Its duties included ensuring the security of communications and supply lines, economic exploitation and combatting partisans in the Wehrmacht's rear areas.

[4] In September 1941, the division's officers attended the Mogilev Conference, organised by General Max von Schenckendorff, commander of Army Group Centre Rear Area.

[7] In March 1942, the division embarked on large-scale Nazi security warfare operations in the Yelnya-Dorogobuzh area east of Smolensk.

[8] The so-called anti-partisan operations in "bandit-infested" areas amounted to destruction of villages, seizure of livestock, deportation of the able-bodied population for slave labour to Germany and killing of those of non-working age.

[9] The tactics included shelling villages not under German control with heavy weapons, resulting in mass civilian casualties.

General Johann Pflugbeil directed his troops that the "goal of the operation is not to drive the enemy back, but to exterminate him".

The unit was largely destroyed during the Soviet Red Army summer offensive, Operation Bagration, in June 1944.