Army Group A

• 1. Introduction

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  The name Army Group A, Heeresgruppe A in German, belonged to three separate formations of the Heer, the ground forces of the Wehrmacht, during World War II. They shared a label and very little else. The first carried out the plan that led to the Armistice of the 22nd of June 1940. The last spent its final months falling back before an advancing Red Army. Between them came a long and grinding retreat. Each of the three ended when its staff was handed a different name. How did a plan that senior officers doubted come to shape the opening of the western campaign? Why did commanders in the field so often ignore the orders above them? And what happened when the man issuing those orders would not let the army group fall back? The answers say a good deal about what a name meant when it could be reassigned so easily.

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• 2. Seven Memoranda

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  Erich von Manstein wrote seven memoranda between the 31st of October 1939 and the 12th of January 1940, and the effort cost him his post. He was chief of staff of Army Group A, whose headquarters sat in the Koblenz Electoral Palace under the command of Gerd von Rundstedt. Manstein drafted his first ideas in late October 1939, just after seeing the original deployment plan against France. That plan put the main effort with Army Group B, the northernmost group. Manstein demanded that the focus move to Army Group A and the German center.

  Franz Halder, the army's general chief of staff, grew annoyed at this insistence. Manstein was taken out of the chief of staff job and sent to command the coming XXXVIII Army Corps, which removed him from a major command in the campaign. Halder's choice to replace him, from the 6th of February 1940, was Georg von Sodenstern. A conservative-minded planner, Sodenstern had been picked precisely because he opposed Manstein's plan. As late as the 5th of March 1940, he predicted that repeating the swift advances of the Polish campaign through a well-developed French defensive line was less than likely.

  The Mechelen incident of January 1940 lent the plan fresh credibility. It provoked a response by the Allied armies and let the Germans observe their defensive movements. That made an encirclement of Allied forces in the Low Countries look plausible.

  Hitler received Manstein privately in Berlin on the 17th of February 1940. The plan had reached Hitler's desk through Günther Blumentritt, Henning von Tresckow and Rudolf Schmundt. Hitler had been turning over similar thought experiments in recent weeks, and Manstein's fuller presentation confirmed them. He ordered the plan implemented, and OKH moved the German Schwerpunkt, the point of main effort, southward.

  Halder was eventually won over, but many detractors remained. Fedor von Bock, who led Army Group B and stood to lose the most materiel, thought the change an irresponsible gamble. Doubts also lingered inside Army Group A. Sodenstern, Blumentritt and Rundstedt himself wondered whether armored and motorized units should lead the advance, or whether infantry should attack first. Heinz Guderian of XIX Army Corps did not share that skepticism.

  Army Group A took command of 4th Army, 12th Army, 16th Army and Panzer Group Kleist, led by generals Kluge, List, Busch and Kleist respectively. That gave it four of the eight field-army level commands spread across the three army groups on the western frontier. Each had three army corps, which made twelve corps in total. Armor was concentrated here as well. Hoth's XV Corps, with the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions, went to 4th Army. The 1st, 2nd, 6th, 8th and 10th Panzer Divisions, split between Reinhardt's XXXXI Corps and Guderian's XIX Corps, went to Panzer Group Kleist, along with three motorized infantry divisions. In all, Army Group A held seven panzer divisions and three motorized infantry divisions. Army Group B received far fewer, and Army Group C received none. Most of the 42 available reserve divisions were also earmarked for Army Group A.

  Panzer Group Kleist alone carried 41,140 motorized vehicles, including 1,222 tanks, which was around half of the whole German tank arm's stock. Its 134,370 personnel were spread across two armored corps and one motorized infantry corps. It was by far the strongest single motorized formation ever used in warfare up to that point.

  The assignment was to break the Meuse river line between Sedan and Dinant and then drive for the Somme estuary. The 4th Army would cross the Meuse at Dinant and the 12th Army at Sedan. The 16th Army would shield the southern flank from Allied counterattack. The 2nd Army, held in reserve at first, would follow behind and cover ground the others vacated.

  Rundstedt then struck an unusual bargain over the panzer group. It could operate autonomously at first, but it would come under an infantry army's orders if that army caught up. The arrangement gave its commanders a strong reason to move fast and take risks, because speed was what protected their independence.

