Panzer Group Kleist was the first operational formation of several Panzer corps in the Wehrmacht. Created for the
Battle of France on 1 March 1940; it was named after its commander
Ewald von Kleist. Panzer Group Kleist played an important role in the
Battle of Belgium. Panzer corps of the Group broke through the
Ardennes and reached the sea, forming a huge pocket, containing several Belgian, British, and French armies. When
the armistice was signed, the Group was deployed in
occupied France, being renamed to Panzer Group 1 (
Panzergruppe 1) in November. In April 1941, Panzer Group 1 took part in the
Balkans campaign (invasion of
Yugoslavia and
Greece) as part of Field Marshal
Maximilian von Weichs's
Second Army.
1941 In May 1941 Panzer Group 1 was attached to Field Marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt's
Army Group South at the beginning of
Operation Barbarossa. At the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Panzer Group 1 included the III, XIV and XLVIII Army Corps (motorized) with five
panzer divisions and four motorized divisions (two of them SS) equipped with 799 tanks. Panzer Group 1 served on the southern sector of the
Eastern Front against the
Red Army and was involved the
Battle of Brody which involved as many as 3,000 Red Army tanks. The units of the Group closed the
encirclement around the Soviet armies
near Uman and
near Kiev. After the fall of
Kiev Panzer Group 1 was enlarged to become the
1st Panzer Army (on October 6, 1941) with Kleist still in command. The army captured
Rostov, but was
forced to retreat eight days later.
1942 In January 1942, Army Group Kleist, which consisted of the First Panzer Army along with the
Seventeenth Army, was formed with its namesake, Kleist, in command. Army Group Kleist played a major role in repulsing the
Red Army attack in the
Second Battle of Kharkov in May 1942. Army Group Kleist was disbanded that month. The First Panzer Army, still under Kleist, which had been attached to
Army Group South earlier, became part of
Army Group A under Field Marshal
Wilhelm List. Army Group A was to lead the thrust into the
Caucasus during
Operation Blue and capture
Grozny and the
Baku (current capital of
Azerbaijan) oilfields. The First Panzer Army was to spearhead the attack.
Rostov,
Maykop,
Krasnodar and the
Kuban region were captured. In September 1942, the offensive by Army Group A stalled in the Caucasus and List was sacked. After
Adolf Hitler briefly took personal control of Army Group A, he appointed Kleist to the command on 22 November 1942. As Kleist took over,
Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen took the reins of the First Panzer Army. In December 1942, as the German
6th Army was being crushed in the
Battle of Stalingrad, the
Red Army launched an offensive against Army Group A. The First Panzer Army was ordered to retreat through Rostov in January 1943, before the Soviet forces could cut it off in the
Kuban. By February 1943, the army had been withdrawn west of the
Don River and Kleist withdrew the remains of his forces from Caucasus into the
Kuban, east of the
Strait of Kerch.
1943 In January 1943, von Mackensen's First Panzer Army became attached to
Army Group Don under Field Marshal
Erich von Manstein. In February, von Manstein redeployed the First Panzer Army together with the
Fourth Panzer Army to counter-attack the Soviet breakthrough from the
Battle of Stalingrad. The First Panzer Army contributed to the success of the
Third Battle of Kharkov in March 1943. In July 1943, the Army, with the help of the
XXIV Panzer Corps, repelled the
Soviet Izyum-Barvenkovo Offensive. In October 1943 Soviet forces crossed the
Dnieper River between
Dnipropetrovsk and
Kremenchug. The First Panzer Army counter-attacked along with the
8th Army, but failed to dislodge the Soviet forces. At the end of March, as the
Red Army closed in on
Kiev, von Mackensen was replaced by
Colonel-General Hans-Valentin Hube.
1944 The First Panzer Army remained attached to
Army Group South from March 1943 to July 1944. By that time Wehrmacht troops had been pulled out from
Ukraine. In March 1944, crisis hit the First Panzer Army as it was encircled by two Soviet fronts in the Battle of
Kamenets-Podolsky pocket. A successful breakthrough was made, saving most of the manpower but losing the heavy equipment. That same month Hitler, who insisted his armies
fight an inflexible defense to the last man, dismissed von Manstein. In October 1941, when the First Panzer Army had been formed, it was a large army consisting of four
corps, several
infantry,
panzer,
motorized,
mountain, and
SS divisions, along with a Romanian army and some Italian, Romanian,
Hungarian, and Slovak divisions. By the spring of 1944, the First Panzer Army had shrunk considerably, consisting of only three corps, two infantry, four panzer, and one SS division. After July 1944 it retreated from
Ukraine and
Poland before fighting with
Army Group A in Slovakia (
Battle of the Dukla Pass).
1945 During its existence, from October 1941 to May 1945, the First Panzer Army spent its entire time on the
Eastern Front. In the spring of 1945, the First Panzer Army's main task was to defend the
Ostrava region in the north of
Moravia, which was at the time the last large industrial area in the hands of
Third Reich. There the First Panzer Army was facing the advance of
4th Ukrainian Front from the north-east (
Ostrava-Opava Operation, 10 March – 5 May 1945) and had lost most of its heavy and medium tanks. At the same time the Panzer Army was
flanked by the
2nd Ukrainian Front from the south (
Bratislava-Brno Operation, 25 March – 5 May 1945). German defensive lines finally collapsed in the early hours of
Prague Offensive. The staff of First Panzer Army, along with other commands subordinated to Army Group Center, surrendered to the Soviet forces on 9 May 1945 in the area of
Deutsch-Brod, while the remnants of its Panzer-units were scattered and captured all the way from
Olomouc to
Vysočina Region. Its last commander general
Walther Nehring abandoned his staff and fled south to surrender to
US Army forces. ==Commanders==