Most or all of the division's officers, non-commissioned officers (NCOs), and specialists were German,[18][24] and were mainly provided by the 7th and 13th SS Divisions, which noticeably weakened those formations.[34] The divisional artillery regiment was formed from the 1st Albanian Artillery Regiment.[33] The division was placed under the command of SS-Standartenführer August Schmidhuber,[35] who was promoted to SS-Oberführer[lower-alpha 7] in June.[32] Members took a religious oath using the Quran, pledging "jihad against unbelievers."[36][37] The division was originally equipped with captured Italian Carro Armato M15/42 tanks, which proved to be unreliable.[38] Its garrison was located in the town of Prizren.[39]