Army Group Centre
army group of the German Army
Army Group Centre (German: Heeresgruppe Mitte) was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created during the planning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, as one of the three German Army formations assigned to the invasion.
After Army Group North was trapped in the Courland Pocket in mid-1944, it was renamed Army Group Courland and the first Army Group Centre was renamed "Army Group North". The second iteration of Army Group Centre was formed by the redesignation of Army Group A as the replacement for the first Army Group Centre.
Formation and command
The army group was officially created by Adolf Hitler when he issued Führer Directive 21 on 18 December 1940, ordering German forces to prepare for an attack on Soviet Russia in 1941. The first commanding officer of Army Group Centre was Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, who would lead it until he was relieved on 18 December 1941 after the failure of the Battle of Moscow and was replaced by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge.
Günther von Kluge would remain the army group's commander until he was injured in October 1943 and replaced by Field Marshal Ernst Busch, who would then be replaced by Field Marshal Walter Model in June 1944. When Model was transferred to the Western Front in August 1944, he was replaced by Ferdinand Schörner, who would command the army group until his desertion in May 1945 after Germany surrendered to the Allies.
Order of battle at formation
Campaign and operational history
Operation Barbarossa
On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany and its Axis allies launched their offensive into the Soviet Union. Their armies, totalling under four million men, were to advance in three directions eastward: towards Leningrad, Moscow, and Ukraine respectively. Army Group Centre's initial strategic goal was for blitzkrieg movement short of Moscow, stop, halve its forces, and assist in pincer movements into Leningrad and Ukraine, dependent upon the orders given, based on successes from Army Groups North and South.
The public source identifies “Army Group Centre” as army group of the German Army. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Army, Group and Centre.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q158260. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1940, 1941 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Army Group Centre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.