Many materials about the history of the Third Reich are still of interest to modern society. Documentary channels show many programs about German combat aircraft and tanks, about the huge battles that took place during the Second World War. Less thoroughly explored is the dark side of the Nazi regime and its military machine - or, more honestly, the true nature of the war machine that the Nazis led.
Adolf Hitler often tried many unconventional approaches during the war. In March 1940, shortly before the German invasion of France, Hitler decided to form a fighting squad of convicted poachers under the command of a tough military officer. Yes, of the poachers - that is, those people who were convicted of illegal hunting for animals. Presumably, Hitler believed that the habit of taking risks would give these people a great advantage in the conduct of hostilities. As for their commander, the SS leader, Heinrich Himmlerumb, knew only one person who could handle this task: Oskar Dirlewanger.
Who was Oskar Dirlewanger?
Oskar Dirlewanger served in the German army during the First World War. Apparently, he served in good faith: Dirlewanger was twice awarded the Iron Cross and wounded six times. In certain circles, he gained fame when, after the surrender of Germany, he managed to withdraw his squad, which was in a difficult situation, numbering 600 people, from Romania to Germany. After the war, he joined the Freikor, an organization of right-wing militants, whose units existed for some time in post-war Germany. There he came into contact with the nascent Nazi party, but his personal life was in complete collapse. Serious addiction to alcohol often ended in violent actions, as a result of which Dirlewanger had problems with the police. He visited concentration camps several times for his addiction to sex with underage girls (the camps contained not only persecuted minorities, but also ordinary criminals). But he managed to earn himself an excuse in the eyes of the Nazis by taking part in the Spanish Civil War (where he was wounded three times), so after the outbreak of World War II, despite his criminal record, he was allowed to join the ranks of the Waffen SS - and just in time to lead a new squad of poachers.to lead a new squad of poachers.to lead a new squad of poachers.
Dirlewanger and his men go to war
During training, the unit quickly acquired its name from its commander: Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. Later, after repeated replenishment, the detachment grew and received the name that still disgusts everyone: the Dirlewanger brigade. This name will forever be associated with mass murder, torture, rape, robbery and all the most unthinkable war crimes.
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The Dirlewanger Brigade was initially deployed to occupied Poland in August 1940, just under a year after the occupation of that country. Their task was to suppress small uprisings that sometimes happened during the Nazi occupation. However, Dirlewanger and his men used their punitive raids as an opportunity to participate in massive crimes. The brigade consisted partly of criminals convicted of extortion, theft and corruption, partly from soldiers who, as a result of "temporary insanity", arbitrarily shot many civilians, and partly from freed psychopaths guilty of sexual crimes, torture and drunken brawls. At night, visitors to the barracks could easily stumble upon mountains of looted property, soldiers who got drunk on duty,hear the screams of raped women and children or prisoners who were tortured just for fun.
Many, if not most, of Dirlewanger's people have been arrested for their crimes. In the early years of the war, German military lawyers found themselves in a somewhat confused situation: then there were laws against the murder of civilians, drunkenness in the line of duty, theft of private property and many other crimes committed by the people of Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger himself kept a Jewish woman as a sex slave, while sex between Germans and Jews was prohibited. The German authorities abhorred the behavior of these people - even the local SS and Gestapo were furious. In the end, the commander of the SS forces in the region threatened that if the brigade was not transferred, he would order the troops to cordon off its barracks. And the brigade was sent further east, to Belarus.
Dirlewanger's special status
Dirlewanger's story was unusual in many ways. First of all, his convictions were supposed to block his way into the ranks of the SS, but this did not happen. In addition, as a commander, he received special permission from Heinrich Himmler to personally punish his people, up to and including execution. This was an unheard of privilege for an officer in the German army; usually the soldier had the right to punish only the court, as in any other army. In the entire multimillion-strong Wehrmacht, only Dirlewanger had such powers, and he disposed of them in his own way: recruits - and these were convicted criminals, and sometimes even political prisoners, but not volunteers - often received serious injuries at the hands of their commander or his entourage. It was in this way that Dirlewanger preferred to show his displeasure.
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS
But, despite his absolute power, Dirlewanger, paradoxically, was very close to his people. He had a habit of using informal language and referring to soldiers by name, which was extremely unusual for a German officer. He drank with them, raped and killed, he acted as if he was one of them. He arranged wrestling matches with them, as he believed that he should be in much better shape than most of the officers of his rank. His calmness under fire and his almost uncanny closeness to his subordinates have become the reason that the incredibly ironic nickname "Gandhi" has stuck to him among his people.
Blood and murder
After Poland, the Dirlewanger brigade was sent to occupied Belarus, where it continued its anti-partisan operations. Used such methods of warfare as the creation of barriers of women and children, which had to go in front of the advancing soldiers through the minefield. Dirlewanger's soldiers could enter the village, lock all residents in a barn and set it on fire, and then shoot anyone who tried to escape. And, as always, rape, murder, robbery and pogroms - all this was in the order of things.
The brigade earned especially sad glory during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. When the Red Army approached, the Poles decided to take control of the capital, but Hitler ordered the brutal suppression of the uprising. The Dirlewanger Brigade was to lead the operation.
The stories about her activities in Warsaw are innumerable. Take just one example, when a German officer was blocked by several Poles in a multi-story building. Later, this officer reported that when the Dirlewanger Brigade arrived, its fighters fearlessly stormed the building. He finished his report by describing the rebels flying out of the building's window.
Of course, they would not have been the Dirlewanger Brigade if they had not committed horrible atrocities. Many years later, in the early 1960s, a former member of the brigade was brought before the judges. He may have had trouble sleeping. At any rate, he described numerous war crimes, including one incident in which a squad member, apparently drunk, raped a girl in the street, then pulled out his knife and ripped her stomach from groin to throat, leaving her to die. In another episode, they took over a kindergarten, small children raised their little hands up to show that they were giving up. Dirlewanger ordered his men to kill them all - but to save ammunition, kill the children with bayonets and rifle butts. This nightmare was called the "Wolskaya massacre", during which about 500 young children were killed. And this is just one of hundreds, even thousands of stories,associated with this detachment.
Warsaw in ruins (1944)
The Warsaw Uprising was, in fact, the last episode in the life of the brigade. Soon after, Dirlewanger himself was again wounded - for the twelfth time - and this time the injury was so severe that he was unable to return to his brigade. By the end of the war, the brigade had grown to the size of a division, with about 7,000 men. But soon, in the spring of 1945, almost all of them were destroyed after they were surrounded by Soviet troops during the Battle of the Elbe. Only a few hundred people from the brigade survived the war.
As for Dirlewanger himself, he was captured alive by French soldiers. However, shortly thereafter, he died in custody. Officially, from natural causes, but there have long been rumors that vengeful Polish soldiers beat him to death.
Thus ended the history of one of the most brutal military formations in world history. How many people did they kill? It's hard to find out. Of course, tens of thousands. The so-called "Einsatzgruppen" acted even worse, which, pursuing a policy of genocide, killed more than a million civilians in the occupied territory of the USSR. Incredibly, no member of the Dirlewanger Brigade has ever been charged with war crimes, but their reputation continues to serve as an instructive example of the true nature of the NSDAP and its leader.
Dmitry Oskin