Inglorious Basterds of the Great Patriotic War (17 photos). All books about: “SS punitive detachments

What happened to the officers and soldiers from the punitive battalion, then the brigade, and then the Dirlewanger SS division?

Fritz Schmedes and the commander of the 72nd SS Regiment, Erich Buchmann, survived the war and later lived in West Germany. Another regiment commander, Ewald Ehlers, did not live to see the end of the war. According to Karl Gerber, Ehlers, who was distinguished by incredible cruelty, was hanged by his own subordinates on May 25, 1945, when his group was in the Halba Pocket.
Gerber heard the story of Ehlers' execution while he and other SS men were escorted to the Soviet prisoner of war camp at Sagan.
It is not known how he completed his life path Chief of Operations Kurt Weisse. Shortly before the end of the war, he changed into the uniform of a Wehrmacht corporal and mingled with the soldiers. As a result, he ended up in British captivity, from where he made a successful escape on March 5, 1946. After this, traces of Weisse are lost, his whereabouts have never been established.

To this day there is an opinion that Substantial part The 36th SS Division was, in the words of the French researcher J. Bernage, “brutally destroyed by Soviet troops.” Of course, there were cases of execution of SS men by Soviet soldiers, but not all of them were executed.
According to the French specialist K. Ingrao, 634 people who previously served with Dirlewanger managed to survive Soviet prisoner of war camps and different time return to your homeland.
However, when talking about Dirlewanger’s subordinates who found themselves in Soviet captivity, we should not forget that more than half of those 634 people who managed to return home were members of the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany who ended up in the SS assault brigade in November 1944 G.

Fritz Schmedes.

Their fate was difficult. 480 people who defected to the Red Army were never released. They were placed in prison camp No. 176 in Focsani (Romania).
Then they were sent to the territory of the Soviet Union - to camps No. 280/2, No. 280/3, No. 280/7, No. 280/18 near Stalino (today Donetsk), where they, divided into groups, were engaged in mining coal in Makeevka, Gorlovka, Kramatorsk, Voroshilovsk, Sverdlovsk and Kadievka.
Of course, some of them died from various diseases. The process of returning home began only in 1946 and continued until the mid-1950s.

A certain part of the penal prisoners (groups of 10-20 people) ended up in the camps of Molotov (Perm), Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg), Ryazan, Tula and Krasnogorsk.
Another 125 people, mostly communists, worked in the Boksitogorsk camp near Tikhvin (200 km east of Leningrad). The MTB authorities checked every communist, some were released earlier, some later.
About 20 former members Dirlewanger's formations subsequently participated in the creation of the Ministry state security GDR (Stasi).
And some, like the former convict of the SS penal camp in Dublovitsa, Alfred Neumann, managed to make a political career. He was a member of the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, headed the Ministry of Logistics for several years, and was also Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Subsequently, Neumann said that communist penal prisoners were under special supervision; until a certain point, they did not have the status of prisoners of war, since for some time they were considered persons involved in punitive actions.

The fate of convicted members of the SS, Wehrmacht, criminals and homosexuals captured by the Red Army was in many ways similar to the fate of communist penal prisoners, but before they could be perceived as prisoners of war, the competent authorities worked with them, trying to find war criminals among them.
Some of those lucky enough to survive were taken back into custody after returning to West Germany, including 11 criminals who did not complete their sentences.

As for the traitors from the USSR who served in the special SS battalion, an investigation group was created in 1947 to search for them, headed by a special investigator important matters MTB, Major Sergei Panin.
The investigation team worked for 14 years. The result of her work was 72 volumes of the criminal case. On December 13, 1960, the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR opened a criminal case on the facts of atrocities committed by punishers of a special SS battalion under the command of Dirlewanger on the temporarily occupied territory of Belarus.
In this case, in December 1960 - May 1961, for the murders and torture of Soviet citizens, KGB officers arrested and prosecuted former SS men A. S. Stopchenko, I. S. Pugachev, V. A. Yalynsky, F. F. Grabarovsky, I. E. Tupigu, G. A. Kirienko, V. R. Zaivy, A. E. Radkovsky, M. V. Maidanov, L. A. Sakhno, P. A. Umants, M. A. Mironenkov and S. A. Shinkevich.
On October 13, 1961, the trial of the collaborators began in Minsk. All of them were sentenced to death.

Of course, these were not all the collaborators who served with Dirlewanger in 1942-1943. But the lives of some ended even before the mentioned process took place in Minsk.
For example, I.D. Melnichenko, who commanded a unit after he fought in the partisan brigade named after. Chkalov, deserted at the end of the summer of 1944.
Until February 1945, Melnichenko hid in the Murmansk region, and then returned to Ukraine, where he traded in theft. The representative of the Rokitnyansky RO NKVD Ronzhin died at his hands.
On July 11, 1945, Melnichenko confessed to the head of the Uzinsky RO NKVD. In August 1945, he was sent to the Chernigov region, to the places where he committed crimes.
During transportation by railway Melnichenko escaped. On February 26, 1946, he was blocked by members of the operational group of the Nosovsky RO NKVD and shot dead during his arrest.

