Dirlewanger and his Monkey

During the battle, Dirlewanger exercised little if any influence on its outcome. Throughout the fighting on 15 December, he sat in his Palást command post, passively awaiting reports from dispatch riders or calls on his single field telephone. He made only one recorded visit to the front lines days after the battle to see for himself what had happened.

Shortly before the battle, the commander of Heeresgruppe Süd, Generaloberst Friessner, made a personal visit and dropped in on Dirlewanger’s command post before moving on to meet the commander of the neighboring 24. Panzer Division. What Freissner saw left him unimpressed.

He found Dirlewanger, whom Friessner characterised as a “not very appealing adventurer type”, sitting calmly behind his desk with a pet monkey on his shoulder. The monkey was said to have accompanied him everywhere.

Questioned about the current situation, Dirlewanger did not even know where the front line was, nor did he know where his troops were. According to Friessner:

“The unit was a wild bunch. One company, communists who were expected to prove themselves on the front, had just deserted to the enemy.”

His deputy commander, Ss-sturmbannführer Weisse, made a better impression, although it was clear that Dirlewanger was out of his depth. When the infamous SS commander told Friessner he was planning to move his command post back to a safer location, perhaps to Deménd where his main HQ lay, Friessner ordered him to stay put and see to his troops.

Friessner then went to visit the 24. Pz.div. commander, who was fighting his own defensive battle a few dozen kilometres to the east. On his drive back to his HQ during the late afternoon, Friessner stopped in Palást to check on Dirlewanger to see whether his orders had been carried out. On arrival, he found the town abandoned and no German troops in sight. He and his escort barely escaped being captured on the town’s outskirts by Soviet reconnaissance patrols scouting the town.

This near-disastrous incident reinforced Friessner’s negative opinion of Dirlewanger, prompted him to remove the brigade from his army group as soon as it could be replaced with a more capable unit.

■ Oskar Dirlewanger. It was said of Dirlewanger that in all the theatres of the Second World War, few could compete with him in his excesses of cruelty and barbarity.