List of German divisions in World War II


This article lists divisions of the Wehrmacht , including the Army, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine, active during World War II.
Upgrades and reorganizations are shown only to identify the variant names for what is notionally a single unit; other upgrades and reorganizations are deferred to the individual articles. Due to the scope of this list, pre-war changes are not shown, nor are upgrades from units smaller than a division. Most of these divisions trained in Berlin, which is also where new military technology was kept and tested.

Name elements not usually translated

;Grenadier: A traditional term for heavy infantry.
;Jäger: A traditional term for light infantry.
;Gebirgsjäger: Traditional term for mountain and ski troops.
;Lehr: A demonstration/training unit.
;Nummer: "Number".
;Panzer: Armour.
;Sturm: "Storm" or "Assault".
;Volks: "of the People".
;zbV: Abbreviation for "zur besonderen Verwendung" Meaning "Special Purpose".
Volks, Sturm, and Grenadier were sometimes used simply as morale-building adjectives, often without any significance to a unit's organization or capabilities.

Army (Heer)

Panzer divisions

Numbered panzer divisions

The designation "Light" had various meanings in the German Army of World War II. There was a series of 5 Light divisions; the first four were pre-war mechanized formations organized for use as mechanized cavalry, and the fifth was an ad hoc collection of mechanized elements rushed to Africa to help the Italians and organized into a division once there. All five were eventually converted to ordinary Panzer divisions.
Various other divisions were dubbed "Light" for other reasons, and are listed among the Infantry Series Divisions.

Infantry series divisions

Types of division in the series

The backbone of the Heer was the infantry division. Of the 154 divisions deployed against Soviet Union in 1941, including reserves, there were 100 infantry, 19 panzer, 11 motorised, 9 security, 5 Waffen-SS, 4 "light", 4 mountain, 1 SS police, and 1 cavalry. A typical infantry division in June 1941 had 17,734 men organized into the following sub-units:
German infantry divisions had a variety of designations and specializations, though numbered in a single series. The major variations are as follows:
;Fortress : Divisions of non-standard organization used to garrison critical sites. The smaller ones might consist of only two or three battalions.
;Grenadier: A morale-building honorific usually indicative of reduced strength when used alone.
;Jäger: Reduced in size with only two regiments compared to an ordinary infantry divisions three and provided with less transport and lighter artillery. Those divisions were trained to fight in difficult terrain.
;Light : There were several meanings of the term light division in the Wehrmacht:
;Motorized: Provided with full motor transport for all infantry and weapons systems. Usually reduced in size compared to an ordinary infantry division. Motorized infantry divisions were renamed Panzergrenadier divisions in 1943.
;Division Nummer: A sort of placeholder division, with a number and staff but few if any combat assets. These divisions started out without any type in their name, though some acquired a type later on.
;Panzergrenadier: As motorized, but with more self-propelled weapons and an added battalion of tanks or fully armored assault guns. What motorized divisions were referred to from 1943 forward.
;Security Division : Designed for mopping-up duties in the rear areas; may consist of two reinforced regiments or of a number of independent battalions.
;Static : Deficient in transport, even enough to move its own artillery. Many of these were divisions that had been mauled on the Eastern Front and were sent west to serve as coastal defense garrisons until sufficient resources were available to rehabilitate them.
;Volksgrenadier: A late-war reorganization with reduced size and increased short-range firepower. Many previously destroyed or badly mauled infantry divisions were reconstituted as Volksgrenadier divisions, and new ones were raised as well. Their fighting worth varied widely depending on unit experience and equipment. Not to be confused with Volkssturm a national militia in which units were supposed to be organized by local Nazi party leaders; trained by the SS; and come under Wehrmacht command in combat.
;zbV: An ad hoc division created to meet a special requirement.
Most of the size reductions listed above were by about a third, either by the removal of an infantry regiment or the removal of one infantry battalion from each of the three regiments.
Infantry divisions were raised in waves, sets of divisions with a standardized table of organization and equipment. In general the later waves were of lower quality than the earlier ones.

Numbered divisions

1st to 99th
According to Davies, the Cavalry divisions were mounted infantry and the Cossack divisions were "true cavalry", modelled on the Russian cavalry divisions.

Naval infantry divisions

Hermann Göring divisions

The Hermann Göring formations grew from a single police detachment to an entire armored corps over the course of the war. The later epithet Fallschirm was purely honorific.
To keep its existence secret, the first German airborne division was named as if a Flieger division in the series of Luftwaffe divisions that controlled air assets rather than ground troops-named 7th Flieger Division The division was later reorganized to start a series of nominally airborne divisions. Though named Fallschirmjäger divisions, only some of them participated in airdrops in the early part of the war, and in practice most operated as ordinary infantry throughout their existence. The lower-numbered ones earned and maintained an élite status, but quality generally declined among the higher-numbered divisions.
s were ordinary infantry divisions organized from Luftwaffe personnel made available after mid-war due to the manpower crunch. They were originally Luftwaffe units but were later handed over to the Army, retaining their numbering but with Luftwaffe attached to distinguish them from similarly numbered divisions already existing in the Heer.
These were headquarters for controlling aggregates of flak assets rather than ordinary combined arms divisions organized for ground combat.
All divisions in the Waffen-SS were ordered in a single series up to 38th, regardless of type. Those tagged with nationalities were at least nominally recruited from those nationalities. Many of the higher-numbered units were small battle groups, i.e. divisions in name only.
Also Panzer Division Kempf, a temporary unit of mixed Heer and Waffen-SS components.