Army Group Centre

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Army Group Centre (Heeresgruppe Mitte in German) was created on 22 June 1941 when Army Group B was renamed Army Group Centre. It was one of three German army formations assigned to the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, code-named Operation Barbarossa. In 1945 when the first Army Group Centre was pushed aside into the Königsberg pocket, Army Group A was renamed Army Group Centre on January 25 and it fought to the end of the war in Europe.

Contents

[edit] History

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and its Axis allies launched their surprise attack against the Soviet Union. Their armies, totaling over three million men, were to advance in three main geographical directions. Army Group North was to move through the Baltic region and capture the city of Leningrad. Army Group Centre was to defeat the Soviet armies in Belarus and to advance towards Moscow. Army Group South was to occupy Ukraine. Blitzkrieg tactics were to ensure a rapid advance and a quick and decisive victory over the Soviet Union by mid-November.

Army Group Centre was the strongest of the three German formations. Commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, it included the 4th and 9th Army, the 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups and the 2nd Air Fleet. By mid-August 1941 it had crushed Soviet forces in huge encirclement battles: Battle of Białystok-Minsk and Battle of Smolensk. Once they had conquered the territories in the West of the Soviet Union, the Germans began their genocide regime, burning thousands of cities and villages, shooting and deporting hundreds of thousands of civilians. Soviet prisoners of war, 300,000 after the battle of Minsk alone, were either killed in concentration camps, or literally starved to death in prison camps, mostly nothing more than fields surrounded with barbed wire in the open.

In spite of terrible losses, Soviet resistance was fierce and self-sacrificing. A partisan movement disrupted German supply lines. Bitter fighting in the Battle of Smolensk delayed the German advance for two months. The advance of Army Group Centre was further delayed as Hitler ordered a postponement of the offensive against Moscow, and to conquer Ukraine first. The German offensive against Moscow was resumed on 30 September 1941.

The delays turned out to be fatal to the German forces fighting their way on the approaches to the Soviet capital. Autumn rains turned roads into mud. In November, an unusually harsh winter set in, catching the Germans ill-equipped for winter warfare. Meanwhile, Soviet resistance grew plainly desperate, as soldiers engaged in infantry combat against German tanks. Suffering tremendous losses, the Soviets finally stopped the German advance in late November 1941, when the Germans had the Moscow Kremlin in sight. The Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Moscow, which started on December 6, 1941, would mark the first decisive blow against the German invaders, and the failure of the German Blitzkrieg. Army Group Centre was driven back out of reach of Moscow by April 1942. Army Group Centre did however hold a narrow salient (the Rzhev Salient) which still threatened Moscow and would be the subject of numerous Soviet attacks in the coming year.

June 1942 saw the preparation of another German summer offensive. Stalin and the Soviet High Command anticipated that Moscow would be the target, however, instead of again striking at the heart of the Soviet Union, the German command turned to long-term economic warfare, seeking to capture Soviet industrial areas and oil fields in the South. Meanwhile, Army Group Centre was to consolidate its positions. The German advance to the Caucasus and the Volga culminated in the carnage of the Battle of Stalingrad. After months of bloody urban warfare in the ruined city, the Soviets surrounded the German forces inside Stalingrad in November 1942 Operation Saturn. That counter-offensive was co-ordinated with a major Soviet offensive in the Moscow area, code-named Operation Mars, the object of which was to destroy the Rzhev Salient. Operation Mars was launched in November 1942 but quickly failed with heavy Soviet losses, Army Group Centre had heavily fortified the Rzhev Salient and constructed a good road network, allowing the quick movement of reinforcements to threatened zones.

Following the success of their Stalingrad and Voronezh counteroffensives the Soviets planned another attack on Army Group Centre for February 1943 (the Sevsk Operation). The plan was for a co-ordinated assault by Soviet forces in the Kursk and northern Army Group Centre areas to encircle and first destroy the German forces at Orel and then the Rzhev Salient with Soviet units ultimately to meet at Smolensk in a grand encirclement of Army Group Centre. However, the Germans forestalled this offensive by carrying out their own Operation Buffalo - the planned evacuation of the Rzhev Salient to shorten their lines. When Soviet attacks from Kursk towards Orel failed to make progress the offensive was called off.

