Part Two: Oskar Dirlwanger: The Worst Nazi

I'm very excited. It's the only way you can actually inject levity into Nazi atrocities is occasional air horn a horn, you know, and then some cool, funky beats. Yeah yeah, a couple of a couple of pops. Yeah, Oh my god, it's a few stings in there. Man. Honest. I've always said Behind the Bastards needs to be more like a

Morning Zoo Fia exactly. Yeah. We could. We we could get like a deep fake of l Ron Hubbard to like come in and be against every now and again and talk about how to kidnap his baby the best. Welcome to Boner and the Nord Tell you today we're talking about Ryan hard Hydra more like ryanrd Hydra. Ye. Sorry, I'm so sorry. We've really, really all the goodwill that we've built up for years of carefully doing this podcast shattered in a second, gone because of my new equipment. Dude,

this this came with it. I don't understand. I don't need it. It just was like, oh, here's a pad for sounds. And I was like when you hear about like people's who being introduced to the global economy having not ever been brought in before, and suddenly like Coca Cola comes to them like that at no point of their ancestors ever processed that amount of sugar. It causes serious health problems. That's what's happening to me. With access to this device that you now, I am going to

destroy myself and my show. Um yes, I am someone liberated, liberated from a work camp who gets a Hershey bar and exactly it's just too much. Oh boy, So times we should probably start this episode by talking about what it means to be a hunter or a poacher right in Nazi Germany. What Because it's not as simple as

you'd think, right. Poaching is a serious crime, a lot of the laws that people are getting arrested under date back to the days when the Kaiser and other nobles are like the only people who are allowed to hunt, or at least allowed to hunt in certain areas and right, because you've got like a king and you've got dukes, and it's like, well, these are the nice deer and only they may hunt them. And you know, or in this woods, all of the game belonged to this noble thing.

It was like I thought it was weird. I was like poachers. It was it a legal, it's certain game. It always is, right because you don't want number one, the Nazis, it must be said, we're kind of ahead of the curve when it came to like attitudes towards animal welfs environmental preservation. So there is some some of this is that like they have laws because it's like, what, we don't want to do damage to this ecosystem. But paradoxes of Nazism is like when Hitler is like, I'm

a vegetarian, like I dislike harming of animals. So some of it does come from just the fact that Hitler is kind of a guy who likes animals, and some of it comes from a lot of it. Most of it comes from just like there have always been these laws because in all of Europe it's been heavily restricted who gets to hunt. Why this is a bigger subject.

But hunting is like it's a thing in Europe in a way it's not in the United States because among other things, a lot of stuff like who gets to have weapons is wrapped up and who gets to go hunting, and like a lot of different kind of game. Number One, because of how much longer there's been sort of settled

societies in Europe. Uh and they were never because there is bad at environmental regulation, as white people tend to be, They wiped out a lot of like the big game species, so there was kind of a need anyway, there's a lot of rules here. So Number one, poaching is something that it is easy to be a poacher, and that

what you can hunt and win is heavily regulated. But but the other thing that's going on here is that even though poaching has punished severely and Hitler himself hates the idea of hunting for meat, hunters have a deep like almost religious, spiritual sort of place in German folklore. Right, the concept of a hunter is something that is is venerated.

Think about like at least a couple of times in those fucking handling Grettelass stories where like the guy who comes and saves the days, some like hunter who's just like through the woods, right, Like it's a thing, you know, um, And it's a thing in part because like Germans have a lot of German history is like rap and German like pride is wrapped up and you know they're they're early history when they were fighting the Romans, and like they're these kind of woods people who are live in

the dark forest their national folk hero myths, and yeah, a lot of them are like exactly. So a lot of Nazi propaganda is focused on people need to return to nature, need to get back to the woods, they need to hike into camp, and of course they need to hunt. Right. That is, as much as Hitler doesn't like it, a lot of Nazis and a lot of Nazi propaganda still does venerate hunters. We're not liking it. And then it's like, don't kill for meat. If you're

gonna kill, kill. This job has been making such moral compromises unbelievable. Stagg right near where I guess Jews. It was horrible, can't you believe it? Put his head up once all. So we we see shades of this in modern right wing propaganda, right like every if you're gonna be like a right wing ship head trumpy political candidate, you're gonna pose with a gun shooting something. Right. Some of those guys are actual hunters. Neo Nazi. Fucking Paul

Neilon is a hunter and a scary asshole um. But a lot of them are just like Dr Oz where it's like, yeah, put me with a shotgun next to some ducks, like people need to see that I'm a real man, um. And it's a bit like that with the Nazis. You definitely have some degree to which this is like showy. But some of the Nazi high command are big hunting nerds. I think it's Gearing. Gearing is huge into hunting, and I believe Himler is as well.

Was either Himler or Gerbel's I actually forgot the double check, but one of the two of the other big guys was was also a big hunting nerd, and they have like very nice hunting lodges. Gearing builds this palace for himself named after his dead wife, Karen Hall. That's just for him to go shoot things while the war is going badly. Um, sell me a dog. There are a

lot of like there. There is Nazis are kind of as much as Hitler doesn't like attributing some sort of magical skill to the idea of being a hunter and poachers, even though it's illegal, poachers are seen as generally the very best hunters, right because not only are they tracking and killing animals, but they're doing it while avoiding the law. Right, So you have to be pretty good at hunting to be a successful being hunted exactly, so that that there

is like a respect. Even as much as the Nazis are big law and order guys, there's a respect for what it means to be a poacher. So it's it's both this, like, these guys are criminals and thus we don't want to associate too closely with them, and also these guys have some sort of primal skill that we've venerate, right. Um, So when the Nazis decide that they're going to form a military unit of cotton sentenced poachers, they think they're making like this is obviously is a is a considered

military decision. It does make sense, right, if you were planning a counter insurgent campaign, this might be a thing you would do because it does make sense. But they're also doing something a little bit more esoteric. The mystical qualities attributed to hunters by German mythology include an understanding of the wild as something powerful, spiritual, and valuable, but by necessity controlled. And there's there's this idea that some men are wild men, and poachers are among them. Dura

Wanger is a wild man. And you can't let these people run freely in your society because like they'll suck it up there too. They bring too much chaos. But they also they're manly, they're powerful, and they're necessary in some places. So there's a there's a place for wildness, there's a place where it's necessary. And as the Nazis gear up to ethnically cleansed Poland and the East, one of the things that is like makes immediate sense to

these guys. It's like, well, this is where, this is a place where wildness is needed, right, this is exactly

we need some fucking lunatics out here. Um, And yeah, I'm gonna quote again from Christian Ingrau quote the image of the hunter, like that of his different quarry, corresponds, according to bertrand Hell, to your European imagination of black blood, which defines the exact distance from the wild to these societies, and by a discourse interpreting hunter's behavior, inserts them in social organization and integrates therein the savagery and violence of

that image. Now black blood meaning like these people have animal blood in exactly, Yeah, there's something inherently wild about them that we have to harness. Right, And if you want to read Christians book, which I do recommend, he goes into a lot of detail about what this means kind of the esoteric history. I don't understand all of this. I'm gonna tell you that right now. I am not an expert on European folklore, and this is an academic text.

