14.
ARMIES CLOSING IN
BOHEMIA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA,
LATE APRIL 1945
Four months had passed since the bleak Christmas of 1944. As April 1945 drew to a close, massive Russian and American forces marched toward each other from east and west, the gap between them shrinking daily. Between the two fronts, Germany was crumbling, its infrastructure in tatters. Trapped in an ever shrinking wedge, millions of refugees tried to stay out of danger. Desperate horsemen who lived in areas affected by fighting were trying to flee to safer areas. Thus far, the Lipizzaner stallions in Austria and the mares in Hostau had not been affected, but in the chaos of the Third Reich’s near collapse, the displaced Lipizzaner had never been in greater danger.
Along a country lane, near the village of St. Martin in Upper Austria, Alois Podhajsky sat astride Neapolitano Africa, eyes trained on his horse’s sensitive ears. He and the other riders from the Spanish Riding School had taken the stallions for their daily exercise. In a loose formation, eight riders followed, similarly mounted on white Lipizzaner. The ground beneath Africa’s hooves was spongy and muddy; pockets of snow clung to the earth. His opalescent coat shone brightly against the bare brown branches just starting to green up for spring. Podhajsky was engaged in a wordless conversation with his mount as his seat, legs, and reins picked up clues to his horse’s emotions. Podhajsky’s face was serene, and his posture in the saddle appeared just as erect as it had nine years earlier, when he had ridden across the stadium at the Olympics in Berlin, but he rapidly scanned the woods that lined the road, then glanced back at Africa’s tapered white ears. Sometimes his horse heard the approach of the dive-bombers before his own ears could pick up the sound.
Africa’s ear flicked twice, and Podhajsky felt the stallion tense slightly underneath him. Podhajsky raised his hand, signaling his fellow riders to take shelter with him under a small copse of trees, though the horses, with their bright white coats, would be easily visible from the air. Under his seat bones and between his legs, Podhajsky felt Africa coil up, ready to spring from danger; but the obedient stallion, trusting his rider implicitly, stood perfectly still. Overhead, the drone of an airplane became audible, buzzing louder and louder until it seemed to hang directly overhead, then fading to a rasp in the distance. No one said a word. When the danger had passed, Podhajsky rode back into the open, and the riders silently followed. Each time this happened, Podhajsky wondered about the wisdom of exercising the stallions out in the open, but what choice did he have? The high-spirited animals, used to daily training, could not stay cooped up in the small stables that had become their temporary home, and the indoor riding hall was so cramped that it could accommodate only two or three horses at a time.
Podhajsky and his riders were lodged in the Arco Castle in St. Martin, where they had taken refuge after fleeing Vienna in March. They were not its only inhabitants; it was packed with other German refugees who had fled the Reich’s eastern territories. Their rooms in the former servants’ wing were humble, but Podhajsky knew that they were fortunate. The village was full to the bursting point with Russian and Polish prisoners of war who had been brought in to work on the local farms. Misery, deprivation, and anger ruled in the small town. The POWs were restless and volatile, waiting for the war’s end to bring their liberation. Local Austrians were locked into a paralyzing apathy—certain the war was almost over but fearful of what the future might hold. Podhajsky understood that to these suffering people, the fate of the white stallions was unimportant. Some of the refugees even said aloud that they didn’t care about the horses and thought they should be slaughtered to add to the meager food supply.
Foremost in everyone’s mind was the fear of which occupying force would arrive first—the Russians, who had already seized Vienna, or the Americans, who were fanning out across Germany and were less than a hundred miles away. As Podhajsky described it, “What was happening at the Front concerned us most deeply, for on the advances of the separate armies to occupy Germany hung our fate.”
One day late that same month, Podhajsky was surprised to find a visitor who had come all the way from Berlin to visit the horses. It was General Erich Weingart, chief of riding and driving in the German Army’s High Command, the same individual who had given Podhajsky permission to evacuate the stallions from Vienna if the Nazis agreed.
The general walked through the stables slowly, stopping to look at each of the horses in turn. The tour was suffused with a feeling of melancholy, as if Weingart seemed to know that he was seeing these horses for the last time.
As the two men walked in the gardens before dinner, Podhajsky confided his fears: His riders, during German occupation, had worn the Wehrmacht uniform. He was afraid they would be separated from the horses, seized as prisoners of war. Already, each rider was responsible for ten horses. If the riders were taken away, no one would be left to safeguard them. But the general reassured him; the Americans would arrive in their area before the Russians, he said. “You will succeed in putting these soldiers as deeply under the spell of your white horses as you have always managed to do with me.”
