Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – c. 7 June 1945) was a German SS commander and habitual offender, convicted for rape of children and other crimes. He is known for committing numerous war crimes in German-occupied territories during World War II. Dirlewanger was the founder and commander of the SS penal unit, the Dirlewanger Brigade, considered to be the most brutal and notorious Waffen-SS unit. His unit epitomized the expansion of the war of terror in its most brutal form within the SS, and with Dirlewanger himself regarded as perhaps the Nazi regime's "most extreme executioner", indulging himself in sadistic acts of violence, rape and murder.

While serving in Poland and Belarus, Dirlewanger has been closely linked to many atrocities, and is considered one of the most cruel and depraved individuals in all of history, with his unit being responsible for the deaths of at least "tens of thousands" in Poland and the Soviet Union. His methods included rape and torture, and he personally kept numerous women as his sex slaves. According to historian Christian Ingrao, Dirlewanger's unit committed the worst atrocities of the Second World War. In Belarus alone, he was responsible for up to 200 villages destroyed and over 120,000 people killed. His unit is also noted to have committed the worst crimes of the Warsaw Uprising, alongside the notorious and brutal Kaminski Brigade, with his unit's behavior and conduct reported as having been far worse. Dirlewanger's unit is regarded as the most infamous Waffen-SS unit in both Poland and Belarus.

Dirlewanger had an impressive career as a junior officer during World War I, and further fought in the post-World War I conflicts, and the Spanish Civil War. He reportedly died after World War II while in the custody of the Western Allies.

According to the historian Timothy Snyder, "in all the theaters of the Second World War, few could compete in cruelty with Oskar Dirlewanger." He has also been described as the "most evil man in the SS" and as "perhaps the most sadistic of all commanders of World War II." According to military historian Tim Heath, Dirlewanger was "a living embodiment of evil and depravity and all the proof that anyone could need that monsters do exist". Historian Alexandra Richie stated how the murder "of partisans and civilians was carried out on a grand scale in Byelorussia" but said that "one person who stood out even in that terrible time was Oskar Dirlewanger" and labeled him as "the very face of evil".

Early life
Dirlewanger was born in Würzburg on 26 September 1895. He was the son of August Dirlewanger, a wealthy sales agent, and his wife Paulina (née Herrlinger). The Dirlewanger family was of Swabian origin. He spent much of his childhood in Esslingen am Neckar after his family moved there in 1906. He attended the Esslinger Gymnasium (known today as the Georgii-Gymnasium) and the Schelztor-Oberrealschule. He completed his Abitur in 1913.

Dirlewanger never married and he stood six feet tall.

World War I
Dirlewanger enlisted in the Württemberg Army on 1 October 1913, and served as a machine gunner in the "König Karl" Grenadier Regiment 123, a part of the XIII (Royal Württemberg) Corps and as a one-year volunteer. With the outbreak of the First World War, on 2 August 1914, Dirlewanger, as part of the regiment, which was part of Crown Prince Wilhelm's 5th Army, was sent to the Western Front, where he took part in the Battle of the Ardennes and later fought in France and Luxembourg. While serving on the Western Front, Dirlewanger was wounded several times, as a result of which he became "40 percent disabled."

He received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class, having been wounded six times, and finished the war with the rank of lieutenant, in charge of a company on the Eastern Front in southern Russia and Romania. At the cessation of hostilities, Dirlewanger's battalion was supposed to be interned in Romania, but Dirlewanger decided to return his unit to Germany, and led 600 men from his company and other battalion units home. According to German biographer Knut Stang, the war was a contributing factor that determined Dirlewanger's later life and his "terror warfare" methods, as "his amoral personality, with his alcoholism and his sadistic sexual orientation, was additionally shattered by the front experiences of the First World War and its frenzied violence and barbarism."