In 1960, the KGB summoned Pyotr Gavrilenko for questioning as a witness. State security officers did not yet know that he was the commander of the machine gun squad that carried out the execution of the population in the village of Lesin in May 1943.
Gavrilenko committed suicide - he jumped out of the third floor window of a hotel in Minsk, as a result of a deep mental shock that occurred after he and the security officers visited the site of the former village.

The search for Dirlewanger's former subordinates continued. Soviet justice also wanted to see German penal prisoners in the dock.
Back in 1946, the head of the Belarusian delegation at the 1st session of the UN General Assembly handed over a list of 1,200 criminals and their accomplices, including members of a special SS battalion, and demanded their extradition for punishment in accordance with Soviet laws.
But the Western powers did not extradite anyone. Subsequently, the Soviet state security authorities established that Active participation Heinrich Faiertag, Bartschke, Toll, Kurt Weisse, Johann Zimmermann, Jacob Thad, Otto Laudbach, Willy Zinkad, Rene Ferderer, Alfred Zingebel, Herbert Dietz, Zemke and Weinhefer took part in the destruction of the population of Belarus.
The listed persons, according to Soviet documents, went to the West and were not punished.

Several trials took place in Germany, where the crimes of the Dirlewanger battalion were examined. One of the first such trials, organized by the Central Office of Justice of the city of Ludwigsburg and the prosecutor's office of Hannover, took place in 1960, and at it, among other things, the role of fines in the burning of the Belarusian village of Khatyn was clarified.
Insufficient documentary evidence did not allow the perpetrators to be brought to justice. However, even later, in the 1970s, the judicial authorities made little progress in establishing the truth.
The Hanover prosecutor's office, which dealt with the Khatyn issue, even doubted whether it could be a murder of the population. In September 1975, the case was transferred to the prosecutor's office in Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein). But the search for those responsible for the tragedy was unsuccessful. The testimony of Soviet witnesses did not help this either. As a result, at the end of 1975 the case was closed.

Five trials against Heinz Reinefarth, the commander of the SS task force and police in the Polish capital, also ended inconclusively.
The Flensburg prosecutor's office tried to find out details of the executions of civilians during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August - September 1944.
Reinefarth, who by that time had become a member of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag from the United Party of Germany, denied the participation of the SS in the crimes.
His words spoken before the prosecutor when the question touched upon the activities of the Dirlewanger regiment on Volskaya Street are known:
“The one who set out with 356 soldiers on the morning of August 5, 1944, by the evening of August 7, 1944, had a force of about 40 people who were fighting for their lives.
The Steinhauer Kampfgruppe, which existed until August 7, 1944, was barely able to carry out such executions. The fighting she waged on the streets was fierce and resulted in heavy losses.
The same goes for Mayer's battle group. This group was also militarily constrained, so it is difficult to imagine them engaging in executions that would violate international law."

Due to the discovery of new materials published in the monograph of the historian from Lüneburg, Dr. Hans von Crannhals, the Flensburg prosecutor's office stopped the investigation.
However, despite new documents and the efforts of prosecutor Birman, who resumed the investigation into this case, Reinefarth was never brought to justice.
The former commander of the task force died quietly at his home in Westland on May 7, 1979. Almost 30 years later, in 2008, journalists from Der Spiegel, who prepared an article about the crimes of the special SS regiment in Warsaw, were forced to state the fact: “In Germany Until now, none of the commanders of this unit have paid for their crimes - neither the officers, nor the soldiers, nor those who were at the same time with them."

In 2008, journalists also learned that the collected materials on the formation of Dirlewanger, as the deputy head of the Ludwigsburg Center for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, prosecutor Joachim Riedl, said in an interview, were either never transferred to the prosecutor's office or were not studied, although since 1988, When a new list of persons put on the international wanted list was submitted to the UN, the Center accumulated a lot of information.
As is now known, the Ludwigsburg administration transferred the materials to the Baden-Württemberg state court, where an investigation team was formed.
As a result of the work, it was possible to find three people who served in the regiment during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. On April 17, 2009, the GRK prosecutor Boguslav Chervinsky said that the Polish side requested help from German colleagues in bringing these three individuals to justice, since in Poland there is no statute of limitations for crimes committed. But none of the three former fines were charged by the German judiciary.

The real participants in the crimes remain free and live out their lives in peace. This applies, in particular, to the anonymous SS veteran whom historian Rolf Michaelis managed to interview.
After spending no more than two years in the Nuremberg-Langwasser prison camp, the anonymous man was released and got a job in Regensburg.
In 1952 he became a school bus driver and then a tour bus driver, and regularly visited Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Anonymous retired in 1985. The former poacher died in 2007.
In the 60 post-war years, he was never brought to justice, although from his memoirs it follows that he took part in many punitive actions in Poland and Belarus and killed many people.

