CHAPTER 5

THE FIELD OF MARS

CAVALRY EQUIPMENT, HORSES, AND DOCTRINE IN THE 1930s

The characteristic weapon of the German cavalry in the interwar period was the same one with which cavalrymen had been armed for centuries: the saber. The blade was thirty inches (76 cm) long and had a chord or width of one-and-a-quarter inches (3 cm). Normally sheathed in a steel scabbard, the M1916 saber's design very closely adhered to that of the truly fearsome light cavalry saber adopted in Prussia as early as 1796. It had an overall length of just under thirty-seven inches (93.9 cm). Issued to both officers and men until 1941, the saber was slung, edged curve to the rear, in a buckled frog attached to the saddle behind the rider's leg on the off side (the right) for enlisted men and the near side (the left) for officers. At the hilt the saber carried a fist strap tied in a colored knot denoting the trooper's regimental squadron.1 In addition to the saber, cavalrymen also carried another edged weapon in the form of a fifteen-and-one-quarter-inch-long (38.7 cm) bayonet. The same as that issued to infantrymen, the mounted trooper's bayonet differed only in having a small leather strap and buckle attached to the frog. This addition kept the bayonet from moving excessively when the trooper was in the saddle. The saber's and bayonet's object, of course, was what it had always been among mounted troops: to instill the fear of cold steel. For the same purpose, as already noted, the cavalry also still carried lances, complete with pennants, until 1927. The lance was intended to be at least as psychologically intimidating as the saber and consisted of a piece of tubular steel ten-and-one-half-feet (3.2-m) long. When riding in column, a trooper gripped the lance at its midpoint with his right hand, arm bent, and carried the weapon at an upward diagonal extending over the horse's withers to the near side.2 Despite their retention of edged weapons, and unlike in some of their grandfathers' experiences in 1870, German cavalrymen of the interwar period wore no armor other than a steel helmet, and their uniforms remained essentially the same as the infantry's. Modeled on the M1918 headgear of World War I, the cavalryman's helmet before the 1930s differed only in having shallow ear cutouts along the bottom edge, supposedly so that bugle calls could be better heard. Possessing a singular, wavy appearance when viewed from the side, this colloquially named “cavalry helmet” was eventually replaced by the standard M1935 helmet familiar to post-1945 generations as the Stahlhelm (even though the term applied also to earlier versions). As for the cavalry's service uniforms, the principal differences from the infantry's dress lay in the cavalrymen's wearing breeches with a full-seat leather addition, the leather overlay helping to keep the rider in the saddle while mounted. Proper riding boots were issued to all ranks. These differed from the infantry's in having a taller leg reaching to just below the knee; additionally, they lacked a hob-nailed sole. This feature allowed for easier use of stirrups. Naturally, mounted troopers also wore spurs. For the cavalry's dress uniform, some small traces of the traditional rider's flair were retained. The dress tunic or blouse, introduced in 1936, somewhat curiously had no pockets, but it did have the addition of decorative, turned-back “Brandenburg cuffs,” the whole being trimmed in traditional cavalry-gold piping.

As for firearms, the cavalry trooper's principal individual weapon throughout the 1930s and into the first years of World War II was the Mauser 98k (for kurz, i.e., “short”) carbine. This was a 7.92-mm, bolt-action weapon. It carried a five-round clip and weighed between eight-and-a-half and just over nine pounds (4 kg), depending upon the wood used for the stock. Based on an older version of the same rifle from World War I, the 98k was just over three feet (1 m) long. Originally designed for horse-mounted and horse-drawn troops, it was eventually adopted by the entire army owing to its ease of operation and “excellent ballistic characteristics.”3 The carbine originally rode, butt-down, in a boot or scabbard on the near side behind the rider's leg and was attached to the back of his belt by a strap. As happened with the German cavalry in World War I, however, the 98k eventually came to be routinely slung diagonally across the trooper's back in what was called the “Russian style.” After 1940, cavalry troopers would see ever more types of semiautomatic weapons and machine-pistols entering service to replace the 98k.

Supplementing the cavalrymen's individual weapons, several types of machine guns supplied heavier firepower between the mid-1920s and 1936. The principal heavy machine gun in service before the 1930s was the “heavy machine gun Model 1908” (sMG 08 or MG 08). As the name indicated, the army had adopted the gun in that year. In its earlier variants, this weapon dated all the way back to Hiram Maxim's original of 1885. It had been used extensively, and to murderous effect, by the German army in World War I, particularly in defense of fixed entrenchments and fortifications. However, the weapon's weight of more than forty pounds (its immediate predecessor, the MG 01, had weighed more than fifty; 18–22.6 kg), not including ammunition and the gallon of water necessary for coolant, dictated that infantrymen simply would not be able to maneuver with it. In 1915 a somewhat lighter variant, the MG 08/15, entered service and was, in its turn, beginning to be replaced by the air-cooled and still lighter MG 08/18 when World War I ended. Despite the weight of all three versions, the cavalry's horsepower eliminated the problem of the MG 08's cumbersomeness, at least until the weapon was dismounted. Therefore the cavalry continued to use it after 1918. The gun had proven itself in mobile combat operations with mounted units as recently as 1920 in the Polish-Russian War. There the Red Army's cavalry had widely used a Russian-built version in the form of the tachanka, consisting of a Maxim gun mounted on a light, horse-drawn buggy or carriage. With the gun aimed to the rear, the Red Army cavalrymen would gallop up, turn and fire, and then, if necessary, gallop away again, firing all the while in a sort of modern-day Parthian shot. Though German cavalry did not employ the MG 08 in this fashion, the Russian experience did show the continuing usefulness of an older technology. When on the march in a German cavalry column, the gun, its ammunition, and its crew all rode on a limbered wagon pulled by a team of six horses.4

