Dirlewanger provided them with an opportunity to commit atrocities on such a scale that it even raised complaints within the brutal SS.[1] The historian Martin Windrow described them as a "terrifying rabble" of "cut-throats, renegades, sadistic morons, and cashiered rejects from other units".[8] Some Nazi officials romanticized the unit, viewing the men as "pure primitive German men" who were "resisting the law".[6]