The Butcher of Warsaw, Oskar Dirlewanger, the worst of the worst
The Butcher of Warsaw, Oskar Dirlewanger, the worst of the worst... 124 years ago today in 1895, one of the most brutally barbaric men of all time, guilty for some of the worst crimes and atrocities of the 20th century, Oskar Dirlewanger, was born in Würzburg, Germany. Nicknamed ‘Gandhi’ for his slender build, such a name could not have been more ill-suited to such a beast of a man as Dirlewanger. Though the Nazi regime had many truly unforgiveable and demonic personalities in its employ, few of them come close to the level of sadistic savagery which Dirlewanger exercised, his evil belonging more to the world of Dante’s Inferno than to the mortal world of the living. Precious little is known of Dirlewanger’s exact origins or his family background. Born in the 1890s, he belonged to that generation of Germans who were destined from birth to fight in the Great War. In 1913 at the age of eighteen he joined the Prussian Army and served as a machine gunner of the Royal Württemberg Corps. The...