Christian is a little bit wonkier than I entirely get. But what I do stand understand is that he's saying the Nazis venerate wildness. Thus, is there a term you will hear a lot in speeches that, like Hitler and Himmler and Gering make is hardness. Right, We want to make young men hard so that they can do the things that are you need to be done in the East, and it is it is very funny. We can make all the dip chokes we want. Um, this is you can see this as part of the evidence for the

intentionalist sort of thing. Actually, it kind of does fit either, because what you're seeing here is that when you're when you're specifically saying we need to make the new generation of men tough and not care about hurting people and able to kind of go wild because we're about to take over a space that we need them to go wild in in order to detain it. Right, Um, that

is preparation for a genocide. Now not in the sense that I think is easy to recognize in court papers, but like that's part of it, right, the the deliberate inculcation of these virtues of hardness and wildness and young men and the Reich is part of why the genocide happens. It's it's it's a it's as necessary as stockpiling the munitions, right because most people can't just go shoot thirty thod folks in a day, right, Yeah, like even most assholts

can't do. Take your biggest American dips it and he's not getting those numbers. No. Um, so the reason darl Wanger and these poachers are being formed into an anti

partisan unit. In addition to the stuff that just makes sense militarily, there's an understanding by the Nazi brass that these guys are going to be good at harnessing the savagery of the wild to get civilian populations, and that maybe a little bit of that wildness will rub off on the other soldiers, and that's kind of what they think, they know they're going to need. It's so it's the insane thing about it, too, is that is number one, they don't have black blood or whatever. The fuck. These

guys are literally just sociopaths. These guys they're finding the most monstrous fucking like I mean, this would be equivalent to like guys drinking four local and people going those guys are wild, man, those guys really animal blood. Yeah, I mean just yeah, just the biggest assholes in the world. And they're just attributing some sort of like I don't know, fucking spiritual animalistic sucking. None of what I'm saying or what Christian to saying, is that like that this is

a lot a completely logical thing. It's just of course there's folklore roots because the German the Nazis are big into that sort of stuff that go deeper than just like we need some poachers, right, There is a lot going on here and it is it is meaningful to understand that. Again, in Grau's book goes into more detail. I'm not going to claim to entirely understand the arguments that he's making there beyond what I have related to you,

because it is more complex than that. But you can read that on your own if you're real into fucking European folklore and hunting. Um. So this takes us back to the discourse though that opened the episode about intentionalists versus functionalists. Durrowanger and his men are about to kill tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, in the most brutal way is conceivable. Most of these specific killings are not ordered by Hitler or by anyone else

in high command directly. Rather, durl Wanger's unit is formed with the understanding that he and his men will interpret their job, which is anti partisan activity, to include just killing everybody in certain areas, right, and not only that, but that they will develop techniques to do that that will be replicable by the rest of the German military. So obviously there are specific direct orders behind a number of their massacres, but usually said orders are less specific

than you'd imagine. And this is not just a thing the Germans did when they were committing war crimes. This is part of their battle theory. There's a thing they have developed in at the end of World War One called Alph Truck's tactic, which venerates individual initiative and leaves solutions to problems open to field commanders. Right, German soldiers up through World War Two are much less hampered by

like they're much less the command exactly. It's more lest like no, no, you're in charge of this unit of guys. We need you here by this stage. However you do, that's up to you. I'm not going to micro manage you. And that's part of how like you get stories about like Rammel being like a hundred miles ahead of the rest of the army and whatnot, because there this is like a thing that the German military specifically tries to

inculcate and its soldiers. And so even though there's not like a direct hitler doesn't send out a memo saying like, hey, have Oscar Darrow Wanger ethnically cleans large parts of Poland and Belarus. He is directly orchestrating those massacres by he and Himler and stuff, by putting this unit together and putting it in the places that it's being put right and being like, you know, hey, just if you feel entrepreneurial,

go for it. It's pretty much. It's weird that the Third Reich was kind of like militarily run like a startup, which is like, pretty well, yeah, you know, yeah, everybody, there's a lot of hats. There's a real startup. Yes, well, there's plenty of snacks and also guns in the kitchen to kill. We have black massashes at every Thursday, all the headphones you could ever want. Yeah, it is. It is a bit like that. So Nazi Germany invades September

nineteen nine Poland. Um, this works pretty well for them. Uh. They fairly rapidly achieve conquest of Poland alongside the Red Army, who are on board for the conquest of Poland. At this everybody wants some Poland right to a few centuries now where people are just like, hey, let's get Poland. Every time a war happens. Yeah, I mean outside of

the Nazi stuff. Man, if you come to me and you're like, hey, Robert, I think we gotta I think I got an idea we could take some Poland, I'll be like, I'll hear you out, you know, I'll hear everyone wants a piece of little bit of Polis. Yeah, exactly.

Not trying to go wild on it. Um. The Nazis kind of go wild on it a little bit, so they militarily this goes pretty well for them, but they start to deal very quickly with the problem that their forces are conquering more people and coming into possession of more Jews than they had entirely been ready to handle. So they've got partisans. There are partisans fighting, although it's not at its high pitch yet, right because everyone in Poland is still sort of dealing with the shock of

being invaded. Yeah, very it's it's it's come, it's come along quickly. So the need to fight partisans at this period is less important than they need to reduce the number of human beings living in like the areas the Germans are trying to take over and turn into Greater Germany.

So Darrel Langer gets sent with his men to Oriannenburg in May of nineteen forty just a couple of months, like not more than a couple of months, but not all of that long after the invasion, and his job is to train the first few dozen poachers in his special unit. His men are kept in an isolated barracks, less their wildness and criminal nature infect the other soldiers.

The specific branch of the German military they were attached to would later become the Waffen s S, which is the military arm of Heinrich Hmler's fun club for racists. And I'm gonna quote now from the s S Darrel Wanger Brigade by Ingrau quote. The two months of training they were given must have been limited to the rudiments of military discipline and a summary physical training, something close to the Prussian drill, but hardly going for they're considering

how soon they were sent into action. This training was selective enough that in the end only fifty five of the eighty poachers were accepted in the commando. The others were returned progressively to their detention centers without penalty. It was purely a question of physical inceptibility. The order requesting their reintegration in prison, specified that no disciplinary measures were involved.

And that's interesting to me that like you get this, like, well, we don't want them to feel bad, right, we don't like, we don't like be dicks to them. If they can't look, you just couldn't cut it, you know, the feeling. Don't hurt their feelings as they are carrying out one of the greatest blood bats in history. Well, we wouldn't want to be like unfair to these guys. Look, they're serving

their time. You know, they volunteered. It's okay, just them not making the cut into the like varsity killing Jews team. Hitler sits down next to one of these guys. Look, buddy, it's nothing against It's all right exactly exactly got cut from his high school jew killing team too, and Jesus Christ, oh boy. So in September of nineteen forty, the men of S. S. Durawanger, which is like what the unit gets called, right, this is just kind of the naming scheme at the Germans used are sent to an area

in Poland called Lublin. This town held an important place in Nazi race theory. One of their propagandists had in the nineteen thirties described it as quote a bottomless well from which Jews flow to all corners of the globe, the source of the rebirth of world jewry. So certain Nazis are like, this is where the Jews come from. There, Yeah, this is the well where the Jews are sprouted and then just get shot into different countries all over the world.

Now look, it's called Lubland, Lublin, Lublin. Now look, I know everything the Jews mountain, oh man. Given everything that's going on in Palestine these days, the question of like what is a Jewish homeland made is a thorny one. But I think everyone can agree it's not Ublin. It's definitely, it's definitely not Lublin. Yeah, we don't. We're not always just like, hey, did you take your your yearly birthright

trips back to Lublin next year in Lublin. So the surrounding terrain is swampy uh in the area, and so it was considered to be Lublin's got a large Jewish population, But it's also considered a great idea. They're going to take all of the Jewish people from the surrounding area and they're going to force them into the swamps around Poland, where they're going to create concentration camps um. And they think this is a great idea because since it's a swamp,

swamps are bad for you. As a general rule, people aren't supposed to live in swamps, and the Nazis are specifically saying that, like, if we make them all live in this swamp and like shitty camps, it will quote cause their considerable decimation. This is a free way to have the environment kill a lot of them, and we

don't know they're trying to biological warfare in a sense. Yeah. Yeah, So we have very little specific detail on what the men of the Dura Wanger unit did in these first eighteen months, but we do know the broad strokes, which is that they helped to set up and guard the Belzac and mag the Neck death camps. This was accomplished in stages, which included destruction of synagogues and Talmudic academies in Lublin, as the people there were rounded up and

forced behind barbed wire. One German soldier later described, quote, we threw the huge Talmudic library out of the building and carried the books to the marketplace, where we set fire to them. The fire lasted twenty hours. The Lublin Jews assembled around and wept bitterly, almost silencing us with their cries. We summon the military band, and with joyful shouts, the soldiers drowned out the sounds of Jewish cries. Jesus fucking pretty bad, pretty fucking bad. This is uh sorry,

I just needed something. Yeah, a little bit of airhorn there to help out airhorns. I mean, I hate to say it, Matt, but that is kind of what the Nazi we just read from dead Yeah, yeah, exactly like I drowned out to cries with my cool horn. This is bleak, Yes, this is very Why are they crying so much? Bring out the air horn? Boot? All right? Okay, they know if they know about speaking of bomba clat.

