| More correctly, the various Dirlewanger units should be described as a roving pack of criminals. It was probably the most singularly evil "combat" unit to see service in World War 2.
Formed by Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger at the request of Gottlöb Berger head of SS recruiting and Direlwanger's drinking buddy as way to keep the dear doctor out of trouble. It seems the German police knew Dirlewanger fairly well as he was variously a rapist, murderer, pedophile, etc. Of course, in Nazi Germany someone so well connected posed a problem for the police in what to do when they caught him.
So, Dirlewanger was tasked with forming an "anti-partisan" unit from "suitable" prisoners and criminals like say, poachers. What Dirlewanger did was take the expedient method of simply emptying the prisons. Unit officers were usually cashiered from regular service. Discipline was often at the point of a gun.
The unit spent most of its time on the Eastern Front where it was repeatedly moved after higher local commanders threatened to shot the lot as they were causing more trouble with the locals than they solved. In the Warsaw uprising one author stated that Brigade Dirlewanger "brought seens to Europe not witnessed since the Middle Ages." Their brutality and disregard for anything approaching humanity was such that they once again had to be withdrawn.
Dirlewanger ended his days wounded in a hospital where he died from "complications" most likely brought on by lead poisoning or some similar violently fatal end. The unit itself was captured at the end of the war by the Red Army who massacred them on the spot upon learning who they were. |