Army Group South's principal objective was to capture Soviet Ukraine and its capital Kiev.

It fought in Western Hungary until March 1945 and retired to Austria at the end of the Second World War, where it was renamed Army Group Ostmark on 2 April 1945.

Ukraine was a major center of Soviet industry and mining and had the good farmland required for Hitler's plans for Lebensraum ('living space').

To carry out these initial tasks its battle order included the First Panzer Group (Gen. Kleist) and the German Sixth (Gen. Reichenau), Seventeenth (Gen. Stülpnagel) and Eleventh Armies (Gen. Schobert), Luftlotte 1 (Keller) and the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies.

Army Group Ostmark was one of the last major German military formations to surrender to the Allies.