Dirlewanger Brigade
The Dirlewanger Brigade, also known as the 2.SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, or the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, or The Black Hunters, was a unit of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The unit, named after its commander Oskar Dirlewanger, consisted of convicted criminals, other prisoners, and some volunteers. Originally formed from convicted poachers in 1940 and first deployed for guarding a labor camp and later counter-insurgency duties against the Polish resistance movement, the brigade saw service in German-occupied Eastern Europe, with an especially active role in the anti-partisan operations in Belarus. The unit is regarded as the most brutal and notorious Waffen-SS unit, with its soldiers described as "The ideal genocidal killers who neither gave nor expected quarter." The unit is regarded as the most infamous Waffen-SS unit in Poland and Belarus, and arguably the worst military unit in modern European history in terms of criminality and cruelty.
During its operations, the unit participated in the mass murder of civilians and committed other atrocities in German-occupied Eastern Europe. It gained a reputation among Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS officers for its brutality. It epitomized the "anti-partisan activity on the Eastern front that emerged from the image of the hunt and the animalization of the enemy." The unit continuously committed sadistic acts of violence, torture, rape and murder, and enjoyed plundering wherever they went. Dirlewanger himself often beat and killed his own troops as well, especially when they displeased him.
According to French historian Christian Ingrao, Dirlewanger's unit committed the worst atrocities of the Second World War, while the American historian Timothy Snyder noted they committed more atrocities than any other unit. The unit killed at least 30,000, and up to 120,000 civilians in Belarus alone and destroyed some 200 villages. Several German commanders and officials attempted to remove Dirlewanger from command and to dissolve the unit, but powerful patrons within the Nazi apparatus protected Dirlewanger and intervened on his behalf. Amongst other actions, the unit took part in the destruction of Warsaw in late 1944 and in the Wola massacre of more than 50,000 of Warsaw's inhabitants in August 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising. In Warsaw the unit killed at least 12,500, and up to 30,000 people, most of them non-combatants. The unit participated in the brutal suppression of the Slovak National Uprising of August to October 1944.
Oskar Dirlewanger
The eponymous Dirlewanger Brigade was led by World War I veteran and habitual offender Oskar Dirlewanger, considered an amoral violent alcoholic who was claimed to have possessed a sadistic sexual fetish and a barbaric nature.After enlisting in the German Army as a machine gunner in 1913, Dirlewanger served in the XIII Corps rising to the rank of Leutnant and receiving the Iron Cross first and second class during WWI. He joined the Freikorps and took part in crushing the German Revolution of 1918–19. After graduating from Frankfurt's Goethe University with a doctorate in political science in 1922, he worked at a bank and at a knitwear factory. By 1923, he had joined the Nazi Party. In 1934, he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor with whom he was sexually involved", and for stealing government property. The conviction led to him being expelled from the Nazi Party. Soon after his release, Dirlewanger was rearrested for sexual assault and sent to a concentration camp at Welzheim. In desperation, he contacted his old WWI comrade Gottlob Berger who was now a senior Nazi working closely with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Berger used his influence to help Dirlewanger join the Condor Legion, a German unit which fought in the Spanish Civil War.
On his return to Germany in 1939, Berger helped Dirlewanger join the Allgemeine SS with the rank of SS-Obersturmführer. In mid-1940, after the invasion of Poland, Berger arranged for Dirlewanger to command and train a military unit of convicted poachers for partisan-hunting.
Composition
In March 1940, Adolf Hitler received a letter from the wife of an Old Fighter party member, who revealed that her husband had been arrested and convicted for poaching in one of Germany's national forests. He had been caught hunting without a license or permit, a serious offense. The woman, in her desperate plea, begged Hitler to release her husband. She proposed that he be sent to the frontline to regain his honor, believing that such an act would allow him to redeem himself and restore his honor.Gottlob Berger revealed, during his interrogation by the International Military Tribunal, that the letter was the main basis for the unit's founding. He also stated that:
The Dirlewanger Brigade owes its existence to an order of Adolf Hitler given in 1940 while the campaign in the West was still going on. One day Himmler called me up and told me that Hitler had ordered all men convicted of poaching with firearms who were in prison were to be collected and formed into a special detachment. That Hitler should have such a somewhat unusual and far-fetched idea at all is due to the following reason: first of all, he himself didn't like hunting and had nothing but scorn for all hunters. Whenever he could ridicule them he did.After considering the request outlined in the letter—and influenced by his own views on poaching—Hitler decided to adopt the concept and transform it into an actual formation. On 23 March 1940, an advisor in the Ministry of Justice at the time, Franz Gürtner received a telephone call from Himmler's adjutant, SS-Gruppenführer Karl Wolff informing them that Hitler had decided to give "suspended sentences to so-called 'honourable poachers' and, depending on their behaviour at the front, to pardon them". A confirmation of Hitler's order was sent specifying that the poachers should, where possible, be Bavarian and Austrian, not be guilty of crimes involving trap setting, and were to be enrolled in marksmen's rifle corps. The men were to combine their knowledge of hunting and woodcraft similar to traditional Jäger elite riflemen with the courage and initiative of those who willingly broke the law.
