36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS
The 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS was formed on the orders of Himmler dated 19 February 1945 from the SS Assault Brigade Dirlewanger and some army units. Although Oskar Dirlewanger was replaced as the Assault Brigade leader of Fritz Schmedeswurth after an injury on 16 February and this division was still often accompanied by the Dirlewanger.
History of the Division
From the end of May 1940, under Oskar Dirlewanger in Sachsenhausen concentration camp convicted poachers who had hunted with the rifle, collected from all over the empire to " poacher Command Oranienburg ". At the end of training 55 soldiers were treated as " Sonderkommando Dirlewanger " to the General Government to Lublin in the command area of the Higher SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik. As of February 1942, the command which had grown to nearly 100 men, was transferred to its destination according to the partisans fighting to Belarus, where it was assigned by God Curt Berg. As of November 11, 1942 it was increased by the designation " SS Special Battalion Dirlewanger ", 1943/1944 it was the " special SS Regiment Dirlewanger ". In July 1944 the regiment to " SS Assault Brigade Dirlewanger " was.
On February 20, 1945, the brigade was ordered back into German territory, reinforced by army troops and a division converted, which was used against the Red Army.
Composition of the Division
Of the approximately 6,000 soldiers of the division were the most disciplinary respondent SS and Wehrmacht; 250 were political concentration camp prisoners; still less was the number of so-called anti-socials and ordinary criminals, who had also been allocated from the concentration camps of the unit. The division was split from the beginning on the 9th and 4th Panzer Army. She had been reinforced with 100 cadets an SS Junker School that were once used as a sectional and company commanders, as well as superiors of 400 prisoners -down from an SS prison. The two armies were encircled and annihilated at the beginning of the last major Soviet offensive on 16 April 1945 in the Halbe pocket about 100 kilometers south of Berlin. For the 25th April, only 36 combat-ready soldiers of the 2nd Regiment were counted. From a Russian prisoner returned 634 men, as is clear from the documents of the search service of the German Red Cross.
By no later than the end of 1944, when the brigade was boosted with 800 political prisoners and used first in Slovakia to combat the Slovak National Uprising and then struggled to Budapest against the Red Army, could no longer be spoken by poachers as the core of the unit. But she was also not a unit of become " anti-fascists in SS uniform " ( H.-P. Klausch ), especially since this had gone over in Hungary in regimental strength to the enemy. According to a witness statement of 28 June 1946, the brigade had existed already at that time the majority of disciplinary respondent members of the Wehrmacht.
Outline ( February 20, 1945 )
- Waffen Grenadier Regiment of the SS 72
- Waffen Grenadier Regiment of the SS 73 SS Artillery Division 36 SS - Fusilier Company 36
- SS -News- Company 36
( Army troops )
- Pioneer Brigade 687
- Grenadier - Regiment 1244 Heavy Tank Destroyer Division 681
- Panzer-Abteilung Stahnsdorf I
Commander
- 20 February to April 1945: SS Brigade Commander and Major General of the Waffen- SS and Police Fritz Schmedeswurth