Interwar period
By the end of World War I, Dirlewanger was described in one police report as "a mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic, who had the habit of erupting into violence under the influence of drugs". The fact that he had succeeded, even after the ceasefire, in fighting his way back from the front in Romania to Germany with his men became for him the defining experience. Henceforth he adopted an unrestrained mode of life, characterized by contempt for the laws and rules of civil society. In 1919, he joined various Freikorps paramilitary militias and fought against German communists in Thuringia, Ruhr, and Saxony, and against Poles in Upper Silesia. He participated in the suppression of the German Revolution of 1918–19 with the Freikorps in multiple German cities in 1920 and 1921. At the same time, he studied at the Higher Commercial School in Mannheim, but was expelled from it for antisemitism. Later, he commanded an armed formation of students which was set up by him under the Württemberg "Highway Watch".

On Easter Sunday 1921, Dirlewanger commanded an armoured train that moved towards Sangerhausen, which had been occupied by the Communist Party of Germany militia group of Max Hoelz in one of their raids intended to inspire worker uprisings. An attack by Dirlewanger failed, and the enemy militiamen succeeded in cutting off his force. After the latter was reinforced by pro-government troops during the night, the Communists withdrew from the town. During this operation, Dirlewanger was grazed on the head by a gunshot. After the Nazi Party gained power, Dirlewanger was celebrated as the town's "liberator from the Red terrorists" and received its honorary citizenship in 1935.

Between his militant forays, he studied at the Goethe University Frankfurt and in 1922 obtained a doctorate in political science (Dr. rer. pol.). He wrote his doctoral thesis as an analysis and critique of the planned economy, titled: “Critique of the idea of a planned management of the economy." The following year, he joined the Nazi Party and its SA militia, and later also the SS. From 1928 to 1931 he was an executive director of a textile factory owned by a Jewish family in Erfurt where he renounced active service in the SA but financially donated to the SA, possibly obtaining the money by embezzling from his company. Dirlewanger held various jobs, which included working at a bank and a knitwear factory. In 1933 after the Nazi seizure of power, Dirlewanger was rewarded by being made director of the Heilbronn employment agency, a strategic post for local-level Nazi leaders.

Dirlewanger was repeatedly convicted for illegal arms possession and embezzlement. In 1934, he was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor with whom he was sexually involved". Dirlewanger also lost his job, his doctor title and all military honours, and was expelled from the party. Soon after his release from the prison in Ludwigsburg, he was arrested again on the same charge and sent to the Welzheim concentration camp, but more likely it was for creating a disturbance before the Reich Chancellery, demanding the reversal of his criminal charges. Dirlewanger was released and reinstated in the general reserve of the SS following personal intervention of his wartime companion and local NSDAP cadre comrade Gottlob Berger, who was also a long-time personal friend of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and had become the head of the SS Main Office (SS-Hauptamt, SS-HA).

Dirlewanger next went to Spain, where he enlisted into the Spanish Legion during the Spanish Civil War. Through Berger he transferred to the German Condor Legion where he served from 1936 to 1939 and was wounded three times. Following further intervention on his behalf by his patron Berger, he successfully petitioned to have his case reconsidered in light of his service in Spain. Dirlewanger was reinstated into the NSDAP, albeit with a higher party number (No. 1,098,716). His doctorate was also restored by the University of Frankfurt.

World War II
At the beginning of World War II, Dirlewanger volunteered for the Waffen-SS and received the rank of Obersturmführer. On 4 June 1940, Berger proposed to Himmler that Dirlewanger be appointed commander of a special SS unit: the so-called Dirlewanger Brigade (at first designated as a battalion, later expanded to a regiment and a brigade, and eventually a division), composed originally of a small group of former poachers along with soldiers of a more conventional background. It was believed that the excellent tracking and shooting skills of the poachers could be put to constructive use in the fight against partisans. The unit was created and Dirlewanger was given the task of conducting military training among poachers serving their sentences in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

