In the main operational formation of the German army to launch World War II, a total of 8 panzer corps were formed, of which 1 to 4 were deployed in the Soviet-German battlefield, 5 to 6 were deployed to snipe the Allied landings on the Western Front, the 7th belonged to the African Panzer Corps under the command of Rommel, the 8th was a temporary formation while guarding Berlin, and a 9th Panzer Corps was still on paper when the war was over. As an important force in the eastward advance, the 3rd Panzer Army was a special case, not only willing to be a green leaf, but also insisting on fighting until the end in adversity, thanks to the two commanders, Hort and Reinhardt.
After the German blitzkrieg operation Barbarossa of the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941, as the two iron pincers of Army Group Center, the 3rd Panzer Group was responsible for the security of the left wing of the central line, directly carrying the security of the passage between Army Group North and Army Group Center, and at the same time closely cooperating with the 2nd Panzer Group commanded by Guderian to play the advantage of the rapid and mobile pincer play of blitzkrieg.
Although the commanders of the 4 armored groups that attacked the Soviet Union were the best in the German army, but the commander of the 3rd panzer group, Holt, was a person who did more and said less, in his eyes, the commander of the 1st panzer group Kleist and the 4th panzer group Hopner were not only older than Guderian, but also the old people of the base camp were secretly caring, only he relied on his own efforts to create a world step by step, and at the level of the central armored attack command, the 3rd armored group was more or less subject to Guderian's containment. After all, he was the founder of Blitzkrieg and an important promoter of the attack on Moscow.
Thus, when Hoth commanded the 15th Panzer Army into Western Europe, he was not as famous as several other armored commanders, and even could not catch up with Rommel's face, until the Soviet-German war broke out, the 3rd Panzer Group was also willing to be a green leaf, allowing Guderian to make the most of the limelight, and the 2nd Panzer Group also went south and north, and after cooperating with the 3rd Panzer Group to complete the task of occupying Minsk and Smolensk, he won the Siege of Kiev and successfully returned to the starting line of the attack on Moscow.
While Guderian was heading south, Holt was also ordered to go north to reinforce the Leningrad battlefield, but the 3rd Panzer Group did not fight well on the northern front, and even when it returned to the middle line, it was reprimanded by Kruger for lacking the coordination of the infantry and tanks.
But Hoth's reluctance to take the lead also brought him benefits, not only by avoiding the risk of dismissal during the Battle of Moscow, but also by taking over the command of Hopner's 4th Panzer Army after a brief stint as commander of the 17th Army, and after his departure, the 3rd Panzer Army fought only 34 tanks in the later stages of the Moscow Campaign, and at the end of the campaign was reduced to a second-rate team and sent to the rear to fight against the Soviet partisans.
From the perspective of military command, each unit has its own set of familiar combat routines, which are different from other units in the big sense, and the chickens do not pee, and each has its own way. The same was true of the 3rd Panzer Army, first with Hot's Gandang Green Leaf, followed by Reinhardt's humiliation.
After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, although Guderian commanded the 2nd Panzer Group invincible and always served as the vanguard of the central attack, several major encirclement battles were basically completed by the 3rd Panzer Group, occupying Minsk in one week and Smolensk in a month, and Hoth commanded his tank troops to break through, and was always the last to close the encirclement. In terms of operational costs, before the Battle of Moscow, the 3rd Panzer Group paid far more sacrifices than the 2nd Panzer Group.
Some wonder why, in December 1941, the German high command relieved Guderian and Hopner of their duties, but only promoted Hort to the position of commander of the 4th Panzer Regiment, and did not Holdh take any responsibility for the defeat of the attack on Moscow? In the end, it was the green leaves that worked, after all, the central attack on the German army was using Guderian as a weather vane, and the 2nd Panzer Army did not occupy Tula on time, and the roundabout operation to occupy Moscow could not be achieved.
On the one hand, Holt went to the 17th Army at the end of the Battle of Moscow, and only after the battle took command of the 4th Panzer Army, he escaped the disaster. On the other hand, the 3rd Panzer Army has really worked hard, the armored tanks have been exhausted, what else can be said? Guderian and Hopner, on the other hand, dismissed the German high command on the grounds that they had left the battlefield without permission, in today's parlance, as deserters.
Unlike guderian, when the 2nd Panzer Army was sent to the Balkans to fight the partisans, the 3rd Panzer Army remained on the Eastern Front, and although it was also a guerrilla, the 3rd Panzer Army was still within the formation of army group Center, laying the groundwork for a later resurgence.
Therefore, after Reinhardt took over the command of the 3rd Panzer Army, adhering to Hort's Gandang green leaf style, after a short rest and waiting, from 1943 onwards, although it lacked enough tanks to support it, the 3rd Panzer Army still played its own style, not as beautiful as the 1st 4th Panzer Army, but also made a final effort to consolidate the Eastern Front.
In this sense, the commanders of the four armored groups on the Eastern Front, except for Kleist, who had maintained a high level of glory on the battlefield, were dismissed successively, and Both Hoth and Reinhardt, who had served as commanders of the 3rd Panzer Army, were both dismissed from their posts, Hoth was dismissed as a civilian in November 1943 due to the defeat in the Battle of Kiev, and Reinhardt was dismissed from military power and stripped of all military positions in early 1945. The difference is that Reinhardt also dared to confront the high command head-on, while Hott did not change his position from the beginning to the end of the war, and the result was useless, indirectly reflecting the attitude of the two men to the war.
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