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• 3. Sickle Cut Through France

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  Army Group A pushed 45 divisions through territory that only 18 enemy divisions held. The 4th Army advanced on the right flank, from the Monschau sector along the Liège-Namur axis and toward Dinant. The 12th Army stood in the center, moving from the Prüm sector through northern Luxembourg toward Neufchâteau in Belgium and then the Meuse. On the left, the 16th Army aimed from the Trier-Merzig sector over Luxembourg City toward Longuyon. Army Group B under Bock and Army Group C under Leeb operated alongside, all under the joint supervision of OKH.

  Günther Blumentritt, one of the army group's staff officers, later called the opening days a "three-fold miracle". First, Allied air forces never struck the long tank columns that sat for hours in Ardennes traffic jams. Second, the Germans crossed the Meuse at Sedan with high speed and low casualties. Third, the tank divisions won a stunning victory in an advance toward the Channel coast that was at times more than reckless. It left the flank of the thrust dangerously uncovered against an Allied counterattack that never materialized.

  Georg-Hans Reinhardt of XXXXI Corps ignored a direct order from the army group and advanced out of his bridgehead at Monthermé. On the 14th of May, Guderian of XIX Corps was unhappy at the idea of using his tanks to guard a bridgehead. He wanted to exploit the momentary disarray behind the French lines. The pattern repeated in the early days of the campaign. The army group high command and the political leadership urged caution, and the corps and divisional commanders on the ground overruled them.

  Ewald von Kleist, leader of the panzer group, was caught between his superiors and his subordinates. He covered Reinhardt's independent action at first. On the 17th of May he had to give Guderian a firm holding order, because Hitler personally decreed a slowdown of the armored advance. The order stayed in place until the 19th of May.

  At 02:00 on the 20th of May, the 2nd Rifle Regiment of the 2nd Panzer Division reached Noyelles-sur-Mer, the first German force to arrive at the Channel coast. That left the northern sector of the French Army, the Belgian Army and the British Expeditionary Force cut off in the Low Countries. On the 21st of May, a British attack struck the exposed German flank at Arras and caused temporary panic among Army Group A's higher-ups. The Germans repelled it within hours.

  By the 24th of May, the Germans had encircled the Channel ports of Boulogne-sur-Mer and Calais. They stood just 15 km from Dunkirk, the last partly unobstructed port open to the trapped Allied forces, who began a rapid evacuation.

  That day produced the Haltebefehl, or halting order, which has drawn particular historical interest. The armored formations were told to stop outside Dunkirk and let infantry take the lead in the fighting there. Postwar observers on both the German and Western Allied sides were struck by the thought that the tanks might have inflicted horrific casualties on the tightly packed Allied infantry if higher command had not interfered.

  Hitler insisted on preserving the remaining tank forces. Kleist's report of the 23rd of May had put his panzer group's casualties at "over 50%". Hitler sided with the leadership of Army Group A and overruled Walther von Brauchitsch, the army's commander-in-chief, who had even tried to move the 4th Army out of Army Group A to force his own view. By coincidence, Hitler was at Army Group A headquarters on the 24th of May when the order was made.

  The halting order was revoked on the 26th of May, and Dunkirk was captured on the 4th of June. The British army abandoned much of its heavy equipment, including 475 tanks. Even so, some 340,000 British and Allied soldiers were evacuated.

  After Dunkirk, Army Group A turned southeast toward the Vosges mountains and the France-Switzerland border. In doing so it encircled the static French forces along the Maginot Line.

  On the 10th of October 1940, Army Group A became the first army group whose commander held the title Supreme Commander in the West, which put it in charge of the military side of the German occupation of France. That duty passed to Army Group D on the 15th of April 1941. By then, on the 1st of April, Army Group A had been repurposed for deployment to German-occupied Poland. It received the cover name Section Staff Winter, later changed to Section Staff Silesia, while preparing for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. On the 22nd of June 1941, the day that offensive began, the staff was renamed Army Group South, and the first deployment ended. Cover names would soon matter again, because the next Army Group A took shape in 1942 under the name Staff Anton.

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• 4. Edelweiss in the Caucasus

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  Staff Anton was the cover name of an army group headquarters formed in the German homeland on the 24th of April 1942. On the 22nd of May it became Coastal Staff Azov. On the 7th of July 1942, it emerged as the second Army Group A, when Army Group South was split during Case Blue, the German summer offensive. Adolf Hitler hoped that dividing the thrust in two would multiply the gains already won. Army Group B took the northern sector and the drive to the Volga that would end at Stalingrad. Army Group A, under Wilhelm List, took the southern sector and the advance into the Caucasus.

