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Dirlewanger’s men were if anything more creative in their abuses, though I won’t describe them here. Himmler knew what they were up to, saying, “The tone in the regiment is, I may say, in many cases a medieval one with cudgels and such things.” Despite this, he told Dirlewanger, “I am very satisfied with your actions, as I recently told you personally.”
After Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest honor in the German military during WWII, he gloated to a friend,
Among those “unwelcome voices” was that of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the head of the SS in Poland, who threatened to arrest the entire regiment if they were not removed from his territory. Eventually even Himmler became alarmed at the grotesque behavior of the regiment, but only because he was concerned that they would eventually begin to attack fellow German soldiers and the Nazi leadership.
What’s particularly bizarre about the group is that Hitler seems to have initially ordered its creation as a punishment for the men involved—originally mostly poachers, whom the animal-loving Hitler hated. Instead, he gave a group of the most depraved sexual perverts, sadists, and psychopaths five years to enjoy satisfying their demonic urges to their hearts’ content.
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