The 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer" was formed in the summer of 1942 on the basis of cavalry regiments that were part of the SS and had experience in suppressing guerrilla operations from 1939-1941. The division was largely composed of Germans from Banat and Transylvania and was used primarily for anti-insurgency and pacification activities in Poland and the USSR. She was also responsible for numerous pogroms committed against the Jewish population. In the years 1941-1943, the unit operated on the Eastern Front, with stations in R¿ewo and Orle. At the end of 1943, it was sent to Hungary, where it was largely dismembered. Its individual units operated in Croatia, Poland and Hungary. Since November, as a unitary unit, it fights near Budapest, where it suffers huge losses and is actually destroyed until February 1945.
During World War II (1939-1945), the German army and the Waffen-SS, despite the popular opinion that they were fully motorized, had several cavalry units at their disposal. Chronologically, the first cavalry division was the 1st Cavalry Division, which fought on the Eastern Front in the years 1941-1942 as part of General Guderian's armored forces, and in 1942 was transformed into the 24th Panzer Division. In the first half of 1943, however, the German army had three independent cavalry regiments, which, however, were largely based on motorized equipment. In 1944, these regiments, together with the Hungarian cavalry division, created a cavalry corps serving in Belarus. It is also worth adding that relatively many cavalry units were created as part of the Waffen-SS. One can mention here, for example, the SS Cavalry Brigade, which was later transformed into the 8th SS Cavalry Division. Cossack units were also formed in the German cavalry - e.g. the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division.