  On the 23rd of July, the day German forces captured Rostov-on-Don, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 45. It made the split permanent and fixed each group's orders. Army Group A received Operation Edelweiss, called Unternehmen Edelweiß in German. The plan was to destroy the Soviet forces that had survived the fighting at Rostov, seize the Soviet Black Sea coast, and deny the Black Sea Fleet its bases. The ultimate objective was Batumi, on the Soviet-Turkish border.

  Army Group B's orders pointed the other way. It was to hold the Don, reach the Volga at Stalingrad, capture the city, and then advance to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. The aim was a defensive line running from the Don through Stalingrad and the Volga to Astrakhan. Two diverging attacks strained the Luftwaffe, whose overstretched formations now had to cover two army groups that tended to drift further apart rather than closer.

  On the 1st of August 1942, Army Group A fielded the 1st Panzer Army under von Kleist, the 17th Army under Ruoff and the 3rd Romanian Army under Dumitrescu. Elements of Luftflotte 4, led by von Richthofen, gave air support. The 1st Panzer Army had four corps, three of them panzer corps. The 17th Army had three corps, and the Romanian army had two. That made nine army corps of German or Romanian nationality.

  On the 26th of August, List sent Hitler an urgent warning that demanded a choice. Either his army group would receive immediate reinforcement, or it would prepare winter positions. Hitler was furious. On the 7th of September he sent Alfred Jodl to List's headquarters, hoping Jodl would find that List had failed in his duties. Jodl instead reported a faithful and conscientious commander. Hitler raged at Jodl and then at List, and dismissed List on the 9th of September. He named no successor and took command of Army Group A himself, holding it until the 22nd of November.

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• 5. Kuban Bridgehead

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  Soviet Operation Uranus had encircled parts of Army Group B in the Stalingrad cauldron, and Army Group A, along with Army Group Don, became the next target of intensive Soviet planning. Hitler gave up direct command and named Ewald von Kleist, until then head of the 1st Panzer Army, to lead Army Group A. Eberhard von Mackensen took over Kleist's army.

  By December 1942, high-ranking German officers badly wanted to pull Army Group A, still partly south of the Terek river, back to the Don and more defensible ground. Hitler resisted at first. The partial collapse of the central sectors of Army Group B that month made withdrawal critically urgent, and Kurt Zeitzler was finally allowed to order the retreat. Hitler still intervened and forbade a full retreat behind the Don. The 1st Panzer Army had to split. A northern segment crossed the Don at Rostov, and a southern segment held the Taman Peninsula, creating the Kuban bridgehead.

  A reorganization on the 27th of January 1943 followed. Army Group A handed the northern group of the 1st Panzer Army, including the army's command, and four more divisions to Army Group Don. The southern group in the Kuban was detached and added to the 17th Army. Army Group A was now to hold the Kuban bridgehead and defend Crimea. Hitler cherished the idea of holding on long enough to launch a major offensive in the summer of 1943 and retake the Maykop oil fields. He also feared that losing the Black Sea coast might push neutral Turkey, and Germany's allies Bulgaria and Romania, to rethink their alignments. The Luftwaffe worried about losing its well-developed air strips. The leaders of Army Group A and Army Group Don would have preferred to give up the Kuban outright and strengthen the line further north to protect the Donbas.

  In early February 1943, the army group completed its withdrawal into the bridgehead defenses, nicknamed the Goth's head position, or Gotenkopf-Stellung. About 20 divisions with around 400,000 troops were gathered in the Kuban and Crimea. With Kriegsmarine landing craft and army engineer boats, the Germans began moving troops not urgently needed toward Crimea, partly to cut supply consumption. They brought 105,000 persons, 45,000 horses, 7,000 motor vehicles and 12,000 horse-drawn vehicles to safety without major casualties.

  The same craft then supplied the bridgehead across the Kerch Strait. The initial requirement of 1,500 tons of supplies per day soon rose to 4,000 tons. Between March and August 1943, the Germans shipped 337,353 tons of supplies, 6,365 soldiers, 2,566 horses, 1,099 motor vehicles, 534 horse-drawn vehicles and 197 heavy guns from Crimea to the Kuban. Soviet air forces bombarded these shipments constantly.

  On the 4th of February, Soviet amphibious landings hit Novorossiysk. The 83rd Naval Rifle Brigade, the 255th Naval Rifle Brigade and the 165th Rifle Brigade were sent to Myskhako, cut off by the sea and the city from their own lines. They surprised the German garrison, roughly a third of the 73rd Infantry Division. The poorly chosen landing ground, however, kept the Soviets from seizing any territory right away.