To overcome the earlier weapon's limitations, the army issued a new set of requirements in the 1920s, and the Dreyse model MG 13 was adopted. The MG 13 accorded with Seeckt's doctrinal emphasis on putting as much firepower as possible in forward units such as the mounted arm. Consequently, he followed the MG 13's development with some attention. At about twenty pounds (9 kg), it not only weighed much less than the MG 08 but also had a higher rate of fire.⁵ By 1936, both the remaining MG 08s and the MG 13s were beginning to be replaced, along with the automatic weapons in other arms, by the justly famous MG 34 and, after about 1943, by the even more famous MG 42. Considered perhaps the first “universal” or true multipurpose machine gun, the air-cooled MG 34 was first tested in late 1933 by Mauser and constructed on the basis of an earlier, Danish design.⁶ Weighing just over twenty-two pounds (9.9 kg) and measuring slightly more than four feet in length (1.2 m), the MG 34 fired 7.92-mm rounds of drum- or belt-fed ammunition to an effective range of approximately 2,200 yards (2,000 m). With a bipod stabilized cyclic rate of 300–400 rounds per minute, the MG 34 delivered very effective fire support for mounted and other troops not least owing to its rapidly interchangeable barrels. Made as it was, however, from finely machined components and requiring producer-specific ammunition for optimum performance, the MG 34 was relatively expensive and slow of manufacture. Its successor, the MG 42, possessed all of the same basic features and ballistic characteristics but with the advantages that it had a higher standard cyclic rate of 800–900 rounds per minute, was made of stamped metal parts, weighed slightly less, and could be produced somewhat more rapidly and cheaply. Given the larger demands of the Heer after 1943, however, the MG 42 was never as widely used among horse-troopers as the MG 34. In either case, the mounted arm now possessed an easily transportable and deadly automatic weapon. The MG 42 also enjoyed a considerable psychological advantage in the “tearing-silk, buzz-saw sound” it made when fired, a sound that made it impossible to separate the sounds of individual rounds being fired.7 The MG 42 would go on to acquire a fearsome reputation among Allied troops on both the Western and Eastern Fronts, Russian soldiers even referring to it as the “mincemeat machine.” When the cavalry was on the march, the weapon was carried barrel-down in a scabbard on the near side behind the gunner's saddle. The rest of the two- or three-horse load included the other members of the gun crew, extra ammunition, cleaning gear, and a tripod. Some indication of these weapons' success is revealed by the fact that a combined total of perhaps 526,000 MG 34s and MG 42s were produced by 1945.

The heavy weapons of the cavalry throughout the 1930s and at the outbreak of war in 1939 consisted of three main types. The most potent was the 75-mm “light infantry gun” (leichtes Infanterie-Geschütz 18; le.I.G. 18) developed by the firm Rheinmetall in 1927.⁸ Actually a howitzer in American military terms, it carried the designation “cavalry gun” in the German mounted regiments. The le.I.G. 18 was specifically designed to be horse-drawn. Its caisson, originally rolling on two spoked, wooden wheels, gave the cavalry gun units the nickname “gypsy artillery.” Later models of the cavalry gun replaced the spoked wheels with steel ones mounting rubber tires. This weapon was well suited to use in mounted units. Its high-trajectory fire could take good advantage of concealment, and its plunging shot was effective against reverse-slope targets. Furthermore, the weapon's typical placement simultaneously offered protection from direct counter-battery fire. Specifically for these reasons, however, the le.I.G. 18 required good spotting of the fall of shot in order to ensure accurate fire. Depending upon a given regiment's designation following the mounted arm's eventual reorganization in 1935–1936, either four or six of these highly accurate weapons appeared on the unit's TOE. Furthermore, and again depending upon the regiment's designation and mission, the le.I.G. 18 would be towed either by a six-horse team or by motorized prime mover.⁹ In the latter case, the vehicle in question was the much liked “motor vehicle 69” (Kraftfahrzeug 69; Kfz 69) built by Krupp. This was the so-called Krupp-Protze (Krupp limber), a six-wheeled, 1.5-ton truck with double rear axles.¹⁰ In addition to the 75-mm howitzer, the cavalry regiments also included a battery of three, towed 37-mm anti-tank guns in the headquarters troop and, at least notionally, a crew-served 50-mm mortar in each bicycle platoon.11 The bicycle platoon was often equipped with the M1939 Patria WKC bicycle, a simple and rugged machine. It was unadorned except for an occasional headlight and the canvas cyclist's cape carried in a roll slung from the crossbar or handlebars. The Patria took its place in the cavalry's columns along with horse-drawn wagons. Of the latter, the most common was the ubiquitous Army Field Wagon 1 (Heeresfeldwagen 1; Hf1). Pulled by a team of two horses, the Hf1 weighed 1,430 pounds (650 kg) empty and could transport a useful load of 1,650 pounds (750 kg). The Hf1 also served throughout the rest of the army's non-mechanized formations.¹²

