Panzerarmee) was a German tank army that was a large armoured formation of the Wehrmacht during World War II.

Panzer corps of the Group broke through the Ardennes and reached the sea, forming a huge pocket, containing several Belgian, British, and French armies.

[9] Army Group A was to lead the thrust into the Caucasus during Operation Blue and capture Grozny and the Baku (current capital of Azerbaijan) oilfields.

[13] By February 1943, the army had been withdrawn west of the Don River and Kleist withdrew the remains of his forces from Caucasus into the Kuban, east of the Strait of Kerch.

At the end of that month, as the Red Army closed in on Kiev,[17] von Mackensen was replaced by Colonel-General Hans-Valentin Hube.

In March 1944, crisis hit the First Panzer Army as it was encircled by two Soviet fronts in the Battle of Kamenets-Podolsky pocket.

That same month Hitler, who insisted his armies fight an inflexible defense to the last man, dismissed von Manstein.

After July 1944 it retreated from Ukraine and Poland before fighting with Army Group A in Slovakia (Battle of the Dukla Pass).

In the spring of 1945, the First Panzer Army's main task was to defend the Ostrava region in the north of Moravia, which was at the time the last large industrial area in the hands of Third Reich.

There the First Panzer Army was facing the advance of 4th Ukrainian Front from the north-east (Ostrava-Opava Operation, 10 March – 5 May 1945) and had lost most of its heavy and medium tanks.