The Army was formed in September 1939, in the
Moscow Military District, and then deployed to the Western Special Military District. During the
Soviet invasion of Poland it consisted, according to Steven Zaloga, of the
11th Rifle Corps (
6th,
33rd, and
121st RD); the
16th Rifle Corps (
8th,
52nd, and
55th Rifle Divisions); and the
3rd Rifle Corps (in reserve) (33 and 113 RDs), under General
Ivan Zakharkin. On 22 June 1941, at the onset of
Operation Barbarossa, the Army was part of the
Soviet Western Front. It consisted of the
1st Rifle Corps (
2nd and
8th Rifle Divisions);
5th Rifle Corps (including
13th,
86th, and
113th Rifle Divisions); 6th Cavalry Corps (
6th and
36th Cavalry Divisions) and
6th and 13th
Mechanised Corps, under General K.D. Golubev. It was encircled by German forces in June 1941 and largely destroyed. By late June, the German
Army Group Centre surrounded the 3rd, 4th and the 10th Armies in the
Battle of Białystok–Minsk. In the end, all the formations and units of the 10th Army were defeated. On 30 June, while trying to cross the highway Minsk-Baranovichi, the army headquarters was destroyed, coming out of the remnants of the environment were addressed by fitting of the 4th Army. The headquarters was officially disbanded on 5 July 1941. The commander of the 10th Army, Major General
KD Golubev, and the army artillery commander, Major General M. Barsukov, escaping from the encirclement in a consolidated group with the August 86th Border Detachment of the NKVD, in late July Golubev was appointed commander of
13th Army, which participated in the
Battle of Smolensk. It was formed three times in 1941, next in October in the
Southern Front, but its formation 'was halted due to severe battle conditions'. It was then reformed in November 1941 in the
Volga region, with nine divisions, seven of which were new formations. Soviet official websites give the nine divisions as the
322nd,
323rd,
324th,
325th,
326th,
328th and
330th Rifle, and
57th &
75th Cavalry, thus including two cavalry divisions. Nine of these divisions had been formed in the space of three weeks from the reserve of the
Moscow Military District and been trained for 12 hours a day. General Lieutenant
Filipp Golikov took command. Golikov's 1967 book describes how the army finished its concentration in the
Penza area on 8 November 1941, after which 15 days were devoted to combat training and 5 days to construction of living quarters and other facilities. There were shortages of everything including warm winter clothing. The majority of the troops were between 30 and 40 years of age and, in some cases, up to 65% of the men had no military training. Initially part of the
Reserve of the Supreme High Command (
Stavka Reserve), it was reassigned to the
Western Front for the
Battle of Moscow, after moving up to Ryazan attacking on the morning of 6 December 1941. In 1942, it continued its defensive operations on the central axis, and in 1943 took part in the
second Battle of Smolensk. The 10th Army headquarters with associated units was withdrawn from the Western Front to the Stavka Reserve in early April (General Staff's directive of 7.04.44). From 10 April, it was moved to Roslavl, where it was to take control of the 81st and 103rd Rifle Corps (total 5 divisions). That same month, the army was disbanded and its headquarters formed the basis of Headquarters
2nd Belorussian Front while its formations were reassigned to the
49th Army. == Commanders ==