On the fateful day the SS and police would surround the area and herd the inhabitants into the largest building in town – usually a church or hall. When everyone was inside it would be set on fire; anyone who tried to escape was shot. At Nuremberg, von dem Bach described the standard procedure: ‘The village was suddenly surrounded and without warning the police gathered the inhabitants into the village square. In front of the mayor, people not essential to the local farms and industry were immediately taken off to collection points for transfer to Germany.’36 Von dem Bach was careful not to mention that those who were not designated as useful slave labour were burned alive or shot.
The partisans, if indeed there were any in the area, often escaped to the woods in advance, leaving only innocent civilians behind. They were killed anyway, the logic being that if you couldn’t kill the actual partisans, you could at least destroy the people who might be aiding them. From six to ten people were killed for each weapon that was found. It became mass murder on a grand scale: it is estimated that 345,000 civilians, many of them Jews, and only 15 per cent of them actual partisans, were killed in these operations, but there were probably many more who died without a trace. The reports speak for themselves. Von dem Bach’s deputy von Gottberg wrote to Berlin after the relatively small Operation ‘Nürnberg’ on 5 December 1942, boasting that 799 bandits, over three hundred suspected gangsters and over 1,800 Jews had been killed. In all this only two German soldiers had been killed and ten wounded. ‘One must have luck,’ he quipped. One had only to recall Himmler’s words of July 1942: ‘All women and girls have the potential to be bandits and assassins.’
Dirlewanger’s first large-sweep operation was Operation ‘Bamberg’, near Bobruisk, in March–April 1942. It was reported that he had proved himself with ‘flying colours’. He met von dem Bach on 17 June, and was praised again for his work. Soon the brigade was involved in some of the biggest ‘anti-bandit’ operations in Byelorussia, which were given romantic-sounding code-names like ‘Adler’, ‘Erntefest’, ‘Zauberflöte’ and ‘Cottbus’. Most lasted three to four weeks, and involved attacks against not only the Byelorussian peasant communities, but also the remaining ghettos – ‘Hornung’ ended with the liquidation of the Slutsk ghetto, and ‘Swamp Fever’ with that of the Baranovitsche ghetto.37 The commander of the 286th Protective Division of the Wehrmacht, General-Leutnant Johann Georg Richert, congratulated Dirlewanger in front of von dem Bach after Operation ‘Adler’. The enemy had ‘tried to escape capture by going up to their necks in the bog or by climbing thin branches of trees and viciously tried to break through. In many cases officers and commissars committed suicide to avoid capture.’ Dirlewanger had ruthlessly hunted them down.
Operation ‘Hornung’, in February 1943, was staged ostensibly to prevent the spread of ‘bandits’ in the Slutsk region. After careful reconnaissance, von dem Bach arrived at Combat Group Staff von Gottberg on 15 February to give the order to begin. Dirlewanger had just been put at von Gottberg’s disposal – other units taking part were Einsatzgruppe B and the Rodianov Battalion, which came from the rear area of Army Group Centre and was also known for its ruthlessness. Five combat groups including the Dirlewanger Brigade were sent into the area with orders to kill everyone they could find, and to take all useful property. Dirlewanger primed his men not to shirk from killing civilians, who, he said, were guilty by association: ‘Given the current weather it must be expected that in all villages of the mentioned area the bandits have found shelter.’ All the houses in Dirlewanger’s area were burned down, and cattle and food taken. Villages were utterly destroyed, along with their inhabitants – the official lists included dozens of place names, all carefully tallied up: ‘Lenin 1,046 people, Adamovo 787, in Pusiczi 780 …’ and so it went on. In all 12,718 people were reported killed, including 3,300 Jews murdered in the Słuck ghetto. Only sixty-five prisoners were taken in the entire operation. Later, when the Soviets exhumed the bodies they found no bullets or spent cartridges lying around. The victims had been burned alive in the barns.
In this terrible phase of the ‘Bandit War’ few prisoners were taken; indeed, only 3,589 people were taken for slave labour by the Sauckel Commission (in charge of processing forced and slave labourers) in the course of eleven major operations, in which at least 33,378 people were murdered.38 It was straightforward slaughter. Gana Michalowna Gricewicz, who survived the destruction of her village, remembered feeling as if ‘there was no one left in the world, that all had been killed’. The country around Slutsk was turned into a ‘dead zone’: all the people, animals and supplies were removed, and the area torched. Any person found there was to be treated like ‘game’, and shot on sight.
One of the most deadly ‘actions’ in which Dirlewanger participated was Operation ‘Cottbus’, which started on the morning of 30 May 1943. The attack at Lake Palik saw 16,662 soldiers sent in to push a terrified civilian population in front of them, forcing them to fight with their backs to the water; the death toll was at least 15,000 people.39 Bach’s deputy von Gottberg praised Dirlewanger’s innovation of forcing civilians to walk over minefields: ‘The mine detector developed by the Dirlewanger Battalion has successfully passed the test,’ he crowed.40 Von dem Bach was delighted by this new technique, which had ‘sent two to three thousand villagers flying’, he said.41 It soon became standard practice. Dirlewanger also continued in his sexual abuse of, and by now profitable trade in, women, noting that one group had ‘enjoyed’ catching many girls who had been trapped on the edge of Lake Palik. The victims were gang raped, and then sold to Dirlewanger’s friends. Some were kept in makeshift prisons, to be abused later.42
Despite his successes in Byelorussia, Dirlewanger’s brutality brought him negative attention once again. Wilhelm Kube reported a massacre in the village of Vitonitsch, complaining that bullet-wounded escapees were climbing out of their pits and seeking help in hospitals and clinics. Kube wrote in a report to Alfred Rosenberg, the Reich Minister for Occupied Territories, that in terms of turning the local population against the Germans, ‘the name Dirlewanger plays a particularly significant role, for this man, in the war of annihilation he wages pitilessly 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 Byelorussian people. When women and children are shot en masse or burned alive, there is no longer a semblance of humane conduct of war. The number of villages burned during sweep operations exceeds that of those burned by the Bolsheviks.’43 Kube’s report was ignored. Dirlewanger was given even more men, this time hardened criminals from Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and Sachsenhausen. In order to impose discipline he had three of them shot in the back of the head in front of their new comrades upon their arrival. All the men knew that they would quickly share the same fate if they did not fall into line; at best they could expect to be sent back to the camps at the first sign of weakness.
Far from attempting to rein him in, von dem Bach and Himmler rewarded Dirlewanger. His grand residence in the ancient town of Lagoisk was perfect for entertaining. Unlike von dem Bach he was not one for ballet or theatre, preferring a ‘Kameradenschaftliche Abend’ (comradeship evening), for which colleagues would be invited from the area, or flown in on his own Fieseler Storch aircraft. After drinks, the guests would be seated at the large table, the lights glinting off stolen glass and silver. The best pieces were sent to his storage facility near his home at Esslingen, in Württemberg, but there was enough left over to make life at headquarters bearable. To the sound of a gramophone playing songs like Dirlewanger’s favourite ‘Alle Tage ist kein Sonntag’, particularly pretty young women prisoners, specially chosen during round-ups, would be forced to serve the food and wine, and to endure the lurid attentions of the host and his guests. Dirlewanger would invariably get very drunk, and invite his guests to join in the rape, and often the murder, of these women.