Oskar Paul Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – c. 7 June 1945) was a German SS commander and habitual offender,[1] convicted for rape of children and other crimes.

[4][5] His unit epitomized the expansion of the war of terror in its most brutal form within the SS, and with Dirlewanger himself regarded as perhaps the Nazi regime's "most extreme executioner,"[6] indulging himself in sadistic acts of violence, rape and murder.

"[6] By the end of World War I, Dirlewanger was described in one police report as "a mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic, who had the habit of erupting into violence under the influence of drugs".

[22] In 1919, he joined various Freikorps paramilitary militias and fought against German communists in Thuringia, Ruhr, and Saxony, and against Poles in Upper Silesia.

[32] On Easter Sunday 1921, 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.

After the Nazi Party gained power, Dirlewanger was celebrated as the town's "liberator from the Red terrorists" and received its honorary citizenship in 1935.

The unit was created and Dirlewanger was given the task of conducting military training among poachers serving their sentences in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

[35] Despite Himmler preferring executioners who exhibited self-control and were efficient while appearing humane, he was not opposed to "lowering his bar and hiring a sadistic psychopath and convicted pedophile like Oskar Dirlewanger.

The unit was assigned to security duties first in the General Government (occupied Poland), where Dirlewanger served as an SS-TV commandant of a labour camp at Stary Dzików.

Atrocities committed by Dirlewanger include burning the genitals of women he abused with a petrol lighter, whipping and then injecting strychnine into Jewish girls and watching their death agonies in the officers' mess.

Immediately after that the corpses were cut into small pieces, mixed with horsemeat, and boiled into soap.According to Peter Longerich, "Dirlewanger's leadership of the Sonderkommando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities, rape, and murder—and his mentor Berger tolerated this behaviour, as did Himmler, who so urgently needed men such as the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger in his fight against 'subhumanity'.

[22] In his letter to Himmler, SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik recommended Dirlewanger, who "... when in charge of the Jewish camp of Dzikow ... was an excellent leader.

[57] American historian Richard Rhodes wrote how the "resulting organization was so vicious – enthusiastically extorting, raping, torturing and murdering Poles and Jews – that it even disgusted men like Globocnik, who had it transferred out of the General Government and into Byelorussia to fight partisans".

In view of the methods often used, reminiscent of the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, the assurances of the German civil administration about the desired cooperation of the Belarusian people look like a lie.

Author Martin Windrow wrote that "in summer '44 Dirlewanger led his 4,000 butchers, rapists and looters into action against the Warsaw Uprising, and quickly committed such unspeakable crimes that both Army and SS commanders successfully demanded the unit's withdrawal.

[64] It was reported in the same Wola district that Dirlewanger burned three hospitals with patients inside while the nurses were "whipped, gang-raped and finally hanged naked, together with the doctors" to the accompaniment of the popular song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus".

[24] Later on, the soldiers "drank, raped, and murdered their way through the Old Town, slaughtering civilians and fighters alike without distinction of age or sex.

"[32] In the Old Town – where about 30,000 civilians were killed – several thousand wounded in field hospitals overrun by the Germans were shot and set on fire with flamethrowers.

[24] In the defeat of the Uprising, it was reported that the "Dirlewanger Brigade burned prisoners alive with gasoline, impaled babies on bayonets and stuck them out of windows and hung women upside down from balconies".

"[66] Dirlewanger also had a habit of hanging people every Thursday, whether it be Poles or his own men, often being the one to kick the chair out from underneath them according to Schenck.

[68] Hermann Fegelein, a member of Adolf Hitler's entourage and a liaison officer of the Waffen-SS, described Dirlewanger's men as "real hoodlums".

[70] In recognition of his work to crush the uprising and intimidate the population of the city, Dirlewanger received his final promotion, to the rank of SS-Oberführer (Colonel/Brigadier), on 15 August 1944.

[44] Dirlewanger then led his men in joining the efforts to put down the Slovak National Uprising in October 1944,[35] where similar atrocities were committed.

[72] Despite being an accomplished soldier who was considered quite brave,[73] Dirlewanger is invariably described as an extremely cruel person by historians and researchers, such as being called "a psychopathic killer and child molester" by Steven Zaloga,[74] "a professional killer, fully malefic" by Richard Rhodes,[58] "a sadist and necrophiliac" by Bryan Mark Rigg,[75] "an expert in extermination and a devotee of sadism and necrophilia" by J. Bowyer Bell,[76] and as a "sadistic, amoral alcoholic" by Knut Stang.

[6] The historian Richard C. Lukas also stated that "Oskar Dirlewanger was one of those degenerates who, in saner days, would have been court-martialed out of the German army" and "a sadist whose brutality was well known.

"[56] According to Alan Clark, Dirlewanger's "experiments on Polish girls are hardly printable even today, combining as they did the indulgence of both sadism and necrophilia.

[78] Military historian Tim Heath states "Dirlewanger was without any doubt one of the most evil, sadistic and sexually depraved individuals in the Third Reich.

"[79] Military historian Samuel W. Mitcham Jr wrote that Oskar Dirlewanger was "a sexually perverted drunkard who enjoyed performing unnatural acts with the dead bodies of his victims, especially the younger ones.

"[25] 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.

[36][82][83][84][85][excessive citations] According to the political scientist Martin A. Lee, as well as the historians Angelo de Boca and Mario Giovana, Dirlewanger survived the war and subsequently lived in Egypt tutoring the guards who provided security to the president Gamal Abdel Nasser.