page_title: Horses in World War II
section_title: Logistics
hierarchical_section_title: Horses in World War II / Belligerent armies / Germany / Logistics
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Polen, Schlagbaum, deutsche Soldaten Zentralbild, II.Weltkrieg 1939-1945 Überfall der faschistischen deutschen Wehrmacht auf Polen am 1.9.1939. Nach der Besetzung der Freien Stadt Danzig durch die Faschisten am 1.9. geht die Landespolizei der Stadt Danzig im Verband mit der deutschen Wehrmacht über die Danzig-polnische Grenze auf der Straße Zoppot-Gdingen (Gdynia) vor. [Scherl Bilderdienst] [Polenfeldzug, bei Danzig, Straße Zoppot-Gdingen.- Deutsche Soldaten beim Überqueren der deutsch-polnischen Grenze; hochgeklappter, unbeschädigter Schlagbaum mit polnischem Wappen [aus Serie mit mehreren (gestellten) Motiven: (1) Bild 183-E10457, (2) Bil]
context_page_description: Horses in World War II were used by the belligerent nations for transportation of troops, artillery, materiel, and, to a lesser extent, in mobile cavalry troops. The role of horses for each nation depended on its military strategy and state of economy and was most pronounced in the German and Soviet Armies. Over the course of the war, both Germany and the Soviet Union employed more than six million horses.
  Most British regular cavalry regiments were mechanised between 1928 and the outbreak of World War II. The United States retained a single horse cavalry regiment stationed in the Philippines, and the German Army retained a single brigade. The French Army of 1939–1940 blended horse regiments into their mobile divisions, and the Soviet Army of 1941 had thirteen cavalry divisions. The Italian, Japanese, Polish and Romanian armies employed substantial cavalry formations.
  Horse-drawn transportation was most important for Germany, as it was relatively lacking in natural oil resources. Infantry and horse-drawn artillery formed the bulk of the German Army throughout the war; only one fifth of the Army belonged to mobile panzer and mechanized divisions.
context_section_description: Most of these horses were employed by foot infantry and horse-drawn artillery troops that formed the bulk of the German Army throughout the war. Of 264 divisions active in November 1944, only 42 were armored or mechanized (November 1943: 52 of 322). In addition to work horses each infantry division possessed a reconnaissance battalion with 216 cavalrymen – the legacy of disbanded cavalry regiments. They wore cavalry insignia until September 1943. Over the course of the war these horse elements were reduced, and the 1945 divisions lacked horsemen altogether. Reconnaissance and antitank battalions were the only mobile elements in a German infantry division.
  The organization of infantry troops and the mindset of their commanders were radically different from those of advance panzer forces. Mechanization of the German Army substantially lagged behind the Red Army, although the blitzkrieg of 1941 temporarily reversed the tables: the Germans captured tanks, trucks and tractors but were losing horses: 179,000 died in December 1941 and January 1942 alone. A German soldier wrote: "A curious odor will stick to this campaign, this mixture of fire, sweat and horse corpses."
  A German division was supposed to be logistically self-sufficient, providing its own men, horses and equipment to haul its own supplies from an Army level railhead. Soviet divisions, on the contrary, relied on the Army level transports. The supply train of a 1943 German infantry division employed 256 trucks and 2,652 horses attended by 4,047 men, while other divisional configurations had up to 6,300 horses. The supply train of a lean 1943 Soviet infantry division, in comparison, had only 91 trucks and 556 horses attended by 879 men. Luftwaffe Field Divisions were designed to be lean and rely on trucks and halftracks but in real life these were substituted with horses and mules. Incidentally, psychotherapist Ernst Göring, nephew of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, used therapeutic horseback riding to rehabilitate wounded pilots, but in 1942 the program was shut down as too expensive.
  Horse logistics slowed down the German advance. The 6th Army, engaged in urban warfare in Stalingrad, was unable to feed or graze their horses and sent them to the rear. When the Soviets enveloped the 6th Army in November 1942, the German troops were cut off from their horse transport and would have been unable to move their artillery had they tried to evacuate the city. In an earlier  envelopment, the Demyansk Pocket, 20,000 horses were trapped together with 95,000 men and airlifting fodder drained precious air transport capacity. However these horses also provided food for soldiers in an environment where the "axe rebounds as a stone from a frozen horse corpse."
caption: Poland, 1939. German horsemen cross the Polish border.
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