General Weingart continued, “I am going back once more to my superiors…and I will have a document drawn up for you, duly signed and sealed and to be put into immediate effect, removing the Spanish Riding School from the command of the army and declaring it once more a civil riding school as it was before 1938. Perhaps this document may help you cope with the transition period more easily. For me, this final service to the Spanish Riding School will be the last good deed of my life.”
The general parted emotionally with Podhajsky that day, assuring him that he would return with the promised document in a few days. Less than a week later, the Arco Castle refugees could hear the sound of artillery fire in the distance, heralding the Americans’ approach. Grimly, Podhajsky realized that whatever happened next would be unpredictable and dangerous. Only later would he learn that General Weingart’s car had been found on the banks of Lake Chiemsee. The German had returned to Bavaria and taken his own life.
Trying not to draw attention to himself, Podhajsky began to prepare for the end: He hid some of their most valuable equipment behind a bricked-up partition inside the castle and stashed away civilian clothes so that his riders might not be noticed among the other refugees and evade being taken as prisoners of war. He knew that everything he had done so far to safeguard the horses could easily be swept away in these final days of conflict.
The riders took turns standing armed guard at the stables. If the Nazi holdouts chose to fight when the American tanks arrived, the animals might be caught in the cross fire. If Podhajsky and his riders appeared too eager to surrender, they might be shot as traitors. As their tense vigil continued, Podhajsky carefully rationed the remaining grain: He had been getting extra feed from Hostau, but now he received nothing—neither feed nor word of the mares and foals. He feared the worst.
ABOUT A HUNDRED MILES due south of St. Martin, the stud farm at Hostau was now cut off from the rest of the German Reich due to a breakdown in communications. It appeared eerily untouched by the ravages of war. In the well-kept stallion barn, Witez, plump and sleek, peered over the half-door of his stall. His warm, throaty whinny greeted the grooms as they passed. He raised his head and his ears flicked forward at the sight of veterinarian Rudolf Lessing hurrying through the stables, intent on his duties. But Lessing did not tarry in the stallion barn. Late April was foaling season, and most of his attention was focused on the broodmares.
In the long barn with the wide foaling stalls, Lessing quietly observed the mares, noting the condition of each. He was attentive to indications that a mare would foal soon; he looked out for signs of restlessness and examined their teats for waxing, a signal that delivery was imminent. If a mare went into labor, he would be called to stand by day or night, no matter the time, and the mares tended to give birth during the hours of darkness. He carefully looked over Madera, one of the Lipizzaner broodmares from Piber, whose sweet disposition shone in her soft brown eyes, and he noted that her udders were starting to fill. She would give birth within the next few days.
Next, Lessing checked on those who were already nursing their pitch-black, wobbly-legged charges. Having for years spent most of his waking hours among horses, he could read their thoughts and understand their expressions. Sometimes when he saw the trusting way they responded to him, especially the mares, heavily pregnant or with newborns by their sides, his heart ached. The horses were at their most defenseless during foaling season. Even here in Bohemia, one of the most sheltered places to ride out the war, no one could ignore the ominous atmosphere lurking below the surface calm. Lessing kept his mind on the work at hand, but the impending danger was never far from his thoughts.
News arrived in tattered rumors and panicked whispers. The official German radio still extolled the soon-to-be triumph of Hitler’s Reich. But late at night, as Lessing and his wife leaned toward a clandestine radio tuned to an Allied station, he surmised the truth: The tide of war had turned against the Nazis, and the Russians were advancing rapidly west toward their position. Like many of his countrymen, Lessing believed that the war would end soon in German defeat; but for civilians even to express such a thought out loud was punishable as treason.
German-speaking civilians, fleeing from intense fighting farther east and fearful that the Russians and Czechs would show no mercy at the end of the war, poured into town, trying to make it across the border into Germany. A few lucky ones had cars or trucks; most had overloaded wagons pulled by worn-out horses; the most pitiful walked, carrying bundles or young children in their arms. The veterinarian lent a hand whenever he could to help the worn-out animals; he treated cracked hooves and skin excoriated by harnesses rubbing on starved bodies. Some of the horses had infected pustules on their withers where stiff leather had rubbed them raw.
