![]() ![]() Though still under investigation for his earlier criminality, he appealed to Heinrich Himmler personally, begging to be allowed to join the Waffen SS before the invasion began. Adolf Hitler salutes troops of the Condor Legion who fought alongside Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, during a rally upon their return to Germany, 1939Īfter returning to Germany following the Nationalist victory in Spain, Dirlewanger found preparations for the Nazi invasion of Poland well under way. Partly to escape further lewd accusations levelled against him, Dirlewanger volunteered to join the German Condor Legion in Spain, fighting for Franco against the Republican government – another chapter in his personal war with the Left. He walked free just in time to indulge his lust for violence once more. In 1934 he was convicted of seducing a dependent, reportedly abusing a 14-year-old girl, for which he was sentenced to two years. By this time he had already been in trouble with the law for possessing a firearm illegally and ‘anti-Semitic incitement’, but if anything this strengthened rather than harmed his position in the party.īy 1932 Dirlewanger had gained a senior position in the Sturmabteilung (SA), but it wasn’t long before his frenzied habits were noticed once again by authorities. He then found the ideal home for his extreme right-wing and nationalist views in the shape of the Nazi Party, which he joined a year later – just two years after it was formed. In 1922, Dirlewanger returned to studying and completed his degree. Members of the German Reichswehr sent to put down the Ruhr Uprising pose next to dead resistance fighters in Möllen, near Duisburg, 1920 These bloody internal clashes would prove to be just a taste of the cruelty Dirlewanger would deliver to the world in the next global conflict. The defeat of the Red Army of the Ruhr saw regular executions and atrocities on both sides. After the failed military coup of 1920, the Kapp Putsch, a large group of left-wing workers rose up in the Ruhr region in west Germany, forming the self-proclaimed Red Army of the Ruhr.Īs a fanatical nationalist, as well as a student of Political Science at the time, Dirlewanger threw down his books to join the Freikorps and Reichswehr forces sent to put down the uprising, as well as insurrections in Saxony and Upper Silesia. Oskar Dirlewanger pictured in 1944 wearing a Close Combat Clasp and Deutsches KreuzĪ veteran of WWI and an Iron Cross recipient, Dirlewanger didn’t take long in finding a new hunting ground for his violent tendencies in the aftermath of Germany’s defeat. While unleashing his feverous hatred against Communists and Jews, his choices of victim largely seemed unprejudiced – man, woman or child like a crazed beast set loose, he would kill indiscriminately. His was a war raged almost entirely against an unarmed enemy. ![]() ![]() Even before the outbreak of WWII, where his most heinous acts were carried out, he was already widely feared within the German military for being unhinged, unpredictable and dangerous.īy the end of the war, Dirlewanger would have overseen and personally taken part in the torture, rape and murder of thousands of civilians in Germany, Belarus and Poland, all under the thin guise of eliminating ‘bandits’ behind the frontline. This description of Oskar Dirlewanger by one of his contemporaries goes some way to describing a mind rightly unfathomable. Even in the company of the manifold corrupt, twisted characters of the Waffen-SS, his record stands out as almost uniquely brutal. “A mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic, who had the habit ofĮrupting into violence under the influence of drugs.”
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