In July and August 1943 the Soviets succeeded in stopping the German offensive Operation Citadel into the Kursk Salient and counterattacked towards Orel and Kharkov. In tandem with the offensive into Ukraine another offensive, the Smolensk Operation (Operation Suvarov), was launched against Army Group Centre between August and October 1943. The attacks made slow progress but were successful in recapturing Smolensk and the important rail junction at Nevel, forcing the German line back on a broad front, however the attack foundered on the strong German defensive works in the Vitebsk-Orsha-Mogilev area (the Ostwall defensive line).

Further Soviet offensives against Army Group Centre - the Gomel and Orsha Operations in November 1943 and the Vitebsk Operation in February 1944 were unsuccessful against the strong Ostwall defences however the Soviets did succeed in almost encircling the heavily fortified town of Vitebsk.

In comparison to the great Soviet victories in the Ukraine since Stalingrad, Soviet progress on the central front (roughly the area Minsk - Smolensk - Moscow) in the period early 1942-early 1944 had been disappointing. Soviet planners launched several offensives hoping for a grand encirclement and destruction of Army Group Centre yet had only succeeded in forcing the German line back on a broad front with heavy Soviet casualties. There were several reasons for this comparative lack of success - the terrain here was much more heavily forested and thus favoured the defender, German units in this area had had time to prepare comprehensive fortifications and the German leadership had been good, while Soviet leadership had been uninspired.

However, all this was to change in summer 1944. In spring 1944 the Soviet command started concentrating massive forces along the frontline in central Russia for a huge summer offensive against Army Group Centre. The Soviets also carried out a masterful deception campaign to convince the Germans that the main Soviet summer offensive would be launched further south, against Army Group Northern Ukraine. The German High Command was fooled and armored units were moved south out of Army Group Centre. The massive Soviet buildup opposite Army Group Centre was not detected.

The offensive, code-named Operation Bagration, was launched on 22 June 1944, the third anniversary of the German invasion and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 (this was actually a coincidence, the attack had been unexpectedly delayed several days). 185 Soviet divisions comprising about 2.5 million soldiers and 6,000 tanks smashed into the German positions on a frontline of 1,000 km. The 500,000-strong German Army Group Centre was crushed. 350,000 Germans were killed or captured. Soviet forces raced forward, liberating Minsk and the rest of Byelorussia (Belarus) by the end of August, crossing the pre-war border and advancing into East Prussia and Poland by the end of the year. In terms of casualties this was the greatest German defeat of the entire war.

The following section needs a rewrite as it is a general eastern front one not specific to Army Group Centre.

The Soviet commanders, after their inaction during the Warsaw Uprising, took Warsaw in January 1945. Over three days, the Red Army, incorporating four army Fronts, began an offensive across the Narew River and from Warsaw. The Soviets outnumbered the Germans on average by 9:1 in troops, 9 or 10:1 in artillery and 10:1 in tanks and self-propelled artillery. After four days the Red Army broke out and started moving thirty to forty Kilometres a day, taking the Baltic States, Danzig, East Prussia, Poznań, and drawing up on a line sixty km east of Berlin along the Oder River.

On the 25th of January Hitler renamed three army groups. Army Group North became Army Group Courland; Army Group Centre became Army Group North and Army Group A became Army Group Centre.

Army Group North (old Army Group Centre), was driven into an ever smaller pocket around Königsberg in East Prussia. On April 9, 1945 Königsberg finally fell to the Red Army, remnants of units continued to resist on the Heiligenbeil & Danzig beachheads until the end of the war in Europe.

The last Soviet campaign of the war, which led to the fall of Berlin and the end of the war in Europe with the surrender of all German forces to the Allies. The three Soviet Fronts involved in the campaign had altogether 2.5 million men ; 6,250 tanks; 7,500 aircraft; 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars; 3,255 truck-mounted "Katyusha" rocket launchers, (nicknamed 'Stalin Organs'); and 95,383 motor vehicles. The campaign started with the battle of Oder-Neisse. Army Group Centre commanded by Ferdinand Schörner had a front that included the river Neisse. Before dawn on the morning of April 16, 1945 the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of General Konev started the attack over the river Neisse with a short but massive bombardment by tens of thousands of artillery pieces...