Over the years of their existence, the SS penal guards, according to the authors’ estimates, killed about 60 thousand people. This figure, we emphasize, cannot be considered final, since not all documents on this issue have yet been studied.
The history of the formation of Dirlewanger, as if in a mirror, reflected the most unsightly and monstrous pictures of the Second World War. This is an example of what people can become who are overwhelmed by hatred and embark on the path of total cruelty, people who have lost their conscience, who do not want to think and bear any responsibility.

More about the gang. Punishers and perverts. 1942 - 1985: http://oper-1974.livejournal.com/255035.html

Kalistros Thielecke (matricide), he killed his mother with 17 stab wounds and ended up in prison and then in the SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger.

Karl Jochheim, a member of the Black Front organization, was arrested in the early 30s and spent 11 years in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. He was amnestied in the fall of 1944 and, among the amnestied political prisoners, was sent to a brigade located at that time in Slovakia Dirlewanger. Survived the war.

Documents of 2 Ukrainians, Poltava resident Pyotr Lavrik and Kharkov resident Nikolai Novosiletsky, who served with Dirlewanger.

Diary of Ivan Melnichenko, deputy commander of the Ukrainian Dirlewanger company. This page of the diary talks about the anti-partisan operation "Franz", in which Melnichenko commanded the company.

“On December 25, 1942, I left the city of Mogilev for Berezino. I celebrated the New Year well and drank. After the New Year, near the village of Terebolye there was a battle, from my company, which I commanded, Shvets was killed and Ratkovsky was wounded.
It was the hardest battle, 20 people from the battalion were wounded. We retreated. After 3 days, Berezino station went to the Chervensky district, cleared the forests until Osipovich, in Osipovichi The whole team loaded up and left....."

Rostislav Muravyov, served as a Sturmführer in a Ukrainian company. He survived the war, lived in Kyiv and worked as a teacher at a construction college. Arrested and sentenced to VMN in 1970.

Dear Herman,

I just returned from surgery and found your letter dated November 16th. Yes, we must all suffer in this war; My deepest condolences to you on the death of your wife. We just have to continue to live until better times.
I'm always happy to hear news from Bamberg. Latest news here: our Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross in October there were no celebrations, the operations were too difficult, and there was no time for this.
The Slovaks are now openly allied with the Russians and in every dirty village there is a nest of partisans. The forests and mountains in the Tatras have made the partisans a mortal danger for us.
We work with every newly arrived prisoner. Now I am in a village near Ipoliság. The Russians are very close. The reinforcements we received are no good, and it would be better if they remained in the concentration camps.
Yesterday twelve of them went over to the Russian side, all of them were old communists, it would be better if they were all hanged on the gallows. But there are still real heroes here.
Well, the enemy artillery opens fire again, and I have to go back. Warm greetings from your son-in-law.
Franz.

From the moment the Second World War began, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the systematic extermination of the Soviet population began. As a rule, to perform tasks of this kind, they were created special units, which bore quite innocent names - Eisatzgruppen or operational-tactical groups. The first such groups were created back in 1938 by Walter Schellenberg. The corresponding order was given by Reinhard Heydrich before the start of operations in Czechoslovakia. The purpose of their organization was to suppress the slightest resistance from the local population.

The creation of task forces did not go beyond the framework of the agreement between the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces and the Reich Security Main Office.

In May 1941, on behalf of Heydrich, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller was obliged to discuss the issue of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the rear of the German army, which was planned to be sent to the Eastern Front. But Müller was too straightforward a man, so the only thing he managed to achieve was to turn General Wagner against himself. Later, the same task was entrusted to the diplomat Schellenberg, who managed to persuade the military, who until that moment had reacted extremely negatively to any actions of the Gestapo in the rear. According to Heydrich's instructions, the army had to not only tolerate the presence of operational tactical groups, but also provide them with all possible support. Thus, Schellenberg's successful negotiations led to the agreement being signed at the end of May.

As a result, four such operational-tactical groups were formed according to geography: A - Baltic states, B - Moscow, Smolensk, C - Kyiv, D - southern Ukraine. At the head of each of these groups were placed experienced Nazis who had long forgotten about such a thing as pangs of conscience, Gruppenführers Franz Stahlecker, Arthur Nebe, Otto Rasch and Otto Ohlendorf. They all received orders from Heydrich's deputy Bruno Steckenbach, who served as head of the SS Security Police and Intelligence Service.

Each of these groups consisted of from a thousand to 1200 people, who were distributed among several teams. Moreover, it should also be noted here that the composition of the groups was thought out in detail. Thus, for every thousand people there were about 100 Gestapo officers, 350 SS men, 150 mechanics and drivers, 130 law enforcement officers, 80 auxiliary police officers, who were usually recruited locally, as well as about 50 criminal police officers and 30 SD officers. In addition, the groups included translators, radio operators, telegraph operators, as well as ... female staff (approximately 10-15 women for each group).

