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Old 05-07-2007, 08:43 PM   #7 (permalink)
T. A. Gardner
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Join Date: Feb 2007
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Let's not forget the luminary Waffen SS units under Dr. Dirlewanger variously, Brigade Dirlewanger, Dirlewanger abt, and finally 36th SS Grenadier Division Dirlewanger.
Composed primarily, if not completely, of felons, criminals, and other miscreants and used as an "anit-partisan" unit in the East. The dear doctor, described as a rapist, murderer, and possible pedipholie who was a drinking buddy of Gottlob Berger head of SS recruiting, was given this unit to command to get him out of the German civil police's hair.
Shifted around the East front regularly it gained a reputation for unexceeded depravity and violence against the local populace. Several higher German commanders threatened to have the whole unit shot if it were not moved.
One author described their performance in putting down the Warsaw uprising as "having brought scenes to a European city not seen since the Middle Ages." The overall SS command was so reviled by their wanton actions the unit was pulled from the operation and sent back to the Eastern front.
Oscar Dirlewanger ended his days in a military hospital dying from "complications" to a wound he recieved (my guess is severe lead posioning...). The unit itself was captured by the Red Army at the end of the war who massacred them on the spot putting an end to one of the worst of the worst of Nazi excesses.
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