TITLE: A group of order $8$ has a subgroup of order $4$
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: Let $G$ be a group of order $8$. Prove that there is a subgroup of order $4$.
I know that if $G$ is cyclic then there is such a subgroup (if $G=\langle a\rangle$ then the order of $\langle a^2\rangle$ is $4$). But how do I prove this when $G$ is not cyclic? Also, I know that $G$ has an element of order $2$, because the order of $G$ is even. I suspect that assuming all elements of $G$ are of order $2$ somehow leads to a contradiction but am unable to show it. Is this correct or is there a different approach that I'm missing? thanks

REPLY [8 votes]: You already noted that if $G$ has an element of order $8$ or $4$ then we are done.
Thus we can assume all elements have order $2$ (except the identity element). Then $G$ is abelian (this is a standard exercise, and I am certain it has been asked on MSE several times).
Let $a$ and $b$ be distinct elements of order $2$. Now it is straightforward to check that $\{e,a,b,ab\}$ is a subgroup of order $4$ (where $e$ is the identity element of $G$).

REPLY [6 votes]: If $G$ is abelian so according to the Fundamental theorem for finite abelian groups we have: $$G\cong~~~\mathbb Z_8,~~\mathbb Z_4\times\mathbb Z_2,~~\mathbb Z_2\times\mathbb Z_2\times\mathbb Z_2$$ So lets assume that $G$ is not abelian. If there is an element in $G$ which is of order $8$ then we have a contradiction. If all non trivial elements of $G$ be of order $2$ so again we have $G=\mathbb Z_2\times\mathbb Z_2\times\mathbb Z_2$ which is a new contradiction, so we at least know that there is an elemnt of order $4$. I think we can stop here cause you wanted to know that. For the next you can use the subgroup generated by $x$ to show that $G=\langle y,x\rangle$ in which $y\in G-\langle x\rangle$ and of course $$G\cong \text{Q}_8,~~\text{or}~~\text{D}_8$$

REPLY [4 votes]: This is a direct consequence of the following theorem.
Let $G$ be a group of order $p^{n}$ for $p$ a prime. Then for each $m$ with $0 \leq m \leq n$, $G$ has a subgroup of order $p^{m}$.
The proof is here.