  Roughly 200,000 Axis soldiers defended the bridgehead against about 350,000 Soviet troops of the North Caucasus Front, which was headquartered at Krasnodar and fielded five field armies. Army Group A used four corps there. They were V Army Corps under Wilhelm Wetzel, XXXXIV Army Corps, XXXXIX Mountain Corps and the Romanian Cavalry Corps, for six German and two Romanian divisions. The 1st Air Corps gave air support from late March, which roughly evened the aerial balance.

  The first Soviet attack came on the 4th of April, when the 56th Army struck the German XXXXIV Corps. Bad weather and a lack of air support stopped it. After Georgy Zhukov personally inspected the field armies, he ordered a pause in offensive operations on the 17th of April. Attacks resumed on the 27th of April and again failed to achieve much. On the 4th of April the line had run east of Kurchanskaya, Kiyevskoye, Krymskaya and Novorossiysk. By the 19th of September, the Germans had abandoned all of those towns.

  In mid-September, Army Group A also took charge of the 6th Army, which was to secure the lower Dnieper river and block advances by the Southern Front. By the 4th of October, the army group held just two field armies, the 6th and 17th, with five corps. Those forces were entirely insufficient, and Soviet air superiority hampered their preparations. Reluctance to pull troops out of the Black Sea bridgeheads left the mainland defenses in peril. At 02:00 on the 9th of October 1943, the evacuation of the 17th Army from the Kuban was complete.

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• 6. Fortress Crimea

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  In late 1943, the 17th Army defended Crimea with only one and a half German divisions and seven Romanian ones. In Nazi parlance the peninsula was Fortress Crimea. Planners valued it as a base for air power and for control of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It also gave the weakened Romanian army a role to play. Forces freed by the Kuban evacuation went straight to the Ukrainian mainland, where the Red Army was pressing hard.

  In the second half of October, the 6th Army was pushed out of the Wotan-Stellung defensive position. Erwin Jaenecke, commander of the 17th Army, decided on his own to prepare an evacuation of the peninsula, known as Operation Michael. Army Group A and OKH both favored the plan. Hitler vetoed it, and on the 25th of October he ordered Crimea held. OKH told the 17th Army to defend the peninsula even if the land connection to Axis forces were cut.

  Soviet armored spearheads reached the Isthmus of Perekop on the 28th of October, where they were briefly halted. By the 1st of November, the link between the 6th and 17th Armies was lost, and the 17th Army was trapped on the peninsula.

  Ion Antonescu, the autocrat of Romania, disagreed with Hitler. Romanian troops made up the majority of the 17th Army, and Antonescu doubted that the isolated peninsula could be held. He feared losses like those Romania had suffered at Stalingrad, which he believed his government could not politically sustain. On the 29th of October, Hitler promised him that the peninsula would be held and that more German battalions would arrive by land, sea and air. These promises were in reality completely unrealistic. Karl Dönitz of the Kriegsmarine had backed Hitler on the 27th, estimating that supplying the army by sea was possible. His army colleague Kurt Zeitzler, who thought the position untenable, was annoyed.

  On the 21st of November, Army Group A told the 17th Army that Hitler still meant to restore the connection, though neither OKH nor the army group could say when. Hans Röttiger added his own prediction that relief would not come soon. In January 1944, Erich von Manstein of Army Group South demanded the evacuation of the Nikopol bridgehead. That removed the starting point from which any relief of Crimea would have been launched. Manstein also wanted the 17th Army evacuated and put back into the mainland line. Hitler rejected this and insisted on defending Crimea.

  Fighting did go on inside the peninsula's approaches. In late October 1943, the Soviet 51st Army probed the Perekop isthmus, defended by XXXXIX Mountain Corps. An attack across Syvash bay by the 4th Ukrainian Front in early November was mostly deflected. In early November, the Soviets also crossed the Strait of Kerch and set up bridgeheads north and south of Eltigen. After a weeks-long Kriegsmarine blockade of the landing forces, a German-Romanian counter-thrust crushed them and retook the bridgeheads within three days.

  Over the winter of 1943-44, the 17th Army built defenses around the whole coastline. XXXXIX Mountain Corps took the Perekop isthmus and the western shore. The Romanian 1st Mountain Corps faced Soviet partisans in the southern mountains, and V Corps was stationed on the Kerch peninsula against any landing from the east. The sole reserve was the Mountain Regiment Crimea, or Gebirgsjägerregiment Krim. Its armored strength was 45 assault guns, supported in anti-tank work by elements of the 9th Flak Division.

