In World War II, the Twelfth Army of the United States, the Belorussian Army of the USSR, the Ukrainian Legion, the armies of these countries were all very large. Among the largest armies in the history of mankind, the German "** Legion" is well deserved, and their numbers are also listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
The creation of the central units of the German Army.
On June 22, 1941, Germany violated the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and launched the greatest war of all time, the Soviet Union. In order to capture the Soviet Union as soon as possible, Hitler spared no effort and mobilized 5.5 million people, which is nearly eighty percent of Germany's military strength, plus the strength of Romania, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Finland and other vassal states.
The Germans divided the 5.5 million army into three major corps, the Northern Army, the Southern Army, and the Soviet Central Army, and the Soviet Union had the largest number of troops and the most sophisticated, and what they wanted to do was to occupy Moscow.
Because it's the most important part, they have to have the best configuration. At the beginning of the war, the division had 31 infantry divisions, 9 armored divisions, 5 machine gun divisions, 1 cavalry division, 1 SS division, 3 guard divisions, a total of 1.45 million people, including 2 armored divisions, more than 2100 tanks and assault guns.
The pinnacle of the army.
During the First World War, the famous German general General Ludendorff brought the concept of overall combat to the extreme, and Germany did not fall into any disadvantage under the attack of Britain, France, and Russia, and they put all their strength into this battle, and by the time of World War II, Germany had developed to a new height.
After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, with the middle road as the vanguard, in just over a month, 500,000 Soviet right-wing regiments were besieged in Minsk, and finally nearly 300,000 Soviets were captured, and after the battle of Minsk, the Germans continued to attack Smolensk, and the two German armored battalions were like two sharp knives, once again surrounding the 300,000 large army regiments of the Soviet Union.
After the two battles of Minsk and Smolensk, the main army of the German army was already greatly damaged, and Hitler was determined to deal with the Soviet Southwestern Army first, so he ordered some tanks from the ** Army Corps to attack the Southwestern Front. It was the largest siege war ever held, in which the Soviets were captured 665,000 people.
After the annihilation of Kyiv, the Germans wiped out all the forces on the front, and now their main goal is Moscow. Therefore, most of the armored forces in the Eastern Theater of Operations, as well as some of the elite forces, were transferred to this area.
By October 1941, the Luftwaffe had reached its peak, with 1.92 million men (the largest army recorded in the Guinness Book of Records) and 76 divisions, including 14 panzer divisions and eight motorized infantry regiments.
In the initial stages of the Battle of the "Hurricane", the German offensive was quite successful, but in the battles of Vyatima and Bad Skov, the Soviets were trapped in Moscow with 660,000 people, and after losing half of them 1.25 million people, Stalin had to transfer an army from the Far East to defend against the Japanese army.
In the end, in the bitter cold weather of the Soviet Union, the Germans had to face the double threat from the Soviet Union, the cold and logistics, which finally led to the failure of the Hurricane plan, they retreated two or three hundred kilometers, and more than half a million people were killed and wounded.
Germany's ** army was originally used to suppress the Soviet Union, so there was the current situation, but the failure of the "Hurricane" plan put them in a difficult situation. No matter how many of their main forces there are, there is only a dead end in front of the meat grinder of the Soviet Union.