Dirlewanger Brigade - Himmler's Convict Legion

you know a unit is bad news when the ss accuses it of reducing its reputation even among the many notorious units that existed within the ss empire one in particular appears to have been the absolute epitome of evil the delavanga

brigade

its name today is synonymous with criminality and brutality and the reputation is fully deserved the members of the units were

convict

ed criminals mostly of violent or sexual type a

legion

of sociopaths and psychopaths led by a violent sexual sadist that even the Nazis found difficult to digest the worst units of the ss were those generally associated with concentration camps where brutality and murder were normal activities or those formations in charge of security and anti-partisan operations or the mobile killing units that roamed the conquered territories, the einsatzgruppen, the lavanga

brigade

, would be Similar to these organizations except for one important difference their membership was not composed of troops or police who engaged in criminal activities but rather

convict

ed criminals who now engaged in state-sponsored criminality under military command.

It's strange that Himmler was so interested in making the SS an elite within the German army. The military should have allowed such a unit to be created, it was actually formed in 1940 when the SS was just beginning to feel troops in battle and was initially composed of criminals who had been convicted of poaching. Himmler realized the value of such woodcutters and Hitler approved the plan to recruit such criminals into a special SS unit that would be used to hunt partisans. The rationale was that these men possessed very good hunting skills along with obvious courage, as they had broken the law, so in 1940 the unit was formed as Orangeburg. poachers unit some Waffen-ss non-commissioned officers with poor disciplinary records were added to the unit and in September 1940 it had 300 troops.

Himmler chose the commander of the unit and appointed Dr. Oscar de Lavanga to the position. At first glance, Derlavanga seemed like a conventional choice around the world. An infantryman of the First War who had risen through the ranks to become a Lieutenant and received the Iron Cross First and Second Class. member of the freikorps during the tumultuous early era of the weimar republic. He had earned a doctorate in political science in 1922. The beloved Lavanga had joined the Nazi party. In 1923, however, his seemingly conventional exterior hid a deeply disturbing private life, a raging derelivanga alcoholic was also a sexual sadist who in 1934 received a two-year prison sentence for the rape of a 13-year-old girl, not to mention the government theft.

Expelled property of the Nazi party, he was later allowed to rejoin even though he ended up in the Veldzyme concentration camp as an inmate after being arrested again for sexual assault, but de Lavanga had powerful connections, including his former comrade from World War I, Gottlob Berger, now the boss. From SS conscription and through Berger's close association with Himmler Dialavanga was freed and sent to Spain where he fought in the Condor Legion Germany's contribution to putting the fascist dictator general Franco in power in 1939 when the beloved Lavanga returned to germany was appointed second lieutenant in the algamena ss and in 1940 was given command of the poaching unit, the unit was expanded and with only a limited number of convicted poachers of suitable age and aptitude to be recruited, the unit He began recruiting all types of convicts, including those classified as criminally insane.

The German Army and the Waffenesses had a system of penal battalions for men convicted of crimes against military law, but these men were usually returned to regular units after serving their sentences, as they had been deemed punished and rehabilitated. The anger brigade was different: it deliberately recruited men. convicted of very serious crimes such as murder, rape and robbery, his recruits were sociopaths, psychopaths and deviants of all kinds, men who under normal circumstances would have been executed by the state or left to rot in prison, the combination of which these men were given weapons and power was terrifying.

The unit, renamed the Delavanga Brigade, became dependent on the SS Totenkopfebunda, the branch responsible for the concentration camps, and would be further reinforced with the incorporation of Russian and Ukrainian volunteers and, later, with the incorporation of a battalion of troops. turkmen, azerbaijanis, uzbeks and tajiks recruited in central asia. The Der Lavanga Brigade was not designed to fight enemy troops, but was an internal security force heavily involved in the Holocaust. Local SS commanders were often dismayed by the unit's behavior in Poland in 1940. The unit's sadism in the Lublin area generated complaints from the regional SS. and police leader which led to his transfer to Belarus under the cover of anti-partisan activities the Lavanga brigade continued a campaign of murder, rape, looting and destruction of property the brigade killed some thirty thousand civilians, leading to a official ss investigation into the methods used by delavanga His specialty was herding large numbers of civilians into barns which were then set on fire and the victims shot down as they tried to escape.

What made this different from other barbaric SS actions was the beatings, rape and corruption that accompanied the De Lavanga atrocities, but given the composition of the unit's troops, this was not a surprise in 1942, The unit continued to expand as men convicted of the most serious crimes were sent to Lavanga and by August 1943 the brigade had three battalions, although designed for murderous activities against defenseless civilians, the brigade was called upon to fight the Soviets and, Surprisingly, given his recruits, they actually performed quite well in the battle, Delavanga led from the front, but his unit suffered many casualties due to military ineptitude.

Dialvanga himself received the German cross in gold, as well as the close combat insignia, and was wounded several times in action. The Der Lavanga Brigade was then used in Warsaw in 1944 to help crush the uprising against German rule. The brigade served alongside another unit of notorious criminality and brutality, the SS Schtum Rona, made up of renegade Russians. Both units were allowed to do whatever they wanted. surveys In one heinous incident, Delavanga ordered the killing of 500 children at a daycare center and, to save bullets, ordered his men to beat and bayonet the children to death, just a small part of the 40,000 studs the unit killed in two weeks. .

Orgy of Terror Deravanga received the knight's cross and was promoted to oberfura or senior colonel. The brigade continued to expand to reach 4,000 men in December 1944, shortly before being employed to crush the Slovak national uprising in late 1944 and then went to the front in suffering Hungary. Again with numerous combat casualties and the war entering its final phase. Lavanga's brigade was used to fight on the Naisa Order line and changed its name to the 4,000-man 36th Waffen-ss Division in February 1945. On April 16, 1945, the division was hit by the Soviet offensive and on the 17th Lavanga was wounded for the twelfth time in combat.

De Lavanga's association with the division ended at this point and the unit began to disintegrate with mass desertions, the commander of one grenadier regiment was even hanged. By his own men trapped in the Javelin pocket, what remained of the Lavanga division was largely annihilated, except for the headquarters element that managed to surrender to the Americans on the Elbe River on May 3, 1945. Some survived. 700 members of the delavanga brigade. In the war, some faced prosecution for war crimes, most did not. As for Oscar de Lavanga, he was captured by French forces in June 1945 while hiding in the mountains.

He died under mysterious circumstances on June 8 in Altzhausen, southern Germany, allegedly beaten to death by Polish soldiers thanks for watching, subscribe and share, and also visit my audiobook channel, war stories with mark Felton. You can also help support both of my channels on PayPal and Patreon, details in the description box below.