Even here on the stud farm, the once orderly pastures were now teeming with extra stock. In mid-March 1945, one of Rau’s stud farm directors had straggled into town, accompanied by a White Russian duke seeking shelter for his herd of sturdy Kabardins and rugged Panje ponies, bred on the Russian steppes. They had fled nearly four hundred miles, from one of the Rau-run stud farms in central Poland, to find refuge in Hostau. Lessing knew that this group was better prepared than other fleeing horsemen—the Cossack horses were bred to be hardy and to subsist on sparse rations, and the Cossack equestrians were skilled outriders, experienced in herding horses overland. Lessing and his colleagues could only imagine the fates of the rest of the horses he had tended in the eastern part of Rau’s empire—they were not likely to move on foot so easily. The farm had also completely lost touch with Alois Podhajsky and the white stallions of Vienna. None of them knew if the historic riding school was still standing. Lessing feared for himself, for his family, and most of all for the swollen-bellied mares and tiny newborn foals who trusted him to keep them safe.
REFUGEES ENTERING HOSTAU, MARCH 1945.
COLONEL HUBERT RUDOFSKY’S TALL leather boots, polished to a high shine, clicked across the cobblestone floors of the stable at Hostau as he scanned the area with his exacting eye. Every detail of the stud farm director’s Wehrmacht uniform was turned out to perfection. Next to Rudofsky but half a head shorter stood Luftwaffe colonel Walter Hölters. Roughly the same age as Rudofsky, around fifty, he sported a narrow Hitler-style mustache. Both men were examining the gray Arabian Lotnik, one of the imports from Janów. Lotnik’s groom clicked his tongue softly, coaxing his charge to prick his ears forward to appear at best advantage. A tasseled gold-threaded Arabian headdress set off the stallion’s beautiful dished face and luminous dark eyes. Rudofsky proudly pointed out the gray’s exceptional characteristics: the large eyes, short back, clean straight legs, and exquisitely fine fluted nostrils. Rau especially prized this stallion, finding him suitable for interbreeding with the Lipizzaner mares because of his light color and “pure blood.” Hölters listened attentively to Rudofsky’s lecture, aware that the stud farm master of Hostau was known to be one of the Reich’s foremost horse-breeding experts.
Hölters had not explained to Rudofsky exactly what his business was in the area. Rudofsky trusted the man’s bona fides as a horse lover but did not press too hard to find out his true intentions. He had found that sticking to horse talk was a lot safer than wading into murkier political waters.
When Rudofsky’s presentation of the horse was over, the visitor signaled that he wished to speak to Rudofsky alone. As the two men strolled toward the pastures, out of earshot of curious grooms, the officer whispered nervously to Rudofsky that he had important information to share. “Vienna has already fallen to the Russians,” he said. “The Red Army is just outside Pilsen, less than forty miles away. They will be here before you know it.”
HUBERT RUDOFSKY WITH LOTNIK AND ANOTHER ARABIAN AT HOSTAU.
Rudofsky absorbed this news with shock. Pilsen was the nearest large town to the east; if what the officer said was true, the Russian conquerors would be upon them in a matter of days—possibly even hours.
“I’ve spent time on the Eastern Front,” Hölters continued. “The Russians care nothing for horses—they will slaughter them on the spot and fry them up as steaks to feed their hungry troops. You are in the greatest danger, and you must act now to save them.”
Rudofsky scrutinized the officer’s face. What solution could this man possibly suggest that he himself hadn’t already thought of and ruled out? Even over and above his direct order to stay put, moving the horses on short order would be impossible. It was the middle of foaling season. They had no trucks to transport them, no gasoline, and no orders to leave. Until now, Hostau itself had been the refuge. The Russian duke and his entourage had made it to Hostau; others might well be headed in their direction. Where could be safer than here?
Rudofsky knew enough to understand that Hölters’s alarm was justified. Examples abounded of valuable horses destroyed during these last few chaotic months of advance and retreat. Trakhenen, Germany’s famed “city of horses,” had seen a mass exodus of all of its equine inhabitants. The owners and breeders of the famed Trakhener cavalry horses, close to eight thousand in number, had fled across the frozen Vistula River while being strafed by Russian bombers. Germany’s greatest Thoroughbred racehorse, Alchimist, was shot to death on April 15, 1945, after Russian soldiers tried to seize him and the stallion refused to load onto their truck. Rudofsky could not know the precise fate of all the horses in Rau’s eastern empire, but he suspected that many of them were scattered or dead. Just a week previously, he had contacted Berlin, asking what to do should the stud farm be in danger of being overrun, and received only the curt reply: “Stay put, at all costs.”
Rudofsky listened intently, desperately hoping that this officer could suggest a better solution. But when Hölters spoke, he was undone. “You must make contact with the Americans. They are not far—just over the border to Bavaria. Perhaps you can deliver the horses to them. It’s your only hope.”
