[Note 1] Although created as an en cadre division from the very beginning, both names were intended to suggest much smaller units, as German military strength was still restricted by the Treaty of Versailles.

After Adolf Hitler renounced the treaty, and officially announced the creation of the Wehrmacht in October 1935, the unit was renamed to the 17th Infantry Division.

During the Invasion of Poland it was reinforced by the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and attached to the German Eighth Army of Gen. Johannes Blaskowitz.

In a large scale mass murder, the soldiers of the 17th Division burnt approximately 80% of buildings in the town and killed without a trial approximately 200 Polish citizens of Polish and Jewish ethnicity, out of whom only 71 people were identified after the war, while the identity of the remaining victims was impossible to establish as they were war refugees unknown to local inhabitants.

After the war the Polish authorities presented the West German prosecutors' office with the documents of the investigation, as well as the detailed information on the 71 identified victims.

The German authorities argued that it was impossible to determine which units of the 17th Division took part in the crimes as the 1st chapter of the war diary of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Regiment was missing.

[3] In a separate case investigated by the after the war, the KBZPNP commission requested the prosecution of the commanders of the 10th and 17th Divisions, which took part in a mass murder of several dozen Poles in the village of Włyń near Łódź.

This was the reasoning in the case of certain Ochecki who was shot to death while trying to rescue his cattle from a barn set in flames by the German soldiers.

The division returned to the Eastern Front in April 1943, fighting around river Mius, Nikopol, Uman, Kishinev and Jassy.