The Soviet 8th Guards Army was an army of the Soviet Union's Red Army/Soviet Army, disbanded in the early 1990s.
Activated in October 1941 as the 7th Reserve Army, the Army was redesignated the 62nd Army at Stalingrad in July 1942. It was among the victors of Stalingrad and thus redesignated the 8th Guards Army.
In 1945 the Soviet 8th Guards Army was commanded by Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov. It was part of Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front. One of the cities which the Army took in its westward drive was Poznan, which the Army seized in January-February 1945. Afterwards, the 8th Guards Army spearheaded the Red Army drive to Berlin in the spring of 1945, where on 2 May 1945, Chuikov took the surrender of the German General Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defensive Area, and the rest of the Berlin garrison. Later the Eighth Guards Army became part of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. On the creation of the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany in 1945, the Army consisted of:
- Headquarters at Weimar
- 4th Guards Rifle Corps (35th, 47th, and 57th Guards Rifle Divisions)
- 28th Guards Rifle Corps (39th, 79th, 88th, Guards Rifle Divisions)
- 29th Guards Rifle Corps (27th, 74th, 82nd Guards Rifle Divisions)
- 11th Tank Corps
During the Cold War, 8th Guards Army stood opposed to NATO forces (specifically the US V Corps) along the strategically vital Fulda Gap in West Germany.
In the last years of its existence, in the late 1980s, 8th Guards Army consisted of:
- Headquarters at Weimar-Nohra
- 79th Guards Tank Division - Jena, GDR: - disbanded, 1992
- 17. Guards Tank Regiment (Saalfeld)
- 65. Guards Tank Regiment (Nohra)
- 211. Guards Tank Regiment( Jena)
- 66. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Nohra)
- 172. Artillery Regiment (Rudolstadt)
- 79th Anti-Aircraft Rocket Regiment (Jena)
- 27th Guards Motor Rifle Division - General-Maerker-Kaserne, Halle, GDR: - to Totskoye, Volga Military District
- 68. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Halle)
- 243. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Halle)
- 244. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Schlotheim)
- 28th Tank Regiment (Halle)
- 54th Guards SP Artillery Regiment (Halle)
- 39th Guards Motor Rifle Division - Ohrdruf, GDR: - disbanded, 1992
- 117. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Meiningen)
- 120. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Ohrdruf)
- 172. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Gotha)
- 15. Guards Tank Regiment(Ohrdruf)
- 87th Artillery Regiment (Gotha)
- 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division - Naumburg, GDR – disbanded, 1992
- 170. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Naumburg)
- 174. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Weißenfels)
- 241. Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Leipzig)
- 57. Guards Tank Regiment (Zeitz)
- 128th Artillery Regiment (Zeitz)
- 47th Tank Brigade - Plauen, GDR: 156 T-80, 18 2S1, 4 2S6, 4 SA-13
Famous quotes containing the words guards and/or army:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)