At times I was wondering if this rather short book could have been reduced down to an essay (particularly since there is no index) and I do find the author's effort to tie the unit to the cult and folklore of hunting to be a bit of a stretch, though inevitable considering this unit's origin as a punishment unit of men who were inveterate poachers. Still, Ingrao does explode some of the misconceptions of this unit, most notably that they were a skilled anti-partisan unit when their real talent was harassing and destroying the populations which supported the Soviet partisan forces. The unit's unofficial motto was "where there's smoke there's Dirlewanger;" a reference to their commander's preferred method of massacre (burning people alive in mass). In this respect the unit's zenith and nadir was the reduction of the Warsaw Ghetto. By this point Oscar Dirlewanger had over a thousand men under his command and never did he kill more victims and never did he lose more of his force in action in one battle; his version of personal leadership being found wanting when he led more than a battalion in action. Though the brigade was elevated to being a nominal division after Warsaw, Dirlewanger himself faded away as commander, while the unit that bore his name was itself ground up in the end game on the Eastern Front and entered the realm of legend. ( )

An interesting look at this "most infamous" band of poachers using their skill to hunt out partisans, and the mentality that viewed their targets as animals. Unfortunately, the book was tedious to read, I felt more like I was reading somebody's dissertation in dry scholarly academic writing rather than a non-fiction book about a piece of history.
I'm glad to have read it and know the history and understand a little bit about the mentality of these "hunters" but this is not something I would recommend to anyone, aside of perhaps researchers or those thoroughly invested in this area of Nazi history. ( )

Gound-breaking study; posits as an interpretative framework the turning of the "hunted" -- German occupation forces at the mercy of partisans in the East -- into the hunted. 'Direlewanger' was one of the most viscious groups to participate in anti-partisan ops during WW II, its 'special' expertise also being used in the April 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. ( )