Rolf Steiner

Rolf Steiner was the son of a Protestant father and Catholic mother.[2] As a youth in Nazi Germany, Steiner was, according to his 1976 memoirs, a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk, and he looked forward to joining the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), but World War Two ended before he could join the Hitler Youth.[1] Steiner later claimed to fought as a Jungvolk volunteer in the Volkssturm (militia) in the last days of World War Two, but no evidence exists to support this claim outside of his own memoirs.[3] A 1968 article in Time stated: "In the final days of World War II, he fought as a Hitler Youth in Germany’s last-ditch defense against the advancing U.S. Army."[4]

In a 2013 interview, Steiner called his memoirs a "fable", stated his father committed suicide in 1937 after failing a "racial hygiene test", and his mother abandoned him in 1944 when he was 11, leaving him to be brought up at a nunnery in Lower Bavaria.[5][6] In the interview, Steiner described a lonely, miserable childhood as a Mischling ("half-breed") under the Third Reich and denied being a member of the Jungvolk or having fought in World War Two.[5] Steiner maintains his teachers called him a "filthy Jew" and he was thrown into the Ganacker concentration camp in early 1945 after he was caught throwing food to the inmates.[5]

In 1948, at the age of 16, Steiner decided to study for the priesthood.[3] He intended to become a Catholic missionary in Africa.[3] Following an affair with a nun at school, however, he decided that the military offered a more interesting life.[3] When he was 17, Steiner enlisted in the French Foreign Legion at Offenburg, and was sent to Sidi-bel-Abbes in Algeria.[1] Steiner intensely wanted to be a soldier, and since the Wehrmacht had abolished together with the German state in 1945, joining the Foreign Legion was the best way to satisfy his martial ambitions.[1] In 2013, he claimed that he enlisted in the Foreign Legion because he was "at war with Germany" and because he read romantic accounts of the Legion's role in the Rif war in Morocco.[5]

As a legionnaire, Steiner fought in Vietnam.[1] In Vietnam, he lost one of his lungs in circumstances that have never been satisfactory explained.[3] Steiner claimed to have lost one of his lungs due to a Viet Minh bullet at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, but the British journalist Frederick Forsyth denied this claim, stating that Steiner's lung was removed by doctors after he was infected with tuberculosis in 1959.[7] In an interview with the German journalist Ulii Kulke, Steiner denied having fought at Dien Bien Phu, saying he was with the Legion's garrison in Hanoi at the time.[5] During his time in the Legion, Steiner was twice demoted down from sergeant to private for insubordination, and twice promoted back up.[4]  

Having first served in the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1e BEP) in northern Vietnam against the Viet Minh, he was in the detachment that parachuted into Suez in the 1956 Suez crisis.[8] He was later posted to Algeria where he met his future wife Odette, a Pied-Noir.[1] The Legion hardened Steiner, and he was taken not only by the bravery, the loyalty and the cosmopolitanism of the Legion, a collection of men from all round the world despite being adversaries only a few years before, were now steadfast comrades.[9] In his letters to the British journalist Peter Martell, Steiner always ended them by quoting the Legion's motto Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our fatherland).[9] Steiner was promoted up from a private to sergeant.[1]

While fighting the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) uprising in Algeria, Steiner became active in the anti-De Gaulle Organisation armée secrète (OAS) through his wife.[1] Many in the Foreign Legion came to intensely identify with the pied-nors of Algeria, and when the French President Charles de Gaulle proposed independence for Algeria, a number of Foreign Legionnaires became involved in the OAS, which attempted to overthrow de Gaulle. Steiner joined the OAS less because of politics because of "a spirit of camaraderie".[1] As an OAS operative, Steiner specialized in setting off plastic bombs as part of the terrorist campaign to overthrow de Gaulle.[1] He was eventually arrested, sentenced to nine months in prison, and then released into civilian life..[10] Being discharged from the Legion left Steiner immensely bored with life as by own admission he was only suitable for a military life.[1]