The Cavalry's Horses

In the 1930s, “cavalry” still meant horses. The concept of armored cavalry hadn't yet taken hold, though it loomed on the military horizon. Because the German army couldn't have cavalry (or horse-drawn logistics trains and artillery for that matter) without horses, several major breeding sources assumed particular importance. Given the varying requirements for cavalry mounts and draft horses, as well as mounts for officers in other arms, breeds' different characteristics influenced which horses went to which arm-of-service and in what numbers. Ensuring the supply of sufficient numbers also became critical. The losses of horses in World War I had been enormous, and not only in Germany. In the inter-war period, breed-stock and the overall equine population nevertheless recovered substantially, and between 1929 and 1937 the number of horses in Germany fluctuated only slightly. In the former year statistical estimates indicated that 3,617,000 horses of all breeds were to be found in the country; in the latter year 3,434,000. By 1939 the number had risen to approximately 3,800,000, presumably under the pressure of the army's increased requirements as it expanded.¹³ Though several different breeds were native to Germany, certain types, and the regions producing them, excelled in their service to the army both during the interwar period and World War II.

Certainly one of the most famous points of supply for both military and civilian horses in all of Germany was the East Prussian Central State Stud at Trakehnen. Located just off the rail line linking Eydtkuhnen on the Polish border with the World War I battlefields of Gumbinnen and Stallupönen, Trakehnen had been established as a stud between 1726 and 1732 by King Frederick William I, the “Soldier King.”14 Originally a large stretch of low-lying, open, and wet moorland (”Trakehnen” means “great moor”) adjoining the Rominten Heath, the Stud eventually encompassed some three thousand hectares of pasture and meadow and an additional three thousand hectares of rich farmland. The processes of canalizing and converting Trakehnen's moors to pasture and farmland were perennial interests of the Hohenzollern princes, as were the horses themselves, 30,000 of which were said to have been required to carry the first Hohenzollern king and his retinue from Berlin to Königsberg for his coronation in 1701. Frederick William I's son, the eventual Frederick the Great, would go on to drain more swamps than any other ruler of the age. In these efforts, pasturage for Prussian horse breeding would have remained important among the latter's concerns, as it had for Frederick William I. Land reclaimed from water-logged moors provided sustenance for horses as well as people, and horses were critical not only for farming but also for the Prussian cavalry.¹⁵ After 1918, the army established a remount depot on the northern side of the railway adjoining the Stud. The depot also encompassed the adjacent village of Kattenau and its surrounding moorland. It was in the remount depot that the army collected and temporarily stabled horses purchased from the Central State Stud and the outlying regional State Studs elsewhere in East Prussia before shipping them to their various units.¹⁶ The army prized these horses, and by 1912 East Prussia produced more than seven thousand remounts per year. By the 1930s, remounts were being purchased at three to four years of age, and all underwent a year of general conditioning at remount parks to bring them up to roughly the same standard of fitness. There followed a year's assignment to their units for a period of initial introduction to the saddle or the harness and a second year's more rigorous training for the horses' respective duties. Only at about six or seven would remounts actually begin an active-duty career generally envisioned to last for about ten years barring permanent injury, incapacitating wounds, and/or premature death. Though the army's demands fell immediately after 1918, by the 1920s the Central State Stud and its satellites were once again producing fine horses. These, however, exhibited a somewhat stockier build than those so heavily influenced by crossbreeding with English and Irish Thoroughbreds before World War I. The post-1918 horses consequently had a greater bone mass and a truer warmblood's disposition but still possessed elegant proportions. The Trakehner thus became the standard riding horse of the interwar German army, as it already had been of the Prussian army before 1914 and as it would remain later for the Wehrmacht. The official breeding goals as specified by the army for what it called the East Prussian Horse included, inter alia: “flexibility, toughness, a great galloping ability…endurance, a noble head, a strong elastic back with good saddle positioning, a deep and capacious chest cavity, [and] a high degree of impulsion (Schwung).”17 By 1939 standard expectations for a good Trakehner stallion or gelding included heights measuring between 15.3 and 16.2 hands. Suitable girths measured between 75 and 79 inches (190–200 cm). The same measurements for Trakehner mares were 15.2 to 16 hands and 70 to 79 inches (177–200 cm) in girth.¹⁸