It should be noted that it was Steckenbach who carried out “Aktsion AB” in 1939, an operation to exterminate the Polish intelligentsia, and then managed to make a good career in this field. The Einsatzgruppen were assigned to the armies "Centre", "North" and "South", and also to the 11th Army. The main task of the Einsatzgruppen was to destroy the enemies of the Reich, and by and large- Communists, Jews and gypsies were subject to destruction. At the insistence of Dr. Otto Rasch, all group members were required to take part in executions in order to overcome themselves. Thus, all members of the groups were bound by a common feeling of guilt.

The formation of the Einsatzgruppen was completed at the end of June 1941, and at the beginning of the next they began to fulfill their duties. Among their immediate responsibilities was the task of exterminating the Jewish population and political commissars. Orders regarding these tasks were communicated to all commanders at a meeting held in Pretz on June 19th. According to this order, all representatives of the Jewish population, including children, were subject to complete destruction. So, for example, 35 thousand Jews were killed in Riga, 195 thousand in Kyiv. As a rule, their liquidation began in the standard way - with forced registration with the police. Executions were always accompanied by robberies, and everything that could be used was subject to confiscation - gold and jewelry, clothes and shoes, leather goods.

During the invasion of Soviet territory, Eisatzgruppen followed German troops as they advanced deeper into the country. These groups carried out their operations with the help of teams of local collaborators. The forces of operational-tactical groups killed thousands of physically and mentally disabled people who were in hospitals. And if the practice of transporting Jews to death camps or ghettos was introduced later, then initial stage they were shot on the spot.

The army, as prescribed by the agreement, provided the punishers with equipment, transport and housing, as well as, in certain cases, personnel (when transporting prisoners as guards). If at first the victims of the Einsatzgruppen were predominantly Jewish men, then later absolutely everyone died at their hands, regardless of age and gender - and they were all buried in a common grave. The Jews were mainly betrayed by local informants. Then they were sent to collection points. After which, they were transported on foot or by truck to the execution site, where trenches had been prepared in advance. In some cases, they were forced to dig their own graves before being shot. After this, everyone, regardless of whether they were men, women or children, was forced to undress and give up all their valuables. The execution was carried out in two ways: the victims were either lined up in front of the trench or forced to lie face down at the bottom of the hole.

It must be said that the most common form of extermination of the population was execution. But in 1941, on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, who noted that such a method was a psychologically difficult test for the members of the firing squads themselves. In this regard, a new, more effective method mass destruction of people. These were gas cars - gas chambers, which were installed on a truck chassis. They served carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe, thus, everyone who was inside died. This invention was called the “gas chamber.” They first appeared on the Eastern Front in the fall of 1941, and from that time on they began to be used along with executions.

Until the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen exterminated more than one million of the Jewish population living on the territory of the Soviet Union, as well as tens of thousands of Gypsies, politicians and patients in mental hospitals.

In the second half of the war, the Einsatzgruppen could be said to have ceased to exist. These punitive squads were replaced by death camps, in which stationary gas chambers were already installed. This, as the world would learn later, gave the Nazis the opportunity to destroy even more innocent people.

Materials used:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C0%E9%ED%E7%E0%F2%F6%E3%F0%F3%EF%EF%FB_%EF%EE%EB%E8%F6%E8 %E8_%E1%E5%E7%EE%EF%E0%F1%ED%EE%F1%F2%E8_%E8_%D1%C4

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/ru/article.php?ModuleId=10005130
http://www.hrono.ru/organ/eisatzgruppen.html

The SS had a unique unit - the 36th Division under the command of Oskar Dirlewanger, which consisted of criminals. Service in the ranks of this SS unit was seen as an opportunity to improve. But as a result, one of the most brutal punitive military units of the Third Reich was created.

In the summer of 1940, at the height of the Western Campaign, Hitler received a letter from a woman who asked the Fuhrer to show leniency towards her husband, who was imprisoned for poaching. He was a sharp shooter, and therefore his wife hoped that his skills would be useful in the army and he would be able to earn forgiveness. Hitler himself was a vegetarian and had an aversion to any hunting, but he liked the idea of ​​​​creating a unit of marksmen. He instructed Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler to find poachers in German prisons. After analysis, it was decided to include in the unit only natives of Austria and Bavaria (hunting was a common trade there) and only repeat poachers, since it was understood that they had a special passion for shooting and hunting in general.

Such unusual unit an unusual commander was also required. The choice fell on Oskar-Paul Dirlewanger. In the First World War, he showed himself to be a desperate and courageous soldier, very quickly achieving officer rank. In the first years of post-war Germany, Dirlewanger continued to serve in voluntary self-defense units, whose goal was the extermination of left-wing activists and members of Marxist parties. He joined and left the Nazi Party several times during the 1920s. At the same time, he received a doctorate in economics.

