After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Hort commanded the 3rd Panzer Army to cooperate with Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army to annihilate more than one million Soviet troops, becoming the most feared German general in the Soviet Army. In 1904, at the age of 19, After graduating from high school, Hott entered the German Military Academy as an army non-commissioned officer candidate. Because of his excellent grades, after graduating from military school, Holt was assigned to serve in the 72nd Infantry Regiment. After the outbreak of World War I, Hort served as a combat staff officer, and then voluntarily transferred to the front line, successively serving as a company commander and a battalion commander.
Due to his outstanding achievements, by the end of World War I, Holt had served as chief of staff of the German infantry division. After the end of World War I, German defense was reduced to 100,000 people. Holt was left in the 4,000-man Army General Regiment, which claimed to be Germany's elite. After that, Hut began his path to promotion. In October 1934, he was promoted to major general of infantry in the German Army. He was commander of the 18th Infantry Division from 1935 to 1938, and on 10 November 1936 he was promoted to Lieutenant General of Infantry in the German Army. On 1 November 1938 he was promoted to General of the German Infantry and was also appointed Commander of the 15th Panzer Army.
The 15th Panzer Corps had two light panzer divisions, the 2nd and 3rd, the German light panzer division, the main force was the mechanized infantry regiment and the "cavalry shooting battalion", each division had only one tank battalion, and the number of tanks was much smaller than that of the panzer division, and it was impossible to fight like the panzer division. On September 1, 1939, germany invaded Poland, and the 15th Panzer Army under the command of Holt entered Poland like lightning. He played a key role in the annihilation of large numbers of Polish troops, for which Holt was awarded the Knight's Medal.
After the actual combat test of the Polish campaign, Hort believed that the light armored division was completely unable to adapt to large-scale armored group operations. At Hort's suggestion, all of Germany's light armored divisions were converted to armored divisions, and the strength of the German armored forces was significantly improved. On 1 May 1940, the Germans attacked France, and the 15th Army, part of the 4th Army Of Army Group A, defeated the French forces in the Brest Raid and forced France to surrender. On 19 July 1940, Hort was promoted to infantry general and served as commander of the 3rd Panzer Army, an elite German unit.
After the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Germany again carried out blitzkrieg. The German 3rd Panzer Army and the 2nd Panzer Army were like two sharp swords, straight into the soviet hinterland. But Hort and Guderian received orders from Hitler to divide their forces to attack Minsk. The two disagreed with Hitler's decision, but had to carry out the order. After that, Hot worked closely with Guderian to achieve outstanding results in the Battle of Minsk, the Battle of Smolensk, and the Battle of Vyazma, annihilating more than 1 million Soviet troops.
If the two Panzer Armies of the German Army had concentrated their forces to attack Moscow, it would have been likely to rewrite the outcome of the Soviet-German war. When Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army reached the outskirts of Moscow, Hitler ordered him to turn to support Army Group South's attack on Kiev. In September 1941, after capturing Minsk and Kiev, the Germans refocused their forces on Moscow. But by this time, the best time to capture Moscow had been missed. After the Soviet command activated Zhukov, a large number of troops had been massed in the Moscow area.