  We investigate the interplay of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and an
external field in spin 1/2 dimers. For isolated dimers and at low field, we
derive simple expressions for the staggered and uniform magnetizations which
show that the orientation of the uniform magnetization can deviate
significantly from that of the external field. In fact, in the limit where the
${\bf D}$ vector of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is parallel to the
external field, the uniform magnetization actually becomes {\it perpendicular}
to the field. For larger fields, we show that the staggered magnetization of an
isolated dimer has a maximum close to one-half the polarization, with a large
maximal value of $0.35 g\mu_B$ in the limit of very small Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya
interaction. We investigate the effect of inter-dimer coupling in the context
of ladders with Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) calculations and
show that, as long as the values of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and of the
exchange interaction are compatible with respect to the development of a
staggered magnetization, the simple picture that emerges for isolated dimers is
also valid for weakly coupled dimers with minor modifications. The results are
compared with torque measurements on
Cu$_{2}$(C$_{5}$H$_{12}$N$_{2}$)$_{2}$Cl$_{4}$.