The unit was assigned to security duties first in the General Government (occupied Poland), where Dirlewanger served as an SS-TV commandant of a labour camp at Stary Dzików. The camp was the subject of an abuse investigation by SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen, who accused Dirlewanger of wanton acts of murder, corruption, and Rassenschande or race defilement (Morgen consequently himself was reduced in rank and sent to the Eastern Front). According to Morgen, "Dirlewanger was a nuisance and a terror to the entire population. He repeatedly pillaged the ghetto in Lublin, extorting ransoms." Atrocities committed by Dirlewanger include burning the genitals of women he abused with a petrol lighter, whipping and then injecting strychnine into Jewish girls and watching their death agonies in the officers' mess. He would often rape children, whether boy or girl, and then shoot them afterwards. The Jewish girls which Dirlewanger raped were taken away and shot by his men so they could not report him nor testify. One day Dirlewanger poisoned 57 Jews by his own initiative. Raul Hilberg noted that this camp was where "one of the first instances that reference was made to the 'soap-making rumor". According to the rumor, Dirlewanger "cut up Jewish women and boiled them with horse meat to make soap." Georg Konrad Morgen, who investigated the conduct of Dirlewanger, testified after the end of the war that: "Dirlewanger had arrested people illegally and arbitrarily, and as for his female prisoners — young jewesses — he did the following against them: he called together a small circle of friends consisting of members of a Wehrmacht supply unit. Then he made so-called scientific experiments, which involved stripping the victims of their clothes. Then they [the victims] were given an injection of strychnine. Dirlewanger looked on, smoked a cigarette, as did his friends, and they saw how these girls were dying. Immediately after that the corpses were cut into small pieces, mixed with horsemeat, and boiled into soap." According to Peter Longerich, "Dirlewanger's leadership of the Sonderkommando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities, rape, and murder—and his mentor Berger tolerated this behaviour, as did Himmler, who so urgently needed men such as the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger in his fight against 'subhumanity'. It was important to the Reichsführer, however, that the detachments within the Sonderkommando did not belong to the Waffen SS, but merely serve it. In his letter to Himmler, SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik recommended Dirlewanger, who "... when in charge of the Jewish camp of Dzikow ... was an excellent leader." During the Ministries Trial after the war, Berger said: "Now Dr. Dirlewanger was hardly a good boy. You can't say that. But he was a good soldier, and he had one big mistake that he didn't know when to stop drinking." He was brutal towards his own men, bringing them into line by involving himself in the murderous deeds of the soldiers, otherwise using draconian methods which disregarded military criminal law, and arbitrarily beat and killed his own men. He was described by the American historian Richard C. Lukas as "an ascetic-looking man who treated his own men as brutally as he treated the Poles. Beating them with clubs to maintain discipline was not uncommon. He even casually shot men he did not like." Another one of Dirlewanger's punishments included the "Dirlewanger coffin", in which a soldier could be locked up in a narrow box for days. American historian Richard Rhodes wrote how the "resulting organization was so vicious – enthusiastically extorting, raping, torturing and murdering Poles and Jews – that it even disgusted men like Globocnik, who had it transferred out of the General Government and into Byelorussia to fight partisans".

In February 1942, the unit was assigned to "anti-gang" operations (Bandenbekämpfung) in Belarus. Historian Timothy Snyder described how "Dirlewanger's preferred method was to herd the local population inside a barn, set the barn on fire, and then shoot with machine guns anyone who tried to escape." One incident recounted by Hans-Peter Klausch described how a village of around 2,500 were put into several barns, with Dirlewanger ordering his men to shoot them all after opening the barns, and then setting the barns on fire, shooting and killing everyone who was able to escape, with Dirlewanger himself at the forefront of the massacre. Rounded-up civilians were routinely used as human shields and marched over minefields. At least 30,000 Belarusian civilians were killed, with up to 200 villages destroyed and more than 120,000 killed under Dirlewanger's orders. Dirlewanger also kept a private harem of multiple women for his own use. Despite Himmler being aware of Dirlewanger's reputation and record, nonetheless he was awarded the German Cross in Gold on 5 December 1943, for his unit's actions such as during Operation Cottbus (May–June 1943), during which Dirlewanger reportedly killed more than 14,000 alleged partisans.

