1st Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
1934-1945 German Army combat formation
The 1st Infantry Division (German: 1. Infanterie-Division) was an infantry division that notably served in World War II as part of the Heer of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht. It had been one of the original infantry divisions of the Reichswehr.
Operational history
Before World War II
The staff of the 1st Infantry Division was initially assembled under the cover name of Artillery Leader 1 (German: Artillerieführer I) in October 1934. Its initial headquarters were at Königsberg. On 15 October 1935, the formation was redesignated as the 1st Infantry Division. It was redeployed to Insterburg on 3 February 1936. The division initially contained the Infantry Regiments 1 (Königsberg), 22 (Gumbinnen), and 43 (Insterburg), as well as Artillery Regiment 1 (Königsberg). The division was built from the Reichswehr-era 1st Infantry Regiment, assembled largely from East Prussian personnel and adopted a strongly Prussian internal culture, as underlined by the black-and-white divisional insignia.
The divisional commander from 1 October 1934 until 1 October 1935 was Georg von Küchler, who later went on to be the army-level commanding general that the 1st Infantry Division served under starting in September 1939.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q697087. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “1st Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.