You know who's fucking just hella into reggae. All of the sponsors of this podcast, Sylvie and I. Look, when or or the CIA or whoever comes out and says they want to do an ad in our show, we have one question, and it's are you fucking down? Are you a rude boy? You goddamn right. We're back so in between helping to carry out actions, like the one we just read from the Horrible Genocide story and march intends of thousands of people to the site of their

eventual extermination. The Durrowanger unit got the chance to show off their special skills encounter sniper missions and in rounding up escaped Polish officers spotted in the area. After the war. The s s officer Burger, who's the guy who gets Durrowinger this job, claimed they spent most of their time in combat with early stages of the Polish resistance. This is probably a lie, As with that stuff I said about counter sniper missions. Ingrou doesn't think they're doing any fighting.

Ingrow thinks they are purely Number one, rounding up Jewish civilians and like burn burning their ship, beating them with rifle buds, forcing them into camps, and number two stealing ship right like, that's actually what they're doing at this stage. And I'm gonna quote from his book now. Post war testimony doesn't mention antipartisan activity. Another very credible indicator of the total absence of danger is the fact that the units suffered no losses. The men almost never mentioned tracking

partisans in the fullest of the demarcation zone. All, however, say that the unit spent the majority of its time on the most ordinary surveillance work. Policing the civilian populations and fighting the black market seem to have been the group's main activities. Unit reports speak regularly if the spoils seized by the men supporting the local police force, money,

consumer goods, valuables, and a lot of this. It's we don't exactly know, but there's a lot of reports of like, yeah, we busted this Jewish community center and they had all of this coffee and meat and stuff, and maybe they just found where different members of the Jewish community were like storing their nice stuff, or maybe they were robbing everyone blind and claiming it was the Jews. They could take some of that. And this is the thing, by

the way, happens across the s S. Right. There are actually major discipline problems at the death camps of like stuff being stolen from Jews by individual members of the s S. Because that stuff is being stolen for the Reich, and there's like disciplining over it. People get like transferred to the East to go die for it. It's like

a whole thing. These guys are like pioneers in the SS stealing everything that isn't nailed down, right, Um, I mean the perk of this kind of fucked up job where you're just like, oh, we get to we get to go in there first and kill quote partisans, which are just civilians who have no idea how the hell you've got in their community center. Yeah, and then fucking stealing everything inside. Yeah, and we gotta you know, we

give a bunch of it to the government. But like, some of that's gonna find Some of those cigarettes are winding up in my pockets, some of that meats winding up on my table, you know. That's that's what they do. Um. And obviously everything the Nazis are doing is gangster activity. What I said earlier in the first episode, these are webs of different gangsters, right. So like the fact that these guys are stealing the s S doesn't hate it

because they're stealing it. Hated because no, that's supposed to go somewhere else, Right, That's that's going up the chain. You know, I don't consider it stealing from the you know, civilians, and consider it stealing from them. You know, they're like, hey, hey, all that stolen ship is ours mother, fucking yeah. Herman Garring needs that coffee exactly, Martin market meat, Martin Borman needs to purshuto. You gotta sit now. You don't get to keep that poachers go hunt something um so the

entire yeah again. The thievery of the darrel Wanger Brigade eventually grows to be too much for the occupation authorities. And I'm gonna quote from a right up by Nicola Bodanovic in War History Online here. Various reports stated that during this period, rape, murder, extortion, beatings, and other crime methods were employed by the members of the Special durl

Wanger Unit. The police chief of the Lublin Ghetto, Friedrich Wilhelm Krueger, was so appalled by the conduct of throat cutting Madman that he appealed several times for them to

be stopped. Instead, he was transferred to Belarus, So were the durrell Wangers after their work in Poland was done again, like the guy the Nazis make head cop in the ghetto, which is not a good man, right, you don't put a nice guy in that Job's flatten and say a cab It's all, but also some are even more kiss Maybe the yeah the most cab of all of the calves. And this guy's like, these guys are rapists. These guys

are really bad. I know, I am preparing to exturminate all of these people, but like, we gotta we gotta get these these cowboys out of Poland's yeah, these guys are just kind of going overboard. Yeah. Um. So it was in Poland that the Darrowenger Brigade first proved itself in actual anti partisan or sorry, it's in Belarus. Um so they get they get sent to Belarus, and it's there that the Darrowanger Brigade UM proves itself and its

first actual anti partisan combat. They do well, they're good at this, Like it was actually militarily a decent idea to like throw these guys together. And Oscar is immediately like, well, this is a small commando unit. You've see what we can do. Give me another couple of hundred men and give us some guns and let's get some armored vehicles. And they get them. And he does this a couple of times. The Nazis keep reinforcing this unit with more

and more guys. Eventually it hits brigade strength. During this period, um and which is like eight or nine hundred men and their first engagements are pretty standard. But then during one of these actions, a squad of their soldiers is ambushed by partisans in the road and several are killed. In reprisal, they burned down a partisan camp in the village, and it's mostly uninhabited at this point because everybody's running away.

But they burn a village to the ground, and this is going to be the first of a lot of villages that they were on the ground. From July to August of nineteen forty two, they carry out a massive anti partisan operation and you have to read between the lines here to find the war crime, but it's pretty clear when you go through the numbers. By the operations end, hundred and eighty one partisans had been killed, but only four hundred and twenty two weapons had been seized, only

twenty seven German soldiers have been killed. One might interpret from this that they're just rounding up villages and killing everybody. And yeah, they're doing the thing that the l a p d does, right, just like keep a gun in the boot of the car to toss it a guy. You know. This would prove to be a general trend for the unit and I'm gonna quote from Ingrou's book again.

During these operations, according to Christian Garlas calculations, six to ten men were killed for every weapon recovered and confiscated. He concludes that only fifteen percent of those killed were real members of armed resistance movements against the Germans. The victims, thus were primarily peasants and fugitives, notably Jews escaped from the ghettos. More significant still is the amount of food

among the spoils collected by the anti partisan units. Potatoes, grain, and cattle appear regularly in the reports of the operations, transforming them, especially after the winter of nineteen to forty three, into murderous predatory raids against the local peasantry. The balance sheet of operations swamp fever, which is what they call this, sums up the situation perfectly. The Germans, by their own admission, had killed only four hundred and eighty nine bandits in

over a month of operation. They had, however, eliminated eight thousand, three hundred and fifty Jews from the Borano Witsitch ghetto, as well as twelve hundred and seventy four suspects and evacuated and seventeen other individuals by evacuated, we must understand

deported for labor within the Reich. These were persons fit for labor found in the villages, while the executed suspects were either escapees killed in the forest or those unfit for labor from the same villages, women, children, and the aged. So they are going through large swaths of territory, they are rounding everybody up, they're sending the men to Germany to labor, and they're killing the women, children and old people.

