By spring 1940, Germany was dominant in Europe. With vast areas of Europe under occupation, it needed men to keep order and put down the lingering resistance groups in captured territory. Since the best men were already being sent to the front, the Reich looked elsewhere for men to fill the ranks of the occupation forces.
Hitler had the perfect candidates: poachers. Poachers were criminals who wouldn’t be called up for military service, but they were also fit, healthy, and had some skill with firearms. Hitler and Himmler had a romantic view of poachers as a sort of rugged Aryan warrior, untamed by society, and capable of mastering the wilds.
If the Nazis needed to hunt down rebels and partisans in the forests of occupied Europe, there were no better candidates.
The order went out in March 1940 and by June a selection of 80 convicted poachers were assembled in Oranienburg to begin training for a group that would be nicknamed the Black Hunters. This band of recruits ranged from regular men on the wrong side of the law, to more brutal criminals who just so happened to have been caught hunting on the wrong land.
But the character of the group would be determined by its leader: a singularly repulsive and evil man named Oskar Paul Dirlewanger.
Dirlewanger was a disgusting human even before joining the SS. A drunken sadist with a love of gambling and prostitution, he’d earned combat experience in the First World War but never left the violence behind at the front. After 1918, he joined the far-right Freikorps militia, where he was involved in violent put-downs of worker strikes and targeted harassment of minorities. Despite his propensity for violence, he was not a mindless thug; he held a doctorate in political science and ran a factory for several years. Dirlewanger was an early member of the Nazi Party, joining during its early days in Munich in 1923, and worked his way up the ranks over the next decade.
His career seemed to end in 1934 when he was caught and convicted on charges of pedophilia. His rank and doctorate were stripped, but his connections in the Nazi Party saved him from languishing in jail forever. His friend Gottlob Berger, a senior SS official and associate of Himmler, managed to get his sentence reduced and he was released in 1936.
#Dirlewanger #nazi #holocaust #history #brigade
Music: Epidemic music
Sources:
Robert S. Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany, (1995)
Christian Ingrao (trans by Phoebe Green), The SS Dirlewanger Brigade: The History of the Black Hunters, (2011)
French L MacLean, The Cruel Hunters: SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, Hitler’s Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit, (1998)
Nigel Cawthorne, The Story of the SS: Hitler’s Infamous Legions of Death, (2011)
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38 Comments
A few years ago I worked with people who had Dementia who lived in the community. After a few visits he would make me a cup of and we would sit and chat. He said that during the war he lived in Hungary. He signed up to fight with the Hungarian SS. He said he hated the Russians and only ever was in conflict with them . Plus he only ever carried ammo boxes for the machine gun. His memory was perfect when he spoke about the war. He made his way to the UK after the war. He was small but of a powerful build. He would smile but not with his eyes. He told me , many SS from his country, Latvia and other countries including Italy. He said that England was the country they wanted to live as we were the closest to the German people in views and outlook. That was his story. How many SS were welcomed to our country…
What an epic bad luck for him that he met those Poles in Altshausen, Baden-Wündeberg in June 1945.
Had he survived just four or five years he woud be released, enjoy "well earned" support or even carreer and state pension in Bundesrepublik like Dillewanger's SS commander during 1944 Warsaw massacres Heinz Reinefarth. Why?
"German criminologist Dieter Schenk called the policy of the government, administration and justice in the 1950s and 1960s 'structural failure to prosecute murderers'. The percentage of former NSDAP members in decision-making bodies and the justice system was relatively high. Schenk reports that in 1950, 66-75 percent of judges and prosecutors were former NSDAP members," the expert emphasizes.
"As reported in his secret report for the CIA by the head of the German intelligence BND, Reinhard Gehlen, in 1950, 129 members of the Bundestag belonged to the NSDAP during the Third Reich, which constituted 26.5 percent," adds Dr. Lubecka.