In the early 1930s, he was again a member of the NDSAP, a Sturmführer, fighting corruption at the regional level, but is best known for his drunken brawls and beatings of random passers-by. In 1934, Dirlewanger raped a 13-year-old girl and went to prison. After being released from prison, he goes as a volunteer to Spain, where he takes part in civil war on the side of General Franco. After this, in Germany, Dirlewanger seeks rehabilitation and enters into military service in the SS with the rank of Oberführer.

It is he who is entrusted with the command of the “Oranienburg Poaching Team” (German: Wilddiebkommando “Oranienburg”), which received its name from its location. Dirlewanger himself believed that service in the SS would help reform criminals.

At the beginning of 1941, the Oranienburg team was sent to Poland. From the very beginning of its combat use, the SS unit was used for punitive operations. Dirlenwanger was tasked with clearing the area of ​​the San River bordering the USSR from “suspicious elements.” Already the first operation of the Dirlewanger unit created its reputation as a cruel and even sadistic SS unit. But the “Poaching Team” did not stay long in Poland. In the second half of 1941, an investigation began into the mass rape of Jewish women by Oranienburg fighters in the Krakow and Lublin ghettos. They were accused of attempted racial incest.

As a result, the unit was sent to Belarus to fight partisans. By this time it had been renamed “Assault Command Dirlewanger” in honor of the commander. The unit begins to be staffed not only with poachers, but also with other repeat offenders: thieves, murderers, rapists.

In 1942, Dirlewanger began anti-partisan operations in the Belarusian forests. Very quickly, the criminal unit in the service of the SS established itself as one of the most effective and merciless punitive units of the SS in the “Reichskommissariat “Belarus””. It was the Dirlewanger that burned the Belarusian village of Khatyn in March 1943. This was far from the first and not the last settlement destroyed by this part of the SS.

During the year of fighting with partisans in Belarus, the composition of the Dirlenwanger changed greatly. The unit suffered significant losses, but was now staffed by local residents who wished to serve the occupation authorities. The composition of the team is first increased to the size of a battalion, and then to a regiment. Up to half of its strength was now made up of Soviet collaborators, mainly Belarusians, Ukrainians and Russians from Latgale. But there was no talk of changing the commander, since the very name of Dirlewanger terrified the whole of Belarus.

Only in November 1943 did the Dirlewanger enter into battle with units of the Red Army for the first time. After the first battles, the losses in personnel were catastrophic. By the end of the year, out of two thousand, only 259 people remained in service in the regiment. But already in February 1944, the Dirlenwanger was restored in full force.

During Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944, Dirlewanger, despite the fact that as a unit it had never been particularly disciplined, retreated to Poland in a very organized manner. In August, it was “Dirlewanger”, together with the Kaminsky brigade (Russian Liberation people's army- RONA) turn out to be the backbone of the punitive units of the SS and the Wehrmacht that suppressed the Warsaw Uprising, organized by the Home Army. It is believed that these events became the bloodiest crime of the Dirlewanger, which destroyed tens of thousands of Warsaw residents.

At the end of 1944, Dirlewanger was elevated to the status of a brigade, and in February 1945 - a division. But these reorganizations remained only on paper. The strength of the 36th SS Division never exceeded two thousand people personnel, although at the end of 1944 it was allowed to be staffed with political prisoners, mainly German communists.

In April 1945, the remnants of the division were defeated by Soviet troops in Silesia.

Oskar Dirlewanger himself was captured, where on the night of June 4-5, 1945, he was beaten to death by Polish guards.

Those who were considered decent people before the war also participated in the destruction of their own fellow citizens.

It is no coincidence that the Second World War is called the most terrible in the history of mankind. For the peoples of the USSR, the embodiment of horror was the “death squads” - SS punitive detachments, which were ordered to deal with civilians.

Four groups

There were four special SS units operating on the territory of the Soviet Union. The first team operated in the Baltic states, the second - from Moscow to Smolensk, the third was entrusted with the outskirts of Kyiv, the fourth - the south of Ukraine. The total number of people who were part of the “death squads” was relatively small - about three thousand people. And this includes technical staff. However, they managed to do quite a lot - their work was organized very thoughtfully.

Each punitive detachment consisted of two parts. The Sonderkommando followed the main Wehrmacht troops and “cleared” the area behind them; The Einsatzkommando worked in the rear.

Exactly how “death squads” should act with civilians was outlined by the Wehrmacht command point by point even before the start of the war. When did they start fighting, more and more instructions began to be sent down from above. All documents took into account the specifics of the occupied territory; they all meant rewards for determination (read: cruelty and inhumanity).

Exterminate the inferior

The main task of the special forces was the destruction of the Jewish population of the Union. It is interesting that at first the Nazis were very successful in acting through the hands of others - they caught anti-Semitic sentiments in certain circles and provoked people to pogroms against Jews.