A second major source of horseflesh for the army's needs lay in another traditional region of German horse breeding. This was in Hannover, in what is today Lower Saxony. Centered on Celle—the aforementioned location of the army's Cavalry School—this area stretched northward from the River Aller into the Lüneberg Heath. Downriver it ran northwestward beyond Verden to Bremen and encompassed the flat-lands of East Friesia and Emsland. In these fertile, windswept plains and low, rolling hills originated the renowned Hanoverian horse and its close cousin the Oldenburger.¹⁹ Horses bred in the region were well known as early as the seventeenth century. They had served in the armies of the Swedish kings Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. In the 1690s, the English had also acquired cavalry remounts from this source. About 1675, the governor of the Spanish Netherlands wrote that he had never seen finer cavalry horses than those later called Hanoverians.²⁰ It was only in the 1730s, however, that the breed began to assume its modern characteristics. In 1735 King George II of Great Britain, in his capacity as Elector of Hannover, decreed the establishment of a centralized effort there to “promote horse breeding in our German lands, especially in the duchy of Bremen and the county of Hoya [southeast of Bremen on the River Weser]…until such time as it has been seen what good comes of it for the land as a whole.”21

After 1815, the establishment of the Kingdom of Hannover in the wake of the Congress of Vienna accelerated the development of a distinct horse-breeding economy in the region. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Hanoverian finally became a valuable, multipurpose military and civilian horse. Indeed, the breed's military priority was stated explicitly in 1900 by the president of the Central Stud at Celle, who also happened to be a general officer in the army of what by then had become part of Prussia: “A horse suitable for use as a troop horse, heavy cavalry horse, artillery horse, or middle-weight carriage horse.”²² As to the breed's size, the Hanoverian's standard measurements before 1945 tended to be close to those of the Trakehner, though somewhat deeper from the point of withers to the chest and of a slightly heftier overall proportion owing to the lingering influence of the latter's eighteenth-century oriental crosses. As with most horses of predominantly German origin, the Hanoverian's overall standard height would increase somewhat after World War II, while the standard bone mass would drop a bit. The leaner, purpose-bred sporting horse of the postwar era was not the norm in the period from 1920 to 1945 for either the Hanoverian or the Trakehner. Of course, the indicated specifications of the German army's cavalry mounts did not necessarily coincide with those needed for the draft-horse labor of pulling artillery caissons or supply wagons, though cavalry horses were later routinely pressed into draft-horse service. Just as 1920s-era engineers of tanks or armored cars confronted difficult tradeoffs among vehicles' weight, weaponry, armor, and range, so too did horse breeders have to balance size, stamina, brute strength, soundness, and the nonquantifiable but critical factor of “heart” in horses intended for military use.

By 1914, 2,500 Hanoverians were being sold to the army annually. While fewer than the numbers of horses coming from East Prussia, the Hanoverians were at least as high in quality. Such sales were critical to the Central Stud's economic viability. As with the Trakehners of East Prussia, however, sales to the army fell dramatically in the years immediately after 1918 as Versailles' restrictions hit home. Nevertheless, and again like the Trakehners, but also as with the Hanoverians' close relative, the Oldenburger (as well as the somewhat smaller Haflinger of southern Germany and Austria), the currency collapse of 1923–1924 ironically helped stabilize breed-stock as persons still possessing cash looked for investments in property that might hold its value over time, despite the impending age of the automobile. This development stood the breed in good stead, as did the army's gradual and initially surreptitious expansion after the mid-1920s. The breeding goals specified by the army for the Hanoverian included a conformation similar to the Trakehner but with a slightly heavier head. Given the breed's intended military mission, its then heavier bone mass won the army's favor, as did its “outstanding jumping talent [and its] much calmer and more agreeable temperament.” While the mass of the army's riding horses continued to come from East Prussia, the Hanoverian was only slightly less prized in both riding and draft roles. Somewhat by contrast, other refined breeds such as Oldenburgers, Holsteiners, and East Friesians served primarily as light draft horses for the army's field artillery as well as for the infantry's service support units such as logistics trains. Other German horse-breeding areas provided the bulk of the army's heavy draft horses. Interestingly, an indication of the army's view of the horse's future may be seen in its willingness to pay more for “coarse” artillery horses than for pure cavalry mounts, the former possessing greater bone-mass and pulling strength than the latter.23 Whatever the breed of horse, the essence of cavalry warfare at the time lay in the transition from steady, sometimes fast, and often far-ranging riding in any weather and over varied terrain to dismounted infantry fighting. The German cavalryman having essentially become what earlier generations had called the dragoon, the horses selected for service in the mounted arm had to be able to endure routine marches of several days' duration over distances of 30 to 60 miles (48–95 km) per day all the while carrying between 200 and 250 pounds (90–113 kg) of rider and equipment.²⁴ Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, then, the army still had superb sources for the vast numbers of horses it required, even though it already envisioned a future of increasing motorization and mechanization. Whether cavalry or not, all divisions would include ever larger numbers of vehicles of all kinds (even though the vast majority of units outside the panzer arm never possessed adequate numbers of adequate machines). But until the sometimes facile prewar assumptions about vehicles bore themselves out, horses—Trakehners, Hanoverians, Oldenburgers, Haflingers, and other breeds—would still be needed in extraordinarily large numbers.