That's the bulk of the anti part as an operation they're doing here, and they are part of and they're not the first part of the early stages of the Final Solution, right, which is camouflaged as anti part As an activity, the s s tactic here that Durrowinger does pioneer because they're also dealing with because again the very like the first stages of what the Einsetz group and are doing is just massacring communities of people who had lived in cities. Um. There is an actual partisan movement

here right. There are Red Army partizans and stuff fighting against the Nazis. And the tactic durrow Wanger develops in these areas is to create what they call death zones. These are not just zones that they're emptying of Jews, but of all of their population. Now SS durrowingger are not the only union involved in this, not by a long shot, but they are the guys figuring out how to depopulate large rural areas for the German military. Right, that is a question that is a like, how are

we going to do this? What is the best way to do this that is the most efficient exactly the less uh least amount of emotional damage to our our people. And that is a different We're not talking about like morally different, but that is a different thing tactically from like we've taken this city and now we're going to round up the Jews and shoot them and worry or whatever. Right, Like,

it's a different thing. It requires different tactics. UM General von Gottberg, who's the guy who authors the original death zone orders and is in direct command of durrow Wanger and his men, praises Durrowanger for his visionary leadership and proposes that he be than a medal after his men kill fifteen thousand people in fifteen months of operations, pausing

only ninety two of their own. Now, the Nazis are dealing with a serious insurgency in Belarus at this point, and as you'd expect, Dr Wanger is kind of seen as their best bet in solving it. One internal report on his activities read quote traffic with Vilnius itself is more and more obstructed by acts of terrorism, minds, et cetera. To this may be added the erroneous psychological treatment of

the population by units on police operations. Here the name Durrol Wanger plays a particularly significant role for this man in the war of annihilation. He wages piteously against an unarmed population, deliberately refuses to consider political necessities. His methods, worthy of the Thirty Years War, make a lie of the civil administration's assurances of their wish to work together with the Belarusian people. When women and children are shot in mass or burned alive, there is no longer a

semblance of human of humane conduct of war. The number of villages burned during sweep operations ex needs that of those burned by the Bolsheviks. God damn, Yeah, that is that is a Nazi being, Like these guys are out of control again, this is this is a guy who is like into this already. He's like no, Like, hey, I believe in this subjugation of loves this usually, but some people are doing a little too much. It is

fucking wild. Yeah it is. And again like I'm not going into too much detailor we will later and some of these things, but like they're not just massacring people, Like no, don't just shoot the women who are not fit for labor, they rape them, right, Like, that's that's who these guys are. That's what this guy was before the war start, right, Like, this is not this is torture as well as execution. They are not doing the most efficient thing, which generally the EINSTS GROUPA at least

earlier on, are just trying to efficiently massacre people with guns. Right, there's a there's a degree of creative sadism to the way that Darrowinger behaves. That is, it's not certainly not unique. You can find a lot of other Nazi units that do it, but he is. He is noteworthy for his dedication to it. I think he's the Steve Jobs. Yeah, Oscar Darrowinger gets out on the stage. Actually that's that's literally the parts. So here's Oscar Drwinger in a turtleneck.

Mine Fields a problem since the beginning of modern warfare. You have a piece of terrain that your enemy doesn't allow your soldiers to cross because they filled it with hidden bombs. Here at Nazi Co, we figured out a solution to mine fields, which is to gather up all of the women and children in the area and just walk them through it until there's no mines. And then and here's here's what's insanely great. Right, here's the thing that's really cool. We shoot them all the survivors. He's

a visionary. He as as far as I could tell, like the guy who invents this as a cohesive tactic. Right, I'm sure there's places where you can find people doing this. Durrell Wanger is the guy who, like, right, basically rights up a guide to the German military of like, here's how you do this. You get all of the you round these the men up from these nearby villages, and

you make them walk. You keep them shoulder with a part because that's the right length, and you have them this is the way in which you use civilians to clear land mines um and then you shoot them all to death. And he's squid gaming. He's doing a proto squid game. Yeah, and it works really well. And in fact, s S and Wehrmacht units across the Eastern Front are advised to adopt durroll Wingers tactics when they encounter minefields because he's like it works pretty well. Um yeah, he's

the Steve Jobs of genocide. So durroll Wanger was also praised for his ability to save on the expenditure of munitions during massacres. One way he did this was instead of look, you've got five people right from these two or three villages, you could shoot them all and then you're out five bullets and those aren't or you just forced them all into barns and you light the barns on fire. And the exactly he really is like a startup. Found he really is a start up guys. We're gonna

disrupt ethnic cleansing, exactly exactly. It's just killed different you know him. The exhumation report of the Soviet Investigating Commission mentions, besides the number of villages and the number killed in each, that neither cartridges nor projectiles were found, and it concluded that the two thousand victims had been burned alive in Barnes, a witness to the massacres, Alexander Mironov, saw a man laughing through a fourteen year old child into a bonfire Jesus.

So again, they're not just doing this like coldly because it's efficient. They're like, they're having fun with this is their king, this is their thing, that's what they live for. This is I mean, you know, these fools were in prison before for being poachers and now they're sing yeah. And they're also, it has to be said, all on meth amphetamine, right, Yeah, it's not written about because it's not generally like discussed all that much, but like this is the period in which an awful lot of the

German Army is on fucking meth. So they're they're drunk and on speed and this is like how they're having fun. So I never with meth, you know, I was like, I was strictly opiate. So I was like, I don't want to funk with meth for the same reason I do not want to drive a VW bug yea Nazi OPI It's just make you like the least offensive of the Nazi hike Herman Garring, you know, and look, if you have to pick one Nazi leader if I had. Yeah. So by this point, the Dura Wanger Brigade has been

expanded well beyond poachers. Its ranks now included disgraced s S soldiers on penal release, as well as Russian and Ukrainian auxiliaries. Right, they don't have that many poachers, you know, there's not There's only some any. This eventually gets to be like two thousand people. So like if you're in the s S and in some cases in the Rmacht and you get like in trouble because you commit a

series of crimes, they just send you here, right. Um. They also when they meet fascists who are like Russian and Ukrainian, they're like, hey, you guys wanna be in the SS kind of and those guys are like, well, we really don't have much of a choice. And also a lot of us are pieces of ships, so yes, and again it is a mix of people who are just fascists who live there, and also people who are like, oh you've got food and I get a gun, well

I'll kill whoever whatever. You don't understand how bleak life is in Western Russia in nineteen I'll do anything. Yeah, it sucks. Now, yeah, I will join your stupid club. Watch the movie Come and See in twenties years under. By the way, Come and See is literally about this. It's about it's set in Belarus. It is it is these Nazis, specifically, it's about Dr Langer, and it's about from the perspective of the Belarusians, those fucking guys much um. And it is a harrowing film. Um. The only I

refused to watch Nazi films. The only one I've seen is um uh, an American tale about the Little Jewish Mouse. That's the only one I'll watched. Darryl Langer is the cat. I believe there was a Nazi. Definitely, he's multiple cats. Yeah, he's he's a couple of them. Um. Now, Come and See is a movie that was made during the Soviet Union and is is like probably the most like visually upsetting film ever made. Um, it's it's it would be hard to beat. It's the closest you can get to

actually living through like some of these experience. It's it is fucking gnarly and it's about this. Like if you've seen Come and See and are still like haunted by some of those images, it's literally about this period and these guys is as good as that Georgia Merrow movie about motorcycles that you keep talking about. Nothing is as good as Night Writers. Um, if the cast of Night Writers had been around, they would have put a stop

to this. You think Ed Harris with a sword in a motorcycle is letting the ship go on the movie. I mean, in the first scenes of the movie, they beat up a Nazi like's just shaking her head, like not again, shaking her head because now two weeks in a row where he cannot bring it up. This is the rest of your life. Now, I'm never not talking about unfortunately, I know, but but that's not true because you go through phases that would go through phases. I

should talk about that a little bit later. Um, we should. We should discuss the child hunting island that we shouldn't be talking about anymore. We'll get to that in a minute. You know what actually weird about forty minutes, Matt, What you ever made a joke that went too far? Never? Never? Okay, that's good. Well, here behind the bastards we have some running jokes. You know, everybody remembers the Doritos era fondly

