Rommel's Afrika Korps

Under the leadership of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, the Deutsches Afrika Korps (or DAK) trounced the British Eighth Army time and time again. The ‘Desert Fox’, as he became known, gained an almost mythical status as a military genius to both friend and foe alike. Rommel owed his success to a combination of his own experience and hard-driving nature, and the superb troops he commanded. Serving as a Leutnant in the First World War, Rommel showed an aggressive style that led to spectacular victories over forces much stronger than his own.

The Panzer III is Germany's standard tank, making up over two-thirds of their tank strength. It has good mobility, is well armoured, and is armed with an effective 5cm (2-inch) gun. Manned by veteran crews that are confident in
their abilities and Germany's eventual victory, they are capable of defeating just about any tank in the world.

As the Allies built bigger and better tanks with more powerful guns, the Panzer III began to lose its advantage. The Germans responded by fitting an additional 20mm plate in front of the driver's plate and on the gun mantlet. This restored its effectiveness, but pushed the tank's weight up, almost to the limits of the chassis.

As the war progressed, the biggest problem the panzer troops faced changed from being hidden anti-tank guns, for which the short-barrelled Panzer IV was the answer, to increasingly heavily armoured enemy tanks. Fitting the Panzer IV with a long-barrelled anti-tank gun was the
answer to this new problem. At the start of the Battle of Gazala, the growing numbers of these powerful tanks started making their presence known as they started knocking out British tanks at long range.

The Panzer IV equipped one company in each tank battalion. Its role is to provide heavy fire support for the lighter Panzer III tanks of the other companies.

The German Army appreciated the heavy 8.8cm FlaK36 anti-aircraft gun as an anti-tank gun. It's ability to knock out any tank at long range was far more interesting to front-line soldiers than its ability to protect their supply lines from Allied bombing raids.

As a result, German divisions were often accompanied by Luftwaffe (Air Force) heavy anti-aircraft batteries operating as anti-tank guns. These units were so effective that Allied tank crews soon started referring to any effective anti-tank gun as an '88'.