Monster Brigade – popularny.net – Dobry humor, kabaret, prezenty, życzenia

Warsaw, Wola, August 1944.

– Hiding yourself!
Several dozen people in dirty SS uniforms ran away, hiding in the gates, yards and behind the bends of the walls. Two boys ran up to the massive double doors. At the hinges on both sides, they placed loads, and one of them unrolled a few meters of cable from a portable reel, which was pulled along the wall. He hid around the corner of the building and screwed the ends of the cables to the detonator. He looked around the corner and shouted “Attention!” he turned the handle.

The blast threw the door onto the pavement. The street was swarming with SS men. They were dirty, hairy and smelly. Most of them staggered and smelled of digestive alcohol. Only the black-cloaked officer in charge was sober – a tall, thin man with an unpleasant face and sunken eyes. SS men rushed inside the building. They climbed a few steps and entered an enormous hall. An unusual sight struck their eyes. The hall was full of children aged four to nine. At the sight of the soldiers, they simultaneously raised their handles. The SS men hesitated. Their commander burst into the hall.
– Well, what are you standing like sheep! You know what to do!

On July 1, 1940, an individual was brought into being whose crimes and bestiality were second to none. Attila’s Huns, Genghis Khan’s Mongols, Lisowczyks and Budyonny’s Cossacks looked like polite altar boys. There is no branch of military history that would be characterized by a similar demoralization and beastliness, and at the same time with very little combat value.
Its creator and commander was Oskar Dirlewanger – the most extreme and dehumanized individual in the panopticon of Nazi criminals. Born in Wurzburg in 1895, he fought as a volunteer during World War I, then suppressed the Silesian Uprising in the ranks of Freikorps. From the beginning of the 1920s, he was a member of the NSDAP, and later the commander of the SA unit. He obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Frankfurt under an accelerated procedure. Punished several times for financial embezzlement, armed robbery and rape of a 13-year-old girl. In 1937 he went to Spain to fight on the side of General Franco. After returning to Germany, he renewed his acquaintance with Gottlob Berger, then a high-ranking Nazi. Berger quickly brought his old pal into the ranks of the SS.

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In 1940, Dirlewanger presented to Himmler his idea of creating a special SS unit composed of criminals – thieves, bandits, rapists and, above all, poachers, whom he valued for their skills in using weapons and moving in the field. Himmler applauded this idea, and in July, as part of the SS Totenkopf division, a detachment initially composed of 84 men, mainly poachers, was set up under the command of Dirlewanger.
The unit called the SS Sonderkommando “Dirlewanger” was directed to the Lublin District, where its official task was to supervise Jewish forced laborers who built roads and fortifications. In fact, the Dirlewanger activists engaged in murdering Jews, raping Jewish women, and mass robbery. Their bestiality made the hairs on the heads of even local police and SS authorities stand up. The command of the Lublin District demanded the immediate removal of “this brigade of bastards”
from their area. Dirlewanger was threatened with trial for “race defilement”, that is, rape of Jewish women. He made no use of it, knowing he had Berger’s backing and had a great reputation with Himmler.

After the attack on the Soviet Union, its unit, constantly replenished with criminals and inmates of psychiatric institutions, grew to the size of a battalion and was moved to the east, to present-day Belarus in order to fight guerrillas.
Dirlewanger, however, instead of fighting the partisans there, they began to pacify the civilian population. The scenario of the operation was always the same – bandits surround the village, chase all residents to the largest barn, block the door, fire several series of machine guns and then set fire. Before that, however, the prettier girls are pulled out of the crowd and gang raped. Afterwards, the soldiers kill them with headshots. It is estimated that in this way the Dirlewanger soldiers burned several hundred villages and murdered about 150,000 people. On the news of the outbreak of the uprising in Warsaw, Hitler gave Himmler a verbal order: “Every inhabitant must be killed, no prisoners may be taken. Warsaw is to be razed to the ground and thus an intimidating example for the whole of Europe is to be created.” Himmler repeated the order to Dirlewanger, who conscientiously set about carrying it out. His unit was then the size of a brigade.