Basically the Black Dog Knights from Berserk
There is dreadful story of Belgian German – 18 year old who volunteered to SS and ended up as a pioneer in occupied Warsaw in August 1944. His unit was supporting Dirlewanger's master race killers by blowing up walls or barricades to let them finish "the job". Miraculously this Belgian guy was found seriously wounded by a Polish farmer in Pomerania in March 1945 and taken into shelter. His Polish hosts were not aware of his war "achievements".
He survived and went to Belgian ambassy two years later and came back home. He survived, but he witnessed of Dirlewanger slaughter in Warsaw like the fate of children in kind of orphanage.
I'm not sure he still thought of Germans as Kulturvolk. But he went back to Poland to thank his saviours.
And survivors of this brigade were hired as instructors in the newly created isra hell army.
The ss was "disturbed" by Dirlewanger not turning over enough loot to the ss! He stole from the ss and that was unforgivable!
Very well presented and narratted. Many attempts were made to disband Dirlewanger's unit but it was his friendship with Berger which constantly got him off the hook
Oskar Dirlwanger and his unit were one of the most Bestial, Twisted and Pure Evil men among those huge bunch of Wicked,Sadists and Utterly Inhumane so called hard core Nazis.
There is one man that is not very well knowed amoug normal ( regular)l WW2 buffs ,but very well knowed by some people( like me) who have studied and stiil study every aspect of the WW2 German Whermacht, SS, Waffen SS,Gestapo,etc,etc and also the very disturbing "story" of the Holocaust, Death Camps and the role of the Einzastgruppen during WW2.
SS: worst brigade we’ve heard of. Japanese: hold my Sake…
So the worst SS unit is as bad as Most of the Soviet Union ?
He was right though… you know who I’m talking about
Interesting though the Soviets did NOT invite themselves into Slovakia. They were begged by the Czecho-Slovak exile governement to free the Czech and Slovak Republics from the nazis and they paid heavy price for it at Dukla. Also the Soviets did help during the Slovak National uprising.
Spicy grandpa
Horseshit
Bolshevik videos when?
Just like Jewish stern & irgun gangs, disgusting criminals allowed to practice their evil, true subhumans
And exactly the same as the Idf today in 2025 murdering 10s of thousands of innocent civilians & pretending they are fighters, the exact same mentality, violent & sadistic
There was a huge number of “friendly fire” incidents against the Dirlewanger Brigade. Their own side was shooting them when ever they had half the chance. 😂
Now make a video of the war crimes if the soviet union and allies (a lot of content, they dis even more than the axis)
Based?
& the proof for all of this is where? 80 years of lies about the Germans continues unabated I see.
So just russian military?
Pedophile. What is it with the socialists and the little kids😖
You haff zis "Dirty Dozen" ja? Vell VE haff…….
Please, for God's and millions of people k*lled by Germans sake, stop calling them "Nazis".
Their country was called Germany.
Their nationality was German.
Their language was German.
Let's not pretend that the nation that started both world wars disappeared somewhere…
Actually wrote a song about this back im 2020 😂 for my band Death Rattlers demo
Germany had capital punishment for rapists. Its the only nation of ww2 who courtmartialed their soldiers for assaulting women… the brits and americans turned a blind eye because the leadership had extermimation plans like the morgenthau plan. And the russians promoted war crimes as soviet passtime.
My grandfather received horrific injuries at one of their detention camps
He got so drunk one christmas he set his own attack dog on himself
Mean
Imagine having dosgusting communists doing this all over europe
Worried about them turning on German soldiers? Unless the Nazis were sending unarmed and untrained women, children, old and sick to the front, you need not worry
This division is on hearts of iron IV
And they’re all gonna pay in hell
Europa: The Last Battle
One day the lies will collapse under their own weight, and the truth will once again triumph
– Joseph Goebbels
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT THAN WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN PALESTINE?
Evil people usually don't know they're evil. It's all justified in their own heads as being rightous. Just like Islamic terrorists.
TSD
The P in Freikorps is silent. So its not "Frycorpse" (ew) but "Frycore" with the R rolled in the front of the mouth, not in the back, just like h!tlers famous south german R in "…Rrreich!"