Eastern Front
After the start of Operation Barbarossa, it included three corps, including the 4th Rifle Corps, with the 27th, 56th, and 85th Rifle Divisions, as well as the 21st Rifle Corps (including the 24th Rifle Division) and 11th Mechanised Corps (21st and 33rd Tank Division and 204th Mechanised Division).
The 3rd Army saw lots of action in important sectors. The Third Army took part in the operations of the Western, Central, Bryansk, as well as the First, Second, and Third Belorussian Fronts during the defenses of Grodno, Lida, and Novogrudok.
The 3rd Army also took part in very important battles such as the Battle of Smolensk, where German troops captured the city in a difficult two-month campaign, and the Battle of Moscow, in which the Red Army's winter counter-attack led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov drove back Army Group Center over 70 miles (110 km) away from Moscow. During the second half of the Eastern Front, the 3rd Army took part in the Battle of Kursk, where numerically superior Soviet forces, using good anti-tank defenses, defeated the German forces, thus stopping Operation Zitadelle and robbing the German Army of all hopes of victory on the Eastern Front. The 3rd Army took part in the operations in Bryansk, Gomel-Rechitsa, and Rogachev-Zhlobin. During the final phases of the war, the 3rd Army took part in the attacks on Belarus, East Prussia, and eastern Germany, where it participated in the Battle of Berlin.
On 1 May 1945 the 3rd Army consisted of the 35th Rifle Corps (250th, 290th, and 348th Rifle Divisions), 40th Rifle Corps (5th, 129th, and 169th Rifle Divisions), 41st Rifle Corps (120th Guards Rifle Division, 269th, and 283rd Rifle Divisions), 4th Corps Artillery Brigade, 44th Gun Artillery Brigade, 584 иптап, and other formations and units.
After the war ended, the Army headquarters was withdrawn to the Belarussian SSR, where it was reorganised in August 1945 as the short-lived Headquarters Belorussian-Lithuanian Military District. The Belorussian-Lithuanian Military District, according to a Czech internet source (valka), existed 31 Dec 44 - 9 JUly 1945, whereupon it was succeeded by the Minsk Military District. By this time the army consisted of three Rifle Corps with nine rifle divisions. Later, all of them except the 120th Guards 'Rogachev' Rifle Division were disbanded.
Read more about this topic: 3rd Army (Soviet Union)
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