Soon another tactic was tried: first, immediately after the fascist troops occupied another large populated area, the Jews, as representatives of an inferior nation, were herded into a ghetto, then their valuables and items of clothing were taken away from them, and only then they were shot. In Kyiv alone, during September 29-30, 1941, more than 33,770 people were killed - they were driven to the Babi Yar tract and shot. Local police took an active part in the executions.

In 1942 Himmler ordered not to waste ammunition on Jews - a lot of honor! – and kill them with cheaper gas. Gas vans began to drive around the occupied territories.

During the winter of 1941-1942 alone, death squads killed about half a million people - mostly women, old people and children. And throughout the war, punitive detachments killed more than a million people on the territory of the Union.

Trial and execution

The public trial of individual members of the death squads took place in 1947, immediately after the end of Nuremberg trials. 14 people were sentenced to hanging, five were imprisoned for many years, two for life. Those who managed to escape from justice continued to be hunted - such crimes had no statute of limitations. And in the USSR for a long time There was a real hunt for collaborators - citizens of the country who had gone over to the side of the fascists. In a country that defeated fascism, they long years pretended to be respectable citizens.

Of those whom fair retribution nevertheless overtook, the most famous are Antonina Makarova, who in her youth was the same Thin Machine Gunner who shot her compatriots in the Lokot Republic, and Grigory Vasyura, who went over to the fascist side at the beginning of the war and participated in the massacre of Khatyn residents.

Any crime is a consequence of the mores of its time. And the personality of the killer, like a distorting mirror, reflects the vices of a generation, estate, class. The Khatyn tragedy is no exception here. It is not for nothing that it still attracts the attention of historians, publicists, writers, ordinary people. The portraits of the executioners of this destroyed Belarusian village showed all the horror occupation regime, the entire social order created by the Nazis. Among the bloody gathering of punishers operating on our land at that time, all these von der Bachs, Gottbergs, Kaminskys, a special place belongs to Oscar Paul Dirlewanger. He was, one might say, a certified executioner...

From the most famous surviving photograph, taken in 1944, a subject of about 60 - 70 years old is looking at us. And at that time, Oskar Dirlewanger was just 49. He is in the uniform of an SS Oberführer. They say about such people: a person with the face of a born killer. Most of Dirlewanger’s assessments come down to precisely these definitions: psychopath, rapist, necrophiliac, sadist, even “the most evil person in the SS." In the intricate hierarchy of Nazism, he was destined for the role of an executor for dirty work - nothing more. The Nazis themselves, many SS bosses and Wehrmacht generals treated him with undisguised disgust. But it was such two-faced purity. Dirlewanger was freely allowed to commit any crimes “in the interests of the Reich.” His biography is filled with the most terrible details and scandals. And the ending was the kind that relatives of the victims usually ask for for murderers.

Dog of war

Dirlewanger's life path as a “model” Nazi. Born into the family of a small shopkeeper in Würzburg, the very heart of Germany. Young veteran of the First World War. Hitler and his followers generally didn’t like old people very much: what good were they, because they couldn’t be put under arms. The nation is strength, and the strength lies with the young! Participation in battles great war was especially valued - in this way a person proved his devotion to Germany, as if joining a special brotherhood. And Dirlewanger became a real “dog of war.” He was wounded four times. As a result of a bullet wound to the head, the brain suffered serious damage. The command appreciated the zeal and awarded the wounded soldier the Iron Cross of both degrees. But there is no need to rush to attribute the entire history of his bloody crimes only to the injury he received. Social environment played much more important role. Such “enraged petty bourgeois” formed the basis of the fascist movement in any country.

Interwar Germany presented a typical picture of a defeated country. Life in it was drilling, filled with countless political intrigues and conspiracies, financial speculations, throwing relevant personalities to the surface. Dirlewanger was here like a duck to water. He joins the Freikorps, a volunteer formation created from war veterans to fight revolutionaries and supporters of leftist ideas. A nomadic life began in the cities of Germany under the command of various commanders, who carried out brutal reprisals against their opponents. The fighting sometimes became quite fierce. In Saxony, for example, in 1921, Dirlewanger commanded an entire armored train. He then studies at the Technical High School in Mannheim and is expelled from there for his anti-Semitic views. In general, he will be expelled not only from universities, but also from the NSDAP. The unbridled and hot-tempered war invalid did not get along well in any team. Dirlewanger did not give up and at the age of 27 defended his doctoral dissertation (analogous to our thesis) on economic topics. He will still survive the proceedings regarding the authorship and value of this work. But such misadventures never bothered Oscar. In the same year, he joined the Nazi movement, where, thanks to his military and Freikorps “exploits,” he began to be considered an old party fighter. And most importantly, he met Gottlob Berger, a person close to him in spirit, in the future one of the leaders of the SS, who became for Dirlewanger “ godfather"and patron.