Wilhelm Kube, the Generalkommissar for Generalbezirk Weißruthenien, noted the effects of that Dirlewanger and others had in Belarus, stating that: "The name of Dirlewanger plays a particularly fatal role here, because this man consciously does not take into account any political needs during his ruthless extermination expedition against the peaceful population. In view of the methods often used, reminiscent of the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, the assurances of the German civil administration about the desired cooperation of the Belarusian people look like a lie. The number of villages destroyed during major police operations exceeds the number of villages burned by partisans."

In the summer of 1944, during Operation Bagration, Dirlewanger's unit suffered heavy losses while fighting against the Red Army. It was then hastily rebuilt and reformed into a Sturmbrigade (assault brigade) and used in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. Author Martin Windrow wrote that "in summer '44 Dirlewanger led his 4,000 butchers, rapists and looters into action against the Warsaw Uprising, and quickly committed such unspeakable crimes that both Army and SS commanders successfully demanded the unit's withdrawal." In Warsaw, Dirlewanger participated in the Wola massacre, together with police units rounding up and shooting some 40,000 civilians, most of them in just two days. In the same Wola district, Dirlewanger burned three hospitals with patients inside while the nurses were "whipped, gang-raped and finally hanged naked, together with the doctors" to the accompaniment of the popular song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus". The role of Dirlewanger in the beginning days of the Wola massacre may have been limited, as he may not have arrived until 7 August. Later on, the soldiers "drank, raped, and murdered their way through the Old Town, slaughtering civilians and fighters alike without distinction of age or sex." In the Old Town – where about 30,000 civilians were killed – several thousand wounded in field hospitals overrun by the Germans were shot and set on fire with flamethrowers. In the defeat of the Uprising, it was reported that the "Dirlewanger Brigade burned prisoners alive with gasoline, impaled babies on bayonets and stuck them out of windows and hung women upside down from balconies". The brutality of Dirlewanger himself was described by Mathias Schenck, a Belgian national who was serving in the area as a German Army sapper, saying that "There is also that small child in Dirlewanger’s hands. He took it from a woman who was standing in the crowd in the street. He lifted the child high and then threw it into the fire. Then he shot the mother." Dirlewanger also had a habit of hanging people every Thursday, whether it be Poles or his own men, often being the one to kick the chair out from underneath them according to Schenck. Schenck described another incident involving the massacre of children, stating that:

"We blew up the doors, I think of a school. Children were standing in the hall and on the stairs. Lots of children. All with their small hands up. We looked at them for a few moments until Dirlewanger ran in. He ordered to kill them all. They shot them and then they were walking over their bodies and breaking their little heads with butt ends. Blood and brain matter streamed down the stairs. There is a memorial plaque in that place stating that 350 children were killed. I think there were many more, maybe 500."

SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, overall commander of the forces pacifying Warsaw – and Dirlewanger's former superior officer in Belarus – described Dirlewanger as having "a typical mercenary nature". Hermann Fegelein, a member of Adolf Hitler's entourage and a liaison officer of the Waffen-SS, described Dirlewanger's men as "real hoodlums".

Dirlewanger gained a notorious reputation for his brutality in suppressing the Warsaw Uprising, as he became known as the "Executioner of the Warsaw Uprising".

In recognition of his work to crush the uprising and intimidate the population of the city, Dirlewanger received his final promotion, to the rank of SS-Oberführer, on 15 August 1944. In October, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, recommended for it by his superior officer in Warsaw, SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth (after the war, Reinefarth lied about his role in Warsaw, even denying Dirlewanger had been under his command).

