In March 1940, Nazi Germany approved the creation of a special combat unit made up exclusively of men serving prison sentences for poaching and related crimes. The decision followed consultations between Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler. The unit was intended to fight partisans in mountainous areas.
Before long, murderers, psychopaths, sexual deviants, and rapists of the worst degree filled its ranks. The unit went on to terrorize civilians and commit unspeakable atrocities, mostly in Poland and Belarus. Its commander was Oskar Dirlewanger, one of the most sadistic Nazi criminals.
Oskar Dirlewanger was born on September 26, 1895. His father was a merchant. After the outbreak of World War I, he took part in the German invasion of Belgium and later fought in France.
He was wounded six times and received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class. In November 1918, at the time of Germany's surrender, he held the rank of lieutenant.
The front experiences had a damaging effect on Dirlewanger's personality. When World War I ended, he was described as a mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic. People with such traits were top candidates for the Nazi Party and the SA, which he joined in 1923.
A year earlier, in 1922, he had completed his studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt and received his doctorate in political science. Dirlewanger was also a pedophile and rapist.
In 1934 he raped a 13-year-old girl from the League of German Girls, the female section of the Hitler Youth. He was also convicted of driving and damaging a government vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.
As a result, he lost his doctorate, was expelled from the Nazi Party and SA, and was sentenced to two years in prison. After his release, between 1936 and 1939, he fought in the Condor Legion, the German military unit sent to Spain to support General Franco's Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish conflict gave Nazi Germany an opportunity to test and develop methods of strategic bombing that were soon used during World War II. Dirlewanger was wounded three times. After his return, he was again allowed to join the Nazi Party and regained the doctorate he had lost for raping a 13-year-old girl.
World War II began on September 1, 1939. In July 1940, Dirlewanger was admitted to the SS. He created and trained a special criminal unit named the Dirlewanger Brigade, which at first consisted mostly of convicted poachers.
They were recruited for their tracking and shooting skills to fight partisans. Later, his unit recruited mostly convicted German criminals. At first, the unit was sent to Nazi-occupied Poland, where Dirlewanger became commandant of a camp at Stary Dzików set up for Jewish slave labor.
They committed atrocities there as well as in the ghetto in Lublin. They used to undress young Jewish female prisoners, whip them, and inject them with strychnine. They laughed as the victims convulsed to death in front of them.
There were even rumors that they cut up Jewish women and boiled them with horse meat to make soap. Heinrich Himmler, as well as Dirlewanger's patron and friend Gottlob Berger, knew about these atrocities and tolerated them. They needed men like Dirlewanger in their fight against the so-called "non-Aryan subhumans."
In February 1942, the Dirlewanger Brigade was sent to Belarus, where its men not only raped and tortured young women but also killed at least 30,000 Belarusian civilians. Their specialty was to cram the local population inside a barn and then set it on fire. Whoever tried to escape the burning barn was shot with a machine gun.
As with the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads operating behind the front line in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, Dirlewanger's unit made their victims, often naked, kneel at the edge of a mass grave. Dirlewanger's kommando shot them in the back of the neck with an automatic pistol, and the bodies dropped straight into the pit.
On August 1, 1944, the Warsaw Uprising began, and Dirlewanger and his men took part in its suppression while committing unspeakable crimes. During the uprising, they also took part in the Wola massacre, in which more than 40,000 Poles were murdered in the Wola neighborhood of the Polish capital.
The massacre was ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, who requested that "anything that moves" be killed in order to stop the Warsaw Uprising. The Dirlewanger Brigade burned three hospitals with patients inside. Nurses were whipped, gang-raped, and hanged naked together with doctors.
Dirlewanger showed no mercy even toward children. When his men found a daycare with 500 children inside, Dirlewanger ordered them all killed. Because he wanted his men to save their bullets, they killed the children with rifle butts and bayonets.
In the Old Town of Warsaw, thousands of civilians and prisoners of war, regardless of gender and age, were raped and murdered. Many were shot or set on fire with flamethrowers.
The Warsaw Uprising lasted 63 days, ending on October 2, 1944. Even though the Red Army was in the suburbs of Warsaw, it did not help the Poles. It is believed that a major reason Stalin decided not to support the uprising was that he wanted to establish a pro-Soviet communist regime in Poland, and a successful uprising by rebels who supported the democratic Polish government-in-exile in London could threaten his plans.
It is estimated that more than 150,000 civilians died in the Warsaw Uprising. For his merits in suppressing the uprising, Oskar Dirlewanger was promoted and awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
In October 1944, Dirlewanger and his men played a crucial role in the brutal suppression of the Slovak National Uprising, which lasted from August 29 to October 28, 1944. Later they took part in fighting against the advancing Red Army in Hungary and Germany.
After the end of the war, Oskar Dirlewanger was arrested on June 1, 1945. Although he was wearing civilian clothes and using a false name, he was recognized by a Jewish former concentration camp prisoner and brought to a detention center.
Dirlewanger died on June 7, 1945. Officially, he died of a heart attack. However, the truth is that after he was recognized by former Polish prisoners, they beat him to death in revenge for his brutality in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising. There were no tears shed for Oskar Dirlewanger.