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The following article comes from the US War Department’s Intelligence Bulletin for January 1944 (Vol II, no. 5.). The Intelligence Bulletin, which contained summaries of Allied intelligence on German equipment and tactics, was published every month and distributed in limited numbers (usually about 150 copies per division) for use by officers and enlisted men in the field. Copies of the Bulletin provide a fascinating insight into what Allied intelligence officers knew about German capabilities, and also what they felt the men in the field needed to hear. As can be seen from this article, which downplays the threat posed by the Panther tank, the gulf between what Allied intelligence knew and what it felt should be passed on to the troops was often quite wide.

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The following two US Army intelligence reports provide a fascinating insight into the initial Allied reaction to the first appearances of the Tiger tank on the battlefields of North Africa.

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The history of the 90th Light Africa Division is shorter than most typical German divisional units because it existed for only two years. Those two years followed the entire North Africa Campaign from 1941 until May of 1943 when all Axis units surrendered in Tunisia. The history of this unit follows directly the fortunes of all German units stationed in North Africa.

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74 years ago, Erwin Rommel had an immediate impact on the North Africa theater in one of the great achievements of the deployment of a fluid, mobile offensive.On 6 February 1941, the order was given to deploy German troops to North Africa to shore up the Italian forces there. The operation was codenamed Sonnenblume - “Sunflower”. The initial deployment was by men of the 5th Light Division (later renamed 21st Panzer Division). By far the most important individual was the commander of these men, Erwin Rommel.

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The winter of 1941-42 in Russia was bitterly cold (temperatures reached a record low of -42 centigrade late in December), and the German Army was poorly equipped to operate in the freezing temperatures in which it found itself. At basic operational levels, from the grease and fuel needed to keep tanks running to the provision of adequate winter clothing for infantrymen (there were 228,000 casualties from frostbite alone during winter 1941-42), the Wehrmacht encountered grave problems. The failure of Operation Typhoon to take Moscow in November and early December was followed by the Red Army offensive that began in the morning of 5 December 1941. Within 10 days, the German Fourth Army in front of Moscow had been driven back 300km, and there was a real possibility that the entire German position facing Moscow would collapse. Next, the Red Army launched a concerted series of offensives all along the Eastern Front early in January 1942 - from Leningrad down to Rostov on Don - catching many German formations unawares. Then, too, this was a period when Hitler’s exasperation at the failure to to obey his order to stand fast made him sack generals willy nilly - C-in-C von Brauchitsch was sacked on 17 December, while 35 corps and divisional commanders were dismissed from December to March, adding further confusion.

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On the morning of 7 December 1942, the men of KGr.zbv 50, a Luftwaffe transport squadron, woke to another dismal morning on the Russian steppe. The blinding snow of the previous week had been replaced by persistent, chilling rain, and the men had to pick their way across the mud on duckboards. For the last two weeks they had been operating out of Tatinskaya airfield in support of the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad, battling to keep their fleet of ageing Ju-52s in the air. The men had spent the night in tents clustered along the northern side of the runway. They were protected from the wind by embankments of snow, but the canvas was still frozen stiff most mornings. As they ate their breakfast in the mess hut, the officers, including their commander Oberstleutnant Otto Baumann, arrived in the truck they had driven over from their marginally better accommodation in the nearby village.

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The Libyan village of Gazala is an unlikely strategic pivot. Located some 31 miles (50km) west of Tobruk, in 1941 it consisted of a squat mud-brick mosque and around 15 simple farmhouses. The people subsisted by herding goats, cultivating small patches of fertile land, and hunting birds in the nearby salt-marshes. It was these salt marshes, more specifically their proximity to the cliffs to the south, that gave Gazala its significance; the village marks a point where the flat coastal strip that runs along Libya’s mediterranean coast narrows to just 1.25 miles (2km) – one of the few defensible points in the otherwise featureless Western Desert.

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Like everyone who grew up in London, I am well aware of Hitler’s obsession with Veltungswaffe (reprisal weapons). I grew up in a neighborhood that was pocked-marked with great big holes, the rows of houses interrupted by patches of overgrown wasteground; sometimes still with bits of shattered brickwork jutting up out of the ground. Many of them were relics of the 1940–41 ‘Blitz’, the work of incendiary bombs for the most part, but others were made later in the war by the ‘doodlebugs’ (V-1 – we British always give cute names to terrifying things) and V-2s.

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Seventy-three years ago this month, the men of Gunther von Kulge’s Army Group Center were huddled in mud-filled foxholes or idling the engines of their vehicles in the fields around Mozhaisk, Kallinin, and Serpukhov. A mile or two to the east, across the Nara River, the Red Army was assembling one last defensive position along a line of rolling hills less than 50km (30 miles) from Moscow.

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