Wholesale The Cruel Hunters

This is a brutal story – but, from the safety of fifty years distance in time – it is an extremely compelling one. It is also an enduring lesson that a military unit, formed under an evil ideology, led by a social outcast and composed of vicious criminals, will sink to its lowest common denominator – hate. The Dirlewanger Battalion, also known as “Sonderkommando (special commando) Dirlewanger” was perhaps the least understood, but at the same time the most notorious German SS anti-partisan unit in World War II. German propaganda correspondents and wartime photographers did not follow them in action. And for good reason. Wherever the Dirlewanger unit – named for and led by Oskar Dirlewanger – operated, corruption and rape formed an every-day part of life and indiscriminate slaughter, beatings and looting were rife. 336 pp | over 50 b/w photographs, maps