The 10th Army of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

was a

field army A field army (also known as numbered army or simply army) is a military formation in many armed forces, composed of two or more corps. It may be subordinate to an army group. Air army, Air armies are the equivalent formations in air forces, and ...

active from 1939 to 1944.

History

The Army was formed in September 1939, in the

Moscow Military District The Order of Lenin Moscow Military District () is a Military districts of Russia, military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Originally it was a district of the Imperial Russian Army until the Russian Empire's collapse in 191 ...

, and then deployed to the Western Special Military District. During the

Soviet invasion of Poland The Soviet invasion of Poland was a military conflict by the Soviet Union without a formal declaration of war. On 17 September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Second Polish Republic, Poland from the east, 16 days after Nazi Germany invaded Polan ...

it consisted, according to Steven Zaloga, of the 11th Rifle Corps ( 6th, 33rd, and 121st RD); the 16th Rifle Corps (

8th Eighth is ordinal form of the number eight. Eighth may refer to: * One eighth, , a fraction, one of eight equal parts of a whole * Eighth note (quaver), a musical note played for half the value of a quarter note (crotchet) * Octave, an interval b ...

, 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 Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

, 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 Army Group Centre () 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 So ...

surrounded the 3rd, 4th and the 10th Armies in the

Battle of Białystok–Minsk The Battle of Białystok–Minsk was a German strategic operation conducted by the Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock during the penetration of the Soviet border region in the opening stage of Operation Barbaros ...

. 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

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 Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

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.F.I. Golikov, 'V Moskovskoi bitve,' (In the Moscow battle), Moscow, Nauka, 1967, pp. 8–51, in William J. Spahr, 'Zhukov: The Rise and Fall of a Great Captain,' Presidio Press, Novato, CA., 1993, pp. 89–91 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 The Reserve of the Supreme High Command (Russian: Резерв Верховного Главнокомандования; also known as the '' Stavka'' Reserve or RVGK () or RGK ( comprises reserve military formations and units; the ''Stavka'' ...

('' Stavka'' Reserve), it was reassigned to the Western Front for the

Battle of Moscow The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated H ...

, 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 The 2nd Belorussian Front (, ''Vtoroi Belorusskiy front'', also romanized "Byelorussian SSR, Byelorussian"), was a Front (military formation), major formation of the Soviet Army during World War II, being equivalent to a Western army group. I ...

while its formations were reassigned to the

49th Army The 49th Combined Arms Army () is a combined arms ( field) army (CAA) of the Russian Ground Forces, formed in 2010 and headquartered in Stavropol. Military Unit в/ч 35181. Part of the Southern Military District, the army traces its heritage b ...

Commanders

* Lieutenant-General Ivan Zakharkin (08.1939 – 10.1939) * Major-General Aleksandr Chernikov (10.1939 – 26.07.1940), * Lieutenant-General Vladimir Zakharovich Romanovsky (07.1940 – 03.1941) * Major-General Konstantin Golubev (03.1941 – 5.07.1941), army disbanded * Lieutenant-General Mikhail Yefremov (01.10.1941 – 17.10.1941), army disbanded * Lieutenant-General Filipp Golikov (01.11.1941 – 01.02.1942), * Lieutenant-General Vasily Popov (02.02.1942 – 04.1944), * Lieutenant-General Vasily Kryuchenkin (04.1944 – 23.04.1944), army disbanded.

References and sources

External links

{{Armies of the Soviet Army Field armies of the Soviet Union, 010 Military units and formations established in 1939 Military units and formations disestablished in 1944 1939 establishments in the Soviet Union Military units and formations of the Soviet invasion of Poland