Army Group North

• 1. Introduction

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  Heeresgruppe Nord, known in English as Army Group North, was not one military formation but three. During World War II the Wehrmacht gave that name to three separate army groups, and each one fought a different campaign in a different landscape. A separate body, the Army Group North Rear Area, organized operations behind the front lines. How does a single name pass between three formations? Who commanded them, and what did they fight for? And what became of the last Army Group North as the war in Europe closed in around East Prussia?

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• 2. Passing the Name

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  The staff of the first Army Group North was formally assembled on the 2nd of September 1939. It was built from the headquarters of 2nd Army, which had been activated only days earlier, on the 26th of August. Fedor von Bock, the commanding general of 2nd Army, became the first commanding general of the new group. That first formation did not keep its name. It was later renamed Army Group B.

  The name returned on the 22nd of June 1941. On that day the second Army Group North was created from the former Army Group C. This second formation served in the northern sector of the Eastern Front from 1941 until January 1945. Its sector would eventually shrink until another name replaced it entirely.

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• 3. Poland, 1939

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  On the morning of the 1st of September 1939, 3rd Army moved out of East Prussia and pushed south toward central Poland. Georg von Küchler commanded it. Farther west, Günther von Kluge's 4th Army attacked from Pomerania into the Danzig Corridor. Bock's army group supervised these two armies. It also held four divisions in reserve: the 10th Panzer Division and the 73rd, 206th and 208th Infantry Divisions.

  The 3rd Army fought at Grudziądz, Mława, Różan, Łomża, Wizna and Brześć Litewski. The 4th Army's battles included Tuchola Forest, Westerplatte, Hel and Gdynia.

  Heinz Guderian led XIX Army Corps inside Kluge's army, where the 3rd Panzer Division was commanded by Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg. In Küchler's army, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst led XXI Army Corps, and Werner Kempf led Panzer Division Kempf. That campaign was the name's first use. The next one would come with preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union.

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• 4. Objective Leningrad

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  Leningrad was the strategic goal handed to Army Group North for Operation Barbarossa. Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb commanded the group, and it staged in East Prussia. Its operational objectives were the territories of the Baltic republics. It was also to secure the northern flank of Army Group Centre in northern Russia, between the Western Dvina River and the Daugavpils-Kholm boundary.

  Three formations carried the assignment. The 18th Army was to move from Koenigsberg toward Ventspils and Jelgava. The 4th Panzer Group aimed at Pskov. The 16th Army was directed at Kaunas and Daugavpils. Two signals regiments, numbered 537 and 639, supported the group, with the second held as a following echelon.

  The army group deployed into Lithuania and northern Belorussia. It reached all of its operational objectives, Tallinn among them, despite stubborn Red Army resistance. Soviet counter-offensives such as the Battle of Raseiniai failed to stop it. The army group approached Leningrad, and the Siege of Leningrad began. The Baltic states were overrun, yet the siege dragged on until 1944, when the Red Army's Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive lifted it.

  In September 1941 a foreign unit joined the group's order of battle. It was the Spanish Blue Division.

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• 5. Pockets and Counterattacks

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  On the 17th of January 1942, Georg von Küchler took over as commander in chief. He was the same officer who had led 3rd Army in Poland. The record of the group's campaign in northern Russia is mostly a list of named fights, and the names tell their own story.

  In October 1941 the group's composition was the 16th and 18th Armies. Nevsky Pyatachok and Operation Nordlicht appear under that offensive phase. The later defensive phase includes the Demyansk Pocket, the Kholm Pocket, the Soviet Toropets-Kholm Operation, the Battle of Velikiye Luki and the Battle of Krasny Bor.

  The force changed shape along the way. By September 1942 it comprised the 11th, 16th and 18th Armies. By December 1942 the 11th Army was gone, leaving only the 16th and 18th. The next change at the top came in January 1944, and it began a rapid run of replacements.

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• 6. Four Commanders in 1944

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  Field Marshal Walter Model became commander in chief on the 9th of January 1944. He held the post for less than three months. On the 31st of March 1944, Generaloberst Georg Lindemann replaced him.

  Generaloberst Johannes Frießner took command on the 4th of July 1944. Just under three weeks later, on the 23rd of July 1944, Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner followed him. Four different men led the army group within a single year.

  The fighting that year ran through the Baltic region. In March 1944 the group consisted of Army Detachment Narwa, the 16th Army and the 18th Army. The Battle of Narva split into two parts, the fight for the Narva bridgehead and the Battle of Tannenberg Line. Combat in southern Estonia followed.

  The Soviet Baltic Offensive then brought the Battle of Porkuni, the Battle of Vilnius and the Battle of Memel. By its end, the group was close to being cut off in Latvia.

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• 7. Courland Cauldron

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  On the 25th of January 1945, Hitler renamed three army groups at once. Army Group North became Army Group Courland. The new name suited a force that had been isolated from Army Group Centre and trapped in Courland, in Latvia. Army Group Centre took the name Army Group North, and Army Group A became Army Group Centre.

  The cost of the trap is recorded in figures. Between January and February 1945, Army Group North sustained 213,000 casualties. Of those, 30,000 were dead, 126,000 were wounded and 57,000 were missing.

  The renaming left the northern name attached to a different army, one that had not been in the Baltic at all. That army had been defending the northernmost sector of the contiguous Eastern Front.

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• 8. The End in East Prussia

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  Generaloberst Dr. Lothar Rendulic became commander in chief on the 27th of January 1945. The third Army Group North, formed from the old Army Group Centre, was driven into an ever smaller pocket around Königsberg in East Prussia. By February 1945 its composition was Army Detachment Samland and the 4th Army. Its battles included the Soviet East Prussian Offensive, the Battle of Königsberg, the Heiligenbeil pocket, the Soviet East Pomeranian Offensive and the Battle of Kolberg.

  Walter Weiß took command on the 12th of March 1945. The army group was dissolved on the 2nd of April 1945, and its staff formed the headquarters of 12th Army.

  Königsberg fell to the Red Army on the 9th of April 1945, a week after the dissolution. Remnants of the group's units kept resisting on the Heiligenbeil and Danzig beachheads until the end of the war in Europe.

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