Eastern Front
During the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), the Polizei Division was initially part of the reserve with Army Group North. In August 1941, the division saw action near Luga. It was during heavy fighting for the Luga bridgehead (held by seven Soviet divisions), that the Polizei Division lost over 2,000 soldiers including the commander, Arthur Mülverstadt, in bloody frontal assaults. The fighting across swamp and forest caused a number of problems and after a series of failed attacks the Polizei Division, along with the help of army formations, managed to fight into the northern part of Luga, encircling and destroying the Soviet defenders in the process.
Read more about this topic: 4th SS Polizei Division
Famous quotes containing the words eastern and/or front:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o’-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)