Oskar Dirlewanger

Oskar Dirlewanger
Personal details
Date of birth	September 26th, 1895
Place of birth	Würzburg, Bavaria, German Empire
Age at start	65 years old
Nationality	German
Role	Head of State of the Dirlewanger Brigade
Political party	Dirlewanger Loyalists
Ideology	National Socialism

Oskar Dirlewanger (born 26 September 1895) is a former SS Commander and current leader of the exiled Dirlewanger Brigade, which has set up in the city of Orsk in the Southern Urals.

In TNO, Dirlewanger is considered to be one of, if not the most purely evil human being in existence by people who know about him. Leading his band of former convicts turned SS men, bandits, rapists and murderers, Dirlewanger rules over his personal fiefdom, bringing about death, misery and horror to the people of the Southern Urals.

Biography

World War I

Dirlewanger enlisted in the Württemberg Army on 1 October 1913, and served as a machine gunner in the "König Karl" Grenadier Regiment 123, a part of the XIII (Royal Württemberg) Corps and as a one-year volunteer. With the outbreak of the First World War, on 2 August 1914, Dirlewanger, as part of the regiment, which was part of Crown Prince Wilhelm's 5th Army, was sent to the Western Front, where he took part in the Battle of the Ardennes and later fought in France and Luxembourg. While serving on the Western Front, Dirlewanger was wounded several times, as a result of which he became "40 percent disabled."

During the course of the war, he would be transferred to the Eastern Front, received the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class, wounded six times, and finished the war with the rank of lieutenant, in charge of a company on the Eastern Front in southern Russia and Romania.

At the cessation of hostilities, Dirlewanger's battalion was supposed to be interned in Romania, but Dirlewanger decided to return his unit to Germany, and led 600 men from his company and other battalion units home. According to German biographer Knut Stang, the war was a contributing factor that determined Dirlewanger's later life and his "terror warfare" methods, as "his amoral personality, with his alcoholism and his sadistic sexual orientation, was additionally shattered by the front experiences of the First World War and its frenzied violence and barbarism."

His experiences would go on to influence his amoral, psychopathic, barbaric, and sadistic personality. Following the war, Dirlewanger was categorized by police as a "mentally unstable, violent, and fanatic alcoholic who had a habit of erupting into violence under the influence of drugs," Making him the prime sort of person to join the Friekorps in the Weimar Era.

Interwar Years

Whilst in the Friekorps, he fought against German communists in Thuringia, Ruhr, and Saxony, and against Poles in Upper Silesia. He would participated in the suppression of the German Revolution of 1918–19 with the Freikorps in multiple German cities in 1920 and 1921. At the same time, he studied at the Higher Commercial School in Mannheim, but was expelled from it for antisemitism. Later, he commanded an armed formation of students which was set up by him under the Württemberg "Highway Watch".

On Easter Sunday 1921, Dirlewanger commanded an armoured train that moved towards Sangerhausen, which had been occupied by the Communist Party of Germany militias in one of their raids intended to inspire worker uprisings. An attack by Dirlewanger failed, and the enemy militiamen succeeded in cutting off his force. After the latter was reinforced by pro-government troops during the night, the Communists withdrew from the town. During this operation, Dirlewanger was grazed on the head by a gunshot. After the Nazi Party gained power, Dirlewanger was celebrated as the town's "liberator from the Red terrorists" and received its honorary citizenship in 1935.

Between his militant forays, he studied at the Goethe University Frankfurt and in 1922 obtained a doctorate in political science (Dr. rer. pol.). He wrote his doctoral thesis as an analysis and critique of the planned economy, titled: “Critique of the idea of a planned management of the economy." The following year, he joined the Nazi Party and its SA militia, and later also the SS. From 1928 to 1931 he was an executive director of a textile factory owned by a Jewish family in Erfurt where he renounced active service in the SA but financially donated to the SA, possibly obtaining the money by embezzling from his company. Dirlewanger held various jobs, which included working at a bank and a knitwear factory. In 1933 after the Nazi seizure of power, Dirlewanger was rewarded by being made director of the Heilbronn employment agency, a strategic post for local-level Nazi leaders.

Dirlewanger was repeatedly convicted for illegal arms possession and embezzlement. In 1934, he was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor with whom he was sexually involved". Dirlewanger also lost his job, his doctor title and all military honours, and was expelled from the party. Soon after his release from the prison in Ludwigsburg, he was arrested again on the same charge and sent to the Welzheim concentration camp, but more likely it was for creating a disturbance before the Reich Chancellery, demanding the reversal of his criminal charges. Dirlewanger was released and reinstated in the general reserve of the SS following personal intervention of his wartime companion and local NSDAP cadre comrade Gottlob Berger, who was also a long-time personal friend of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and had become the head of the SS Main Office (SS-Hauptamt, SS-HA).

Dirlewanger next went to Spain, where he enlisted into the Spanish Legion during the Spanish Civil War. Through Berger he transferred to the German Condor Legion where he served from 1936 to 1939 and was wounded three times. Following further intervention on his behalf by his patron Berger, he successfully petitioned to have his case reconsidered in light of his service in Spain. Dirlewanger was reinstated into the NSDAP, albeit with a higher party number (No. 1,098,716). His doctorate was also restored by the University of Frankfurt.

World War II

When World War II broke out, Dirlewanger volunteered for the SS and received the rank of Obersturmführer On 4 June 1940, Berger proposed to Himmler that Dirlewanger be appointed commander of a special SS unit: the so-called Dirlewanger Brigade (at first designated as a battalion, later expanded to a regiment and a brigade, and eventually a division), composed originally of a small group of former poachers along with soldiers of a more conventional background. It was believed that the excellent tracking and shooting skills of the poachers could be put to constructive use in the fight against partisans. The unit was created and Dirlewanger was given the task of conducting military training among poachers serving their sentences in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

He was first assigned to security duties in Poland, where he took pleasure in raiding ghettos and collecting ransoms. He committed numerous atrocities during his time in Poland, some of which appalled even the most sadistic Nazis. This included rape, sadistic murders, and brutal acts of repression. His brigade accompanied the Wehrmacht into Russia, and he and his forces committed even more murder, rape, pillage, and genocide against the local population. The Brigade remained in Russia, hunting partisans and massacring thousands until the end of the war and after.

The West Russian War

Following World War II, Dirlewanger remained in Russia. He continued his work with his brigade, hunting and murdering within the Eastern territories, until the West Russian War began. His unit was sent to back up Wehrmacht units, acting as pacification troops against the partisons.

Unbeknownst to the Wehrmacht, Dirlewanger, along with all other SS forces, were planning to attack and destroy the Wehrmacht. The plan however, was discovered by Hans Speidel, and Wehrmacht forces launched a preemptive strike against the SS. Dirlewanger's men were forced to flee deep into Russia, where the Wehrmacht assumed they would all freeze in the cold or be killed by the locals.

The Black Bandits

Despite the hopes of the Wehrmacht and most of humanity, Oskar Dirlewanger and his brigade didn't die, instead, Dirlewanger took his men and seized the city of Orsk, setting up his headquarters there. Dirlewanger began raiding nearby towns and villages with his trademark brutality and murder, creating a bandit state. Dirlewanger's bandits have carved a path of destruction and suffering throughout Russia, and their sights are now set on the city of Orenburg, a weak anarchist state with great wealth. All that stands between Orenburg and annihilation are the forces of the Ural League.

Trivia

• Oskar Dirlewanger currently has the most death events of any leader, the amount is more than 70.