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German soldier and his horse in the Russian SFSR, 1941.In two months, December 1941 and January 1942, the German Army on the Eastern Front lost 189,000 horses. [1]Horses in World War II were used by the belligerent nations, for transportation of troops, artillery, materiel, messages, and, to a lesser extent, in mobile cavalry troops.
The goal was to create a race of "Aryan horses". [1] The head of the Spanish Riding School, Alois Podhajsky, was a famed German horseman and dressage expert, who had been a bronze medallist at the 1936 Olympics. He had also been an Austrian Army officer, and by 1938 had been enrolled in the Wehrmacht with the rank of Major. [2]
Lipizzaner horses, a breed since 1580, and the Spanish Riding School, founded in 1735, remain living Austrian treasures, though both are nearly lost during WWII.During the German occupation, Colonel Alois Podhajsky, who performed in dressage events in the 1936 Olympics and is the Riding School’s Director, becomes attached to the German Army.
The division fought in the southern sector of the front, seeing action around the Berezina and Dniepr rivers, especially in efforts to clear the Pripet Marshes of by-passed Red Army units. It was withdrawn to France in November 1941 and its 17,000 horses were handed over to infantry divisions.
The incident prompted false reports of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks, after journalists saw the bodies of horses and cavalrymen. Nazi propaganda [ 3 ] took advantage to suggest that the Poles attacked intentionally since they had believed the Germans still had the dummy tanks permitted by the Versailles Treaty 's restrictions.
The German Army, strapped for motorised transport because its factories were needed to produce tanks and aircraft, used around 2.75 million horses – more than it had used in World War I. [197] One German infantry division in Normandy in 1944 had 5,000 horses. [165]
Contrary to popular belief, the German Army in World War II was not a mechanised juggernaut as a whole. In 1941, between 60 and 70 percent of their forces were not motorised, relying on railroad for rapid movement and on horse-drawn transport cross country. The percentage of motorisation decreased thereafter. [23]
The final major German offensive in the Eastern theatre of World War II took place during July–August 1943 with the launch of Operation Citadel, an assault on the Kursk salient. [334] Approximately one million German troops confronted a Soviet force over 2.5 million strong.