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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.
Approximately 186 horses were part of the Metropolitan Police mounted division during the second World War. Mounted patrols were stationed throughout London to aid in controlling traffic and improve the morale of Londoners during the frequent German V-1 and V-2 bombing raids that wracked the city during the early to mid-1940s. [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 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]
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.
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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]