Compared with silicon devices, silicon carbide devices have low on-state resistance, which can reduce on-state loss of DC solid state circuit breaker and reduce the pressure of cooling. However, silicon carbide MOSFET has the smaller die area and the higher current density than silicon MOSFET, which leads to the weaker short-circuit ability, the shorter short-circuit withstand time and the higher protection requirement. In order to ensure the safe and reliable operation of silicon carbide power devices and improve the reliability of silicon carbide based DC solid state circuit breakers, the short circuit capability of silicon and silicon carbide MOSFET are analyzed and compared. The internal fault mechanism is revealed. In addition, gate-source voltage clamp methods are elaborated and compared. Combined with desaturation detection, a “soft turn-off” short-circuit protection method based on source parasitic inductance is proposed. Finally, a DC solid state circuit breaker prototype is built for experimental verification. Experimental results show that the proposed method can not only reduce the voltage stress of the power device, but also suppress the short circuit current, suggesting that it is an effective short-circuit protection method for DC solid state circuit breaker based on silicon carbide devices.