The 1st Panzer Division (German: 1st Panzer-Division) was formed in October 1935 in Weimar on the basis of the 3rd Cavalry Division. Its first commander was the later field marshal Maksymilian von Weichs. The unit started its combat route during the September campaign in 1939, fighting in southern Poland. The unit took part in the storming of Warsaw. It is almost certain that the soldiers of the division during the fighting in 1939 were responsible for murdering the civilian population. The 1st Armored Division took a very active part in the campaign in France in the summer of 1940 as part of the 19th Corps commanded by General Heinz Guderian, which played a decisive role in this campaign. After the end of this campaign, the 2nd armored regiment was excluded from the division structure, which was used to create the 16th Armored Division. The unit took part in Operation Barbarossa, fighting initially as part of Army Group "North" and later Army Group "Center". As a result of heavy losses, at the end of 1942, she was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and went to France, and then to ... Greece, where she remained until November 1943! This month she is sent back to the Eastern Front and fights in Ukraine until September 1944. In October of that year she was transferred to Hungary and in the winter of 1944 she fought in the areas of Transylvania. Until April 1945, he fought in Hungary to retire to Austria in May this year.
In the course of World War II, German sapper units (German: Pioniere) were assigned in the strength of the battalion to each infantry, armored, mountain, grenadier and panzer grenadier divisions. At the end of the war, they were also assigned to the Volkssturm division. The full-time sapper battalion consisted of, among others, a staff, two companies of sappers, a company of motorized sappers and a motorized bridge column. It is worth adding that the units of sappers (pioneers) in the Wehrmacht, and also in the Waffen SS, were abundantly equipped with machine guns and other support weapons, and the soldiers serving in them had good, and often very good, training. In addition to performing typical engineering and sapper tasks, they were also perceived as assault units (German: Sturmpioniere) intended to attack heavily fortified objects and permanent resistance points. It is worth adding that the Sturmpioniere units very often collaborated with other types of armed forces on ordinary infantry and ending with aviation.