ray theon knife missiles, all that good stuff. Lately, I've really been enjoying a series of running jokes about having an island where rich people hunt children for sport right at good time. With those jokes very funny, I assumed absurd enough that nobody would take them seriously. That's one of the requirements now incorrect Number one's because we show the name. And half of why we bleeped the name was because we didn't want to alienate, you know, someone

who might be a sponsor someday. I think the cats are that bag, but half of it was also it just was kind of funny. This led to a lot of people being like, is Robert serious? Is have a child hunting island? Is this real? And it was a constant thing um And normally I thought it was kind of funny, and generally people would get on the subred and be like, hey, what's going on, and other people

would correct them, and I was like, Okay, that's fine. Recently, more than one member of the team have gotten messages from people who are taking it very seriously, and one person was distraught and being like, I feel like this is real and you're not like it's not a joke, and and you like and the amount of Reddit threads is deeply and this is the Reddit threads, but those are funny. There were there were some people I think who are maybe like having a tough time issue and

took it, took it really serious. And if you are listening, please I am not joking that that was that was a gag. That was for yucksing not to have a child hunting island. Please do not. You are not joking about the fact that you are joking. I get that. That's confusing. There is no child hunting island. We will not be doing that joke anymore. But you know what

we will be doing, Matt what throwing two ads? We're back, I hope everybody again, very seriously, there's no child hunting island, um associated with specifically, Oh, Matt, I wanna, I wanna do a yes and to that, but that's what got

us in this situation, so I have to stop. Um. So by this point in the war, right and we're talking like nineteen forty three ish, late nineteen forty three pretty much, UM, the Dura Winger Brigade has been expanded to there's these disgrace soldiers, these these auxiliaries, and they're kind of mostly used as a result, they avoid direct combat a lot because, among other things, well, there's a lot of Russians in this unit. We probably shouldn't have

them fighting the Red Army. That might not go great. We don't know we can trust these guys. Um. Yeah, and one of these Russians later reported on his time with the Dura Winger unit. Quote. During these actions, the peaceful inhabitants of towns, villages, and hamlets were shot, burned, alive, hanged houses, schools, hospitals, clubs, churches, and other public buildings were burned. If my memory is correct, more than a

hundred inhabited areas were destroyed together with their inhabitants. Now, Oscar, it must be noted because they are fighting in actual, actual insurgence during pieces of this is kind of one of the reasons that these guys, these criminals and rapists like, are very loyal to him, weirdly loyal, is that he's always the first guy into combat. Um, he gets wounded multiple times during this he I mean, he already has

half an arm. Yeah, he does not give a shit about right, He trying to hes trying to die like he's the only thing Oscar Durrell Wanger cares about less than age of consent laws is getting shot, right, It'll just make me come harder. Oh boy. This earned him the adoration of his men um and he also they appreciated his openness to their suggestions on how to proceed with the war. The pattern of new tactics of cruelty originating within the unit and then spreading out to the

German military in the East continued. In addition to barn burning, which gets adopted on a wider basis by the Germans, Durrell Winger experimented with letting packs of starving dogs feed on the corpses of murdered women and children. Like trade up Ramsey Bolton, He's trying to figure out the most fucked up ways to like like destroying not just people's lives,

with their minds too. And some of this is like again, there's a bad and illegal, but like, if you have insurgents, killing everyone in the area where they are is like a tactic for fighting them, right because there's no one to fight you. Um, a lot of this, like the feasting dogs on corpses, there's no reason for this beyond he's number one, he wants to like scare people, and

number two he's a monster. Um And for Oscar experimentation, it's especially in like forty three, it goes beyond stuff that is helpful to just like stuff a fucked up dude does because there's no one to stop him. I'm gonna quote now from a Bond University thesis paper by Harris Goldworthy. Quote he made so called scientific experiments which involved stripping the victims of their clothes. Then they the

victims were given an injection of Stryck nine. Darro Wanger looked on, smoked a cigarette, as did his friends, and they saw how these girls were dying. Immediately after that, the corpses were cut into small pieces, mixed with horsemeat and boiled into soap. Fucking A, there's like no reason for this. He's just he's just being a piece of ship.

Like he's just he's just trying to it's just a new It's like you know, I mean, I'm not trying to minimize it, but it's like, you know, it's like when you know you need to stop with the porn hub because you're just like, what's next? Piss porn and then you're like, am I really going to be a piss porn guy? And he's the kind of guy who was like, yes, yeah, he is the kind of guy who goes straight to piss porn. Yeah, he starts off

because a piss pigo. Okay. The primary causes of death for Darrel Winger's men during this age of the war because again most of well they are again, there are some they are getting into some firefights, some of which are nearly most of what they're doing is just massacring, and as a result, the vast majority of men who die in his units um either get shot by their own friends because everybody's drunk um, or they die in

like car accidents because again everybody's drong. Everybody's drunk. That is the primary cause of death is they're wasted in between massacres and they die somehow. So the larger SS keeps an eager eye on their progress and on kind of some of the things they're experimenting with, even though they they're not. They don't like them, right, because these guys are gross. Everybody knows it, Like nobody wants to

be these guys other than these guys. But I'm gonna quote from a write up in Heinrich Himler A Life Here, Dara Wanger's leadership of the Saunder Commando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities, rape, and murder, and his mentor Burger tolerated this behavior, as did Himler, who so urgently needed men such as the Saunder Come and

Darrow Anger in his fight against sub humanity. It was important to the Reich's Fearer, however, that the detachments within the Saunder Commando did not belong to the s S, but merely served it. It was not until nineteen that Darrow Anger succeeded in incorporating his unit, which accepted criminals of every hue and so was growing unstoppably into the s S as the thirty six Grenadier Division. So that guy is not with us, Okay, yeah, like he's with us,

but he's not really, he's like a volunteer. Like we let him wear as a uniform and stuff. But that all that weird ships, that's not us. That's not some of that's us. A little bit of it is us, a tiny, tiny bit, but mostly it's that I don't know about that these guys are funked up? Should someone call hr I mean it is one of the one of the stories that people will tell about Himler. That is, people take different things out of it. But he is a period at which he visits one of the death camps.

I think it might have been Auschwitz, and he like passes out when he's like watching the ship right, And some people take it as like, oh, he was, like what a weak man, he couldn't handle it. That's not how his guys would have interpreted it, because most of them are not like even mostly people committing the genocide are not like eager to physically do it. They see it as like this is a nasty, terrible job and we're taking this burden upon And that's how they talk

about it to themselves. That's what hardness means. It doesn't mean like violent sadism. That's not what it's supposed to mean. It means you're cold enough that like you understand this has to be done, and like that he would pass out. That just actually means that he's he's a decent man who just has to do this terrible task to protect the right. Good guy. What a good guy like I hope all of his men cradled the cradled them in their arms and just like it's okay, please stop crying.

And that's part of why, part of why the s S and why guys like Himmler, even though they need the dr Wanger Brigade, find them so off putting and disgusting, is that like they're taking full ownership of the kind of things that these guys are making happen, but don't want to don't want to have as a part of them, Right Benrick Himler doesn't want to have like rape, burning a village to death on his soul. He wants it done, he needs it done, He'll make sure it gets done,

but he doesn't. That's not a part of his conception of who he is, right, Yeah, and these guys, you know, I'm more than just death camps. Yea. I am also a man who likes to dress like a medieval knight. In my last dress like a night. I like to you know, go to renfairs. I feel like the problem with cancel cultures these days is you are reduced to the worst thing you've ever done. For example, me killing all of the Jews, Yeah I did that, a big deal, Okay.

