It committed war crimes at Babi Yar while under the command of Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau during Operation Barbarossa.

The 6th Army was reformed in March 1943, and participated in fighting in Ukraine and later Romania, before being almost completely destroyed in the Second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive in August 1944.

During the invasion of the Low Countries the 6th Army saw active service linking up with paratroopers and destroying fortifications at Eben Emael, Liège, and Namur during the Battle of Belgium.

The 6th Army was then involved in the breakthrough of the Paris defences on 12 June 1940, before acting as a northern flank for German forces along the Normandy coast during the closing stages of the Battle of France.

[10] The goals of the operation were to secure both the oil fields at Baku, Azerbaijan, and the city of Stalingrad on the river Volga to protect the forces advancing into the Caucasus.

[13] Despite German air superiority over Stalingrad, and with more artillery pieces than the Red Army, progress was reduced to no more than several meters a day.

Despite initial progress, capturing the town of Verkhne-Kumsky and reaching the river Myshkova, the 4th Panzer Army was eventually halted and later forced to withdraw due to the threat posed to its rear by Operation Little Saturn.

[18] Also contributing to Winter Storm's failure was Adolf Hitler's refusal to approve of Operation Thunderclap, a planned breakout attempt by the 6th Army, to occur simultaneously.

[21] German casualties were 147,200 killed and wounded and over 91,000 captured, the latter including Field Marshal Paulus, 24 generals and 2,500 officers of lesser rank.

[30] IV SS Panzer Corps was transferred to the 6th Army's command[31] and a series of relief attempts, codenamed Operation Konrad, was launched during the 46-day-long Siege of Budapest.

Several units, including the III Panzer Corps, took part in Operation Spring Awakening, while the rest of the Sixth Army provided defence for the left flank of the offensive, in the region west of Székesfehérvár.

Soon after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Sixth Army's surgeon, the staff doctor Gerhart Panning, learned about captured Russian expanding bullets by using Jewish POWs.

To determine the effects of this type of ammunition on German soldiers, he decided to test them on other human beings after asking SD member and SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel for some "guinea pigs" (Jewish POWs).

[36] In July 1941 while conducting operations in Right-bank Ukraine, the Sixth Army bloodlessly captured the Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva.

The order said, in part[39] "The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization.

Sie hat den weiteren Zweck, Erhebungen im Rücken der Wehrmacht, die erfahrungsgemäß stets von Juden angezettelt wurden, im Keime zu ersticken.— Conduct of Troops in Eastern Territories Immediately after this order was issued, Sixth Army records show a dramatic increase in shootings, rapes and massacres committed by Sixth Army constituent units.