44th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht) and the 44th towards the Brenner pass. Divisional units of the 44th Infantry Division began arriving in Innsbruck, Austria on 27 July, and by the month's end it was on the border at the Brenner pass. Its admission into Italy proper, however, now became a matter of political debate between the higher political and military establishments of Italy and Germany. The new Italian leadership did not want more German units to enter the country as that would enable the Germans to take control. However, they were not ready to openly oppose the Germans at this time and they could not
Brenner Pass to the German word for somebody who clears woodland. A name for the pass itself appears for the first time in 1328 as "ob dem Prenner" (German for "above the Prenner"). The Romans regularised the mountain pass at Brenner, which had already been under frequent use during the prehistoric eras since the most recent Ice Age. Brenner Pass, however, was not the first trans-Alpine Roman road to become regularised under the Roman Empire. The first Roman road to cross the Alpine range, Via Claudia Augusta, connected Verona in northern Italy with Augusta Vindelicorum (modern-day Augsburg) in the Roman province of