The army group was officially created by Adolf Hitler when he issued Führer Directive 21[1] on 18 December 1940, ordering German forces to prepare for an attack on Soviet Russia in 1941.

When Model was transferred to the Western Front in August 1944, he was replaced by Ferdinand Schörner, who would command the army group until his desertion in May 1945 after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

The German Ninth Army was able to repel these attacks and stabilise its front, despite continuing large-scale partisan activity in its rear areas.

Meanwhile, the German strategic focus on the Eastern Front shifted to southwestern Russia, with the launching of Operation Blue in June.

The operation was repulsed with very heavy Soviet losses, although it did have the effect of pinning down German units that could have been sent to the fighting around Stalingrad.

In the spring of 1944, the Soviet High Command started concentrating forces along the front line in central Russia for a summer offensive against Army Group Centre.

The German High Command was fooled and armored units were moved south out of Army Group Centre.

185 Red Army divisions, comprising 2.3 million soldiers and 4,000 tanks and assault guns, smashed into the German positions on a 200km-wide front.

The Soviet forces raced forward, liberating Minsk and the rest of Belorussia by mid-July, and reaching the Vistula and the Baltic States by early August.

Between January and February 1945, Army Group Centre sustained 140,000 casualties, including 15,000 dead, 77,000 wounded (not counting non-evacuees), and 48,000 missing.

The three Soviet Fronts involved in the campaign had altogether 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks, 7,500 aircraft, 41,600 artillery pieces and mortars, 3,255 truck-mounted Katyusha rocket launchers (nicknamed "Stalin Organs" by the Germans), and 95,383 motor vehicles.

Before dawn on the morning of 16 April 1945 the 1st Ukrainian Front under the command of General Konev started the attack over the river Neisse with a short but massive bombardment by tens of thousands of artillery pieces.