Army Group Vistula - Organisation

Organisation

The Army Group was originally formed from:

• The Ninth Army of General Theodor Busse, which had previously been part of Army Group A and had been shattered around Warsaw during the Vistula-Oder Offensive. This now held lines on the Oder and was progressively rebuilt.
• The Second Army of Colonel-General Walter Weiss, which as part of Army Group Centre had been defending the line of the Narew river on the borders of East Prussia. The East Prussian Offensive had cut it off from the remnants of its parent formation, and by late January it defended a long sector from Elbing in the east running westwards through Pomerania. It therefore formed the new army group's northern and eastern flank.
• The Eleventh SS Panzer Army was a 'new' formation which had been assembled in western Pomerania. Soon after its formation it received the staff of the Third Panzer Army, which had been largely destroyed in East Prussia, and was redesignated as Third Panzer Army.

During the East Pomeranian Offensive, the Second Army was finally cut off from the remainder of the army group and withdrew into Danzig, where it was eventually destroyed. The rest of Army Group Vistula was forced west of the Oder, though the Third Panzer Army retained a small bridgehead at Altdamm until the middle of March.

Towards the end of April, the Twenty-First Army (itself formed around the remnants of the Fourth Army, which had been destroyed in the Heiligenbeil Cauldron) was added to Army Group Vistula.