The Dirlewanger troops were assigned to the police grouping of the grouppenfuhrer Heinz Reinefarth. In the first days of August, they entered the Wola district of Warsaw. Wola – the working-class district of the capital had quite sparse buildings and was cut by wide communication arteries, which made it difficult to defend for the insurgents. Dirlewanger’s bandits began the methodical extermination of the civilian population.
A similar tactic was used as in Belarus – a complex of houses was surrounded, the inhabitants were driven out and, after a series of rapes and robberies, they were murdered with machine gun fire. Sometimes people didn’t even bother to expel people outside. They were simply thrown into the cellars where the inhabitants of the grenade beam were hiding, and the whole building was set on fire with flamethrowers. Whoever tried to escape was killed and his body thrown into the fire. The Hecatomb lasted three days. In the period from 5 to 7 August, approximately 60,000 people were murdered.

From Wola, the Dirlewanger people moved to the Old Town. At that time, eighteen-year-old sapper Mathias Schenk was assigned to their branch – a Belgian conscripted into the Wehrmacht. His task was to pave the way for bandits by blowing up doors and gates of buildings. Mathias’ stories make hair stand out. After blowing up the door to one of the insurgent hospitals in the Old Town, the bandits saw a huge room covered with mattresses and camp beds. They rushed inside immediately and started murdering the wounded, including … wounded German soldiers. They shouted at them in German not to kill Poles, but the
degenerates acted in a murderous amok. They murdered everyone, including the Germans. Then they attacked the nurses, stripped their clothes off and locked themselves in a separate room with them. After a while there were screams of raped women. Their fate was completed a few hours later.
“… In the evening there was a scream at Adolf Hitler Platz like in a boxing fights. My friend and I climbed the rubble to see what was happening. Soldiers of all formations: Wehrmacht, SS, Kaminski’s Cossacks, boys from Hitlerjugend; whistles, calls. Dirlewanger stood with his men and laughed. Nurses from that field hospital rushed across the square, naked, with their hands on their heads. Blood ran down their legs. , and a spiked crown on her head. They were walking to the gallows, on which several bodies were already swinging. While they were hanging one of the sisters, Dirlewanger kicked bricks from under her legs. ”
(Mathias Schenk, “My Warsaw Frenzy”)

The monsters of Dirlewanger, merciless towards civilians, had no combat value. Poorly trained, demoralized and constantly stained with vodka, which was supplied to them in unlimited quantities, they went straight to the bullets of the insurgents. And they did not miss. The insurgents had little ammunition and waited for a sure shot. About 60% of the Germans killed in the Uprising were shot in the head.
The first clash between Dirlewanger fighters and the insurgents took place at the beginning of August. The soldiers under the command of Janusz Brochwicz-Lewiński “Gryf”, who defended the Michler Palace, saw a group of dirty, staggering figures walking in front of them, who do not even try to hide. They let them go a few meters and then killed every one. In response, the Dirlewanger soldiers began using civilians as human shields.
“… The SS men drove civilians out of the nearby houses and put them on the tank, ordered them to sit on the armor. I saw something like this for the first time.
They rushed a Polish woman in a long coat; she hugged a little girl. People huddled on the tank helped her in. Someone took the girl. her mother, the tank moved. The little one slipped out of her mother’s hands. She fell under the caterpillars. The woman screamed. One of the SS men grimaced and shot her in the head. ”
(Mathias Schenk, “My Warsaw Frenzy”).

There was iron discipline in the brigade. Oskar Dirlewanger himself usually rode a tank behind the advancing stormtroopers and fired at those who were retreating. He used to hang a dozen people every Thursday. It doesn’t matter to whom – prisoners, civilians, even their own subordinates who risked anything against him. The road to the noose was very short for him. Some of his bandits hanged on the gallows next to the Poles.
The German command despised Dirlewanger and his bandits, treating them as cannon fodder and deliberately guiding them through the most difficult sections.
The brigade’s losses during the Uprising reached 315%. The insurgents wiped these murderers off the face of the earth several times. The brigade, however, was constantly reborn, powered by transports of criminals (often with death sentences) and psychopaths. All of them had the promised amnesty on condition that by their actions they would deserve the Knight’s Cross of the 2nd class.