Veterinary and Remount Services

By 1939, caring for the hundreds of thousands of horses in the army on the eve of war consumed enormous resources of men and matériel, resources that would be expended in ever-greater amounts as the inevitable attrition of the animals occurred once the shooting started. Hence a sketch of the veterinary and remount services becomes important for a better understanding of the task confronting all mounted units as Hitler unleashed his war. The commander of the Army Veterinary Service was the Veterinarian Inspector General (Generaloberstabsveterinär), a post held from 1938 to 1945 by General Curt Schulze. Schulze's command, the Veterinärinspektion, was an Inspectorate of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; OKW). Thus he served as the commanding technical director in all matters of veterinary medicine and farriery for the entire army, not merely for the cavalry.25 “During the war, he was responsible for [a nominal strength of] 1,250,000 horses, 37,000 blacksmiths and 125,000 soldiers. The veterinary service was divided into 236 veterinary companies, 48 veterinary hospitals, and 68 horse transport [units].”²⁶ The hospitals of the veterinary service treated approximately 100,000 horses daily for ailments ranging from general lameness and communicable disease to wounds from bullets and shrapnel after 1939. An indication of the service's success can be seen in a return-to-active-duty rate of approximately 75 percent of all horses treated.²⁷

Each cavalry division was assigned two veterinary companies. Infantry, alpine, and Luftwaffe field divisions each were assigned one. Each veterinary company's hospital section provided care to wounded, injured, or sick horses brought in from the company's two collection stations. The latter could also provide the animals first aid. The collection stations were usually located five or six miles (8–10 km) behind the divisional front lines. Recuperating horses were shuttled from the hospital section to the veterinary company's supply section. Following recovery, the horses were first moved back to the collection stations and then out to the division. Horses in need of longer-term care were instead passed back to army-level hospitals and, if necessary, to the level of the appropriate army group. If necessary, they could be sent still further back to the “zone of the interior.” Conversely, newly assigned or recovered horses coming from veterinary parks and remount depots at the army and army-group echelon flowed down the same chain. Eventually they reached the company-level supply section and moved through the company's collection stations to the division.28

Closely supporting and reinforcing the divisional veterinary service, army-level facilities played a major role. Each army was assigned a hospital for wounded and injured horses. A second hospital treated any horses suffering from infectious diseases, especially captured horses. The hospitals had a rated capacity of 550 horses, but subsequent conditions in Russia drove the numbers into the thousands. Supplementing the army-level hospitals were two motorized veterinary clinics, as well as a motorized veterinary test station capable of executing bacteriological, serological, and chemical examinations. The army-level remount depot, like the hospitals, carried a rated capacity of about five hundred horses but often stabled many more. An interesting feature at this level of command was the motorized veterinary park where horses might recuperate. The veterinary park, however, needed ready access to railway transport owing to its very heavy complement of equipment and, of course, for shipping horses to and receiving them from the zone of the interior. Hospitals could also be located at an intervening army-group echelon, but the principal connections remained those directly linking the zone of the interior and the army-level facilities.²⁹ As of 1935, the army's veterinarians were trained at the Army Veterinary Academy in Hannover in conjunction with the civilian Veterinary University (Hochschule) in the same city. There were also three principal military farriery schools in Hannover, Munich, and Berlin.³⁰ Given the huge numbers of horses in question, the demands on the skills and physical endurance of the army's veterinarians and farriers may be easily imagined.

Keeping the cavalry and the rest of the army supplied with riding and draft horses was an enormous undertaking. Remounts came from two sources: the army's own remount service and requisitions. Working in the Inspectorate of Riding and Driving of the Army High Command, the remount service's purchasing commissions bought horses both from state establishments such as those at Trakehnen and Celle and from private owners.31 As before World War I, horses in the Reich were registered as to their potential military suitability and availability. Before 1933, registration took place under the auspices of various civilian agricultural organizations supervised by the army's Inspectorate of Conscription and Recruiting. Horses could thereby be declared militarily indispensable just as could civilians in critical occupations. Ideally aged three or four at the time of purchase, horses initially spent a year in one of fourteen regional remount depots before entering formal training at the Riding and Driving Schools located in the various Military Districts (Wehrkreise) of the Reich. In the remount depots, horses were brought to a uniform standard of maintenance. After 1939, the one-year conditioning period was often omitted with horses going directly into training. Even before the war's outbreak, the army's demands grew faster than the Reich's equine population. These demands forced the army to purchase horses abroad as early as 1936. Obviously, by 1939 demands for horseflesh had become voracious. In that year the number of required horses rose at a stroke from some 120,000 to almost 600,000. Domestic and foreign purchase, as well as requisition (whether compensated or not), rose even more dramatically once the war began: 148,000 in 1940; 282,000 in 1941; 400,000 in 1942; and 380,000 in 1943. As far as actual purchases were concerned, Hungary constituted a favored prewar source. That country alone supplied 25,000 horses for the Heer in the year 1934–1935, that is before the expansion of the Wehrmacht even really gathered speed. Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and, until 1939, Ireland also supplied stocks of horses. Eventually, between 1939 and the beginning of 1942, the German armed forces would also acquire 435,000 captured horses from the armies of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union.