I've also read many fine books. Yeah, and so part of like why there's part of why these guys get reported so much by the SS is less that the SS guys who are reporting them are legitimately horrified that they're committing war crimes and more like it's not you are you are unabashedly gleeful about doing the thing that we do, but have to pretend exactly the presense is gone, and it's like you're you're making us look bad by yeah, you're making us feel bad because we don't want to

be that guy right when you like and again that you can make a case that these are less bad people than, for example, guys like the commandant of Auschwitz, who was a loving father if I think five kids, and you can find pictures of him on his vacations and playing with his children by the pool and being a wonderful dad while he is running Auschwitz. Rudolf Hess I believe was his name. Um, and um, I think it's ho s or whatever, like because there's another guy, yeah,

not that hass, not the other guy. Um. But yeah, I think you could argue guys like Darrel Winger who are just like, yeah, man, I fucking love raping and murdering people. This is awesome, This is who I am. Baby is a better person than the guy who like pretends to be the loving father while he gasses a million people. Right, because they know right from wrong. They know it's bad, they know they're doing bad. And the worst part about these people is they've convinced themselves. Their

narrative is that they are the victims. That's why they have to do this, like how this guy phrases it. Yeah, and they take the entire narrative and throw it in the trash when you start gleefully doing it. And then what does that say about all of your beliefs and all of your crimes? It says that you are basically that on the insete. There's no mask with the dar Winger.

Bring this mask off now. As the war turns against Germany, these guys do find themselves thrown into actual combat more and more, and the end of ninety three d of brings an end to the good times because they don't do great in stand up fights. That's not really not really, there's not really what they're good at. Um. It also brings another change in the composition of the unit, as German manpower struggles become more severe Christian and grow White

writes quote. Starting in July nineteen forty three, the Sounder and Height received large contentions of delinquents of a different kind.

The idea was not new. In early spring March, Himler had ordered that Germans of the Reich and all men of the class of nineteen o one and later living in an irregular situation within the general government who have no military training or assignment and who have avoided the draft for years arrested in a general government sweep must be gathered and assigned to the penal battalions of the

dure Wanger Unit. Now what that means is he's saying all of the men of eligible age who have not been serving in the military because there's some sort of criminal are going to be sent directly to the dure Wanger Unit. And these guys are all they're all born between eighteen nine and eighteen one. Most of them have

been imprisoned as a social individuals or professional criminals. Um, that's about half of these new guys are just professional criminals, people who had committed burglary, who had stolen purses, um, and then often most often for armed robbery, assault, manslaughter, murder like like mostly bad. About half of these guys are like violent crime guys, right, But there's also a bunch of people who get brought into this unit whose

crimes are being a social. Now, this doesn't include petty criminals, but it also means just like homeless people, right, you're living on the street, you know you're a social. Unemployed people who can't get a job, people who are mentally disabled, right, who have some sort of like mental thing that makes them unable to like work job, feeble minded right, Um, there are some people who the Germans considered to be psychopathic but don't have an extensive criminal record. All these

people get put in there. Now, Beginning in late nineteen forty four, with shortages even more severe of manpower, Himler, Gottla Burger, and durl Wanger to side to expand the number of eligible men for the unit to include not just those guys we talked about, but also political prisoners

who have been held in Nazi concentration camps. And now the ranks of this SS units start to swell with former anti fascists, mostly communists, who had been locked away who had been in concentration camps for years get put into the Dura Wanger Unit. Historian Peter Klausch refers to the unit during this period as consisting of quote, anti fascists in s S uniform. Yeah, it's this is we are getting into one of the bleaker parts of the story.

Now Klausch is overstating the matter. But these guys are never the majority of the unit, right. The majority of the unit is like violent criminals and stuff um and members of other military units who had gotten in trouble, generally for rape or something. But a lot of the Dura Wanger Unit are like former communists, mens who men who had fought Nazis in the streets and been arrested for it. Right, And a lot of these guys take part in the slaughter of civilians with the Arrowanger Unit.

This is the only and very specific instance in which the right wingers are like Antifa is the real fascist is like these this one group of guys. Now, yeah, yeah, they're the exception that the rule. It is more complicated than that, because a lot of these guys they're looking at like, well, we don't know what this unit is doing, right, Because if you're in a concentrate, you don't know what they're doing in. You just know, Oh, I can get out and they're gonna give me a gun. I can

find a way to get away. I can desert and join the variety. Right, And about a hundred of these guys do, right. They get over there and as soon as they can, they desert and they fight for the Russian army. Right. Um, And like those guys, fine, that's you do whatever you gotta do to get out of concentration. I'm not gonna judge you. You You don't know what these guys are doing. Um, but a significant number of these dudes don't leave even when like the war turns against

them and they're surrounded and being annihilated. They fight to death with to the death with their comrades. That's not an insignificant number of these anti fascists or ori anti fascists. It's like some Stockholm syndrome ship right there. And this is all It's hard to say exactly. Some of it's probably they just you know, these folks have become their comrades. Some of it maybe they just there wasn't a chance to get away. It's it's a nasty war, right people.

Show options are limited and we're already in this is pretty complex moral territory. But it gets gnarlier as you're surely aware, Matt. Homosexuality is illegal in the Third Reich. However, many gay men, particularly soldiers, caught engaging in homosexual sex, aren't sent to concentration camps. Instead, these are some of the guys who get put in penal battalions. Right, So a decent number the whole time this brigade is active,

A decent number the guys going in a lot. It's a mix of like guys who have just committed rape and guys who are like having homosexual sex and get caught. Now, Hans Peter Clouch says that the hope here was to push these men back to the right path via explosion about you're straighten them out by making them fight with these these real hard customers. Right. Um, they also didn't want too They didn't want Germans who were being drafted to think that if they just like fucked a dude,

they'd get out of military service. Right. That was the other thing, um, star fucking dudes and it'll just be a verse. I want to quote next from a Council of Europe paper titled Queer in Europe. During the Second World War quote, the Rmacht preferred to retend to retrain homosexuals rather than exclude them. Franz Siedler adds that even emasculated men were still fit for military service as long as they were worthy of serving. It was not desirable

to dispense emasculated men from their military obligations. From nineteen forty four, when Germany was experiencing huge and growing losses on the Eastern Front, it was decided to resort to the forced incorporation of homosexuals interned in concentration camps. As Schlagdenhaufen describes in his contribution, a number of testimonies show that this political strategy was seen as a last hope.

The historian Rainier Hoffschlitt has retraced the career of Heinz F, one of the last homosexuals to have been forced into the army. On May one, eight days before the capitulation of Nazi Germany, he joined the Wehrmacht under duress and a lot again, how you want to morally judge the men who make the decision to join a unit like the Darawanger Brigade, or who are made to join it to avoid life in a camp because like, I don't know, I'm a podcast host. I'm not gonna parce all this

out for you. But this is a thing that happens, right, This is part of the history of World War two, and it's fucking art gnarly. There was a fucking by the end there it sounds like a rainbow coalition of bastards, you know. And they were I'm sorry, they were retraining the gay um soldiers like into straightness or into being like the strait nous. Right. The idea was that like, well,

you know what is massacre? Yeah, their conversion therapy was like, go massacre this village with Oscar God, do something straight like killing innocent people terribly. Yeah, yeah, that's that's basically what's happening. In total, the Dura Wanger Brigade spent fifty three months in Belarus, during which we know they killed at least thirty thousand people, most of whom were women

and children. During this massacre, they'd expanded from a small commando unit to a regiment of roughly two thousand men. So that's the death toll so far, right, people, and this is like, this is this is a death toll

of people. This is like in one specific camp because like usually here numbers like this, and you started thinking like, oh, this is we got a death camp going No, this is this is a roving band of bastards who are going around doing murder, who have just emptied a big chunk of the Belarusian countryside, right like, that's what they're doing. And again it might have been significantly more than thirty thousand. As the Russian advance began to push the German army westward,

the durl Wanger Brigade was sent back to Poland. When the Polish underground took control of parts of their former capital, Nazi Germany redeployed badly needed forces to crush the city. Dr Wanger and his men were front and center. Their brutality was so intense that it stunned many of the soldiers they fought alongside. One of these men was an eighteen year old sapper named Shank, temporarily attached to the

