In 2012 a movie called Iron Sky was released. It tells the true story, well the complete fiction, of how, in the dying days of World War 2, the Nazis fled to the far side of the moon and established a base there where they could safely stay until the time was ripe to bring the Fourth Reich back to earth - this time succeed where the Third Reich had failed before.

The landscape on the moon, funnily enough, was perhaps an easier landscape than what General (Later Field Marshall) Rommel was to find himself fighting over for about 2 years between 1941 and 1943 – the desert of North Africa. 

Rommel had proven himself a remarkably bold panzer commander, a natural master of the new style of war known as Blitzkrieg when in France in 1940 he commanded the 7th Panzer Division, named by his French adversaries the Ghost Division because they never knew where or when it would appear. Season 59, Parts 10 to 13 on my Danger Zone podcast tells that story.

But the challenges of fighting in the desert of North Africa proved much more akin to fighting on the moon – only worse. Well not worse, but challenging. In fact, in this series of programmes I look at whether it was even going to be possible for Rommel to win his North African campaign with his legendary Deutsche Afrika Korp and his much, and often unfairly maligned Italian allies.

Tag words: Martin van Creveld; Supplying War; Dick Taylor; The Second World War Tank Crisis; Iron Sky; General Rommel; Field Marshall Rommel; North Africa; Libya; Cyrenaica; Western Desert; 7thPanzer Division; Deutsche Afrika Korp; Africa Corp; Blitzkrieg; Qattara Depression; Ice Cold in Alex; Mungo Melvin; Hannibal; Cannae; Franz von Halder; Graziani; Sidi Barani;