In the latter case, the horses in question were the soon to be famous panye or panje horses. Known to the Germans by the same name as the small, two-wheeled wagons and wintertime sledges they pulled, these horses were often colloquially called “steppe ponies.” In fact, they were seldom ponies at all in the zoological sense. Of indiscriminate breed, they nevertheless frequently reflected the physiological influence of the horses of the Black Sea and Kazakh Steppe, though one should be cautious in ascribing too much influence here to the taller and more elegant oriental breeds such as the Russian Orlov Trotter, the specifically Turkmen Akhal Teke, or, by extension, the Turkic Karaman. Often measuring only fourteen hands, panje horses tended to be smaller than their German or other Western European counterparts and therefore not as able to bear or pull extremely heavy loads. What they lacked in stature and finesse, however, they more than made up in hardiness. Capable of enormous feats of endurance, the panje horse could travel as much as ninety miles (150 km) in a day and sustain itself on nearly any edible vegetable matter: oats, corn (i.e., maize), barley, hay, grass, straw, weeds, and, when necessary, even roofing thatch and tree bark. Somewhat less efficient in its way of going than its larger western cousins, the panje horse could not easily be incorporated in marching cavalry columns without rapidly becoming exhausted owing to its shorter legs and the more rapid average pace of larger breeds. In horse-drawn logistics or artillery trains, the panje horse did not fit well when coupled to standard Wehrmacht vehicles whose traces and higher centers of gravity made it a much less effective draft animal. When pulling native Ukrainian- or Russian-style carts, wagons, or sledges, however, the panje horse performed well and earned a good reputation among German troops, particularly those outside cavalry and artillery units who often didn't possess good horse-handling skills. Given the smaller size of panje wagons and the numbers of extra personnel who would be required to man ever larger panje columns attempting to move the required amounts of supplies and ammunition, the German army never saw the panje horse as anything more than a temporary expedient, albeit a welcome one, for hard-pressed units, particularly in Russia's winters. Nevertheless, as German soldiers were to discover in the first winter in Russia in 1941–1942, panje horses could survive unsheltered in all but the very coldest conditions; and, as noted, they enjoyed the additional advantage of not only needing less, but also much less refined, feed and fodder than the Wehrmacht's horses. In that respect, the German horses' standard daily ration in 1941 consisted of a whopping eleven pounds (5 kg) of oats for cavalry mounts and light draft horses; fourteen pounds (6.5 kg) for heavy draft horses; and nearly eighteen pounds (8 kg) for very heavy draft horses such as Belgians and Percherons. Of course, it should be borne in mind that uncooked oats in and of themselves do not have the same nutritive value for a horse as they do when rolled, steamed, or cooked as feed-mash. Rolled oats have their hulls cracked in the process, and steamed or cooked oats will tend to slough off their hulls altogether. In these cases, horses will be better able to digest the nutrients in the grain. By contrast, the hulls of the raw seeds make proper digestion more difficult. Consequently, much of the nutritive value of a given ration of raw oats would go in one end of the horse and out the other. Thus a larger amount of raw oats would be necessary to compensate for the relative loss of nutrition if the oats could not first be rolled, steamed, or fully cooked. Obviously, German cavalry, artillery, or draft horses would not always be able to be fed prepared oats in forward areas and/or locations at the far end of, much less beyond the end of, the logistics trains. This very situation would often present itself in Russia, as in the winter of 1941–1942. Greater reliance on local resources—sometimes adequate but all too often not—would necessarily result, with all that that would imply for the condition of the horses. In the mid-1930s, however, such a condition still lay in the realm of the unknown. In the meantime, peacetime rations of grain and sweet feed remained unchanged. It should be added that these rations of oats did not include an additional daily ration of hay varying from eight to eleven pounds (4–5 kg).

Of course, military horses work very hard and need generous rations of feed and fodder regardless of their arm of service. The rations-allowance nonetheless constituted a huge commitment of resources. Given the eventual exigencies of the war, such rations were not always available even when the horses themselves were. Consequently, panje horses not only came to provide a large proportion of remounts and draft horses after 1942, but they also drew less heavily on the army's supply chain. The latter factor assumed ever-greater significance with the increasing intensity of the Allies' strategic bombing campaign of Germany's infrastructure as of mid-1943. Coming from whatever sources they might, however, the army's cavalry remounts and draft horses still had to be found, and found they were. In the end, the total number of horses purchased or requisitioned from all private sources through 1944 reached the amazing figure of 1,645,000. Not counting further requisitions in the chaotic final year of the war, the grand total of horses (and mules) employed by the Wehrmacht during World War II approaches 2,500,000, and one source cites an even higher total of 2,750,000.32

