3rd Guards Army ( Soviet Union ) The 3rd Guards Army was a field army of the Soviet Red Army that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II , notably in 1945 . It was created in December 1942 , as part of the Southwestern Front ( as a result of renaming 1st Guards Army of 2nd formation ) , according to the order of the Supreme High Command on formation of the 3rd Guards Army ( 5 . 12 . 1942 ) . General Lieutenant Dmitri Lelyushenko was appointed to command the formation , and held the reins until March 1943 ( and subsequently from August 1943 to February 1944 ) . General Major I . Khetagurov held command from March to August 1943 . Up to the middle of December the army comprised the 14th Rifle Corps , 50th Guards , 197th , 203rd and 278th Rifle Divisions , 90th and 94th Separate Rifle Brigades , the Soviet 1st Guards Mechanized Corps , the 22nd Motor - Rifle Brigade and other units . 3rd Guards Army was assigned in succession to the Soviet Southwestern Front , 3rd , 4th and since March 1944 the First Ukrainian Front led by Marshal Ivan Koniev . After a brief stint under the command of General - Lieutenant D . I . Ryabyshev in February and March 1944 , from April 1944 to the end of the war in Europe General Colonel N . Gordov was in command . The Army participated in the Middle Don and Voroshilovgrad offensive operations , the defensive battles on the northern Donets River , in the Donbass and Zaporozhye offensive operations , in the liquidation of the Germans ' Nikopol bridgehead , in the Nikopol - Krivoi Rog and Proskurov - Chernovits operations , the Lvov - Sandomierz Offensive , Sandomir - Silesia , and then took part in the attack on Berlin . Berlin . In the First Ukrainian Front ' s attack from the Neisse River into Saxony and the Brandenburg area , the 3rd Guards Army attacked north of Cottbus into the Spree River . Part of it also attacked Cottbus and captured it . However , the 3rd Guards Army did not head north into the southern suburbs of Berlin . Koniev had angled the 5th Guards Army left towards Spremberg and the 3rd Guards Army to the right to force the German troops back into Cottbus . A few days after the great Soviet offensive of April 16 , the 3rd Guards Army kept the pressure on the Germans around Cottbus . Koniev was warned of the mass of German troops in the Spreewald . He expedited the 28th Army ' s advance that was intended to seal the gap between the 3rd Guards Army , effectively finishing off the Germans in the Cottbus area , and the 3rd Guards Tank Army . On April 25 , when the First Belorussian Front was fighting the Battle of Berlin , the 3rd Guards Army was rushed into positions close to the Berlin - Dresden autobahn " to block all the forest roads leading from east to west . " Gordov ' s troops chopped down tall pine trees to form tank barriers . However , the 3rd Guards Army did not manage to occupy the southern part of its sector , which meant that there was a gap between it and the 28th Army . However , that did not matter that much since German resistance in eastern Germany was now very limited , as the Ninth and Twelfth Armies were retreating towards the Elbe River , and resistance was limited to small pockets of concentration . After the Berlin operation , the Army formed part of the Soviet force for the Prague Offensive . All formations of this army ( except 76th Rifle Corps with the 287th and 389th Rifle Divisions ) were disbanded in the summer of 1945 , and the Army HQ was reorganised as part of the Volga Military District .