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• 7. Retreat Through Ukraine

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  The Nikopol ore area, with its manganese production, loomed large in Hitler's strategic thinking, even though output there had been idle for weeks because of the nearby fighting. In December 1943 and January 1944, the Romanian 3rd Army joined Army Group A to help the 6th Army defend it. On the 30th of January 1944, the 3rd Ukrainian Front launched the Nikopol-Krivoi Rog offensive. The first blow east of Krivoi Rog was a diversion, and the main attack hit Apostolove two days later. The 6th Army was formally reattached to Army Group A, which pushed for an urgent withdrawal of all its forces to the Kamenka river line.

  The Soviet 46th Army captured Apostolove on the 5th of February. Kleist ordered a counterattack by IV Corps on the 8th of February, but Soviet ground and air superiority and bad weather made it ineffective. On the 10th of February, Army Group A asked OKH for a large retreat to the Bug-Inhul position, which would shorten the front from 320 km to 200 km and free three or four divisions for reserve. While the headquarters at Mykolaiv awaited an answer, the Soviets launched another two-pronged attack against Krivoi Rog, aiming to trap LVII Panzer Corps.

  A hastily assembled formation called Group Schörner, built under Ferdinand Schörner from four corps, escaped annihilation but lost most of its heavy equipment. It numbered 10 infantry divisions, a Jäger division and a mountain division. On the 21st of February, Kleist let the 6th Army abandon Krivoi Rog. Hitler formally permitted the 6th Army's withdrawal on the 22nd of February. On the 26th, LII Army Corps joined the army group, which added 110 km to its front. Hitler's interventions again blocked a necessary withdrawal, since LII Corps was ordered to stand southeast of Kirovograd.

  Stavka was disappointed with the Soviet winter operations of 1943-44. The Red Army had pushed the Germans off the Dniepr line and retaken the Krivoi Rog-Nikopol sector, but it had not destroyed Army Groups South and A or reconquered all of Soviet Ukraine. In mid-February, Stavka cut the goals of the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts. Rodion Malinovsky's 3rd Ukrainian Front was now to breach the lower Inhulets river line and take Mykolaiv, where Army Group A had its headquarters. The 4th Ukrainian Front was pulled off the mainland to retake Crimea.

  The rasputitsa mud season brought a short lull. On the 3rd of March, the Red Army resumed the attack. The German 6th Army stood exposed, with only its left wing west of the Inhul. By the 7th of March, Soviet troops were just outside Novyi Buh, which the Germans abandoned on the 8th. The same day, Hitler ordered the 6th Army "to hold and to close the gap". Army Group A had wanted to pull back to a shorter, more compact line. The Soviet 8th Guards Army turned southwest and dashed for the Dnieper-Bug estuary, threatening four corps still far to the east. Hitler accepted a retreat only on the 9th of March, too late for the Germans to build preliminary defenses.

  On the 11th of March, the vanguard of the 8th Guards Army reached Barmasovo and blocked the retreat route of most of the 6th Army. Malinovsky had split his thrust and left the 8th Guards Army alone in that sector, which saved the Germans. With concentrated air support from 1st Air Corps, the southern group of the 6th Army broke the army's flank protection and reached the Mykolaiv-Trikati bridgehead and the Bug by mid-March. The northern group, Corps Group Kirchner, reached a line 50 km east of the Bug.

  Politics now collided with geography. The Red Army's crossing of the Bug brought civil and military control of Romania's Transnistria Governorate, run by Gheorghe Potopeanu for Ion Antonescu, under Army Group A. That effectively ended Romanian rule across the Dniestr. On the 19th of March, Kleist and Manstein met Hitler at Obersalzberg and asked for Army Group A to withdraw to the Dniestr. Hitler refused. On the 24th of March, Karl-Adolf Hollidt of the 6th Army threatened to order the withdrawal himself, and Army Group A decreed it on the 25th. Kleist also went against OKH and put the 8th Army under his own army group to coordinate the front. Hitler surprised both generals by accepting the withdrawal from the Bug with minimal resistance, though he still insisted on keeping the 17th Army in Crimea.

