Dirlewanger Brigade

The Dirlewanger Brigade, also known as the 2.SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger (19 December 1944), or the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (German: 36. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS), or The Black Hunters (German: Die schwarzen Jäger), was a unit of the Waffen-SS during World War II. The unit, named after its commander Oskar Dirlewanger, consisted of convicted criminals, other prisoners, and some volunteers. Originally formed from convicted poachers in 1940 and first deployed for guarding a labor camp and later counter-insurgency duties against the Polish resistance movement, the brigade saw service in German-occupied Eastern Europe, with an especially active role in the anti-partisan operations in Belarus. The unit is regarded as the most brutal and notorious Waffen-SS unit, with its soldiers described as "The ideal genocidal killers who neither gave nor expected quarter." The unit is regarded as the most infamous Waffen-SS unit in Poland and Belarus, and arguably the worst military unit in modern European history in terms of criminality and cruelty. During its operations, the unit participated in the mass murder of civilians and committed other atrocities in German-occupied Eastern Europe. It gained a reputation among Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS officers for its brutality. It epitomized the "anti-partisan activity on the Eastern front that emerged from the image of the hunt and the animalization of the enemy." The unit continuously committed sadistic acts of violence, torture, rape and murder, and enjoyed plundering wherever they went. Dirlewanger himself often beat and killed his own troops as well, especially when they displeased him. According to French historian Christian Ingrao, Dirlewanger's unit committed the worst atrocities of the Second World War, while the American historian Timothy Snyder noted they committed more atrocities than any other unit. The unit killed at least 30,000, and up to 120,000 civilians in Belarus alone and destroyed some...