In 1967, while living in Paris, he made contact with former colleague Roger Faulques, who was organizing a mercenary unit for the newly independent Republic of Biafra.[11] France was supporting Biafra, which happened to have most of Nigeria's oil fields out of the hope if Biafra succeeded in breaking away from Nigeria, French oil companies would be awarded the oil concessions.[1] The French secret service, the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage was sponsoring mercenaries to fight for Biafra, and Steiner was one of the mercenaries recruited.[1] French documents declassified in 2017 confirmed what had long been suspected, namely the recruitment of mercenaries such as Steiner to fight for Biafra together with the supply of arms were orchestrated by the "Africa cell" within the French government headed by the controversial French civil servant Jacques Foccart.[12] The air field at Uli became “Africa’s busiest airport” as French arms were flown in from Libreville, Gabon.[12] French arms were shipped to Libreville and from there were flown into Uli.[12]

Steiner flew to Port Harcourt via Lisbon, Portugal and Libreville and enlisted into the Biafran army.[12] Faulques and most of his 53 mercenaries soon left Biafra after leading his men into unauthorized attack to retake the city of Calabar that ended in disaster in October 1967.[11] Steiner was one of the few who chose to stay on, becoming their leader as a former sergeant in the Foreign Legion he had the most seniority.[11] Fauques and most of the mercenaries he had recruited had expected a repeat of the Congo crisis when they had with the exception of the Irish, Swedish and Indian troops fighting under the banner of the United Nations had faced very undisciplined and badly trained opponents.[13] The discovery that the Nigerians were more disciplined than the Congolese led most of the mercenaries to depart Biafra as the possibility that they might get killed was too unnerving for them.[13]

The British historian Peter Baxter wrote that white mercenaries had an over-sized impact during the Congo crisis of 1960-65 mostly because the Congolese Army had almost disintegrated, and the badly trained Congolese militias were outclassed by the mercenaries.[3] It was hoped that white mercenaries would have a similar impact in Nigeria, but Baxter wrote that through much of the Nigerian Army's leadership had been killed in two coups in 1966, there were still a sufficient number of Sandhurst-trained Nigerian Army officers left to provide just enough professional leadership to hold the Nigerian Army together.[3] Baxter wrote that the Sandhurst-trained Nigerian officers of "altogether higher caliber" than the Congolese militia leaders, and generally speaking, the Nigerians tended to get the better of the mercenaries.[3]      

Steiner's first project upon arriving in 1967 was an attempt to create a brown water navy for Biafra by converting some river boats into gun boats.[14] Steiner argued that with Biafra being flanked on three side by rivers, most notably the natural defensive barrier of the great Niger River that controlling the riparian waters was essential.[14]  

Steiner had some success in leading small units into action against the Nigerian Federal Army.[11] Steiner had wanted to conduct irregular operations, but the need to defend the oil wells led him and his men being assigned a conventional role.[13] David M. Bane, the American ambassador in Libreville reported to Washington on 12 November 1968: "Rolf Steiner, Taffy Williams and an unnamed Italian then became military advisors to Ojukwu. At the end of April 1968, Steiner and the Italian were each given command of a battalion of Biafran commandos with 400 to 500 men per battalion".[15]

Steiner was given the command 4th Biafran Commando Brigade as a lieutenant colonel.[16] The 4th Commando Brigade was intended for irregular operations and existed out of the regular chain of command in the Biafran Army.[16] The first three brigades did not exist; the Biafran army created this bit of disinformation to confuse the Nigerian Federal forces. As the commander of 4th Commando Brigade, Steiner commanded 3, 000 men.[12] Steiner's subordinates were a mixture of adventurers consisting of the Italian Giorgio Norbiato; the Rhodesian explosive expert Johnny Erasmus; the Welshmen Taffy Williams; the Scotsman Alexander Gay; the Irishman Louis "Paddy" Malrooney; the Corsican Armand Iaranelli who had able to enlist in the Foreign Legion by pretending to be Italian; and a Jamaican bartender turned mercenary who called himself "Johnny Korea".[11] Norbiato, Erasmus, and Gay all previously as served as mercenaries fighting for Katanga.[11] The brigade was divided into the Ahoada Strike Force led by Iaranelli, the Abaliki Strike led by Erasmus and the Guards force led by Williams.[11] Williams was known for his short temper and was considered to be "bullet proof" owning to his ability to survive multiple wounds; Malrooney for his tendency to walk around with a gun in his one hand and a bottle of wine in the other ; and the heavily armed Gay always carried around a shotgun “just in case I have to shoot my way out of this bloody place” and professed his belief in the Celtic notion of the "little people".[4] The 4th Brigade spent the first three months of 1968 operating behind the lines of the Federal Nigerian Army.[4]

