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Kurt Steiner

Kurt Steiner (1900-1943) was a Luftwaffe fallschirmjäger who had served with distinction on the Eastern Front.

Biography[]

Kurt Steiner was born in Munich in 1900. Third son of a Roman Catholic familiy. In 1943, While returning from the Russian front, by train, however, his journey was delayed, as the SS were now using the rail line to send the Jews to the death camps. Not wanting sit around, he, Ritter, and most came out to stretch their legs, two MPs arrive to tell him to get back on the train. He reluctantly refused, and noticed the "resistance terrorists" on the other train, and was disgusted by the fact they were just ordinary people, were there was no fighter among them.

When a Jewish teenage girl named Anna, tried to escape, the MPs grabbed only for Steiner to punch one, and the other tried to shoot him only fort Steiner to be covered by his men. Steiner, put Anne on a train headed away, and would likely allow her to escape the SS, but she was killed.

An aggressive, unforgiving, SS Obergruppenführer, had Steiner arrested, stripped of his rank and medals. Steiner tried to avoid his men getting the same punishment only for Obergruppenfuhrer to delightfully refuse, and had both him and his men shipped off to a penal colony. He would've likely died there, had it not been for Oberst Max Radl from the Abwehr. Radl offered Steiner a chance to regain his commission and his honor if he'd undertake a perilous mission to the town of Studley Constable and abduct or kill Winston Churchill.

Steiner, refusing to risk the lives of his men needlessly, put it to a vote, and his men unanimously agreed. They were returned to active duty and Steiner got his medals back. Posing as Polish paratroopers and wearing their fallschirmjäger uniforms underneath their Polish ones so they wouldn't be shot as spies, Steiner's team parachuted into England and came to Studley Constable. Steiner in particular went under the pseudonym of Colonel Miller, posing as a British officer commanding the Poles.

The ruse was discovered when one of Steiner's men was killed rescuing a British girl from drowning, uncovering his fallschirmjäger uniform. Realizing the jig was up, Steiner, and his men rounded up the townspeople and put them in the church, however Pamela Vereker, the sister of the village priest Father Vereker managed to escape and warn the nearby Army Ranger detachment commanded by the inexperienced, glory-seeking Colonel Clarence E. Pitts. Against the advice of Captain Harry Clark, Pitts led a disastrous attempt to retake the town without enough men and with no proper reconnaissance. He and several of his men were killed.

The more levelheaded and experienced Clark attempted to persuade Steiner to surrender and give up his mission, but Oberst Steiner refused. While his men held off the Americans, Steiner was able to slip away. Only von Neustadt survived. Alone, Steiner went to the manor where Churchill was staying and confronted him. Realizing he couldn't take the Prime Minister with him, Steiner settled for assassinating him instead and shot Churchill dead on the spot. Just as he did, Clark and several British Army officers came running, and one of them gunned Steiner down. He presumably didn't live to learn that "Churchill" had been a decoy, but he was only wounded and survived.

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