In late May 1940, Dirlewanger was sent to Oranienburg to take charge of 80 selected men convicted of poaching crimes who were temporarily released from their sentences. After two months of training, 55 men were selected with the rest sent back to prison. On 14 June 1940, the Wilddiebkommando Oranienburg was formed as part of the Waffen-SS and is subordinated to the SS-Totenkopf's 5th Regiment. Himmler made Dirlewanger its commander. The unit was sent to Poland where it was joined by four Waffen-SS NCOs selected for their previous disciplinary records and twenty other recruits. By September 1940, the formation numbered over 300 men. Dirlewanger was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer by Himmler. With the influx of criminals, the emphasis on poachers was now lost, though many of the former poachers rose to NCO ranks to train the unit. Those convicted of other crimes, including the criminally insane and homosexuals, also joined the unit.
From the beginning, the formation attracted criticism from both the Nazi Party and the SS for the idea that convicted criminals who were forbidden to carry arms, therefore then exempt from conscription in the Wehrmacht, could be a part of the elite SS. A solution was found where it was proclaimed that the formation was not part of the SS, but under the control of the SS. Accordingly, the unit name was changed to Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. In January 1942, to rebuild its strength, the unit was authorised to recruit Russian and Ukrainian volunteers. By February 1943, the number of men in the battalion doubled to 700. In May 1944, the 550 men from the Ostmuselmanische SS-Regiment were attached to the SS-Sonderregiment Dirlewanger.
Although other Strafbataillons were raised as the war proceeded and the need for further manpower grew, these penal military units were for those convicted of military offences, whereas the recruits sent to the unit were convicted of major crimes such as premeditated murder, rape, arson, and burglary. Dirlewanger provided them with an opportunity to commit atrocities on such a scale that it even raised complaints within the brutal SS. Historian Martin Windrow described them as a "terrifying rabble" of "cut-throats, renegades, sadistic morons, and cashiered rejects from other units". Some Nazi officials romanticized the unit, viewing the men as "pure primitive German men" who were "resisting the law".
Operational history
During the organization's time in the Soviet Union, the unit burned women and children alive, let packs of starved dogs feed on them, and injected Jewish women with strychnine. Transcripts of the Nuremberg trials show Soviet prosecutors frequently questioning defendants accused of war crimes on the Eastern Front about their knowledge of the Dirlewanger Brigade. Heinrich Himmler noted the brutality of Dirlewanger, noting that "The tone in the regiment is, I may say, in many cases a medieval one with cudgels and such things. If anyone expresses doubts about winning the war he is likely to fall dead from the table."The deputy commander, Kurt Weisse, has been described as the soldier in Dirlewanger that came closest to matching Dirlewanger in "brutality, cruelty, and outright sadism", and if "there was anyone in the unit who matched the classic profile of a psychopath, it was he." Weisse was hand-picked by Dirlewanger for his loyalty and shared criminality.
Poland
On 1 August 1940, the unit was formally transferred to the 5. SS-Totenkopf Regiment. One month later, the unit was retitled to Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. On 1 September 1940, they were informed that they would not be sent to any frontlines but instead assigned to guard duties in the region of Lublin in the General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. The unit was reinforced with hundred of additional volunteers from Sachsenhausen which contained a mixture of poachers, SS men, or both. In September 1940, the unit now with the strength of approximately 280-300 men began their movement from Sachsenhausen to Lublin by railway taking around 10–14 hours Upon arrival, the unit was subordinated to SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik, who served as the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer-Ost's representative for Lublin. Even though they received additional training, they were tasked with guarding the ghetto in Lublin, where they often abused the population. For example, according to Morgen's report, Dirlewanger arrested Jews on the charge of ritual murder and then, demanded ransoms up to 15.000 Zlotys or the prisoners would be shot.According to the historian, Matthew Cooper, "wherever the Dirlewanger unit operated, corruption and rape formed an every-day part of life and indiscriminate slaughter, beatings and looting were rife". Even within the brutal regime of the General Government concerns were raised about the unit's conduct. Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger eventually demanded the quick removal of the unit from his territory or he would have the men arrested.
The unit's crimes continued when it returned to Poland to help suppress the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Crimes included the mass rape and murder of 15 Red Cross nurses and the killing of thousands of civilians. After troops entered a makeshift military hospital, they first killed the wounded with bayonets and rifle butts before gang-raping the women. The naked bleeding nurses were then taken outside, hanged by their feet and shot in their stomachs. The unit would carry out atrocities during the Wola massacre in which more than 40,000 Polish civilians were killed in reprisal on the orders of Himmler.