He directed his first silent film, Clothes Make the Man, the adaption of a novel by Gottfried Keller, in 1921.

Steinhoff went on to direct several other popular commercial films before transitioning to his career as a propagandist.

On April 20, 1945, during the last war days, Steinhoff tried to escape from Berlin on the last scheduled Lufthansa flight.

The plane, a Junkers Ju 52, was shot down by the Soviet Red Army,[1] and all but one of the passengers died.

Hans Albers called him "the greatest asshole of the century", while O. W. Fischer referred to him as "browner than Joseph Goebbels and blacker than Heinrich Himmler.