Oskar Dirlewanger

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Oskar Dirlewanger as an SS-Oberführer, 1944.

Oskar Dirlewanger (September 26, 1895 Würzburg - June 7, 1945 Altshausen) was a World War II officer with the Schutzstaffel (SS). He commanded the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger unit. Dr. Oskar Dirlewanger was an infantry soldier in World War I and won both the Iron Cross 2nd Class and the Iron Cross 1st Class. He was a member of several Freikorps after the war. He attempted to join the Schutzstaffel three times, finally becoming a full-fledged member of the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1932.

He served in the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. He was wounded three times.

A convicted rapist and child molester, himself interned at a concentration camp before the SS believed it necessary to form a brigade solely of ex-convicts for use on the Eastern Front, Dirlewanger was selected for his experience by Heinrich Himmler to lead it. His unit was employed in the fight against Partisans in the occupied Soviet Union where they earned a reputation for savagery. Later, the same unit was used in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising, where they committed even worse atrocities, for which they were never punished by the Nazi authorities.

[edit] Death

Dirlewanger was sentenced for war crimes and, according to one version, was beaten to death by a fellow inmates at Altshausen, a French prison camp.

Author French McLean gives a different version of his death stating that Polish soldiers, charged with guarding Dirlewanger, fatally beat him, possibly as revenge for his actions in Warsaw.

Other rumors, including one story of Dirlewanger serving in the French Foreign Legion, and later defecting to Egypt to accept a commission in Gamal Abdel Nasser's army were proven false.

A book about Dirlewangers brigade was written, by German writer Will Berthold. Though for the most part fiction, it accurately presents Dirlewanger as a paranoid, brute man, who had no problems hanging his own men to strike fear in the others.

This book was published in 1989, and the original title was Brigade Dirlewanger. In the Netherlands this book has the following titles: "Moordbrigade Dirlewanger", "Aan het Front", and "Dirlewanger".