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:
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)