What Are The Most Unknown Facts About The World War
435,000 horses were captured from the USSR, France, and Poland.
One German soldier wrote in his combat memoirs:
“Whatever the relative merits of horse-drawn versus motorized transportation, our division was again relying almost exclusively on horses to haul our guns and other equipment by the time I returned to the front in mid-1944.”
Source: the myth of the blitzkrieg
Germany’s limited amount of fuel also fueled the use of forces. By 1939, the use of horses by the German army tripled.
One veterinarian admitted:
“The German Army never considered completely replacing horses with motor vehicles. This was especially true when fuel and rubber shortages grew critical.”
Germany purchased many of their horses from Hungary. Germany also got many horses from occupied countries in central and western Europe. Poland provided Germany with 4000 horses a week as they prepared for their Eastern Front invasion. Additional horses were purchased from Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Ireland.
Many horses of course came from Germany itself. The German Army also used both warm and cold blood. Warm blood horses are typically American and Arabian. While Clydesdales and other descendants of the medieval war horse are cold blood horses.
German Horse Cavalry in 1939
Cross-breeding was not that successful. As the war progressed, lighter ones replaced heavier draft horses, causing increased exhaustion.
“The German Army relied more on horse-drawn wagons to haul supplies, artillery, and for reconnaissance patrols during World War II more than in World War I. Up to 750,000 horses and mules served in Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The plan to invade England, Operation Sea Lion, involved more horses than vehicles: 57,000 to 34,000.”
Source:The Myth of Blitzkrieg - JSTOR
It required 10 to 16 horses to pull heavy field guns. Replacement horses were also marched to the front because only a handful filled needed railroad cars. Wider Russian railroad track gauges hampered supplies for both men and horses and had to be converted to narrower European gauges.
Unfortunately horses died in massive numbers just as much as the Germans soldiers did as the war dragged on. Horses died at a rate of 1,000 a day. They died from wounds, severe skin conditions that infected massive numbers, exhaustion, exposure and starvation. They were also killed by conventional warfare from shell explosions, fires, bullets and grenades.
One gunner remarked:
“Our route is lined by dead horses that have broken their legs or collapsed through sheer exhaustion.” A German general echoed that the battlefield “was a fantastic sight … full of dead horses … some horses were only half dead, standing on three frozen legs, shaking the remaining broken one.”
“The Soviet Union, of course, depended on horses for agriculture. But their number of horses also dropped from 21,000,000 in 1940 to 7,800,000 in 1943. Such losses foreshadowed later economic shortages.”
There were other massive logistical issues that the Germans did not prepare themselves nor their horses for. Hitler famously disliked horses and his disapproval lead to many disasters for the horses and his men.
Horses need feed and water whether active or not. Most horses couldn’t march more than 20 miles per day. Horses were also sensitive to cold climates just like those on the Eastern Front winter.
One soldier remarked:
“Can you imagine people flinging themselves at an old horse corpse, tearing open the head and swallowing its brain raw?” Another soldier reported, “This evening we cooked up some horses again. You will have to imagine how it tastes, without salt or any other seasoning, and when the animal gave up the ghost a month ago and has been lying under the snow ever since.”
The starvation on both sides of the Eastern Front also precipitated the mass eating of many horses on both sides.
But the mechanized German army could not have advanced at all or made any successes without the wide use of horses on the Eastern Front.
https://www.thebrooke.org/get-involved/every-horse-remembered/war-horse-facts