The British journalist A. J Venter described Steiner as "a ruthless, demanding taskmaster" who was very "hard" on his troops, but was respected, through not loved by the men under his command.[17] Steiner reveled in the war and was well known for his eccentricities such as pulling out his Browning Hi-Power handgun and firing into the air whatever he wanted people to pay attention to him.[18] Venter also wrote that Steiner was an "austere, engaging" man who quickly became a favorite of the journalists covering the war who found the flamboyant, eccentric mercenary Steiner a good news story.[7] A photograph taken in 1968 by the Italian journalist Romano Cagnoni of Steiner in a stern, martial pose dressed in an uniform of his own design made headlines all around the world.[3] A 1968 article in Time quoted Steiner as saying about his opponents: "If any corporal serving under me in the Legion had taken more than a week to conquer West Africa with their kind of equipment, I’d have him shot for dereliction of duty."[4]     

Steiner used a skull and crossbones as his regimental symbol, which he thought would constantly remind his troops of the risks inherent to war, rather than any reference to the pirates' Jolly Roger or the Nazi SS.[11][19] Steiner found the Biafrans to be quick learners and highly motivated.[11] The other ranks of the 4th Commando Brigade saw themselves as an elite force and were proud of their skull and crossbones symbol.[11]  Steiner, far from being a mercenary, fought for the Biafrans without pay, serving long after most other European soldiers of fortune had left the cause.[1]

Steiner claimed to have fought for Biafra because for idealistic reasons, saying the Igbo people were the victims of genocide, but the American journalist Ted Morgan mocked his claims, describing Steiner as a militarist who simply craved war because killing was the only thing he knew how to do well.[1] Morgan wrote in his review of Steiner's memoirs The Last Adventurer:

"Mr. Steiner never saw beyond the battlefield, and it did not really matter which battlefield. Scratch the veneer of just causes and you will find a war‐lover. Money was not important, but the life style was. In civilian life, he was a nobody. In combat, he was an expert. Fighting was the one thing he knew how to do well. He felt comfortable in violent situations. He enjoyed strutting around in fatigues, and leading his Biafran commandos into battle. Where else could he get the rush of adrenaline only combat brings? Where else could a sergeant be promoted overnight to colonel? Although it is not intended as such, his account of how he single‐handedly prevented a Biafran collapse should be read as a great piece of comic writing, in the manner of Evelyn Waugh."[1]

The slogan Steiner adopted for the 4th Brigade was "Long Live Death! Long Live War!"[17] One of Steiner's former colleagues called him "a self-appointed Messiah" who in his own mind was fighting for the oppressed peoples of Africa, noting that Steiner liked to denounce the other mercenaries who fought only for money as the "scum of the earth".[19] Martell wrote about him: "Too wild to conform to the rigid authority of a formal army, he found comfort in violence, and meaning in the adrenaline of battle and the regularity of uniform".[19] The Time article from 1968 stated: "Steiner likes beer, Benson & Hedges cigarettes, violence and very little else. Compulsively clean, he throws even slightly dusty plates at his mess waiters, then kicks them to drive the point home...The troops do not seem to mind the harshness of the command; they follow Steiner because they believe he is a winner and because he has juju (good luck)."[4] The same article noted:

"The mercenaries’ salaries run from $1,700 a month upward. But payday is at best a sporadic affair in besieged Biafra. In any case, money is probably not the major reason for their presence. It is not the land, either, for they seem to have no eyes for the green rolling infinity of the African bush, the visionary sunsets, the humming, warm, smoky nights. They are lobos, outcasts from society who fight every day in order to taste the excitement that comes in living close to violent death. If they survive Biafra, they will doubtless drift on in search of another war."[4]