In search of new candidates for the monster brigade, they even reached into concentration camps, where particularly dangerous criminals were sent (they were capos in the camps). Sex offenders – rapists and pedophiles were also welcome. The crimes of Dirlewanger soldiers committed on children during the Uprising are beyond imagination.
During the fights in Wola in August, Dirlewanger’s bandits fell into an orphanage for Orthodox children. At the sight of several hundred orphans with their hands raised, they hesitated for a moment. Dirlewanger burst into the room and, brandishing a pistol, ordered them all killed. Not wanting to waste ammunition, the bandits began to smash the children’s heads with rifle butts. A stream of blood flowed down the stairs to the street, where a huge red pool had formed.
Only two girls who still live in Russia survived the massacre.
One day, in one of the cellars, Mathias Schenk noticed a little girl, maybe 10 years old. He waved her not to be afraid and she walked over to him. As she walked far behind him, a shot rang out. The bullet tore the girl’s head to pieces. Behind him, Mathias heard the laugh of one of the Dirlewanger drivers, “Well, wasn’t that a championship shot ?!”.

He also saw the baby in the hands of Dirlewanger. He snatched them from a woman standing among the crowd driven out of the building on fire. He threw them into the fire, then shot the mother. Orphaned Warsaw children often fell in love with the adults they met. It doesn’t matter if they were insurgents or Germans.
The mascot of the unit to which Mathias was assigned was a mutilated 10-year-old boy with no leg. He jumped on one leg around the Germans, he even helped them a little. One day, two Dirlewanger people called him. They surreptitiously put an unlocked grenade into his bag and made him jump towards the nearest tree. The explosion tore the boy to shreds.

After the suppression of the Uprising, Dirlewanger was received at Wawel, where Governor Hans Frank gave a gala dinner in his honor. Adolf Hitler himself also sent words of appreciation to the monster. “With justifiable pride, you can call yourself a real winner from Warsaw,” wrote the leader of the Third Reich.
The Dirlewanger Brigade was transferred to Slovakia, where it suppressed the national uprising there. In February 1945 it was transformed into the 36th SS “Dirlewanger” Grenadier Division. He himself left the unit as a result of his wound. The new commander was lynched by his subordinates. Soon after, the unit disintegrated. Oskar Dirlewanger was arrested on June 1, 1945 in the French zone of occupation. He was arrested in Althausen. Seven days later, his massacred body was found in his cell. Most likely, he was lynched by Polish soldiers who were guarding him. For many years after the war, rumors circulated that he had survived the war and was hiding in Egypt. The exhumation of his grave finally dispelled them.
To this day, there are several to a dozen bandits from the monster brigade.

Bibliography:
– Milena Zawiślińska, Przyjechali, żeby zabić miasto, www.tvnwarszawa.pl, Dostęp 28.11.2011.
– Christian Ingrao, Czarni myśliwi. Brygada Dirlewangera, Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2011.
– Rzeź Woli, Wikipedia.pl, Dostęp 28.11.2011.
– Janusz Roszkowski, Dowódca morderców, „Przegląd”, nr 47/2004.
– Georg Bonisch, Dzielny Szwab, „Forum”, 28.07.2008.
– Jakub Czarniak, Doktor Potwór i jego brygada, „Polska Zbrojna”, 3.06.2011.
– Aleksandra Rybińska, Cezary Gmyz, Krzysztof Wójcik, Ścigając dirlewangerowców, oprawców Warszawy, www.rodaknet.com, Dostęp 28.11.2011.
– https://pl.m.wikipedia.org/…/36_Dywizja_Grenadier%C3%B3w_SS…

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