The 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler was a division-sized unit of SS bodyguards created on 9 November 1923 to protect Adolf Hitler. The division would take part in the 1939 invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, and it was transformed into a panzer division during the course of the war. From 1940 to 1945, the division killed 5,000 prisoners of war, including massacres of Soviet Red Army POWs and Allied troops at Malmedy in 1945. The division was destroyed during Operation Spring Awakening in Hungary, and some units were destroyed during the Battle of Berlin. On 8 May 1945, the last remnants of the unit surrendered to the US Army in the Styria region of Austria.