The German 4th Army was a field army of the German Wehrmacht that existed from 1939 to 1945. The army was activated on 1 August 1939 with Gunther von Kluge as commander, and the army was a part of Army Group North during the invasion of Poland in September 1939. The army would proceed to take part in the Battle of France, Operation Barbarossa, and the offensives against the Soviet Red Army in 1942-1943. The army lost 130,000 troops during Operation Bagration, many of them in Minsk. In early 1945, the army was encircled in the Heiligenbeil Pocket in East Prussia by the Red Army, and the remnants of the army surrendered after the Battle of Koenigsberg on 27 April 1945.