The 4. SS-Polizei-Panzergrenadier-Division, originally formed in October 1939 at Truppenübungsplatz Wandern as the Polizei-Division from thousands of drafted members of the Ordnungspolizei who retained their police ranks and insignia rather than fully joining the SS, was created under Generalleutnant der Polizei Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch to circumvent Wehrmacht recruitment limits on the SS while allowing policemen to fulfill military obligations; equipped mainly with captured Czech material and trained as a horse-drawn infantry formation, it first saw combat in June 1940 during the Battle of France under Army Group C, crossing the Aisne River and Ardennes Canal before fighting in the Argonne Forest. Transferred to Army Group North for Operation Barbarossa in 1941, it engaged in heavy combat near Luga in August, suffering over 2,000 casualties including the death of commander Arthur Mülverstadt amid swampy terrain assaults that ultimately helped encircle Soviet forces, then moved to the Volkhov River sector where, after formal transfer to the Waffen-SS on 24 February 1942 (becoming the SS-Polizei-Division with personnel adopting SS insignia), it contributed to the destruction of the Soviet 2nd Shock Army in the Battle of Lyuban and spent the remainder of the year on the Leningrad front. In early 1943, after further fighting south of Lake Ladoga and a successful defense at Kolpino, portions of the division were withdrawn westward for conversion to a motorized Panzergrenadier formation (with Polizei-Panzergrenadier-Regimenter redesignated as SS-Panzergrenadier-Regimenter 7 and 8), leaving a Kampfgruppe on the Eastern Front until mid-1944 while the main body, now designated 4. SS-Polizei-Panzergrenadier-Division, was sent to Greece under Heeresgruppe E for anti-partisan operations; there it committed numerous war crimes, including the Distomo massacre of 10 June 1944 in which troops under Fritz Lautenbach killed 214 civilians, the Kleisoura massacre, and further atrocities during Operation Kreuzotter that destroyed villages and killed hundreds. Recalled in August–September 1944 to face the Red Army near Belgrade and in Hungary, the division suffered severe losses during the Budapest Offensive, fighting retreats through Szolnok, Hatvan, and into Slovakia with strength reduced to mere hundreds of men and few operational guns, before being shifted north to Pomerania in early 1945 for the planned Army Detachment Steiner relief of Berlin (which never materialized), becoming encircled at Danzig, evacuated via the Hela Peninsula to Swinemünde, and finally fighting across the Elbe to surrender to American forces near Wittenberge-Lenzen in May 1945.
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EICHENLAUBTRÄGER
SS-Obergruppenführer Alfred Wünnenberg (1891-1963) was born on 20 July 1891 in Saarburg, Alsace-Lorraine, in the German Empire, and entered military service on 25 February 1913 as a Fahnenjunker in the Infanterie-Regiment „Vogel von Falckenstein“ (7. Westfälisches) Nr. 56 of the Prussian Army; during the First World War he served as a Kompaniechef, was wounded on both the Western and Eastern fronts, trained as a pilot from June 1916, and flew as an Aufklärungsflieger with Feld-Flieger-Abteilung 47 from August 1917, earning the Eisernes Kreuz 2. Klasse on 10 February 1915 and 1. Klasse on 9 September 1915 along with other decorations including the Königlich Preussisches Flugzeugbeobachter-Abzeichen and the Ritter des Königlicher Preussischer Hausordens von Hohenzollern mit Schwertern. After the war he briefly served with Grenzschutz Ost and a Freikorps in Oberschlesien before joining the Preußische Schutzpolizei as a Polizei-Oberleutnant in September 1920, rising through various police commands and training roles in Essen, Potsdam-Eiche, Krefeld, Köln, Charlottenburg, Hindenburg, Beuthen, Gleiwitz, Saarbrücken, Bremen, and Mannheim, joining the NSDAP on 1 May 1933 (Mitgliedsnummer 2.222.600) and the SS (SS-Nr. 405.898), and by December 1938 serving on the staff of the Inspekteur der Ordnungspolizei in Stuttgart. On 2 October 1939 he became Kommandeur of Polizei-Schützen-Regiment 3 of the Polizei-Division (later SS-Polizei-Division) with the rank of SS-Standartenführer and Oberst der Schutzpolizei, participating in the Western campaign of 1940 and the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; for his leadership in the Luga sector—particularly his personal bravery on 11 August 1941 in capturing the hills at Stojanowschtschina (taking seventeen enemy tanks and numerous heavy bunkers), his advance on 23 August to seize Ssyrez, the hills west of it, and the heights at Turowo that enabled the capture of Luga, and his regiment’s breakthrough of the outer defensive lines of Leningrad on 13 September by securing bridges and key positions while advancing toward Pushkin via the Ishora position—he was awarded the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes on 15 November 1941 as SS-Standartenführer and Oberst der Schupo. He assumed command of the SS-Polizei-Division on 15 December 1941, and for his successful leadership of the division at the Volkhov, where he closed the ring around the Volkhov pocket by attacking through extremely swampy terrain to achieve surprise against an enemy expecting an advance along the road, he received the Eichenlaub zum Ritterkreuz (91st award) on 23 April 1942 as SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei. Promoted further to SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei in July 1942 and then to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS und Polizei in July 1943, he briefly commanded the IV. SS-Panzer-Korps from 10 June 1943 until 31 August 1943, after which he succeeded Kurt Daluege as Chef des Hauptamtes der Ordnungspolizei, a post he held until the end of the war (and briefly as Chef der Deutschen Polizei in the final days); he fled via the Rattenlinie Nord to Flensburg, was interned as a POW in Dachau in 1946, released in 1947, and died on 30 December 1963 in Krefeld, West Germany.
Source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_SS_Polizei_Panzergrenadier_Division
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