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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.
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.
Horses such as the Trakehner were used in World War II which, at the end, nearly destroyed the breed as Soviet troops advanced from the East, causing flight and expulsion of Germans during and after WWII. The main Stud and local residents were forced to evacuate between 20 January 1945 and March 1945.
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 It was withdrawn to France in November 1941 and its 17,000 horses were handed over to infantry divisions.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 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]
The German army relied heavily on horses for transport purposes in the war, and had 2.75 million horses and mules. [93] In 1945, of Germany's 304 combat units, only 13 were motorized, and the remaining units depended on horses and cattle to carry equipment and heavy weapons. [90] [94] The horse losses in the German army were immense. [95]
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The German Army (German: Heer, German: ⓘ; lit. ' army ' ) was the land forces component of the Wehrmacht , [ b ] the regular armed forces of Nazi Germany , from 1935 until it effectively ceased to exist in 1945 and then was formally dissolved in August 1946. [ 4 ]