Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
The Cruel Hunters : SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger Hitler's Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit, Hardback Book

The Cruel Hunters : SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger Hitler's Most Notorious Anti-Partisan Unit Hardback

Hardback

Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours

Description

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.

Formed as a battalion of convicted poachers in 1940, the unit operated in Poland until 1942, guarding Jews in forced labor camps and making life miserable for Poles in Lublin and Cracow.

From there Dirlewanger spent two years combating partisans in central Russia, giving no quarter and expecting none in return, during vicious fighting against an elusive foe in the midst of inhospitable swamps and dismal forests.

In 1944 Dirlewanger savaged Warsaw during the Polish Uprising, before moving to Slovakia to crush another rebellion there.

The end of the war saw the unit, which was now a division in size, fighting for its life south of Berlin against the Soviet Army.

Medieval in their outlook on war and certainly not indicative of many German military formations, this unit none-the-less remains a reflection of a segment of mankind gone mad in the inferno of World War II on the eastern front.

Size: 6" x 9" over 50 b/w photographs, maps, fully annotated

Information

Save 12%

£31.99

£27.99

Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information