During World War II, German forces committed countless war crimes in occupied countries of Europe. Officials of the German army (Wehrmacht) participated in them, but mainly the SS, i.e. the elites of the Nazi party.
After all, a main reason for the existence of the last paramilitary organization was to terrorize those peoples who had the misfortune of falling into German occupation so that they would become obedient pawns of the Third Reich. But there was one SS unit whose crimes disgusted the Germans themselves, including the other SS.
This unit was made up of criminals who had been convicted of murder, rape and other heinous crimes. Like most of its members who had many names, this unit appeared under various names, most of which included the word “Dirlewanger” in their title. It is the surname of its leader and creator, Oskar Dirlewanger, who before World War II was a notorious alcoholic pedophile.
The Nazis had imprisoned him for raping minors and expelled him from their party. That such a subject was released and created a criminal unit that fought and was under the protection of the top leadership, is one of the many proofs of the nature of her regime.
Oscar Dirlewanger
Oskar Dirlewanger was one of the millions of Germans who fought in World War I. He distinguished himself in many battles for his valor and as a result he was promoted from a private soldier at the end of the war to a second lieutenant.
After the war he participated in the Frei Korps paramilitary organization that suppressed the communist uprisings that aimed to seize power in the German states. Corporal Adolf Hitler was also in this same organization.
Their paths crossed again in 1923 when Dirlewanger joined the Nazi party. But, he did not have any notable action, as he was an alcoholic and psychologically unstable.
Convicted pedophile
In 1934 while the Nazis had taken power, Oskar Dirlewanger was arrested for the rape of a 13-year-old girl and theft of state property. The jury found him guilty of the crimes, but his sentence was only two years in prison. It was clear that Nazi party officials had arranged for him to ‘go down’.
Also, although he was expelled from the Nazi party after his conviction, he was allowed to reapply for membership immediately after his release. In 1936 Dirlewanger was released, but was quickly arrested again for sexually assaulting a minor. This time the Nazis were determined to get rid of him and so he was sent to a concentration camp.
Dirlewanger’s “plug”
In desperation, Dirlewanger contacted his old World War I comrade Gottlob Berger for help. He was now a senior member of the Nazi party and a close associate of SS leader Heinrich Himmler.
Berger used his influence to get Dirlewanger to leave the concentration camp and join the “Legion Condor”, a German unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) on the side of Franco’s fascists.
The action of this unit in Spain was heroized by the Nazis. Thus, when in the spring of 1939 the “Legion Condor” returned to Germany, Oskar Dirlewanger was no longer a pedophile, but a “war hero”. His friend Berger was able to get him into the SS and even as an officer.
“Oranienburg Poaching Unit”
On March 23, 1940, Hitler ordered the creation of a unit made up of men who had been convicted as poachers. Their mission was to deal with the insurgency that had begun to appear in occupied Poland. According to the order, they would only be pardoned if they distinguished themselves in business.
Hitler preferred them to be Bavarians and Austrians and forbade the inclusion of poachers convicted of setting traps. The reason was that he considered this method inhumane to the animals.
In late May 1940, Himmler ordered Dirlewanger to Oranienburg to take command of this new “poacher” unit. Thus, on June 14, 1940, the “Poacher Unit Oranienburg” (“Wilddiebkommando Oranienburg”) was officially established as part of the Waffen-SS. The unit consisted of only 55 men and was sent to Poland.
There were added four SS non-commissioned officers who had been selected because they had committed disciplinary offences, as well as many new recruits. By September 1940, the unit numbered more than 300 men. Apart from the first 55 executives, the rest had been convicted of serious crimes unrelated to poaching, such as murder, rape, etc. Also Dirlewanger was promoted to the rank of SS-Obersturmführer by Himmler.
The Many Names of the “Dirlewanger Unit”
Like most of its members, who had many names, this unit appeared under various names, such as “SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger”, “SS Sondereinheit Dirlewanger”, “SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger”, “Brigade Dirlewanger”, “Black Hunters” » (German: Die schwarzen Jäger) or 36th Grenadier Division Waffen SS (German: die 36. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS).
The main reason for the unit’s name changes was the shame even the Nazis and SS men felt that convicted criminals who were forbidden to bear arms, therefore exempt from enlistment in the Wehrmacht, could be part of the SS which for they constituted an “elite” military force.
A solution was found. It was declared that the formation was not part of the SS, but “under the control” of the SS. Consequently, the name of the unit was changed to “Special Unit Dirlewanger” (“Sonderkommando Dirlewanger”). As the unit’s strength grew, it was placed under the command of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (the formation responsible for commanding the concentration camps) and redesignated the “SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger”.
In January 1942, in order to increase its strength, the unit was authorized to recruit Russian and Ukrainian volunteers. By February 1943, the number of men in the battalion had doubled to 700. It again became a Waffen-SS unit in late 1944. In May 1944, the 550 men (Turkestani, Volga Tartars, Azerbaijanis, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and Tajiks ) of an SS regiment were transferred to Dirlewanger’s unit, so it officially became the “Dirlewanger Brigade”.
Dirlewanger’s Criminals
It should be noted that as the war continued, the Germans created other convict units that fought on the front lines. However, German soldiers who had been convicted of violations of the military code were sent to these units. Many of them were not criminals.
Only to Dirlewanger’s unit were sent recruits who had been convicted of criminal offenses and even heinous ones, such as premeditated murder, rape, and arson. When the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941, this unit committed atrocities of such a form and scale that it disgusted even the other SS men who had themselves killed or tortured hundreds of thousands of people.
Dirlewanger and his men enjoyed listening to the screams of women and children as they were burned alive inside their homes. Another “favorite” pastime of theirs was to throw women and children to hungry packs of wild dogs and laugh as they tore their flesh.
The unit took part in numerous operations against insurgents, mainly in occupied Belarus. He also participated in the destruction of Warsaw in late 1944, and the massacre of approximately 100,000 inhabitants during the Warsaw Uprising, as well as the brutal suppression of the Slovak National Uprising between August and October 1944.
The End
Pleas by Wehrmacht commanders and even the Waffen-SS to disband Dirlewanger’s unit not only went unheeded, but as the war got worse and worse for Germany, the Nazi leadership reinforced it.
In February 1945, it was upgraded from a brigade to a division and sent to the Oder-Neisse line to stop the Soviet advance. It was now the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division SS 36, always commanded by the notorious Oskar Dirlewanger. It then numbered 4,000 men, many of whom belonged to regular Wehrmacht units.
The division was pushed back to the northeast when the final Soviet offensive began on 16 April 1945 towards Berlin. The next day, Oskar Dirlewanger was seriously wounded in battle and sent to the rear.
Over the next few days the Soviets disbanded the remnants of his unit, and it effectively ceased to exist on May 1, 1945.
Only 700 men of the division survived the war after they managed to cross the Elbe and surrender to the Americans.
Many of them were tried by the Allies as war criminals and sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Not among them was their leader, Oskar Dirlewanger. He was captured by the French occupation forces in Germany and died in their custody on June 8, 1945.
It is said that the French notified the Poles that they had captured him. They sent some of their own who killed him slowly and torturously while the French guards pretended not to see. Be that as it may, no one bothered about the circumstances of the death of the master criminal, Oskar Dirlewanger.