Psychopath and scammer

Dr. Dirlewanger devoted several years to working in various commercial structures. There he was noted for numerous financial frauds. True, with an ideological bias - the owners of his enterprises were Jews, and he used the stolen money to support local assault troops.

After Hitler came to power, a loyal party member received leadership position at the labor exchange in Württemberg Heilbronn. But this was not what the soul of the old warrior and troublemaker demanded. Bureaucracy and sitting in an office were not his element. What kind of things did he do? Irresistible drunkenness was Dirlewanger's most innocent offense. For the time being, people turned a blind eye to these “pranks.” When he was charged with raping a thirteen-year-old girl, the party was forced to intervene. In addition, there were serious suspicions that the criminal episode was by no means the only one. The "old fighter" was expelled from the party, deprived doctorate, the title of honorary citizen of Sangerhausen (the same Saxon city where he distinguished himself as an armored train commander). In addition, Dirlewanger went to prison for two years.

Upon his release, he tried to justify himself, but the party members, who were then fighting for the purity of their ranks, which were pretty polluted by all kinds of criminal and openly psychopathic personalities, sent their former comrade-in-arms to a concentration camp. And then fate turned its face to Oscar, or rather, Berger’s face. By that time, he had become the chief of staff of the Reichsführer SS and sent his unlucky friend out of harm’s way to fight in Spain on the side of General Franco’s nationalists. Here Dirlewanger turned around with all his might. And this war itself, which knew no laws and was distinguished by savage cruelty, gave him the opportunity to throw out his devilish energy.

Commander of the poachers

“Feats” for the benefit of the Reich were not forgotten, and in April 1940, Dirlewanger’s pedophile case was reviewed. He was acquitted, reinstated in the party, and even returned his doctorate. Moreover, they decided to use Dr. Oscar’s criminal experience for its intended purpose. Among the entire mass of German prisoners there were “ideologically and socially close elements.” Why should they sit in prison? Obviously, Himmler was personally puzzled by this question when he instructed the newly appointed SS Obersturmführer (analogous to a senior lieutenant) Dirlewanger to form the “Oranienburg poaching team.” His finest hour has come.

Dirlewanger was not so much a commander as a legal boss for his subordinates, with many of whom he had to share prison rations. He had complete control over their life and death. Sadistic punishments flourished in the unit. For various offenses, the fighters were flogged - they could receive from 25 to 100 blows with a stick, and they were locked for several days in the “Dirlewanger coffin” - a special narrow box. The Nazis needed such a crazy Sonderkommando for their policy in the occupied territories.

The criminal path of Dirlewanger's personal army began in Poland. Local patriots did not accept the seizure of their homeland, and an underground anti-fascist struggle unfolded in the newly formed “Governor General”. To counteract the underground, “poachers” were sent to Lublin. Now we will not describe all the horrors that Dirlewanger and his henchmen personally committed. The curious reader can easily find this information. There was everything: sophisticated torture, mass rape, and robbery. The degree of barbarity that was happening is evidenced by the fact that the SS leadership was forced to open several criminal cases based on the identified episodes! And although the Sonderführer himself considered such proceedings “comical,” he ended up in jail. At that time, the Nazis were not quite ready for such outright sadistic orgies.

Executioner

And again Berger intervened, interceding for his protégé. And the war that began with Soviet Union removed all restrictions on Dirlewanger's base instincts. “What can happen to a Russian or a Czech does not interest me at all. Whether they will live or die of hunger like cattle - for me it matters only in the sense that we will need persons belonging to these nationalities as slaves" - this is just one of a whole series of misanthropic quotes owned personally Himmler. The Reichsführer SS has enough of them to fill a small brown booklet. Is it any wonder that Dirlewanger, his subordinate, henceforth got away with everything?

In occupied Soviet territory, Dirlewanger's Sonderkommando is constantly growing: first the battalion is expanded to a regiment, then transformed into a brigade. And in February 1945, the 36th SS Grenadier Division was created on its base. And not a simple one, but a personalized one - “Dirlewanger”. Rare honor! SS divisions were usually named after some historical heroes or fallen Nazis, and there were also geographical names based on the place of formation. For example, the 1st SS Panzer Division was named not so much in honor of Adolf Hitler himself, but rather in honor of his Leibstandarte - a personal security unit. The other was christened not by Himmler’s name, but by his position - “Reichsführer SS”. And only Hermann Goering had his own registered formation in the form of a division within the Luftwaffe. And here, directly and uncomplicatedly, is Dirlewanger. Here's to you, a despised sadist pariah! Dirlewanger himself was promoted all the way to Oberführer (something like a brigadier general). The “specialization” of German criminals who were allowed to be recruited also expanded. Petty thieves, rapists, and other rabble were added to the “poachers.” This is how the staff of an entire “penal army” was formed. And back in January 1942, Dirlewanger was allowed to replenish his unit at the expense of the local population.

