5th Division (German Empire)

5th Division (German Empire)

The 5th Division (5. Division) was a unit of the Prussian/German Army. It was formed in Crossen in 1816 as a brigade, moved to Frankfurt an der Oder in 1817, and became the 5th Division on September 5, 1818. The headquarters moved to Berlin in 1840 and back to Frankfurt in 1845. The division was subordinated in peacetime to the III Army Corps (III. Armeekorps). The division was disbanded in 1919 during the demobilization of the German Army after World War I. The division was recruited in the Province of Brandenburg.

The 10th Brigade of the 5th Division fought in the Second Schleswig War of 1864, including the key Battle of Dybbøl, or Düppeler Heights. The division then fought in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, including the Battle of Königgrätz. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the division saw action in the battles of Spicheren, Mars-la-Tour, Gravelotte, Beaune-la-Rolande, Orléans, and Le Mans, and in the Siege of Metz.

The division was mobilized as the 5th Infantry Division in August 1914 and sent to the west for the opening campaigns of the war. In 1914 it fought in the Battle of the Marne and the Race to the Sea. It then settled into positional warfare in the trenches along the Somme. It fought in the Battle of the Somme and in the Battle of Verdun in 1916 and in the Second Battle of the Aisne (also called the Third Battle of Champagne) in 1917. In mid-1917, it was sent to the Eastern Front in response to the Russian Kerensky Offensive. In October 1917, the division was transferred to the Italian Front, where it fought in the Battle of Caporetto. It returned to the Western Front in December 1917, and remained there until war's end, participating in the German Spring Offensive and the Allied offensives that followed. Until being bloodied in the offensives of 1918, the division was rated a first-class division by Allied intelligence.