  The withdrawal began on the 28th of March. Army Group A now held three German and two Romanian armies, after the Romanian 4th Army joined on the 26th. Its left wing became Army Group Wöhler, under Otto Wöhler of the 8th Army, which was in turn subordinated to the Romanian 3rd Army as Army Detachment Dumitrescu. This defied military logic, because the German 6th Army sat in the line between the Romanian 3rd Army and Wöhler's group. General Petre Dumitrescu had to oversee not only his own army but also a far-off group on the opposite flank.

  Hopes for a solid line along the Dniestr and Iasi collapsed. Continuous attacks by the 46th Army damaged the 6th Army's withdrawal, and the German XXIX Corps was split in two by a Soviet advance. Odesa was hurriedly abandoned from the 9th of April. By the 14th of April the whole line stood on the west bank of the Dniestr, by which time Army Group A had already ceased to exist under that name.

  On the 2nd of April 1944, Hitler decreed the renaming of several army groups. Army Group A became Army Group South Ukraine on the 5th of April, and its northern neighbor, Army Group South, became Army Group North Ukraine. The names were chosen for politics rather than geography. Both groups had been pushed out of most of Ukraine, so the labels signalled Hitler's willingness to reconquer it. On the 8th of April, the 4th Ukrainian Front began its Crimean offensive, and the 17th Army, for so long a core formation of the former Army Group A, came under heavy attack.

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• 8. The Last Army Group A

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  Army Group North Ukraine received the name Army Group A on the 23rd of September 1944, in the south of German-occupied Poland and in the Carpathian Mountains. Wolf-Dietrich von Xylander became its chief of staff on the 28th of September. After the Red Army broke out of the Sandomierz bridgehead and began the Vistula-Oder offensive in early January 1945, the army group started a general withdrawal.

  On the 1st of January 1945, Army Group A commanded 93,075 infantrymen along a front of 700 km, or about 133 men per kilometer. That count left out the temporarily attached 1st Hungarian Army. In the line stood 29 German infantry divisions, 2 German autonomous brigades and 3 Hungarian infantry divisions. The reserve held 5.5 German mobile divisions, a Jäger division and two Hungarian divisions. The army group also had 1,816 artillery guns, 318 combat-ready tanks, 616 assault guns and 793 anti-tank cannons. Soviet armored vehicles outnumbered German ones along every segment of the front. The 1st Panzer Army held 163 km of the line, the 17th Army 128 km, the 4th Panzer Army 187 km and the 9th Army 222 km.

  On the 10th of January 1945, the Luftwaffe officer Robert Ritter von Greim estimated the air strength facing Army Groups Center and A at 300 German planes against 10,500 Allied planes. That was a ratio of 35 to 1.

  At 04:00 on the 12th of January, the Red Army launched its major winter offensive from the Baranow bridgehead. The 1st Ukrainian Front and the 4th Ukrainian Front struck along the whole line. The 1st Baltic Front, 2nd Byelorussian Front and 3rd Byelorussian Front joined on the 13th of January with a major attack against East Prussia, and the 1st Byelorussian Front followed in the center on the 14th. The staff of Army Group A had broad strategic information about Soviet avenues of attack but lacked tactical specifics about individual Soviet divisions and corps. The Polish Home Army added to the trouble by supporting the Soviet advance with partisan activity behind German lines. German counterattacks by the Jagdpanzers and assault guns of XXXXVIII Panzer Corps were repelled by elite Soviet armored formations, including the 3rd Guards Tank Army, the 4th Guards Tank Army, the 31st Tank Corps and the 4th Guards Tank Corps.

  On the 17th of January, the Soviet leadership reacted to the collapse of Army Group A, which surprised even the Soviets. It ordered the 1st Byelorussian Front to reach the line Bromberg-Posen by the 4th of February. The 1st Ukrainian Front was given Breslau as a target and told to reach the Oder and form bridgeheads on its west bank by the 30th of January. The 1st Ukrainian Front crossed the prewar German border into Silesia on the 19th of January and reached the Oder on the 22nd. The 1st Byelorussian Front captured Bromberg the next day.

  Hitler answered the disaster on the Vistula with familiar habits, replacing commanders and renaming army groups. Army Group Vistula was ordered into existence on the 21st of January and given to Heinrich Himmler. It was to cover the northern sector of the mainland front and stop a Soviet breakthrough toward Danzig and Posen. On the 25th of January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups at once. Army Group A became the new Army Group Center, and the old Army Group Center became Army Group North. The old Army Group North, trapped in the Courland Pocket, became Army Group Courland.

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