The 3rd Nigerian Division held the lines just beyond Onitsha, which the Nigerians had taken in March 1968.[20] Onitsha had been taken by the 2nd Nigerian Division under the command of General Murtala Mohammed, a victory that the Biafrans were completely unprepared for and left a dangerous wedge into their lines, but Mohammed chose not to exploit his victory.[21] Initially, the 4th Commando Brigade stayed along the front at Onitsha, where they succeeded in halting the Nigerians, but in July 1968 the brigade was moved to the Owerri sector.[13] The hope was the brigade would serve as a wedge that would hinder the Nigerian advance along a front extending from Owerri to Port Harcourt.[13] By this time, the 4th Brigade were serving as shock troops being assigned to wherever the Nigerian pressure was at its most intense.[22] The British journalist Frederick Forsyth in his 1969 book The Biafra Story devoted an entire chapter to covering the exploits of Steiner and the 4th Brigade in 1968.[22]

One Yoruba who fought for Biafra, Fola Oyewole, recalled that most Biafran officers "...loathed Steiner for his pompous attitude and his lack of manners".[23] Oyewole remembered Steiner as saying to a Biafran colonel "You general in Biafra, in France a corporal!"[23] Steiner's unwillingness to take orders from any Biafran officer together with the fact that the highest rank he held in the French Foreign Legion was sergeant made him widely disliked by the Biafrans.[23] Oyewole stated the original purpose of 4th Commando Brigade was to conduct irregular operations behind the Nigerian lines and the decision by to employ the brigade as a regular unit was unwise as he recalled one mercenary as saying to him "Steiner was a very good commander when he had about 100 exceptionally brave fighters".[23] Finally, Oyewole stated the white mercenaries were hated by the ordinary people of Biafra due to their high-handed behavior; a tendency to retreat when it appeared possible the Nigerians were about to cut them off instead of holding their ground; and a fondness for looting, noting that the European mercenaries seemed more interested in stealing as much as possible instead of helping Biafra.[23]   

In August 1968, the 4th Commando Brigade was involved in extremely heavy fighting as it attempted to stop the 3rd Nigerian Marine Commando Division under the command of General Benjamin "Black Scorpion" Adekunle from crossing the Imo River as the Nigerians followed up their capture of Port Harcourt, the center of the oil industry.[24] By this stage, the 4th Commando Brigade was down to only 1, 000 men, some of whom had to capture ammunition on the battlefield to arm themselves.[24] In September 1968, the 4th Brigade attempted to hold the town of Aba, but was forced to retreat after running out of ammunition.[4] In October 1968, the Nigerians launched an offensive intended to take the Biafran capital of Umuahia with the aim of finishing the war, but in course of heavy fighting, the 4th Brigade played a prominent role in halting the Nigerian offensive.[4] Steiner started to press for the Biafrans to launch an offensive to seize Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria, a plan that was widely considered to be insane as Lagos was too far away from the front.[23] With the plan to take Lagos rejected, Steiner pressed for an offensive to retake Calabar.[23] Instead, Steiner and the 4th Commando Brigade were assigned just outside of Onitsha in an defensive role as heavy Biafran losses were making any offensives increasingly impossible and Biafran president C. Odumegwu Ojukwu was concerned that the Nigerians might take his ancestral hometown of Nnewi.[23]

The Indian historian Pradeep Baru wrote the 4th Commando Brigade under Steiner's leadership had a "poor operational record" and by late 1968, several Biafran officers felt that Steiner was more of a liability than an asset for Biafra.[16] The British historian Philip Jowett wrote the operations under Steiner's command were "extremely costly" as the 4th Commando Brigade took very heavy losses in all its operations.[11] Jowett also wrote that Steiner was over-confident and became "delusional" in his self-assessment of his abilities.[25] Most notably he felt that he need not take orders from the staff of the Biafran president C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, causing much tension over the rouge commander.[25] By contrast, the British historian Philip Baxter called the 4th Commando Brigade as the "best unit in the [Biafran] army" and under Steiner's leadership "well commanded and tactically sound" on the operational level.[26]

