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oskar dirlewanger was a world war II officer of the schutzstaffel - ss. he commanded the infamous ss-sturmbrigade named after him "dirlewanger". the unit was made out of amnestied germans convicted of major crimes.
in 1934 dirlewanger was convicted of the rape of a 13-year old girl and molesting other underage girls and he was sentenced to two years imprisonment. he was able to leave after intervention of his nazi friend and later ss-obergruppenführer gottlob berger. at the beginning of the wwII dirlewanger volunteered for the waffen-ss and received the rank of obersturmführer.
there was the idea for a military unit made up of convicted criminals. heinrich himmler thought that convicted criminals could be reformed and used as second line units on the eastern front against the partisans. however a lack of poachers meant that the division soon began accepting hardened career criminals and convicts - rapists, child molesters, murderers.
dirlewangers unit was employed in the fight against partisans in the occupied soviet union where they gained a reputation for extreme brutality, including indiscriminate murder of civilians of all gender and age, rape and other excesses and looting.
dirlewangers unit was used in the suppression of the warsaw uprising at the specific request of himmler, who was so deeply enraged at the continued resistance of the warsaw poles that he sought to utilize the units penchant for sadistic and bloodthirsty terrorism to quickly break the will of the remaining polish fighters. the first actions taken by the unit was to enter the hospitals and kill anyone. on the streets of warsaw everybody was shot who did not hide in buildings. people surviving those action tell that it was nearly impossible to walk through the streets when the unit had left because it was all slippery because of the blood.
by this stage in the units history, the brigades ethos had become so degenerate and indiscriminate that himmler was forced to detail several companies of military police to protect nearby german units and ensure the dirlewanger men only targeted the poles. the unit was encouraged by himmler to terrorize freely, take no prisoners, and generally indulge their perverse tendencies. favored tactics of the dirlewanger men during the siege reportedly included the ubiquitous gang rape of female poles - women and children - playing "bayonet catch" with live babies, slashing people to death and torturing captives to death by hacking off their arms, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight to run armless and flaming down the street. the dirlewanger brigade committed almost nonstop atrocities during this period. Another insane tactics was to watch people dying after giving them strychnine injections.
a letter of dirlewanger to his friend berger is documenting that dirlewanger sold polish women to ss to one of the headquarters of the ss for 2 bottles of schnaps, each.
in 1943 dirlewanger developped a way to solve the problem of mines on the streets: he rounded the people living in the area up and they had to walk through the minefields.
crazy eh that it´s possible that you can play with such a name! btw: two days ago a GM got a ticket from me because i was posting something about dirlewanger in a conference which was immediately deleted! so i told him that i think it´s pretty funny that he erased my posting but didn´t erase the name of this user. a day later he told me he´ll take care. still today the name is there.
