History
Following the Anschluss annexation of Austria in 1938, the 4th Light Division was formed in Vienna after converting a mobile division of the Austrian army in April of that year. It initially consisted of the 33rd Panzer Battalion, the 102nd Motorized Artillery Regiment, and the 10th and 11th Motorized Cavalry Regiments. In 1939 it fought in the Invasion of Poland, on the right flank of Army Group South, attacking out of Slovakia, pushing over the San River on 10 September and capturing Krakowiec on 12 September. It then moved to establish a bridgehead over the Bug River at Krylow on 14 September. The division then turned west, blocking the escape of several units of the Polish Army. In the process the division took tens of thousands of prisoners. On October 24, the division departed Salzberg, returning to Vienna by train. That winter it was converted to the 9th Panzer Division and formally redesignated 3 January 1940. It consisted of the 9th Rifle Brigade, the 33rd Panzer Battalion, the 102nd Panzer Artillery Regiment, and several other divisional units.
Read more about this topic: 9th Panzer Division (Germany)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)