On the Brink of War: 1935–1939

As with so many aspects of Germany's national life, the Reichswehr saw itself transformed by the accession of the Nazis to power on 30 January 1933. Throughout his public career before being named Reich Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler had made it abundantly clear that history's verdict as handed down in 1918 possessed no validity for him or his party. That verdict would be overturned, and his would be the court to do it. As early as his first speech to assembled military officers on 3 February 1933, Hitler maintained that the prerequisite to regaining the Reich's strength, in fact the essential definition of that strength, was the expansion of the armed forces beyond the limits set by Versailles. For him, the armed forces were the most important institution in the State. No one and nothing could or would be allowed to interfere with their expansion: not the Western Powers, not any bilateral or multilateral international agreements, not general domestic constraints, not his closest associates in the party. On this score he never wavered, though initially he could not say so publicly. Until he could in fact speak publicly about the subject—that is, until rearmament had actually proceeded so far as to make international opposition less likely—his mission would be to mask the expansion process politically.³³

An important early step in this process was Hitler's decision, supported by various elements in the army and the Foreign Ministry, to withdraw Germany from membership in the League of Nations as well as the League's Disarmament Conference. Taken in the autumn of 1934, this decision scored a huge domestic propaganda success for the Nazi regime. Furthermore, Hitler's determination helped solidify his early support within the armed forces and among the public at large.³⁴ Not coincidentally, it also occurred at same time as his decision, apparently made in May 1934 and announced privately on 1 October, to begin the secret expansion of the armed forces to three times the size allowed under the Treaty of Versailles.³⁵ With breathtaking rapidity, this secret decision was followed by Hitler's dramatic public announcement on 16 March 1935 that Germany had once more assumed her rightful sovereignty in military matters. He simultaneously announced the reintroduction of conscription with a one-year period of service effective 1 October 1935 and yet another expansion—a doubling in this case—of the army to a base figure of 600,000 men in 36 divisions. The unveiling of a not-so-secret Luftwaffe followed shortly thereafter.36 Incidentally, in that same spring and summer of 1935, changes occurred in the nomenclature of the armed forces. The old, Weimar-era designations began officially to fall away. The term Reichswehr came to be replaced officially by Wehrmacht. Before 1935, the latter term had referred more or less generically to the military power of the Reich or any other State. Similarly, the post-1918 term Reichsheer, specifically referring to the army, also went by the boards. It was superseded by the simple Heer. Seeckt's old billet, the Truppenamt, also officially disappeared. In its place there reappeared the older “General Staff,” a term and an office that had been specifically banned by the Treaty of Versailles as reflecting a putatively inherent Prussian militarism.

As much for political reasons as military ones, Hitler demanded that Germany's rearmament be driven forward at breakneck pace. In this demand he overrode or simply ignored occasional opposition from the army's leadership. He also permitted ferocious and ultimately unresolved competition for resources and manpower among the three branches of service—Heer, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine.³⁷ Requirements for the same resources by many grandiose and propagandistically important public works projects only compounded administrative confusion as the Nazi satraps battled each other for prominence and perquisites. This internecine political rivalry further eroded whatever efficiency still existed in the army's expansion. This situation directly affected the cavalry in that the army's programs for motorization and mechanization, already viewed by some in the late 1920s as certain to replace the horsemen, did not proceed effectively. The Wehrmacht's growth “remained a fundamentally unco-ordinated [sic] expansion of its individual services. An overall rearmament programme for the Wehrmacht did not exist.” Of course, much is often made of the fact that the first three armored divisions were established as early as the autumn of 1935. Furthermore, almost exactly one year later the army had already reached, indeed exceeded, its own and Hitler's goal of a thirty-six-division force, a total that it was originally not supposed to attain until autumn 1939.38 Nevertheless, throughout the six years of peace remaining between the Nazis' accession to power and the invasion of Poland, the army continued to operate under the guidance of a doctrinal manual still giving horse-mounted troops militarily important, if not critical, tactical and operational roles.

This manual, Truppenführung (Unit Command), appeared in two parts published in 1933 and 1934 as Heeresdienstvorschrift 300 (Army Service Regulation 300). In its turn, Truppenführung had succeeded the important manual which had provided the basis of Germany's military doctrine throughout Seeckt's tenure as head of the Truppenamt and afterward. That earlier manual was entitled Führung und Gefecht der Verbundenen Waffen (Command and Combat of the Combined Arms—widely known simply as das FuG).³⁹ Important for the army as a whole and for the cavalry in particular was the latter's doctrinal restoration of the importance of mobile battle leading to the enemy's annihilation. The FuG's emphasis on mobile battle resulting in the battle of annihilation (Vernichtungsschlacht) attempted to overcome the legacy of the positional warfare (Stellungskrieg) earlier waged on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, despite that legacy's inapplicability to the campaigns on the Eastern Front. Importantly, the FuG's restoration of the centrality of mobile-combat doctrine also returned to an older Prussian-German tradition of emphasizing as much mobility as possible, according to whatever the then-current technology allowed. Such a principle favored military commanders possessed of great initiative and fighting campaigns as briefly and decisively as possible. If anything could be said to constitute a true German way of war, this was it, not the great battles of attrition which had so dominated the image and conduct of the Western Front before 1918.⁴⁰

