I find it hard to form an idea of Dirlewanger when reading about the war. I have an immediate distrust of all the stories of Dirlewanger electrocuting / eating / torturing Jews to death, as the sources of those often come from historians like Richard Grunberger and Timothy Snyder who make a living off tilting at swastika windmills, but the sources I consider reputable don't paint a very flattering picture either. Clearly he wasn't just a feral rapetard. There's even a handful of accounts of him being a (comparatively) honorable and disciplined Lieutenant during WWI.
(12-21-2022, 06:50 PM)calico Wrote: My vague recollection is that Dirlewanger's contemporaries claimed his personality changed drastically after a serious head injury, but if my mind didn't invent it I can't seem to find a source anywhere.
He suffered a head wound in 1921 at Sangerhausen which was nearly fatal, but I also can't find any source that he changed in behavior at all. By 1921, Dirlewanger had already volunteered for frontline combat twice, joined different freikorp militias twice, been arrested twice, and been injured thrice.
On the question of his adherence to National Socialism, Dirlewanger was an early member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz Und Trutzbund at a time when, though popular among students, there was no real reason to join the organization for anything other than real conviction. His doctoral thesis was, if I remember correctly, a critique of socialism that was barely accepted for being too political. He briefly renounced his völkisch beliefs for a time to get a job at a factory, but who among us hasn't pretended to be bluepilled for some cash? My boss thinks I'm vaccinated, we all have our secrets. At the heart of it, Dirlewanger was an embodiment of blind, mad, retarded war. Everything in his career paints a picture of a man totally captivated by power and conflict. A rebuke of Dirlewanger from the right would have to be something along the lines of him being what happens when our ideals go too far, which I consider a bad thread to follow; what modern society needs is MORE madness, not warnings away from it— Dirlewanger is an exception to this rule. I personally think there's some value in appreciating Dirlewanger, if only because giving any ground in the "Were Nazis Evil" debate is a waste of breath. If he was an insane pedophile murder-rapist, then he's our insane pedophile murder-rapist. This forum has several members who fit into that description already.