This hodgepodge of people has committed incredible atrocities on our land. Almost not a single major punitive operation of the Nazis (and about 140 of them were carried out in Belarus alone) was carried out without Dirlewanger’s wards. It is impossible to read the preserved reports of the executioners without shuddering! A combination of cynicism and coldness of inveterate office clerks. And each time they justified the murders as “the fight against bandits.” But for some reason among the latter were infants, women, and old people. The Sonderführer personally took part in many executions. He did not disdain torture or mass executions.

The SS Sonderbattalion "Dirlewanger" played a sinister role in the Khatyn tragedy. The commander himself did not have time to check in there. But for his punishers, the action was an ordinary, ordinary event. Many of them, detained after the war, will not even be able to remember the name of the village or any characteristic details. In their memory, all the crimes were mixed into one bloody mess. Now we know for certain that a German company and a Ukrainian platoon from the Sonderbattalion took part in the destruction of Khatyn. Here are just two quotes from the testimony of the Dirlewangerites:

From the interrogation protocol of M.V. Maidanov:

“From Logoisk we went on punitive operations to many populated areas, where we killed people, burned villages, robbed property, cleared forests in order to detect and destroy partisans. We traveled from Logoisk to carry out the specified actions both at close distances and to specific places.”

From the interrogation protocol of F.F. Graborovsky:

“When all the residents of the village of Khatyn were herded to the barn, they began to drive them into the barn, then, on the orders of the Germans, they were shot in this barn. I was armed with a rifle then and also fired at a barn with people. Having shot the citizens in the barn, they burned the barn with the corpses and the entire village of Khatyn.”

Monkey owner

True, the Dirlewanger brigade had occasion to participate in real battles. Thus, they tried to strangle the Borisov-Begoml partisan zone, were a striking force in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, and fought against the Slovak rebels. In the capital of Poland, “poachers” again distinguished themselves with inhumane crimes. For these atrocities, in September 1944 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest order of the Third Reich, awarded in recognition of the recipient's special bravery. Yes, in organizing torture and mass executions, the newly minted gentleman showed rare composure. But in direct clashes, Dirlewanger’s army suffered huge losses. And here the commander found himself shoulder to shoulder with his soldiers, rushing into the thick of the battle. Only the punishers clearly lacked real military skills and training. They were much more skilled at mocking the defenseless civilian population.

By the end of the war, Dirlewanger had completely degenerated, turning into a complete psychopath. According to his memoirs, his constant companion was a small monkey, which became the mascot of the “penalties.” He was not capable of effective command on the front line, and at the end of 1944 the brigade was taken over by SS Brigadeführer Fritz Schmedes. But the change of commander did not change the nature of the actions. Wherever former “penalties” appeared, the local population invariably suffered. Dirlewanger's division was finally defeated during battles in Hungary and then in Silesia. At that time, only a few dozen people remained from individual regiments.

Amazingly, Dirlewanger himself could easily escape punishment. The same Shmedes escaped from a prisoner of war camp and then his traces were lost. Dirlewanger's constant patron, SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, spent only six and a half years in prison. And he lived quietly until 1975! Many Western countries refused to extradite Nazi executioners to the USSR and other socialist countries, citing “the bias of their intelligence services.”

Oskar Dirlewanger was seriously wounded at the very end of the war and was recovering. He was arrested by soldiers of the French 1st Army in the Württemberg city of Altshausen, not far from where his Nazi career began. And then the executioner was overtaken by the well-deserved punishment. Polish soldiers were assigned to guard the prisoner. It was they who reminded him of the defeat of Lublin and the monstrous massacre of Warsaw. Further circumstances are shrouded in mystery and surrounded by legends. Officially, the death of the chief punisher was recognized on June 7. But there are quite good reasons to claim that the guards simply beat him to death on the night of June 4-5. At least the corpse was found with significant physical damage. The body was disfigured, and then rumors circulated for a long time that Dirlewanger managed to disappear safely. But the exhumation carried out in 1960 confirmed that this scoundrel’s earthly journey ended in 1945.

The question is quite appropriate: why now, in the days of mourning for Khatyn, which was burned 75 years ago, for tens of thousands of our compatriots who fell victims of large-scale Nazi punitive operations, remember this executioner? I’m not afraid to seem banal: so that they remember and this will not happen again. It’s surprising, but books are being published, including in Russian, where Dirlewanger is called “the genius of the anti-partisan war,” “the commander who brought order to the occupied territory,” “fought the bandits.” Many such epithets can be found in the open spaces global network...What can I say?! Order... Truly cemetery order! No, still, as much as we remember the victims of Nazi terror and bow our heads before their martyrdom, we will repeat the names of their executioners. And send curses. And one of the first on this anathematized list is the ominous and devilish name of Oskar Dirlewanger.

Vadim GIGIN, candidate of historical sciences.