The Americans? Rudofsky made use of his military background to maintain a neutral expression, but behind his dignified facade, he was shocked to the core. This officer, a stranger to him, was suggesting what Rudofsky had not imagined in his wildest dreams. It was unthinkable, preposterous, it bordered on the insane—he was advising Rudofsky to commit an act of high treason! Rudofsky silently ticked through the possibilities. Perhaps the officer had been sent specifically to test his loyalties, laying out a trap for him to stumble into? Even more terrifying, perhaps he spoke the truth. If their best hope was to surrender to the Americans, then clearly, all other avenues had been exhausted. One thing was certain: Rudofsky had sensed that this man’s enthusiasm for the horses was real, his erudition about the Lipizzaner and the Spanish Riding School authentic. Without speaking, Rudofsky ended the taut pause with a curt nod of assent.
After instructing Rudofsky to await further communication, Hölters got back into his car and drove away. Rudofsky would never see the short colonel with the Hitler mustache again.
AFTER HÖLTERS’S DEPARTURE, RUDOFSKY was thrown into a chasm of indecision. He understood that the horses were in danger and that a catastrophe was imminent, but he remained deeply uncertain whether he should take the Luftwaffe colonel’s advice. He wondered if he had been set up and was about to be double-crossed, then mulled over what the Americans might do if approached. Of all the horsemen in the Reich, Rudofsky had been selected to be in charge of these, their most precious horses. He was responsible for their safety. There was no easy solution to the problem, and he had precious little time to consider his options—if he spent too long thinking, it would be too late to act.
Just shy of his forty-eighth birthday, Rudofsky had been born into a place and time that quickly taught a hard truth: Republics and empires, dictators and presidents, came and went, ruthlessly demanding loyalty but constantly being overturned. Throughout almost forty straight years of upheaval, Rudofsky had kept his mind on horses and blended in like a chameleon with his surroundings. His loyalties lay close to home: to his ailing mother, his niece and nephew, to the Catholic parish where generations of Rudofskys had been baptized, married, and buried, and of course, to the animals entrusted to his care. Horses had been here before Hitler’s Third Reich arrived, and horses would be here, he believed, after Hitler was gone. Rudofsky was deeply reluctant to flee with the horses—not because he didn’t care about their well-being. Nothing was more important to him. But where, he wondered, could he protect them better than here in Hostau, where he was a highly respected member of the community? The safest thing for the horses, in Rudofsky’s opinion, was for them to remain at the farm.
WEARY AND BATTLE-WORN, HANK REED and the 2nd Cavalry had been fighting their way eastward for four months since Christmas 1944. On March 19, they had crossed the Rhine, and since then, they had been rapidly leapfrogging across Germany. The fighting was sporadic but ugly, with fanatical Germans digging in, willing to battle the Americans to the death. Colonel Reed and his men had penetrated so far into Germany that the Czechoslovakian border was just a few kilometers away. Right over that border, unbeknownst to them, lay the still peaceful village of Hostau.
Two hundred and ninety-five days. That was how many times the sun had risen and set since the day Reed and his men first set foot in France. The impress of each day was etched across Reed’s windburned face, written in his hooded gaze and somber expression. Everyone was predicting German defeat any day, but even as they marched closer to the end of the war, Reed was losing men from his ranks almost daily—shot by snipers, burned alive by mortar fire, rained on by lava-hot shrapnel, and blasted by cannon. It always hurt to lose a man, but somehow, the closer the end seemed, the more each loss counted. He could see the prospect of home flickering in the back of his men’s eyes with each mile covered and each new town captured. Every day, the after-action reports totaled the losses, adding new numbers to the columns of emptied boots. He had to try not to think about the mothers and sweethearts at home—the ones reading in the newspapers that the war was almost over, the ones who were allowing themselves to believe that surely their loved one was going to make it home alive.
The late-April sun shone down on all of them: on Podhajsky, who knew that the next few days would most likely decide his stallions’ fate; on Lessing, who nursed the mares and foals, wondering what would become of them; on Rudofsky, a man who had been thrust unwillingly into the most momentous decision of his life; and on Hank Reed, a man who loved horses, who had no idea he was about to be given the chance of a lifetime. The sun also shone upon the horses—reflecting glints of sunlight on the backs of the white stallions in St. Martin, and the broodmares in Hostau, and Witez’s blood bay coat, which shone like burnished bronze. The next few days would determine the fate of all of them, men and horses alike, encircled by warring nations pointing the world’s most powerful guns in their direction.