I know what you're saying and I am inclined to agree, but perhaps it would have been better if he had stood trial and been executed in the proper manner.
@@nerkfumgogi798 A proper trial with the correct judgement, as happened normally between 1945-47 would have been the proper thing to do. That was the whole point. The allies refused by and large to sink to the level of the nazis. The allies were supposed to do things according to the law. That was the whole point of tribunals. That has nothing to do with political correctness.
If anyone has the stomach for it (its really really uncomfortable) there is a fantastic film about this called "Come and See" from director Elem Klimov. I believe it is about this unit directly, or based around them. It was written with Ales Adamovich who actually fought against this unit as a teenager which is why it is so realistic.
Man, is that ever a good movie- but you're right; it's a gut-punch, for sure. There's an English subtitled copy here on YT in at least 720p, unless they've taken it down already.
And the Dirlewanger Brigade wasn't the only SS unit to go that far off the rails. Look up a real piece of work named Bronislav Kaminsky and the unit of thugs and butchers he commanded. Or the doings of a guy named Artur Phleps and the SS Prinz Eugen.
The Nazi party was formed by a socipath who attracted like minded types. The kind of people who are drawn to sociopaths are ignorant, weak and self worshiping. Beware of anyone who rallies people with the mythic past lie especially.
The things he and his unit did during putting down of Warsaw Uprising in 1944 was beyond horrific. It is pure karma that his guards in the french zone happened to be Poles....
@@carlhicksjr8401 Absolutely. The man tasked with putting down the Uprising such as the general Erich von dem Bach got away with it. One of the biggest genecides of WWII.
@@misko7482 Well, we have the pleasure of knowing the Jurgen Stroop, the on-scene commander who gloated in it all, was hung for his crimes. It's not enough, but it's something.
No way of telling when the photo was taken. The other shots were probably not of the unit, but many were from British Pathé's large archive. Soldiers of that time often fought for days and weeks. Which undoubtedly takes a toll on both body and mind.. And as part of a penal battalion, it's highly likely that they weren't served the best rations
VERY TRUE! Many WW1 generals were abysmally incompetent, sending their troops "over the top" in human wave attacks; as if the same tactic that had failed miserably the last 18 times you tried it will work if you just keep doing it until you run out of men and places to bury them.
@@VeganV5912 If you advertised veganism in a normal comprehensive way, instead of spouting out words like an absolute maniac in the comment section of a video talking about nazi war crimes, maybe people would be more interested
@@chillstation1624 .. HitIer and StaIin and PoI Pot, were KiiiiIIing innocent souls. BIuuudgeoned to death... 👈 Hint hint 🤥🦠🍖🔴.... 🙄. Over a frigging 5 minute burger et cetera !!! CuIt🔴foIIowing !!!!!!!!!
"French prison officials said that "Dirlewanger perished from a heart attack, but eyewitnesses to his death reported that some Polish prison guards beat him to death". Couldn't happen to a MORE DESERVING DEMON!! I hope that those Polish guards were all promoted and given generous salary raises. The world was a cleaner and more decent place after D's eradication.
@@soundofeighthooves well hop over to his wiki page, check the sources and find there is a lot of stuff on him...how could that not be, even his 'peers" thougjht of him ZUM KOTZEN
@@VeganV5912 Fucking disgusting, comparing a natural process to a piece of shit which murdered civillians in the worst possible way's. What the fuck do you think happens to animals in the wild? They dont die in a hospital bed, they get shredded to pieces by predator's, or eaten alive. Dolphins literally fucking play with their victims before killing them.
@@17_jager37 it’s true. In fact an SS police judge called Georg Morgen issued the arrest of Dirlewagner because of his unit’s appalling crimes but it was rejected by Himmler because “it’s better to shoot too many poles than too few”. Guderian also appealed to have his unit removed and despite one of Himmlerr’s own officers agreeing this would be a good decision, Hitler rejected the request.
It's probably because the SS, as disgusting and wrong as this sounds, required a professionality as they executed Jews and Slavic people. Sexual assaults and beatings were common, but they were not *really* accepted as the norm, but still slaughtering people was perfectly fine. It's a very disturbing paradox.
