44 Facts About Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Dirlewanger is known for committing numerous war crimes and atrocities in German-occupied territories during World War II.

Dirlewanger was the commander of the SS penal unit known as the Dirlewanger Brigade, considered to be the most brutal and notorious Waffen-SS unit.

Oskar Dirlewanger's unit is 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.

Oskar Dirlewanger's unit is regarded as the most infamous Waffen-SS unit in both Poland and Belarus, and arguably the worst military unit in modern European history based in terms of criminality and cruelty.

Oskar Dirlewanger had an impressive career as a junior officer during World War I, and further fought in the post-World War I conflicts, being a part of the Freikorps, with the troops he led then characterized by excessive violence, and the Spanish Civil War.

Oskar Dirlewanger reportedly died after World War II while in the custody of the Western Allies.

Oskar Dirlewanger spent much of his childhood in Esslingen am Neckar after his family moved there in 1906.

Oskar Dirlewanger attended the Esslinger Gymnasium and the Schelztor-Oberrealschule.

Oskar Dirlewanger never married and he stood 1.8 metres tall.

Oskar Dirlewanger enlisted in the Wurttemberg Army on 1 October 1913, and served as a machine gunner in the "Konig Karl" Grenadier Regiment 123, a part of the XIII Corps and as a one-year volunteer.

Oskar Dirlewanger 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, Oskar Dirlewanger's battalion was supposed to be interned in Romania, but Oskar Dirlewanger decided to return his unit to Germany, and led 600 men from his company and other battalion units home.

On Easter Sunday 1921, Oskar 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 Oskar Dirlewanger failed, and the enemy militiamen succeeded in cutting off his force.

Oskar Dirlewanger held various jobs, which included working at a bank and a knitwear factory.

In 1933 after the Nazi seizure of power, Oskar Dirlewanger was rewarded by being made director of the Heilbronn employment agency, a strategic post for local-level Nazi leaders.

Oskar Dirlewanger was repeatedly convicted for illegal arms possession and embezzlement.

Oskar Dirlewanger lost his job, his doctor title and all military honours, and was expelled from the party.

Oskar 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 a long-time personal friend of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler and had become the head of the SS Main Office.

Oskar Dirlewanger next went to Spain, where he enlisted into the Spanish Legion during the Spanish Civil War.

Oskar Dirlewanger was reinstated into the NSDAP, albeit with a higher party number.

Oskar Dirlewanger's doctorate was restored by the University of Frankfurt.

At the beginning of World War II, Oskar Dirlewanger volunteered for the Waffen-SS and received the rank of Obersturmfuhrer.

On 4 June 1940, Berger proposed to Himmler that Oskar Dirlewanger be appointed commander of the newly formed "Wilddiebkommando Oranienberg": the so-called Oskar Dirlewanger Brigade, composed originally of a small group of former poachers along with soldiers of a more conventional background.

The unit was created and Oskar 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, where Oskar Dirlewanger served as an SS-TV commandant of a labour camp at Stary Dzikow.

Oskar Dirlewanger repeatedly pillaged the ghetto in Lublin, extorting ransoms.

One day Oskar Dirlewanger poisoned 57 Jews by his own initiative.

Oskar Dirlewanger looked on, smoked a cigarette, as did his friends, and they saw how these girls were dying.

Oskar Dirlewanger kept a private harem of multiple women for his own use.

The name of Oskar 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.

Oskar Dirlewanger took it from a woman who was standing in the crowd in the street.

Oskar Dirlewanger lifted the child high and then threw it into the fire.

Oskar 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, Oskar Dirlewanger received his final promotion, to the rank of SS-Oberfuhrer, on 15 August 1944.

Oskar Dirlewanger then led his men in joining the efforts to put down the Slovak National Uprising in October 1944, where similar atrocities were committed.

That same month, Oskar Dirlewanger was shot in the chest while fighting against Soviet forces near Guben in Brandenburg and sent to the rear.

Oskar 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.

Oskar Dirlewanger was recognised by a Jewish former concentration camp inmate and brought to a detention centre.

Likewise, Benjamin Netanyahu has written that, alongside hundreds of other Nazi officials, Oskar Dirlewanger fled to Egypt, where he became a bodyguard to Nasser.

The rumors about Oskar Dirlewanger still being alive did not just circulate around Altshausen, but across all of Germany.

Sproll then requested that the presumed grave where Oskar Dirlewanger had been buried be exhumed to prevent public unrest.

Several of Oskar Dirlewanger's siblings, including Paul and Elfriede Oskar Dirlewanger, were questioned.

Berger expressed his doubts regarding Oskar Dirlewanger's reported death in Altshausen in 1945, stating that he believed Oskar Dirlewanger was still alive and residing in France.