Before players can get to the Battlefield 5 War Stories, they must play through the Battlefield 5 Prologue; a roughly 10-15 minute mission called “My Country Calling,” directly mirroring the prologue of Battlefield 1. Just like that mission, My Country Calling gives players a series of snapshots of the different theatres of the Second World War; jumping to a new location after each few minutes. The whole mission features Mark Strong as the narrator.
The Battlefield 5 Prologue includes five separate playable sections, starting with “Night Raid Over Narvik Dock”; a portrayal of a single moment during the Battles of Narvik. The second vignette puts the player in control of a German tank during the Final Breakthrough at Tobruk. This brief tank battle takes place during the Siege of Tobruk; a months-long siege of a Libyan port city. While the rest of the vignettes have no direct relation to the War Stories, this section actually appears to be a direct prologue to the upcoming fourth War Story, The Last Tiger.
The Battlefield 5 Prologue: Final Breakthrough at Tobruk
It’s unclear from the brief vignette in the Battlefield 5 Prologue exactly when the “Final Breakthrough at Tobruk,” takes place. The actual siege lasted for months and included many different tank battles. The most likely candidate is that the battle takes place sometime during Operation Crusader, near the end of the siege. This was the last time that the British garrison broke out of Tobruk to attack the Axis forces. Of interest is the fact that the mission appears to cast players as Peter Müller, the German tank commander who will appear in The Last Tiger War Story which is due to release in December.
At the Final Breakthrough, Müller is in command of a Panzer IV tank. He and several other German Panzers engage a rival force of British vehicles, mostly consisting of Sherman tanks and Staghounds, with some field gun support. The vignette comes to an end as Müller’s tank engages a T34 Calliopes, leaving the tank’s fate unclear. Whether it was destroyed or not, Müller evidently survives, as he will go on to appear in the events of The Last Tiger as commander of a German Tiger tank in 1945.
The Siege of Tobruk
The real Siege of Tobruk took place in Libya in 1941 during the Western Desert Campaign. It was a protracted battle which lasted from April to late November as the Axis forces attempted to seize control of the port city of Tobruk. Like so many pivotal tank engagements during the war, the German army at Tobruk was led by Erwin Rommel. Tobruk was initially an Axis port, but had come under Allied control in January of 1941. However, the Western Desert Campaign had taken most of the Allies elsewhere, leaving a poorly-equipped Australian garrison to hold the city. One month later, the Germans began Operation Sonnenblume and sent thousands of troops into North Africa, where they recaptured the region and laid siege to Tobruk.
The subsequent siege was dominated by fierce tank battles and bombing raids launched by both sides. In March, the Axis forces made serious inroads during the Battle of the Salient; they were able to capture some of the city’s perimeter defences. To make matters worse, Allied attempts to break through to Tobruk did not go well. Operation Brevity was the first; a fast strike intended to break through to the city. Unfortunately, it was abandoned after just one day. The second relief attempt was Operation Battleaxe; a massive attack against the German and Italian forces in Cyrenaica. At the time, Operation Battleaxe was the first time that the Germans had fought defensively on such a large scale. Nonetheless, two of the three Allied attacks failed and they lost over half of their tanks. A German counterattack forced the Allies to abandon the operation, while Tobruk remained under siege.
The “Final Breakthrough of Tobruk”: Operation Crusader
Following the failure of Operation Battleaxe, much of the Australian garrison withdrew from Tobruk under cover of night, while British troops came in led by General Scobie. What Battlefield 5 refers to as the “Final Breakthrough,” likely refers to events during Operation Crusader, the third relief effort which finally broke the Siege of Tobruk. The British garrison sallied forth from Tobruk and were able to take Rommel’s forces by surprise, while simultaneous attacks took place across the region. By December, Rommel realised that the position had become untenable and withdrew, leaving Tobruk in Allied hands.