On May 7 the day that German Chief-of-Staff General Alfred Jodl was negotiating surrender of all German forces at SHAEF, the last that the German Armed Forces High Command (AFHC) had heard from Schörner was on May 2. He had reported that he intended to fight his way west and surrender his army group to the Americans. On the May 8 a colonel on the (AFHC), was escorted through the American lines to see Schörner. The colonel reported that Schörner had ordered the men under his operational command to observer the surrender but that he could not guarantee that he would be obeyed everywhere. Later that day Schörner deserted his command and flew to Austria where on the May 18 he was arrested by the Americans. Some of Army Group Centre continued to resist until May 11 by which time the overwhelming force of the Soviet Armies sent to occupy Czechoslovakia in the Prague Offensive gave them no option but to surrender or be killed.

[edit] Commanders in chief

[edit] Order of battle

[edit] Army Group HQ troops

  • 537th Signals Regiment
  • 537th Signals Regiment (2nd list)

[edit] Subordinated units

Date subordinated armies
1941
June 1941 9th Army, 4th Army
July 1941 3rd Panzer Group, 9th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Group, z. Vfg. 2nd Army
August 1941 3rd Panzer Group, 9th Army, 2nd Army, Army Group of Guderian
September 1941 3rd Panzer Group, 9th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Group, 2nd Army
October 1941 9th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 2nd Army
November 1941 9th Army, 3rd Panzer Group, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 2nd Army
1942
January 1942 9th Army, 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 2nd Army
February 1942 3rd Panzer Army, 9th Army, 4th Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army
May 1942 9th Army, 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army
1943
January 1943 LIX AK, 9th Army, 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army
February 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 9th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army
March 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 9th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 2nd Army
April 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 2nd Army, z.Vfg. 9th Army
July 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Panzer Army, 9th Army, 2nd Army
September 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 9th Army, 2nd Army
November 1943 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 9th Army, 2nd Army, armed forces commander east country
1944
January 1944 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 9th Army, 2nd Army
July 1944 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Army, z.Vfg. 9th Army
August 1944 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 4th Army, 2nd Army, IV SS Panzer Corps
1945
January 1945 3rd Panzer Army, 4th Army, 2nd Army
February 1945 4th Panzer Army, 17th Army, 1st Panzer Army
May 1945 7th Army, 4th Panzer Army, 17th Army, 1st Panzer Army

[edit] 1 January 1942

[edit] Army Group

  • Commander: Field Marshal Günther von Kluge
  • Chief of Staff: Major General Hans von Greiffenberg
  • Rear Area Command under General of Infantry Heinrich von Schenckendorff
    • 286th Infantry Division (security) under Lieutenant General Kurt Müller
    • 339th Infantry Division (minus Kampfgruppe to VI.Armeekorps) under Lieutenant General Georg Hewelcke
    • 403rd Infantry Division (security) under Major General Wolfgang von Ditfurth
    • 707th Infantry Division under Major General Gustav Freiherr von Maunchenheim gennant Bechtolsheim
    • Kampfgruppe of 221st Infantry Division (security)
    • 202nd and 203rd Security Brigades
  • Army Group reserves
  • Units in transit to Army Group
    • 83rd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Alexander von Zülow
    • 328th Infantry Division under Major General Wilhelm Behrens
    • 329th Infantry Division under Colonel Helmuth Castorf
    • 330th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Karl Graf
    • 331st Infantry Division under Colonel Franz Beyer

[edit] Second Army

  • Commander: General of Panzer Troops Rudolf Schmidt (Note: commanded both Second Army and Second Panzer Army together under the intermediate command Armeegruppe Schmidt)
  • Chief of Staff: Colonel Gustav Harteneck
  • XXXXVIII Corps under General of Panzer Troops Werner Kempf
  • XXXV Corps under General of Artillery Rudolf Kaempf
    • 134th Infantry Division under Colonel Hans Schlemmer
    • 262nd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Edgar Theisen
    • 293rd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Justin von Oberntiz
  • LV Corps under General of Infantry Erwin Vierow
    • 3rd Panzer Division under Major General Hermann Breith
    • 45th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Fritz Schlieper
    • 95th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Hans-Heinrich Sixt von Arnim
    • 221st Infantry Division (security division) under Lieutenant General Johann Pflugbeil
    • Kampfgruppe of 168th Infantry Division
    • Kampfgruppe of 299th Infantry Division
    • 1.SS (mot.) Brigade

