Medium Tank Panzer

The Panzer III emerged as one of the formative images of German military success in the newsreels produced by the Propaganda Ministry, documenting the Blitzkrieg victories of the early war years. While proving adequate to the task of countering allied armor in France and the Western desert, the fateful encounter with the superior Soviet T-34 tank, following the invasion of Russia in 1941, revealed the technical shortcomings of the Panzer III.

Its days as a battle tank were numbered, but the Panzer III could still be seen serving in the East as a command tank until 1944, and in other secondary theaters such as Norway until Germany’s surrender.

Meet the Panzer III medium tank, one of Germany's showpiece weapons in World War II, often appearing in newsreel footage documenting early Nazi victories in Europe. Though it could easily hold its own against the Allied forces' tanks, the Panzer III met its match on the Eastern Front against the Russian T-34. By the end of the war, it had been shifted to secondary fronts and was often used as a command tank rather than on the main battlefield.

The Panzer III was designed to be the backbone of the Panzer force and was deployed on every front. However, due to its deficient armament and poor armor, and despite its outstanding reliability, it was obsolete by 1942.