@@cl570 not always. It’s a bit of a grey area because some ss men such as the leibstandarte could be shot on the spot for acting out of line. But that’s less to do with morals and probably more to do with maintaining impeccable discipline in the ranks of the so called elite divisions.
@@justicegutierrez6847 if you think there is good and evil then you are religious my little boy. Ever watched a lion eat a hippo alive? takes about 60min for it do die. Is this evil? no it is nature.
A lion eating an animal obviously isn’t good or evil because they don’t have a concept of good or evil. Well I have news for you, we’re sentient and we do have concepts like good and evil.
I became obsessed with finding out more about this unit after reading French Macleans book "The Cruel Hunters" about 20 years ago which details everything that they were up to in the East, they truly were the lowest of the low.
It's a good book,I've got it,shiffer books also do,amazingly,a memoir from someone who done 40-45 in the unit. Lastly a new book on the final crushing of these scum comes out in December
The idea of 'most evil' is truly something to ponder. Compare Dirlewanger - a psychopath and alcoholic who did his own 'dirty work' and killed hundreds or even thousands with his own hands in horrific fashion - to Arendt's 'desk murderers' like Adolf Eichmann or Rudolf Höss who bloodlessly killed hundreds of thousands with a mere stroke of a pen. Dirlewanger was not someone you'd be comfortable around, while if you knew nothing about them, Eichmann or Höss would likely strike you as polite, unimpressive middle-management types. How do you weigh their respective deeds?
I usally dont think in these terms (pure/ evil etc)...but i feel philosophically challenged now. He is beyond anything, maybe best comparable with these lone, serial killer types... accept for he was part of a regime that would let him do it and facilitated it...like a union of psychos. To finish off; intention, ability and result should be the markings when scaling this filth. Again USUALLY i would oppose Capital Punishment, but that little wanker makes me change my mind. Have a cheery Sunday mate😎
The latter shouldn't really surprise anyone watching these videos or have an interest in history; the modern world is completely ignorant to the barbaric treatment of animals across the globe. I'm not going to draw a direct comparison, yet the idea of 'out of sight, out of mind' is a powerful tool for deluding people into acts they're culpable for. Humans are naturally capable of pure evil, yet people still refuse to believe they'd act the same. History has literally proved otherwise!
The persons who are directly involved in physical criminal brutality are arguably more morally repugnant than those who sit at desks and sign death warrants for thousands of people. It's relatively easy to sign orders to kill people because you don't have to physically see the victims. When you're able to physically attack and violate people without having pangs of a conscience, you're sociopathic and evil.
There is a big difference from running a camp, which is very clinical, or violating the geneva convention, in frustration against partisans, and wanton pillaging and barbarity.
I can highly recommend - but with a word of caution due to the horrific, psychodelic scenes - the soviet movie Come And See. It's based on horrific acts by Dirlewanger's unit in the belarusian countryside (specifically the massacre in the village of Chatyn), although not identifying the unit by name.
".... although not identifying the unit by name...." and that RIGHT THERE seems to be THE BIG PROBLEM with all of these claims; the military units are never specifically identified; nor: their NCOs/COs ...
Honestly, I though those were from the "blowtorch" regiment. Though they don't differ much from eachother in brutality. Hence why I could be mixing them up.
Those two Polish guards are the real heroes in this story. Imagine being so wronged that you became capable of beating a man to death. What a vile business. I hope they felt some kind of retribution afterwards and were not negatively affected by their actions. And good on the French for disguising it as something else.
Human lives were valued differently back then.. And doubt that poles situated in France, had been held in a kz camp. But stories of the man's achievements had probably travelled far
What happened to the rest of his unit? It’s ridiculous to think as brutal as the Natzi’s were, even his own superiors wanted him out. Very unsettling and sad to think this dude with his cronies ran around. Sometimes I like to imagine the resistance in these towns throwing down. You know they got their licks in too, but a costly war.
They were only bothered by some things he did - the Nazis got many of their ideas from the US Confederacy and especially the Jim Crow era - they saw how terror (such as lynchings) worked very well and emulated it on a bigger scale.
@@mainely8007 in addition more Americans died in the American Civil War from 1861-1865, then in any other war that America has fought in its history. Consequently, the immigrants who felt enslaved by British Crown came to America for freedom and work. Northern industry required large numbers of people to power it. So many the resentment towards any type of slavery began to grow when immigrants came to America. And they came to America with a dream and they died fighting for African American slaves to purse there’s. And that’s a fact jack.
