39th Guards Rifle Division - Cold War Service

Cold War Service

Along with the rest of the 8th Guards Army, from 1949 the division was stationed in Ohrdruf, Gotha and Meiningen, East Germany (the GDR). Following the Second World War, the 39th Guards became a Motor Rifle Division in 1957. At different times (up to the 1980s), some regiments and separate battalions changed their garrison and placed in other cities of Thuringia - Arnstadt and Saalfeld. It was opposite the strategically vital Fulda Gap, and the U.S. V and VII US Corps in NATO's Central Army Group. The distance from the locations of parts of the division to the state border with Germany was about 5 kilometers. Withdrawal from Germany began about October 28, 1991.

The division had the Military mail Feldpost number 38865.

By a Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the USSR Council of Ministers on 30 October 1967, the "For Service to protect the Soviet homeland and achieved high results in combat and political training and 50th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution to award the 39th Guards Motorized Rifle Barvenkovsky Order of Lenin Red Banner Orders of Suvorov twice and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Division the Commemorative Banner of the CPSU Central Committee, and leave it for an eternal possession as a symbol of valor.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the division was disbanded after a temporary relocation to Bila Tserkva in Ukraine in 1992.