authorised the formation of the division on 6 April 1943, ordering that all Cossacks serving in the Wehrmacht to be concentrated into the division. The division was formed and trained at Mielau in the spring-summer of 1943. The Cossacks brought their wives and children with them, forcing the Germans to establish another camp to house the dependents. Many of the German officers were Baltic German emigres who possessed the necessary knowledge of Russian. However, owing to a shortage of officers with the necessary Russian language skills, the Wehrmacht was forced to relax its policy against accepting emigre officers, and a number of Cossack emigre officers living in Yugoslavia, France, Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were recruited into the division. Other officers were the sons of Cossack emigres who had served in the armies of France, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria before the war. A disproportionate number of the German officers were cavalrymen, and of these officers Austrians were over-represented as it as felt that Austrians were more "tactful" in dealing with Slavs rather than the Prussians. The division was created on 4 August 1943 by merging the Cossack regiments Platow and von Jungschulz under the command of the Reiterverband Pannwitz. All these units existed since 1942. To these further new regiments were added. Some of the other units brought in were the Cossack Reconnaissance Battalion led by the Don Cossack Nikolai Nazarenko; the Cossack Detachment 600 led by Ivan Kononov, also a Don Cossack; and a force of Terek Cossacks led by ataman Nikolai Kulakkov of the Terek Host. Initially organized to fight the Red Army in Southern Russia, the division was deployed to the puppet Independent State of Croatia, where they were placed under the command of the Second Panzer Army and were used to protect the railroad line from Austria through Zagreb to Belgrade. Some units were also used to fight partisans. The division's first fighting engagement was on 12 October 1943, when it was dispatched against Yugoslav partisans in the Fruška Gora Mountains. In the operation the Cossacks, aided by 15 tanks and one armored car, captured the village of Beocin, where the partisan HQ was. During that operation many villages were burned, including a monastery on Fruška Gora, and around 300 innocent Serbian villagers were killed. Subsequently, the unit was used to protect the Zagreb-Belgrade railroad and the Sava Valley. Several regiments of the division took part in security warfare and guarded the Sarajevo railroad. As part of a wide security sweep, Napfkuchen, the Cossack division was transferred to Croatia, where it fought against partisans and Chetniks in 1944. While in Croatia the division quickly established a reputation for undisciplined and ruthless behavior, not only towards the partisans but also the civilian population, prompting Croatian authorities to complain to the Germans and finally to Adolf Hitler personally. Besides raping women, killing people and plundering and burning towns suspected of harboring partisans and their supporters, the division used telegraph poles along the railroad tracks for mass hangings as a warning to the partisans and others. Although the behavior of the Cossacks was not as ruthless as portrayed by Partisan propaganda, nevertheless during its first two months of deployment in Croatia, special divisional courts-martial imposed at least 20 death sentences in each of the four regiments for related crimes. The Cossacks' first engagement against the Red Army occurred in December 1944 near Pitomača. The fighting resulted in Soviet withdrawal from the area. In December 1944 the 1st Cossack Division was transferred to the Waffen-SS and reorganized by the SS Führungshauptamt until 30 April 1945. Together with a 2nd Cossack Division it became part of the newly formed XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. At the end of the war Cossacks of the division retreated into Austria and surrendered to British troops. They were promised safety by the British but were subsequently forcibly transferred to the USSR. The majority of those, who did not manage to escape, went into the labour camps of the Gulag. The German and Cossack leadership were tried, sentenced to death and executed in Moscow in early 1947. The remaining officers and ranks who survived the labour camps were released after Stalins death in 1953.