First of all, many of them have been killed in combat. It's not that hard to aim if your target is a completely drunk idiot who doesn't care about his own life. They were efficient when they had to murder defenceless civilians but not in a regular battle against armed soldiers. In Warsaw Uprising Dirlewanger lost about 300% of his men (it was possible because he had a supply of the new ones) so probably very few of them (if any) were in the brigade from the beginning until the end. And during the post-war period... Well, I can easily imagine some of them becoming "regular" rapists, burglars, alcoholics and murderers and being sent to jail as civilian criminals.
From what I understand, most of the Dirlewanger brigade were wiped out by the Red Army in the last months of the war, and most of the remainder were taken prisoner by the Soviets. It's a matter of debate which fate was worse for them.
On my entire life .this channel is the most interesting historical program i ever watch .intense voice narrator .intense story .intense editing . No shit ,all content on this channel are LIT !. ive always give thumb when the video just starting .cause i know your work always epic .grazzie dark docs 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Never knew about this beast. Thank you for your information. Just when you think you've heard all there was to hear about the nazi regime...it gets more disturbing.
The worst Nazi units were the various allied bomber commands. They destroyed Central europes infrastructure in the final months of the war, starving tens of millions of people so that by the time the Glorious Western Armies on behalf of the Globalist Banking Cartel liberated Worker Camps people were filmed in skeletal conditions after their guards and attendants had fled for as much as two weeks prior. Friggen Nazis. Thank goodness this lead to brave humane allied death squads going around executing people without trial or later on having show trials leading to jail or execution. Without these herioc efforts we would not have had the IMF, Communist conquest of half of europe, china, north korea or vietnam. We wouldnt of had brave reforms in USA like trans teaching 4yo to be gay and chemically castrate themselves. We wouldnt of have the great reset, denazification /dewhitefication of the world So hate those nazi incinerators of women children and elderly civilians along with their destruction of rail cars carrying food.
Just when you think that you've known enough or heard enough, this video shatters that notion, and you realize to what depths of depravity and cruelty a man is capable of. It's like you ain't seen nothing yet!
This video doesn’t even get to the depths of some of their most heinous crimes. It is said they burst through a door of a day care where they murdered 500 children, ordered by Dirlewanger himself, by shooting and finishing them off with rifle butts bayonets to save ammo. Horrendous beyond belief.
I remember reading about this for the first time in the magazine called History...I can still feel my stomach turn everytime I hear the name Dirlewanger mentioned
Thank you for putting out content like this. I can only imagine how tough it is putting the script for something like this is. As hard as it is please keep it up as we must never forget the atrocities that were committed.
His Unit was known as Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. There are several books out, on this unit, a very good one is "The Cruel Hunters...SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger." By French Maclean.
I first heard of dirlewanger when I read that timothy snyder book "bloodlands" in the 2000s, it's an interesting book about the soviet and nazi horrors perpetrated in eastern Europe before and during the war, it's okay if you don't mind reading about that sort of thing, there was another infamous unit called Kaminsky brigade I think it was built around Soviet pows in German service.... one of my friends said that Soviet 80s movie "come and see" portrayed some of what dirlewangers men did in Belarus, just awful stuff....
il y a quelques années j'avais lu un article sur cette unité qui " n'affrontait" que des populations désarmées...leur chef est mort avant son passage au tribunal , c'est regrettable certes mais tout à fait compréhensible.Merci pour cet article et le travail qu'il a nécessité.
When you empty the jails of murders and other crazy crimes and put them in a brigade you got the Dirlewanger unit , they sent them into warsawa and got a stream of violence , rape . ,
I am confused. Very early in the video, you say pow's of the American civil war were used as soldiers. I am assuming you mean they were used by the army that captured them to fight against the army they were fighting with before their capture. I was totally ignorant of that fact, if it's true. Do you have citations for that statement?
I think they meant that before they started to draft children, armies would empty prisons to have more soldiers that are adults, rather than draft kids before convicts, POW's are subjected to unpaid labor, like all prisoners.