Dirlewanger then led his men in joining the efforts to put down the Slovak National Uprising in October 1944, where similar atrocities were committed. Eventually he and his men were posted on the front lines of Hungary and eastern Germany to fight against the advancing Red Army. In February 1945, the unit was expanded again and re-designated as the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. That same month, Dirlewanger was shot in the chest while fighting against Soviet forces near Guben in Brandenburg and sent to the rear. It was his twelfth and final injury in the war. On 22 April, he went into hiding.

Despite being an accomplished soldier who was considered quite brave, Dirlewanger is invariably described as an extremely cruel person by historians and researchers, such as being called "a psychopathic killer and child molester" by Steven Zaloga, "a professional killer, fully malefic" by Richard Rhodes, "a sadist and necrophiliac" by Bryan Mark Rigg, "an expert in extermination and a devotee of sadism and necrophilia" by J. Bowyer Bell, and as a "sadistic, amoral alcoholic" by Knut Stang. The historian Richard C. Lukas also stated that "Oskar Dirlewanger was one of those degenerates who, in saner days, would have been court-martialed out of the German army" and "a sadist whose brutality was well known." According to Alan Clark, Dirlewanger's "experiments on Polish girls are hardly printable even today, combining as they did the indulgence of both sadism and necrophilia." Professor Nikolaus Wachsmann called him "one of the most odious characters in the pantheon of SS villains".

Military historian Samuel W. Mitcham Jr wrote that Oskar Dirlewanger was "a sexually perverted drunkard who enjoyed performing unnatural acts with the dead bodies of his victims, especially the younger ones." However, there has been some skepticism pointed towards the accusations of Dirlewanger's necrophilia with military historian Tim Heath saying that despite his career being characterized by "child rape, murder, perversion, sadism and alcoholism," there has been no proven evidence of necrophilia and that "one can only assume that such assumptions are the result of literary fabrication." Despite this, Heath declares that Dirlewanger was "a living embodiment of evil and depravity and all the proof that anyone could need that monsters do exist."

Death
Dirlewanger was arrested on 1 June 1945 near the town of Altshausen in Upper Swabia by French occupation zone authorities while he was wearing civilian clothes, using a false name, and hiding in a remote hunting lodge. He was recognised by a Jewish former concentration camp inmate and brought to a detention centre. He reportedly died around 5–7 June 1945 in a prison camp at Altshausen, probably as a result of ill treatment. There are numerous conflicting reports of the nature of his death: the French said that he died of a heart attack and was buried in an unmarked grave; or he was taken by armed Poles, presumably former forced laborers; or French military prisoners (of Polish descent); or Polish soldiers (29e Groupement d'Infanterie polonaise), who were mistreated in custody; or former inmates and prison guards; or that he escaped and joined the French Foreign Legion. Ultimately his fate is unknown, but it is generally considered most likely that he died at Altshausen.

According to the political scientist Martin A. Lee, as well as the historians Angelo de Boca and Mario Giovana, Dirlewanger survived the war and subsequently lived in Egypt tutoring the guards who provided security to the president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Awards

 * Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (28 August 1914) and 1st Class (13 July 1916)
 * Wound Badge (1914) in Gold (30 April 1918)
 * Spanish Cross of Military Merit (1939)
 * Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (24 May 1942) and 1st Class (16 September 1942)
 * Wound Badge (1939) in Gold (9 July 1943)
 * German Cross in Gold (5 December 1943)
 * Close Combat Clasp in bronze (19 March 1944)
 * Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (30 September 1944)
 * Bandit-warfare Badge in Silver (1944)

Legacy
The Dirlewanger Brigade's crossed grenades emblem has been seen many times during the ongoing Ukraine conflict, used by the alt-right militia the Azov Battalion. Wolfsbrigade 44, a German Neo-Nazi group which was banned by the German government in December 2020, who according to  The Sunday Times, used "44" as code for "DD," short for "Division Dirlewanger."