On 15 November 1968 Steiner ordered Operation Hiroshima with the aim of retaking Onitsha and stopping the Nigerian advance.[20] Baxter wrote that Steiner "ordered a surprisingly ill-conceived full frontal assault against Nigerian positions across an open area without artillery, air or fire support".[27] Adekunle had his men dug-in with fortified machine gun posts and the Nigerians decisively stopped the Biafran offensive.[24] The Belgian mercenary Marc Goosens was killed together with most of his men in a suicidal attack against well dug Nigerian position.[24] By the time the offensive was abandoned on 29 November 1968, over half of the 4th Commando Brigade had been killed.[24] After the failure of Operation Hiroshima, Steiner lapsed into a depressive state, becoming paranoid as he feared that his own men were planning to kill him while drinking heavily.[24] In an assessment, Forsyth wrote of Steiner: "He was good once, but deteriorated. The press publicity got to him and that's always bad for a mercenary".[28]

On 6 December 1968, Steiner was ordered to present himself before Ojukwu and explain his failure.[24] Steiner showed up very drunk and belligerent.[24] He ordered a glass of beer and become extremely angry when he found the beer was warm, smashing his glass and saying he deserved cold beer.[24] When Ojukwu refused, Steiner attempted to slap him across the face, leading to a brawl with Ojukwu's bodyguards.[24] Only Ojukwu saved Steiner from being shot on the spot, and the meeting ended with Ojukwu stripping him of command and Steiner being marched out in handcuffs.[24] Following several confrontations with his Biafran colleagues, Steiner resigned from service, was then arrested, and expelled from the country in handcuffs.[8] On 10 December 1968, Steiner was expelled from Biafra.[25] On 15 December 1968, Maurice Delauney, the French ambassador to Gabon, reported to Paris: "After departure of Rolf Steiner and his comrades, there are only three European combatants with the Biafrans, two French and one English".[12] Oyewole wrote: "Steiner's departure from Biafra removed the shine from the white mercenaries, the myth of the white man's superiority in the art of soldering".[29] His departure was greeted with much relief by the Biafran officers.[29] After the war, Philip Effiong, the chief of the Biafran general staff was asked by a journalist about the impact of the white mercenaries on the war, his reply was: "They had not helped. It would had made no difference if not a single one of them came to work for the secessionist forces. Rolf Steiner stayed the longest. He was more of a bad influence than anything else. We were happy to get rid of him".[29]

According to Chinua Achebe, Steiner worked for the Biafrans pro bono.[30] He was rewarded with Biafran citizenship.

Following his return to Europe, he learned through his contacts in charitable foundations of the plight of Christians in southern Sudan. He offered his services to Idi Amin, then commander of the Ugandan Army, who was funding the Anyanya rebel forces, and was dispatched to the war zone.[31] Steiner arrived in the Sudan (modern South Sudan) in July 1969, where he supervised the building of an airfield to fly in arms.[32] Steiner described southern Sudan as a place where the people were almost living in the Stone Age, writing the people had nothing: "not even the most ordinary objects which seem to have invaded the plant-not a plastic bucket, a box of matches, a nylon shirt, or even a bottle of Coca-Cola. Nine-tenths of the people went naked. They lived like animals. The women didn't even have pots to cook in. Instead the men hammered bits of sheet metal into usable shapes".[33] The south of the Sudan operated on a barter economy and for the peoples of the region, whatever they be Dinka or Nuer, the principle currency were and still are cattle.[34] The principle means of acquiring wealth in southern Sudan had been millennia cattle raids.[34] The lack of cash to pay for weapons was a persistent problem for Anyanya. One of the few ways Anyaya brought weapons was by slaughtering elephants and selling their tusks on the international black markets as there were and still are very profitable ivory trade smuggling networks that stretched from Africa to Asia.[35]     