"I am confused. Very early in the video, you say pow's of the American civil war were used as soldiers. I am assuming you mean they were used by the army that captured them to fight against the army they were fighting with before their capture." The United States government recruited Confederate soldiers from its prison camps for campaigns against Indians during the American Civil War. Many U.S. army regulars were withdrawn to the East to fight in the American Civil War; meanwhile many tribes went on the warpath as a consequence of years of disputes with the U.S.A., as well the hostile tribes seizing the opportunity of weakened defenses to raid and attack.
Yeah, those Confederate soldiers who enlisted in the American army were called "Galvanized Yankees" by other American soldiers, because the loyalty of the now ex-Confederate soldiers to the U.S. government was considered no deeper than a zinc coating on an iron pail.
Funny thing that a few hundred years back, Dirlewanger Brigade probably wouldn't even have stood out as particularly cruel, with pillage, rape and casual brutality being the norm rather than exception in warfare. While Dirlewanger Brigade's crimes might seem shocking to modern sensibilities, they also pretty much describe an average medieval or early modern warband on a raid. One but need look at the accounts of the Thirty Years War to realize that Dirlewanger and his crew never really did anything that hadn't been already done countless times before. As for Dirlewanger himself, it's interesting how those who knew him personally actually describe him as a rather decent guy when he was sober (which was admittedly rarely the case). It was likely the combination of his experiences during WWI, a head injury and alcoholism that turned him into the monster we know.
Eh, though there were comparable crimes committed in the 30 Years' War, the sheer scale of what Dirlewanger managed to do is astonishing. On the other hand, wouldn't be surprised if the trauma of World War I played a role in making him such a monster.
I once saw a Polish construction worker carry a full sized washing machine, slung over his back, one handed grip on its inner rim, up three flights of stairs. Not the best group of people to take a beating from until you "pass".
Mind the fact that people back then were probably more active than now, I mean they had to do most of the work manually. Chopping wood with an axe instead of a chainsaw, visiting people in person instead of sending a fax or an e-mail, things like this.
“After the door of the building was blown off we saw a daycare-full of small children, around 500; all with small hands in the air. Even Dirlewanger's own people called him a butcher; he ordered to kill them all. The shots were fired, but he requested his men to save the ammo and finish them off with rifle-butts and bayonets. Blood and brain matter flowed in streams down the stairs.”
this is nothing compared to the terror fire bombing of Dresden and other german cities or the fire and nuclear bombing of men women and children in Japan
I don't know if this was made specifically at my request in another video, but thank you just the same. This beast, this absolutely chaotic evil monster, deserved far worse than he and the rest of the SS got.
5:46 is actually from Poland in 1940. This girl is desperately crying over her sister’s body who just got killed from a German bombing raid. The photo’s made headlines then. You can see them in the imperial war museum.
this lil vid was a ‘light hearted’ look at the Dirlewanger soldiers. these men (if you wanna call them that) were savages far beyond what most could fathom as the evil of man. other SS brigades were scared of them.
@@nilepax8168 "you ain't even read the book", do you really expect me to answer to an illiterate such as yourself about reading books? Lmfao I think you need to touch up on basic English before asking people such attempted privileged questions 🤣
Describing mental asylum patients and the former inmates of concentration camps as "the lowest scum of society", in the same breath as rapists and murderers, is absolutely shocking and I very much hope it was just poor writing rather than a genuinely held belief
People think this is shocking, see what people do when they think no one is looking, look at how cruel kids can be... then times it by 100, it's easy to see how state sanctioned violence and cruelty grows to such an horrible level
Also, in a unit like that with a reputation for extraordinary brutality, even the men who weren't total psychopaths would probably start to act like everyone else in order to fit in.
Thumbnail pic of the splinter camo mask Is NOT of the Dirlewanger Brigade. It is a photo of 7th Gebirgsjagers. This photo is often mistaken as Dirlewanger.
6:25 what DD is describing was depicted in the film "Come and See" (Elem Klimov, director) you can find the clip on RU-vid but I recommend the whole film also on RU-vid.
I'd be interested to know what your sources for all this are - a lot of information here . The description of poachers as men with 'an utter disregard of the law' is hilarious - _poachers_ !
Food in general wasn't something you see a abundance in the supermarket, like nowadays... Besides, shooting the fuhrer's wild in Germany was as bad, as speaking up against Putin in Russia is today
