Putting the "Corps" in the "Afrika Korps"

The German Army of World War II

In common parlance, the term Afrika Korps covers all of the German troops who served in North Africa between 1941 and 1943. Strictly speaking, however, the Afrika Korps was, for most of that period, a subset of the German formation operating on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the name of which changed several times over the course of the middle years of World War II.

In the autumn of 1941, on the eve of the great British Empire offensive we often call the ‘Crusader Battles’, the Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) was a small armored corps. In contrast to the typical German armored corps of that year, which consisted of two armored divisions and a motorized infantry division, the Afrika Korps had but two component formations, both of which were armored divisions.

The two armored divisions of the Afrika Korps of the fall of 1941 had much in common. Each, for example, possessed a motorized reconnaissance battalion, two tank battalions, and three field artillery battalions.

The one realm in which the two armored divisions differed was that of infantry. Where 15. Panzer Division had four battalions of motorized infantry, 21. Panzer Division had but three units of that type.

For Further Reading: Readers interested in the internal workings of German armored forces in the fall of 1941 will find much of interest in the account written by the operations officer of the 15. Panzer Division, which was published some years ago as Inside the Afrika Korps.