Скачать или смотреть The 1st Cavalry Division (24th Panzer Division)

The 24th Panzer Division was formed in late 1941 from the 1st Cavalry Division based at Königsberg, which was formed shortly after the outbreak of World War II in November 1939 when the 1st Cavalry Brigade was expanded to division-size. The Cavalry division was part of the German invasion of the Netherlands and later it participated in the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) where it was part of the Army Group Center before being send back to East Prussia for conversion to a tank division.
As a Panzer division after initially being stationed in northern France, it served under the Fourth Panzer Army in Army Group South of the Eastern Front from June 1942. The division participated in the capture of Voronezh and in late December 1942 was encircled in the Battle of Stalingrad and destroyed. The Division was reformed in March 1943 and served in Normandy, Italy and then sent back to the Eastern Front where it suffered heavy casualties in the battles around Kiev and Dnieper.
Between the 8th April and 6th June 1944 it took part in the First Jassy-Kishinev Offensive and later saw action in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Parts of the division were evacuated to Schleswig-Holstein and later surrendered there to British forces at the end of the war, while the remainder surrendered to Soviet forces in East Prussia in May 1945. In keeping with the Division's mounted origins, the 24th Panzer division kept their golden-yellow Waffenfarbe of the cavalry rather than the pink Waffenfarbe of Panzer units.