Whatever happened to Oskar Dirlewanger?

Oskar Dirlewanger had a long career as a soldier, fighting in World War One, fighting with the freikorps against communist insurrectionists in Weimar Germany, fighting with the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War. He also had a long ‘career’ as a sexual sadist and convicted child rapist. Undoubtedly this all made him very qualified to head the SS convict division, tasked with anti-partisan operations on the eastern front. The division went on to commit some of the most heinous crimes of the war (some of which are loosely depicted in the Russian movie Come and See. Sealing up hundreds of civilians in a barn, setting it on fire and spraying with machine guns was a trademark. Gang rape, mutilation and wholesale slaughter of civilians and enemy combatants was the modus operandi of these brave SS men. Redirected to Warsaw in time to fight in the uprising of 1944, the division took part in the Wola massacre of as many as 40,000 Polish civilians.

Fast forward to the end of the war, Dirlewanger wound up in Althausen prison in the French occupation zone. Official reports state that he died of natural causes while in prison. Later on, there were unsubstantiated rumors had it that he escaped and joined the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, and then the Egyptian Army.

One report had it different. In an act worthy of a Tarantino revenge/vindication story arc, he was found by three Poles serving in the French military, who proceeded to mercilessly beat him to death in his cell.