In Truppenführung, the German army distilled its experiences since 1870, particularly in light of the initial victories and the eventual defeat in the war of 1914–1918. Throughout the manual, the army's doctrinal thinkers continued to envision a prominent role for the cavalry and for horses generally, notwithstanding the advent of the panzer arm. “Combat is the cavalry's principal mission.”⁴¹ A clearer statement of doctrinal intent and the cavalry's putative contribution to the army could hardly be imagined. It would be in reconnaissance and screening that most of the cavalry's combat would occur. From these two principal tasks others would derive: movements against the enemy's lines of communication; flank security; pursuit; and delaying actions (706–710). Eventually, after the invasion of the Soviet Union, anti-partisan duties would be added to the list. In clear recognition of the events of 1870 and the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, Truppenführung urged avoidance of mounted attacks against prepared positions. If, however, such efforts were necessary to fix the enemy in place (another classic task of the cavalry, as at Mars-la-Tour in 1870), then the horsemen were to undertake even these (707). In any case, they would normally fight dismounted, dragoon-style, and were to be supported as closely as possible by their own horse-artillery and automatic weapons (716). Mounted combat would be a rarity. If it did actually occur, Truppenführung's authors wrote that such combat would usually result only from a chance engagement of two small units or from the surprising of an enemy formation. Nevertheless, the manual also stressed in very traditional fashion that a mounted attack against a demoralized enemy could have great psychological effect (718). When engaged, the cavalry divisions' own motorized infantry and artillery, as well as their bicycle- and motorcycle-mounted troops, would augment the horsemen's firepower. Truppenführung acknowledged, however, that these units would largely be limited to the roads and be dependent on “other arms” (i.e., horsemen, armored cars, and aircraft) for their reconnaissance and march-security (720–722). In spite of any such limitation, the cavalry divisions were deemed fully capable, along with their infantry counterparts, of independent operations and self-support precisely because of their organic composition (22). Their reconnaissance and screening value was highly regarded because of their all-weather, cross-country capability, a capability not yet matched by motorized vehicles (133). Conversely, horses' marching speeds of perhaps five miles per hour (7 km/h) at the walk and seven (10 km/h) at the trot compared very unfavorably with the eighteen to twenty-five miles per hour (30–40 km/h) of motorized vehicles (292 and footnote there), not to mention the critically important equine requirements of regular rest and watering halts (272–273, 303).

For all that the Truppenführung retained a major role for the cavalry, the writing appeared to be on the wall, or at least it would have been had peace lasted long enough for the army to acquire sufficient numbers of motorized and mechanized vehicles. A second part of the manual, published in 1934, covered the matter of armored combat vehicles (gepanzerte Kampffahrzeuge). At the time, this designation included both wheeled armored cars and the tracked progenitors of proper tanks (725–758). While the first panzer divisions would only be established in 1935, the manual clearly foresaw the horse cavalry's replacement. Furthermore, armored cars were explicitly envisioned as assuming the cavalry's reconnaissance functions despite armored cars' then-still-poor, off-road capability (727). For its part, the tank possessed much better cross-country capability but was still hampered by short range and relatively low road speed compared to its wheeled counterpart. Consequently, the gaps in the various vehicles' characteristics still left a place for horse-mounted troops to occupy in the years between 1935 and 1939, even if the evident tendency was toward the horse's retirement from the combat role.

Even if the Truppenführung seemed to herald the end for the German cavalry, nothing was yet a done deal, even in 1935. Similar arguments over the mounted arm's viability occurred at roughly the same time in other European armies as well as in the U.S. Army. To maintain that in 1920, 1930, or even 1935 all officers in every army stood convinced of mechanization's inevitability badly misrepresents the then-prevailing situation. Four of the five cavalry divisions in the French army, for example, were modified into mixed divisions between 1932 and 1939, and three still were still in service when war came. Each of these divisions required more than five thousand horses for its two horse-mounted brigades.42 Similarly, in the British army, only two of twenty cavalry regiments had been converted from horses to armored cars, much less tanks, by 1933, and major armored experimental exercises had largely ended in 1931.⁴³ Of course, it remains true that the British army is the only major European army to go to war in 1939 without significant numbers of horses in the active forces. Nevertheless, what was written of the British army applied at least as well to the Herr after 1934. There was no

heroic but vain struggle [in the German army] of a handful of brilliant iconoclasts, who were later proved right, against a compact majority of antediluvian cavalry-loving diehards. Closer inspection…shows that the reality was more complex. The progressives or radicals did not agree with each other on all points and in some respects their predictions proved mistaken or inadequate. Moreover, although diehards or reactionaries certainly existed, the majority of officers…could be described as cautious or moderate progressives; that is, they recognized that machines such as tanks would play an increasingly important part in future war, but they tended to stress the numerous problems and uncertainties. How, for example, would armored forces be supplied and repaired when far from base? Would they not soon be countered by antitank guns? And above all, what part would armored units play in military organization as a whole, given the shortage of funds and equipment, and traditional interservice rivalries?44

All of these considerations applied, mutatis mutandis, to the armies that Adolf Hitler was even then preparing to unleash against Europe.