Formation
The Division never consisted of more than around 6,000 men, the strength of a normal Brigade.
Alongside the men of the Junkerschule, the division also received some additional units, one being the SS special use Begleitkommando-SS and two Zollgrenzschutz (Customs Border Guards) battalions. Soldiers from the 6th SS Mountain Division Nord, a company from 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, officers from the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Russian), 600 Frenchmen with their Swiss Major Hersche and a battalion of Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) were also taken on strength.
The first Divisional commander was Richard Schulze-Kossens, who at the time was the Commanding officer of the SS-Brigade Nibelungen and the Junkerschule at Bad Tölz. He was followed by Martin Stange on 12 April, (Heinz Lammerding and Karl von Oberkamp were also assigned as commanders, but never took up the post).
The division had two Grenadier regiments; the 95th, under the command of Sturmbannführer Markus Faulhaber and the 96th, commanded by Obersturmführer Walter Schmidt.
The division's 38th Panzerjäger (Tank Hunter) Battalion received the majority of its men from the Prinz Eugen division and officers from Nord. The Abteilung (detachment) received about 10 Jagdpanzer 38(t) tank destroyers on 15 April, it also had some 75 mm towed PaK 40 anti-tank guns (the Abteilung served under 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen from 17 to 24 April, until it came under its parent division).
Read more about this topic: 38th SS Division Nibelungen
Famous quotes containing the word formation:
“... the mass migrations now habitual in our nation are disastrous to the family and to the formation of individual character. It is impossible to create a stable society if something like a third of our people are constantly moving about. We cannot grow fine human beings, any more than we can grow fine trees, if they are constantly torn up by the roots and transplanted ...”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“The formation of an oppositional world view is necessary for feminist struggle. This means that the world we have most intimately known, the world in which we feel “safe” ... must be radically changed. Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses.”
—Bell (c. 1955)
“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)