[edit] Second Panzer Army

  • Commander: General of Panzer Troops Rudolf Schmidt (Note: commanded both Second Army and Second Panzer Army together under the intermediate command Army Group Schmidt)
  • Chief of Staff: Colonel Kurt Freiherr von Liebenstein
  • XXIV Corps under General of Panzer Troops Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg
  • XXXXVII Corps under General of Artillery Joachim Lemelsen
  • LIII Corps under General of Infantry Walther Fischer von Weikersthal
    • 4th Panzer Division under Lieutenant General Willibald von Langermann und Erlenkamp
    • 112th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Friedrich Mieth
      • Kampfgruppe of 56th Infantry Division (attached)
    • 167th Infantry Division under Major General Wolf Trierenberg
    • 296th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Wilhelm Stemmermann
    • Kampfgruppe of 10th Motorized Infantry Division
    • Infanterie-Division (mot.) Grossdeutschland under Colonel Walter Hoernlein

[edit] Third Panzer Army

  • Commander: Colonel General Georg-Hans Reinhardt
  • Chief of Staff: Colonel Walther von Hünersdorff
  • XXXXI Corps under General of Panzer Troops Walter Model
  • LVI Corps under General of Panzer Troops Ferdinand Schaal
    • 7th Panzer Division under Major General Hans Freiherr von Funck
    • 14th Motorized Infantry Division under Colonel Walther Krause
      • Lehr-Brigade 900 (mot.) (attached)

[edit] Fourth Army

  • Commander: General of Mountain Troops Ludwig Kübler
  • Chief of Staff: Colonel Günther Blumentritt
  • XII Corps under General of Infantry Walter Schroth
  • XIII Corps under General of Infantry Hans Felber
    • 52nd Infantry Division (minus Kampfgruppe to XXXXIII Corps) under Lieutenant General Lothar Rendulic
    • 260th Infantry Division under Colonel Walther Hahm
    • 268th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Erich Straube
  • XX Corps under General of Infantry Friedrich Materna
    • 15th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Ernst-Eberhard Hell
    • 183rd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Benignus Dippold
    • 258th Infantry Division under Major General Karl Pflaum
    • 292nd Infantry Division under Major General Willy Seeger
    • Kampfgruppe of 10th Panzer Division
  • XXXX Corps under General of Panzer Troops Georg Stumme
    • 19th Panzer Division under Lieutenant General Otto von Knobelsdorff
    • 216th Infantry Division under Major General Werner Freiherr von und zu Gilsa
    • Kampfgruppe of 10th Motorized Infantry Division
    • Kampfgruppe of 56th Infantry Division
    • Kampfgruppe of 403rd Infantry Division (security division)
  • XXXXIII Corps under General of Infantry Gotthard Heinrici
    • 32nd Infantry Division under Major General Wilhelm Bohnstedt
    • 131st Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Heinrich Meyer-Bürdorf
    • 137th Infantry Division under Major General Karl von Dewitz gennant von Krebs
    • Kampfgruppe of 52nd Infantry Division
  • LVII Corps under Lieutenant General Freidrich Kirchner
    • 34th Infantry Division under Major General Friedrich Fürst
    • 98th Infantry Division under Colonel Martin Gareis
    • Kampfgruppe of 19th Panzer Division

[edit] Fourth Panzer Army

[edit] Ninth Army

  • Commander: Colonel General Otto Colinburg-Bodigheim
  • Chief of Staff: Colonel Kurt Weckmann
  • VI Corps under General of Flyers Wolfram von Richtofen
  • XXIII Corps under General of Infantry Albrecht Schubert
    • 102nd Infantry Division under Major General John Ansat
    • 206th Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Hugo Höfl
    • 253rd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Otto Schellert
    • 256th Infantry Division under Major General Gerhardt Kauffmann
  • XXVII Corps under Lieutenant General Eccard von Gablenz
    • 86th Infantry Division under Major General Helmuth Weidling
    • 129th Infantry Division under Major General Stephan Rittau
    • 162nd Infantry Division under Lieutenant General Hermann Franke
    • 251st Infantry Division under Major General Karl Burdach

[edit] See also

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