Walter A. Steene

Record status: unconfirmed. Class-roster match confidence is medium. Correct the infobox if you have a source, and note it on talk.

Walter A. Steene
Personal details
Born	1913
Died	1984
Nativity	Austria
Religion	Jewish
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	0555167
Rank	Corporal
Camp Ritchie	Class 17 (11 March – 8 May 1944)
Section	5B
Team	IPW 181

Teammates

Team — IPW 181

These are other soldiers listed on the same team roster. People moved between teams; overlapping service dates are not always documented.

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.

Walter A. Steene (1913–1984) was an Austrian-born linguist and Camp Ritchie trainee (Class 17; IPW Team 181) who later taught German in Pennsylvania.

Biography

Walter A. Steene was born in 1913 in Austria and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1930s. He later described leaving because he rejected the political climate that fed National Socialism. Before and during early wartime he struggled with “enemy alien” classification while seeking citizenship.

Drafted into the U.S. Army, he trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, in Class 17 and is rostered with IPW Team 181 (also recorded under enlisted ASN 32533898). A 1972 profile said he spoke English, French, German, and Dutch; served as an interpreter; and was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in London as a liaison officer. He later told the same interviewer that he took shorthand testimony in German from senior Nazi defendants and prepared translations in Washington for the Nuremberg process—claims reported in the press and kept here as his account.

After the war he taught German at Morrisville High School in Pennsylvania and at Rider College; in 1972 the Pennsylvania Department of Education named him among the state’s outstanding teachers. He died in 1984.

Research notes

• Also 32533898 Cpl
• Also enlisted ASN 32533898 (Cpl) on research notes; officer ASN 0555167 is the canonical roster title.
• 1972 Courier Times claims about interrogating Goering, Hess, Keitel, and Doenitz are Steene’s reported recollection—publish as attributed, not independently verified here.

Gallery

• 
  Bucks County Courier Times, 10 January 1972 — profile of Morrisville teacher Walter A. Steene (Camp Ritchie; postwar teaching).
• 
  Bucks County Courier Times, 7 January 1972 — related Steene coverage.
• 
  Portrait crop of Walter A. Steene from the 10 January 1972 Courier Times profile.

Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	71
Class_ASN	32533898
Class_Name	STEENE, Walter A.
match_method	pass2_unique_name
row_source	both

Timeline

• 1913 — Born in Austria.
• Mid-1930s — Immigrates to the United States.
• Camp Ritchie Class 17; IPW Team 181 (also ASN 32533898).
• WWII — Interpreter / liaison work (his 1972 account includes London embassy and Nuremberg translation support).
• 1972 — Profiled as Morrisville / Rider College German teacher.
• 1984 — Died.

Sources

• Bucks County Courier Times, 7 January 1972
• Bucks County Courier Times, 10 January 1972
• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)