During the Berlin Offensive elements of the army linked up with American troops at Torgau on the Elbe.

The 5th Guards Army fought under command of the Steppe, Voronezh, and 2nd and 1st Ukrainian Fronts from 1943 until the end of the war.

[5] On the night of 10 July the army's 33rd Guards Rifle Corps arrived at Prokhorovka.

[6] On the night of 11 July the army's 32nd Guards Rifle Corps took up defensive positions on the Psel River[7] at Oboyan, Olkhovatka, Veselyy, and Semyonovka.

[9] Soldiers of the 9th Guards Airborne Division were carried on the hulls of the tanks during the charge down the slopes in front of Prokhorovka.

Within three hours of the launch of the offensive on the morning of 3 August, the army had broken through the main German positions.

For the next six months after the offensive, the army fought in heavy battles to retain the Sandomierz bridgehead.

[12] The first contact was made between patrols near Strehla, when U.S. First Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue crossed the River Elbe in a boat with three men of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon.

The same day, another patrol under Second Lieutenant William Robertson with Frank Huff, James McDonnell and Paul Staub met Soviet Lieutenant Alexander Silvashko with some soldiers on the destroyed Elbe bridge of Torgau.

[15][16] The army then became part of the Central Group of Forces, possibly based in Austria.