By August 1969, Steiner was associated with Anyanya General Emilio Tafeng and was encouraging his ambitions to make himself leader of Anyanya.[36] In the same month, Steiner planted a story in the Ugandan newspapers that a revolution had brought down the Nile Provisional Government and the people were rallying to Tafeng.[36] Steiner began to train Tafeng's men at his base in Morta and in 1969 led a "daring attack" on the Sudanese Army post at Kajo Keji, which in ended in disaster as the small arms fire of the guerrillas was no match for the heavy machine guns and mortars of the Sudanese.[37]

In November 1969, he definitely attached himself to the faction led by General Emilio Tafeng who he was serving as a military adviser to.[32] Tafeng gave him the rank of colonel together the command of a force that is estimated to have numbered between 20,000-24, 000 men.[32] The Anyanya rebels were inclined to factionalism, and by 1969 Tafeng had broken away from the main faction to form the Anyidi Revolutionary Government.[32] The split was in part caused by Steiner who promised Tafeng "that if he could keep away from the Nile Provisional Government...the German government had agreed to supply him with arms so that he could fight separately against the Arabs".[36] Steiner suggested that Tafeng that he should overthrow President Gordon Muortat of Nile Provisional Government and once Tafeng was in charge should in turn appoint him chief of staff of Anyanya.[36]  

Steiner suggested to Tafeng that arms could be smuggled into the Sudan via Uganda under the guise of humanitarian aid, saying it would be easy to hide arms and ammunition in among the blankets, medical supplies and agricultural implements.[37] The commander of the Ugandan Army, Idi Amin, tolerated the arms smuggling provided that he received sufficient bribes.[37] After his defeat at Kajo-Kaji, Steiner went to West Germany where he contacted a Catholic charity, the Biafra-Sudan Action Committee, in an attempt to raise awareness in the West about the plight of the southern Sudanese.[37] Upon his return to Sudan, Tafeng gave him a bodyguard of about 800 men, believing that Steiner would deliver upon his promises of aid.[37] An American documentary filmmaker Allan Reed found Steiner in 1970 and recalled: "He wanted to be king. We found him sitting on the ground in this little hut, and he was patching up some infected wounds that some kids had, there was a whole long line of them. He said the only time he was ever happy was when he went into battle. His eyes lit up when he talked about it. He told me that he thinks of himself as a 17th century man. It seemed to me that he was there building himself a little kingdom".[38]

Reed stated that Steiner claimed to him that he was working for MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency, but Reed was skeptical of these claims, saying: "He didn't deliver any goods. Any major Western intelligence agency could at least get him some machine guns or munitions...It was really quite strange. It was quite a pathetic looking place".[39] The locals told Reed that the previous year Steiner had ordered them to build an airfield, saying that "plane loads of arms and relief aid" from the West would then be flown in.[9] Of the airfield that had been built in 1969, Reed stated: "So the people chopped down the trees and built a grass runway. It was completely overrun with weeds. The people said that no planes had ever come".[9] Steiner was noted for his eccentric training and leadership methods such as firing his gun near the feet of sentries he caught sleeping at night, making recruits ride leap swings through fires, and making trainees sit in a circle with their feet facing a mortar tube while he fired a round.[9] The people of the southern Sudan remembered Steiner as a strange and terrifying character, but he believed he was acting in their best interest, telling one journalist in 1970: "I'm an extremist. The Africans need my help".[9] Martell wrote about Steiner: "He was addicted to the thrill of combat-or at least to bask in the reputation of that. Coupled with a love of guns and an arrogant political naivety that he could make a change, it was a dangerous mix".[9]