SS for the operation. He later wrote this quote, I would now like to describe the assault on the hospital as usual. Rushed to the objective grenades, and then after they exploded, we went in. I was about to fire, but I heard don't shoot from the inside. What do I do? I signaled to my comrades twentys away to cover me. I ordered the Poles to open the door and come out with their hands up. Inside I heard

snatches of conversation, some in Polish, some in German. The door opened slowly and a Red Cross nurse stuck out a white flag. My comrades came up and we went in bayonets fixed a Polish officer, a doctor in fifteen Polish Red Cross nurses surrendered the hospital. The Germans asked us not to hurt the Polls. Then the s S arrived. They immediately executed all the Polish wounded and attacked the nurses, who were soon stripped and raped. We were pushed out

the other door of the hospital. When we could come back that night, the s S had relieved us, there was tumult on the execution grounds. Soldiers from all the units ss Ukrainians were playing flute and singing, and there I saw something so frightening and horrible I can hardly describe it. Fifty years later, the s S were pushing the nurses, naked their hands on their heads to the gallows. They had cut a short tunic for the doctor had put a rope around his neck and pushed him towards

the gallows, where some ten civilians were already hanging. The crowd laughed and shouted. Some soldiers were protesting, but they were drowned out. I saw we could do nothing, so I kept my remarks for our headquarters. Bro. Pretty bad war crimes, honestly, dude, At this point, I'm starting to think that Nazis were bad. Yeah, that is the unavoidable conclusion when you when you try to damn it. Yeah, pretty bad, pretty bad guys unit. Yeah, those are the

guys raping and murdering nurses. J fuck. Shank makes it clear that whenever the enemy were actual soldiers with actual guns, the indisciplined, sloppy viciousness of the Dura Wanger of Durrah Wanger's men was as much a hindrance as a help, and like real combat. And here's another excerpt from his recollections quote, Then the reinforcements arrived the s s. It was the Dura Wanger Penal Battalion. Its soldiers wore no marks of rank, they had drunk a lot and weren't sober.

They immediately attacked the Polish positions. They charged the houses, yelling Hurrah. Just in front of the houses, they fell under polish fire. They died by dozens, many were wounded. They didn't gain a meter of ground. Their leader was frenzied. We then advanced together with the s S under tank protection, a few meters in front of the buildings. The tank was hit and exploded. A soldier's helmet flew into the air.

So that's that. Part's funny. That parts that's good. What's not good is that the polls don't win the wars. I getta uprising right uh. And the violence that follows is a slaughter almost unparalleled in the history of armed conflict. Today, it's known as the Wola massacre. Rather than going to detail about every crime against humanity committed by these men, I am going to find an accurate summary of their activities. I found in an article by Peter Preskar quote the

Dura Wanger Brigade reeked a vodka and death. They slaughtered innocent poles, regardless of age and sex. Dura Wanger, wearing a black coat, walked in the rear, screamed orders and shot anyone who lagged behind. The Drwinger Brigade and cooperation with the equally sadistic Kaminsky militia, massacred forty thousand unarmed men, women and children in the Wola district of Warsaw. They did all that in less than two weeks. Yeah, drro

Wanger burned multiple hospitals. Patients Inside the hospital, nurses were whipped, gang raped, and hanged naked while popular German music was playing. At one point, darro Winger ordered his men to execute five hundred young children. He wanted his troops to save their bullets, so they did the bulk of their work with rifle butts and bayonets. On another occasion, one of dara Winger's men took a pretty young woman. He cut her blouse open with a bayonet and then raped her. Afterwards,

he cut her from belly to neck. So we're gonna we're gonna leave that be in terms of descriptions of Nazi war crimes. But like when I say, these guys are like the worst, not like they're the worst of Like this is yeah, pretty pretty bad guys. How do you do how long you been doing this podcast? Man? Like four years? Five ye or something like that? I mean, god, damn dude, how do you is your How's how's your head?

How's your mental head? You know, it's like you you get, you get a lot of stories like this you read, honestly, the ones that are like, I don't know, like, yeah, the thing that I think about when I when I read stories like this in terms of like visual things is them Because for the reporting that I did, I had to watch the christ Church massacre video a number

of times. God, That's the thing that I think about the most when I think about, like, what kind of dude does this in in the way in which this kind of like yeah, the very specific sadism, the very specific, like I mean, just the the evil that veers into an illness type of like crimes where you're just like, you know, I don't want to obviously, I'm not trying to minimize it by saying that this is like, you know, obviously some sort of illness, but it just you can't

you can't otherwise explain this level of sadism. I get what you have, guys, and we talked about token last episode a little bit. I get why you get guys like Tolkien who see pretty terrible things, who view evil as something supernatural a certain extent, right, because seeing something like this, like it all, there's there's a degree of to which it like, I don't know there there's there's something there that it is. It is hard. Maybe we're programmed to write to write like and maybe it's a

defensive thing. You don't want to believe that it because it is. I think just people are capable of all sorts of fucked up shit. Um, but it it does feel in the same way that like, if you've ever fought a wildfire, it feels like there's some sort of intelligence to the wildfire. Um. It feels when you when you like read about cruelty like this, you almost it is hard not to feel like there's something there, you know,

when you when you look into it that way. I don't know, not that that means there is anything, but

it's hard not to feel that sometimes. Yeah, it's it's you understand how someone could um look at look at you know, see these this level of atrocities and it works with their reality because their reality is based on kind of this like uh, logical emotionally logical foundation and framework with narratives, with stories, there's the reason in an action and a reaction and then seeing something this sadistic and going like this is otherworldly because this doesn't make sense,

it doesn't. This is who it's that hope you You would hope no one could enjoy something like this, and you would hope that other people would be like, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this, But to see it in masses and an up close and personal it's got to be. I read about orcs and wizards and ship too, dude.

I feel like this is why I talk about the Sopranos and the Wire because sad it is, it is, I mean worth noting that, like there are Nazis who try to stop this, like members to give you an idea of how bad this guy's Members of the s S during the cleansing of the Warsaw ghetto reprimand this guy for cruelty that I don't I don't know on like the bad guy CV, I don't know what else you could put above that, But like the SS in

Warsaw was like Jesus Christ, this guy is unchanged. So he and his unit are reprimanded and they are removed to Hungary where they helped to put down the Slovak national uprising, and they again kill thousands. Terrible bloodshed. I feel like we have not too. I don't want to like that, not that that's not also an important story, but like I feel like I've read enough stories of horrible sure, like you you can, you can get what they probably did over more atrocities beyond capability to even

a man. Yeah, so you know if that happens. Uh. And it's here that the story of the Dara Wanger Brigade starts to come to an end. During an action against the Red Army, Oscar gets shot through the chest. Now he lives. We're not done yet, of course. Don't worry, though, Matt, this is actually gonna be fun. You're gonna like this last part. Yeah. So he gets separated from his unit because he's hurt pretty bad. Um, And now Oscar is not a dumb man, and he's pretty obvious at this point,

we're not gonna win this thing, right, We're not. We're not gonna There's like one battle where like fifteen thousand rockets land on his troops positions. He's like, oh yeah, we're we're This probably isn't gonna go well for us, boy, So he he deserts and he goes into hiding near his own own old hometown. Most of his soldiers die fighting, some of them get captured, some of them do a lot you know, do dessert. Um. So there's cases of like anti fascists who deserted and joined the Red Army

and wind up fighting there anyway. Um. And this is a story that does, thankfully have I'm not gonna call at a happy ending because this is a nightmare, but as close to a happy ending as you are going to get in a story about the s S and genocide. Because unlike a lot of the guys the Eronsets group of a lot of the guys who are like architects of the Holocaust to escape, Oscar does not escape. He gets captured by the French occupation forces at the end of the war and they put him in a jail.

