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 armour 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 it could still be seen serving in the East as a command tank until 1944, and in other secondary theatres such as Norway until the German surrender.