In late 1969-early 1970, there was heavy fighting as the new Sudanese president, General Gaafar Nimeiry who just overthrown the previous government in May 1969, ordered an offensive to retake southern Sudan.[40] Under the impact of the offensive, Anyidi Revolutionary Government collapsed in April 1970.[32] The Anyidi Revolutionary Government was cornered between forces of the Nile Provisional Government and another faction loyal to Colonel Joseph Lagu who like Tafeng wanted to overthrow Muortat.[41] Tafeng made a bargain where he disbanded his government and recognized the authority of Lagu, who was hostile towards Steiner.[41] After a lull in the spring, the fighting resumed and in September-October 1970 several Anyanya camps were taken by the Sudanese Army.[40] Among the camps captured were Tafeng's camp at Morta where Steiner had been based.[40] By this point, Steiner was wandering around Southern Sudan aimlessly as the main Anyanya leaders distrusted him.[32] The British historian Edgar O'Ballance wrote: "Steiner had hardly made any impression in the south, which in general seemed embarrassed by his former presence there..."..[42]

Eventually he quarreled with Colonel Joseph Lagu, an Anyanya leader, and was ordered by Lagu to leave the Sudan. Israel was backing the Anyanya rebellion of the black southern Sudanese against the Muslim Arab northerners, and the Israelis had singled out Lagu as the most able of Anyanya leaders.[43] The Israelis felt that Steiner was a "loose cannon" and objected to a man who spent his youth in the Nazi Deutsches Jungvolk.[43] One former Israeli agent attached to Anyanya told Martell: "I told Lagu, either Steiner leaves or we get out".[43] In November 1970, Steiner returned to Uganda and was immediately arrested.[32] Deciding to return to Europe, Steiner stopped in Kampala, Uganda and unwittingly became involved in the power struggle between Amin and President Milton Obote. When he refused to implicate his benefactor Amin in treason, Obote had him arrested and flown to Khartoum on January 8, 1971, charged with "crimes against Africa."[44][45]

On 18 January 1971, Steiner appeared at a press conference in Khartoum, where he admitted that he worked as a mercenary, but denied having fought for Anyanya, saying he only served the Anyidi Revolutionary Government.[32] Steiner gave his own assessment of the Anyanya guerrillas, saying they fought well against each other, but less well against the Sudanese Army.[42] He described Anyanya as riven by factionalism, personality conflicts and an inability to co-ordinate the political and military aspects of the war.[42] He also stated Anyanya had much difficulty overcoming ethnic conflicts as the guerrillas disliked fighting outside of their home regions and that he had prepared several ambushes of the Sudanese that failed when one or more of the "resistance platoons" failed to co-ordinate or even to show up at all.[42]

Steiner's trial in Khartoum between 5 August-9 September 1971 attracted international publicity, not the least because of Steiner's tendency to gave rambling speeches before the court and to make bizarre claims.[46] The Muslim Arab government in Khartoum always maintained that the Christian blacks of south Sudan had no grievances, and the rebellion was merely the work of outsiders stirring the southerners up, so putting a mercenary on trial was a great propaganda coup for the Nimeiry regime.[43] Ignoring the fact that rebellion had started long before Steiner had arrived in 1969, the Nimeiry regime vastly exaggerated Steiner's role in the war as it portrayed him as the mastermind behind the rebellion who had duped gullible Africans into fighting against Khartoum.[43] He spent three years in prison, where he was severely tortured, and was eventually sentenced to death by the Sudanese courts, which was commuted to twenty years on "humanitarian" grounds.[43] The same Israeli agent expressed regret to Martell that he had pressured Lagu to expel Steiner, saying: "If I had known he would had been tortured like this, I would not had let it happen. What is the point to torture this person? He did nothing bad".[43] During his time in Khartoum, he was the subject of an East German documentary. Steiner has denied that the East Germans tortured him, noting that they got him to talk by supplying him with beer (a rarity in the Sudan, which enforces sharia law and bans alcohol).[5] It was only through pressure from the West German government that he was finally released from prison in March 1974. As a result of imprisonment and torture in Khartoum, Steiner lost one kidney together with 30% of his vision in both eyes.[1]

Steiner retired to Germany where he remarried and wrote his memoirs, which were published in 1976 as The Last Adventurer.[47] In 1976, the East German documentary Immer wenn der Steiner kam featuring interviews with Steiner in Khartoum prison was released, which sought to portray him as the puppet of Western oil companies.[5] In 1976, Steiner tried to sue the government of the Sudan for torturing him to sum of 12 million deutschmarks, but his lawsuit was thrown out by a Cologne court.[48] Much of Steiner's notoriety seemed to stem from confusion in the public mind with another German mercenary, Siegfried "Congo Killer" Müller, a Wehrmacht veteran who always wore an Iron Cross around his neck and was notorious in the Congo for his brutality towards blacks.[5] 

