Description: One of the most notorious yet least understood body of troops that fought for the Third Reich during World War II was the infamous Sondereinheit Dirlewanger, or the "Dirlewanger Special Unit." Formed initially as a company-sized formation in June 1940 from convicted poachers, it served under the command of SS-Obersturmführer Oskar Dirlewanger, one of the most infamous criminals in military history. After assisting in putting down the Warsaw Uprising during 1944, by November of that year it had been enlarged and retitled as the 2. SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger. One month later, it fought one of its most controversial actions near the town of Ipolysag, Hungary. As a result of its overly hasty and haphazard deployment, lack of heavy armament, and a confusing chain of command, it was virtually destroyed by two Soviet mechanized corps.
Consequently, the Wehrmacht leadership blamed Dirlewanger and the performance of his troops for the encirclement of the Hungarian capital of Budapest that led to the annihilation of its garrison two months later. The brigade's defeat at Ipolysag also led to its compulsory removal from the front lines and its eventual shipment to a rest area where it would be completely rebuilt. Despite its lackluster performance, the brigade was rebuilt again but never recovered from the thrashing it received at the hands of the 6th Guards Army.Brief description: Douglas E. Nash, Sr., is a West Point Class of 1980 graduate and a retired US Army Colonel with thirty-two years of active duty service in places like Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Cuba, and Uzbekistan. His many works include Hell's Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket January to February 1944 and Victory Was Beyond Their Grasp: with the 272nd Volks-Grenadier Division from the Huertgen Forest to the Heart of the Reich which was nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.