And I guess who's running that jail. Oh fuck, I don't know. Former members of the Polish resistance. So guys who have been fighting his guys in Warsaw exactly. And those guys are like what we got who? Oh? Yeah, he's not he is not making it to trial, Like, no, this guy is not seeing the courtroom. We're we're gonna handle Yeah, We're gonna take care of this. So we have an account of what happens next from another Nazi, who's Darrel Wanger's cellmate, right, and here's what he writes.

Quote in front of the cell door, there was French soldier, a garden a red kepi. Never Nevertheless, when I was arrested, I did not see the frenchman, but rather armed and uniformed poles. On the next day came a sixteen year old Jew from Ebber's Bach Solgout County County, where he lived, and they let him punch us in the face, which he did under the which he did under the supervision of the polls until he got tired. Now I'm gonna be like, if we're being totally honest, this is legally

a war crime, I'm also fine with it. I'm completely fine with it. This is one of them look the other way. Yeah, let's let's let this boy whose family was massacred hit these Nazis as much as he fucking wants. I love it. Punch in the face is just a great It's a great way to start this. It's just like, all right, first we're gonna have the sixteen year old punch you in the face. Let him he until he's all tucker it out. Let him work some stuff out right,

He's got some demon slid him exercise. I'm here quote, I'm gonna continue now. We returned to the cell with her face is completely shattered. I myself had been beaten on the same day by the polls, and only because I forgot refused to shout three times, I am a German pig. Durrell Wanger and Munch, who's another Nazi, were pulled out of the cell into the corridor every night

and brutally beaten. I heard blows and terrible screams. In daylight, I would see bleeding open wounds on the faces of munctioned Darrell Wanger, and their entire bodies were covered with bleeding welts. Munchen Darrell Wanger were taken from their cells separately three times on the night of fourth to fifth June and beaten in the corridor. After they returned to their cell for the third time, they could no longer

speak or stand. After a short time, the guards came to the cell again and ordered them to get up and follow them. Neither Munch nor Durrell Wanger could lift themselves. Then the guards began to strike them with rifle butts in their heads so that their heads turned into indiscernible bloody pulp. Then they started kicking them in the stomachs. After that, the guards left both of them lying in

the cell unconscious. I am surprised that, according to the registration of death performed by the French commandant, Durro Wanger had died only on the seventh of June nine. So you don't get this often with Nazi war criminals. But yeah, that's about the right way for that to end. Oh, that's wonderful. That is just like the Catharsis, because yes,

you do not get this often. It's always like they go to fucking you know, they go to Argentina and hide out and then they gotta be fucking like found this is they killed themselves like a bunch of bitches. And you know, we don't get that, like, you know, getting just beat to death. Victims of his crime spend days beating him to death and miserably in a cell. It's about I don't know again, not justice, not even legal,

but like what do you want? You know, like what what what what do you want from these people other than to do that to him and I love that they whipped out all the classics. You know, they were just like the sadistic classics, the punching, the kicking, the pistol whipping. You know, it must have hurt, like double knowing at like while he's being beaten to death, He's like,

they're not even innovating new ways of doing this. They're not even building some sort of elaborate Roob Goldberg machine which kicks me in the nuts till I bleed to death. It's like, no, dude, we're just gonna fucking go. I'm on you right now. Yeah, we're just gonna yeah, the old stuff. So the old stuff. That's the story of Oscar Durrel Wanger. Um, Wow, boy, howdy what a piece of ship. There we go. Yeah. I don't like them.

It is thoroughly nice to like, you know, have one where they actually you know, beat beat one where they get there. Yeah, I would say, statistically speaking, a lot of the times it's and they died at the ripe old age of way too long. Yea, they died comfortably in their bed. This is and I can imagine a heart woman is like those Polish guys are like, wait, that's sucking Oscar Durroll Winger. Yea, you know there's that. There's that kid came into town the other day. A

whole family got wiped out by Darrell Wingers. Bring him in here, Yeah yeah, bring him in here. What a gift we're gonna We're gonna help him move past this. Oh man, I love it. That is like that, that is what that for that kid must have been. Just it's like, I mean, I don't but I hope it helped, right, Like, Yeah, I don't know that that makes it any better, but I can build a narrative in my head in which that does feel better for me to hear that, So

I would. I certainly don't know if it helped that kid, but I can't imagine it hurt. No, you're not you. You are not turned into a worse person because you punch Oscar Darroll Wanger while he's in prison. I don't believe that. No, No, that is he's doing God's work right, He's doing right there for him. Yeah, they got it at the end there, the story really came together. Yeah. I wish it had started with him being beaten to death of some but all of these guys, you know,

starting with them being beat to death. You know, it makes you kind of a little bit go like, no, the Germans should have kept hitting their children. You know, it was all that, you know, the progressive lady being like,

we shouldn't do that. Well, look where that leaded. Well, I mean, I will say that the point that that paper is making that we didn't maybe get new enough to tail is that like the way in which Dura Wanger's generation was raised kind of hinged on that when the not the generation the Nazis raise up that are like the young soldiers are trained, are like it is

about hardness and physical discipline. I don't know that, like wh who actually knows right that guy Shank who was eighteen years old is raised under that system and clearly is like, well this is obviously wrong and evil, and I am on the wrong side. And I realized that now as a as a boy um, whereas Darrow Wanger grows up in a more progressive age and is like

the worst person I magine. So I don't know what to take it about that we don't have the problems, We don't actually have enough to tail about his childhood to like make more conclusions about what was going on and whether they impacted it or if he was just just an asshole. Yeah, it sounds like an asshole. Um, sounds like I mean, I'm just gonna be help. Yeah. That's the thing about World War One. It really it didn't. It didn't make him better. I think we can conclude that.

But to be fair to the rest of the veterans of World War One, uh, they didn't do the same ship. Gerald Tolken wrote about Hobbits afterwards. About Hobbits, he was just like, what if there's these cute little Irish kids and all they do is, you know, smoke weed and find rings of power? Yeah, same war, same battlefields. One guy winds up doing the worst things I've ever read about, And the other guy is like, what if there were little people who like to eat for breakfast? That seems nice.

I'm gonna write about one fighting a dragon. Yeah. What if they were elves and they're all hot? Yeah yeah, like a reason, they're just the hottest people. And there's also the dwarves and they're funny, like yeah, good for Tolkien man. Yeah yeah, anyway, Really, that's what the that's the message here is Jero Tolkien was pretty good at processing trauma. Exactly. He was very good at processing it. And I think we can all safely say that he would not give a fuck that Amazon cast Black Elves like,

I don't think he would care. He would hate the show, but not for that reason, right right, right, You would hate the show for a thousand other reasons, thousand, a thousand of reasons you would never understand in your entire ready every one of his books, some of them would be like, well, what are you going on about? John Um? Anyway, the episodes over, you want to plug your I do I do. If you've stuck around this long, then you

must be excited for a plug. I do a wonderful the wire rewatch podcast called pod Yourself The Wire Um. You should listen to it, and you should give us five stars in review. I just want that. I just want this one to have all the reviews. I don't even care that if anyone listens to it. But it's like, you know, when I go into the Apple podcast store, I see like people they got like four thousand reviews and you know five thousand, and I'm like, I want to be one of those podcasts. So do that for us,

and then also listen to it. Review Bomb and listen to Matt's podcast. You can say anything in the review as long as it's five stars. You can be like, oh, Matt, it's a great podcast. Although he keeps talking about feet feel free mentioned feet, I don't care, just five stars we love them. Well, you can check that out. You can read my book After the Revolution. Just type it in with a k press or just type it into

like whatever book buying website you use. You will find it and can get any book or a physical copy. And you know, as you go out into the world after this harrowing week, be the sixteen year old punching a Nazi in the face that you have them around the world, right, Hell yeah, dude, fuck yeah. Behind the

Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.