In 1977 and 1978, Steiner visited East Germany to contact the East German officials who interviewed him in Khartoum, though to what purpose remains unclear, but in 1978 the Stasi (East German secret police) stated there was to be no more contact with him.[5] General Idi Amin became president of Uganda after deposing Obote in a coup d'etat on 25 January 1971, attracting worldwide notoriety during his time for power between 1971-79 for his cruelty and for ruining Uganda. As a someone who knew Amin personally, Steiner became something of a celebrity in the beerhalls of Munich where he would recount tales of meeting Amin, and in the process he became a friend of the journalist, collector of Nazi memorabilia and fraudster Gerd Heidemann, who in his turn became internationally infamous in 1983 as one of the authors of the Hitler diaries hoax.[5]

Forysth has admitted the character of Kurt Semmler in his 1974 novel The Dogs of War, a crazed German mercenary who dies in the Sudan, was based on Steiner.[38] In June 1982, Steiner was involved in a lawsuit in Munich as the government of the Federal Republic attempted to bill him for the cost of flying him out of Khartoum, leading him to claim that he had not wanted to leave the Sudan.[49] In 2013, he was living in Munich and was described by the journalist Ulli Kulke as haunting the beerhalls, where he maintained a belligerent attitude, still insisting that he was idealist who fought only to protect the peoples of Africa.[5] In an interview with the British journalist Peter Martell, Steiner called The Last Adventurer a "fable" written by his ghost writer Yves-Guy Berges.[6] In the same interview, Steiner denied being a mercenary, saying: "I was no mercenary. That is a lie. What I did, I did for the people. It was not for money, it was for the cause".[50] Steiner rejects the label of soldier of fortune, saying he had been defamed as he maintained: "When a man fights for what he truly believes, he is not a mercenary".[9]

Frederick Forsyth's popular novel about mercenaries, The Dogs of War, has Steiner as a friend and rival of the mercenary leader who is the protagonist.[51]

• Biafra
• First Sudanese Civil War
• Taffy Williams

• Barua, Pradeep The Military Effectiveness of Post-Colonial States, Leiden: Brill, 2013, ISBN 9004249117.
• Baxter, Peter Biafra: The Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970, London: Helion and Company, 2014, ISBN 1909982369
• Collins, Robert Civil Wars and Revolution in the Sudan: Essays on the Sudan, Southern Sudan and Darfur, 1962 - 2004, Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers, 2005, ISBN 0974819875.
• Jowett, Philip Modern African Wars (5): The Nigerian-Biafran War 1967–70, London: Osprey, 2016 ISBN 1472816102
• Martell, Peter First Raise a Flag: How South Sudan Won the Longest War but Lost the Peace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019 ISBN 0190083379
• Nyeko-Jones, Jennifer The Silent Sunset: A Daughter's Memoir Milton Keynes, AuthorHouse, 2011 ISBN 1456788965.
• Poggo, Scopas The First Sudanese Civil War: Africans, Arabs, and Israelis in the Southern Sudan, 1955-1972, New York: Springer 2008 ISBN 0230617980.
• O'Ballance, Edgar Sudan, Civil War and Terrorism, 1956-99, New York: Springer, 2003 ISBN 0230597327
• Oyewole, Fola "Scientists and Mercenaries" pages 59-65 from Transition, Volume 48, 1975.
• Venter, A.J. War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars: The Modern Mercenary in Combat, New Delhi: Lancer, 2006, ISBN 8170621747.
• Venter, A.J. Biafra's War 1967-1970: A Tribal Conflict in Nigeria That Left a Million Dead, Warwick: Helion and Company, 2016 ISBN 1912174316,.

• Die Irrfahrten des Rolf Steiner,: Legionär ohne Legende (German)