4th Army (Wehrmacht)

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Troop association badge of the 4th Army

The 4th Army / Army High Command 4 (AOK 4) was a major unit of the Army of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War . She was the high command of changing army corps and numerous special troops.

history

The 4th Army was formed on August 1, 1939 from Army Group Command 6 in Hanover. Commander-in-chief was Artillery General Günther von Kluge . The first combat operations of the 4th Army took place during the attack on Poland as part of Army Group North under Colonel General Fedor von Bock . The 4th Army consisted of the II. And III. Army Corps , each with two infantry divisions, the XIX. Army corps with two motorized and one tank divisions , the I. Grenzschutzkorps with one infantry division and two infantry divisions as reserves. The army had orders to take the Polish Corridor and in this way create a connection between East Prussia and the rest of the German Empire. Part of the 4th Army advanced further south to Pomerania and allied with other German troops near Warsaw .

During the western campaign , the 4th Army advanced as part of Army Group A under Colonel General Gerd von Rundstedt from the Rhineland to Belgium . Together with other German armies, the 4th Army broke the Dijle Line and completed the containment of the Allied forces in the Battle of Dunkirk . Major General Erwin Rommel , then under Kluge, contributed with the 7th Panzer Division to its victories. Kluge, to date Colonel General, was appointed Field Marshal General on July 19, 1940, along with twelve others .

At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the 4th Army was subordinated to Bock's Army Group Center . Their first goal was to encircle as many Soviet troops as possible in the Minsk area . It succeeded in encircling and destroying two Soviet armies. The 4th Army then took part in the Battle of Smolensk , in which numerous Soviet troops were also destroyed. These successes led, among other things, to the assumption that the Soviet Union had been defeated. However, poor road conditions meant that the Army Group was stopped and with it the 4th Army.

Division of the 4th Army on December 1, 1941

During the Battle of Moscow in December 1941, she came within a few kilometers of the city before Soviet counterattacks forced her to retreat. On December 19, 1941, Kluge submitted his replacement together with von Bock and Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch . Kluge was replaced by General of the Mountain Troop Ludwig Kübler .

After the start of Operation Blau , the 4th Army and the entire Central Army Group did not experience any major fighting because most of the troops had been concentrated in the south. However, when Army Group Center was in retreat along the whole line from 1943, the 4th Army also had to relocate its troops and during the autumn and winter of 1943/44 stood in constant defensive battles at or near the pant production on the Dnieper near Orsha (" Runway battles "). During the retreat and the following months, the Soviet Western Front attacked the 4th Army in eleven successive battles. Due to tactical inadequacies on the part of the Soviets and good leadership by Heinrici, there were enormous losses on the part of the Red Army. The unsuccessful attacks cost the Red Army more than 530,000 soldiers, the losses of the 4th Army amounted to "only" 35,000 men, 10,000 of them dead and missing.

As the only major unit of the Wehrmacht, the 4th Army managed to hold its positions through the winter and early summer of 1944. During the Soviet operation Bagration , this army unit was destroyed in the Kesselschlacht near Minsk. Most of the commanders were either captured or killed by the Soviets. The 4th Army therefore had to be reorganized in July and August 1944 under the leadership of General der Infanterie Friedrich Hoßbach .

Army organization on January 12, 1945

  • Parachute Panzer Corps Hermann Göring , Major General Schmalz , with 21st and 61st Infantry Divisions and Parachute Panzer Division 2 Hermann Göring
  • XXXXI. Panzer Corps , General of the Artillery Weidling , with 28th Jäger, 50th, 170th and 367th Infantry Divisions
  • VI. Army Corps , General of the Infantry Großmann with 541st and 558th Volksgrenadier Divisions as well as 131st Infantry Division and Police Group Hannibal
  • LV. Army Corps , General of the Infantry Herrlein with 203rd Infantry and 562nd and 547th Volksgrenadier Divisions
  • 23rd Infantry Division (security area Thorn)
  • Parachute Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring (from January 15th on transport)

During the Battle of East Prussia in early 1945, most of the army in East Prussia was cut off, parts of the trapped troops could be evacuated across the Baltic Sea to Pomerania, where they were subordinated to the East Prussian army . The 4th Army was disbanded on April 7, 1945, and its staff later became the 21st Army . The last in command was General of the Infantry Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller .

Twelve files, hundreds of pages of orders and reports, soberly typed or by hand, of the 4th Army, which defended Heiligenbeil in 1945 , were found in a forest near the city in 2004 and taken to a Moscow military archive.

Commander in chief

See also

literature

  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 2. The Land Forces 1–5 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1973, ISBN 3-7648-0871-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The inferno of the highway battles in Russia, welt.de, accessed on February 13, 2014
  2. ↑ Koenigsberger Express The No Man's Land reveals a secret. Koenigsberger Express, Issue 7, 2004