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 German forces operating on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. (What the whole of the German expeditionary force in North Africa was called 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 that has come to be known as the “Crusader Battles,” the Deutsches Afrika Korps (DAK) was a small armored corps. Unlike the typical German armored corps of the time, 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 are likely to enjoy the account written by the operations officer of the 15. Panzer Division, which was published some years ago as Inside the Afrika Korps.