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CHAPTER 7

BARBAROSSA

THE 1ST CAVALRY DIVISION IN RUSSIA, 1941–1942

General Kurt Feldt's assessment from summer 1940 concerning Germany's next enemy was not far from the mark. Though intervening campaigns in spring 1941 led to the conquest of the Balkans and Crete, and though German forces found themselves dispatched to North Africa as well, Hitler's real enemy always lay in the east. The non-aggression pact with Stalin would last not one minute longer than necessary. Along with several million other soldiers, the German cavalrymen would play their part in what would become by far the largest land war in history.1

With the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the 1st Cavalry Division initially found itself operating in the area of the Pripet Marshes. Straddling the borders of prewar Poland and Russia, the marshes stretched away eastward for more than two hundred miles (321 km) from a point near the River Bug and the city of Brest-Litovsk on the border between German- and Soviet-occupied Poland to the Berezina River and the cities of Bobruisk and Gomel. Covering, according to one estimate, a vast area of nearly 100,000 square miles (258,998 sq/km), the region called Polessia (“woodlands”) by Poles formed the largest contiguous wetland in Europe.² Somewhat reminiscent of the lakes and moor land around the East Prussian State Stud at Trakehnen, though never effectively canalized, the marshes' relatively dry areas were interspersed with sand dunes, innumerable meandering streams, and, occasionally, larger rivers such as the Pripet and Horyn. Indeed, the Pripet River was the only significant stream flowing more or less west to east (i.e., roughly parallel to the path of the German invasion) in the whole of the western Soviet Union. Its and the Horyn's tributaries, and most other rivers in the western Soviet Union, flowed perpendicular to the Germans' axis of advance, thereby creating innumerable large and small riparian barriers to the invaders and requiring “an infinite number of bridges.” All of the Pripet Marshes' watercourses drained a shallow basin that at its widest extent stretched some one hundred miles (160 km) north to south. Extensive forested belts included thick stands of willow, birch, and alder. In 1941 the Pripet Marshes sheltered a sparse human population living close to the land on both sides of the border in villages and small towns. Pinsk remained one of the largest of the latter and also served as an administrative center. In addition, the marshes also provided extensive habitat for wolves, wild boar, waterfowl, millions of mosquitoes,3 and eventually Soviet partisans.

Twice a year the marshes expanded. In the spring, runoff from snow-melt raised water levels and caused rivers and streams to flood. In the fall, for a period of about four weeks, autumnal rains repeated the process until the first hard frost.⁴ Cross-country movement for foot soldiers could be agonizingly slow in the marshes. For vehicles it was often literally impossible. The roads that did exist were usually no more than unimproved lanes and usually so narrow that military vehicles could neither detour nor turn around. German combat engineers could, and did, build bridges and corduroy roads in the marshes from readily available logs, but a motorized convoy's speed over such surfaces was limited to about five, kidney-pounding miles per hour (8 km/h).⁵ By contrast, horse-mounted columns possessed real advantages. They could move at least as fast as vehicles in the marshes' terrain. They didn't need corduroy roads and could usually ride easily on dirt tracks, wet or dry. They didn't need much, if any, gasoline. If necessary, cavalrymen's horses could forage for their fuel, and they could usually outdistance marching infantry with ease, even at the walk. Mounted or not, however, German soldiers always had to remain watchful, for their maps did not always reveal the true nature of the ground, whether in the Pripet Marshes or in the hundreds of other large, forested wetlands they encountered. What often appeared to be, and what maps often depicted as, meadowlike flats were frequently covered with a sort of dark turf effectively floating on a glutinous, apparently bottomless substratum. The “slightest pressure” would break the turf, and the result would be a “motor vehicle swallow[ed] to its very top” or a horse to its haunches. Such deficiencies in intelligence, whether on maps or in other respects, were later admitted by German veterans to have been a significant contributory factor in their underestimation of the difficulties inherent in conquering a country as immense as Soviet Russia.6

As in much of the Soviet Union, the expanses of the Pripet Marshes remained largely bereft of modern transportation arteries. “The entire Soviet Union had only 51,000 miles of railroad, all of a different gauge than those in Germany and eastern Europe. Of 850,000 miles of road, 700,000 were hardly more than cart tracks; 150,000 miles were allegedly all-weather roads, but only 40,000 miles of those were hard surfaced.”⁷ On the edges of the marshes themselves, roads and railways ran roughly northeast from Brest-Litovsk to Minsk and others almost due east from Brest-Litovsk to Gomel. Connecting the latter two cities was yet another stretch running generally southeast from Minsk via Bobruisk to Gomel. The Pripet Marshes thus found themselves enclosed in a sort of triangle with Minsk at the apex. Within that triangle, however, almost all movement frequently reverted to walking speed at best, particularly in the wet seasons. In the event, that very factor, combined with the marshes' unique topographical features, made the basin of the Pripet River a haven for Red Army soldiers scattered from their units in Operation Barbarossa's initial stages. Eventually added to those stragglers came organized bands of Soviet partisans and civilians fleeing the German invaders. All such persons thus became a major concern for the German 1st Cavalry Division in 1941 (and later for the principal cavalry unit of the Waffen-SS), for the marshes could not be safely bypassed. If they were, then partisans could pounce at will on the logistical columns following in the wake of the then-steadily advancing German frontline formations.

Aggravating this situation was an even greater practical problem. The Pripet Marshes lay astride the operational boundary line dividing the Germans' Army Group Center and Army Group South. Consequently, not only the southern sectors of Army Group Center's axis of advance but also the northern sectors of Army Group South's could be attacked by Soviet partisans holed up in the marshes. Cavalry units might therefore not only be effective in combing the swamps of enemy fighters, as the Germans' situation reports often said. They might also help play the crucial role of operational liaison through the marshes between the two army groups until the German advance reached the Berezina.

This set of problems regarding German motorized and mechanized formations' lack of mobility in the Pripet Marshes casts an interesting light on an issue that had confronted German cavalry in 1914. In that earlier conflict, the great masses of horsemen advancing through Belgium were significantly hampered by the heavily built-up nature of the landscape in Flanders. Their mobility was impeded by numerous villages, walls, fences, hedges, canals, industrial plants, slag heaps, railways, and rivers. In 1941 it was German motorized and mechanized formations that found themselves in an analogous situation regarding the vast extent of the Pripet Marshes and other forested wetlands. The shoe was now on the other hoof: it was the mechanized and motorized forces that either could not move at all or, when they could, then only with difficulty. By marked contrast, the horsemen of the 1st Cavalry Division (and later, once again, the cavalry of the Waffen-SS) could operate more easily in this difficult country and thereby still render valuable service to the German army.

Interestingly enough, that army wasn't alone in having leaders who thought that mounted forces might still play a useful role in such country. The Red Army, too, was aware of the value of horsemen in the region of the Pripet Marshes and elsewhere. Along with partisans, the Red Army sometimes deployed its own cavalry units in what eventually became a sort of front-behind-the-front. To note merely one example, in the fall of 1941 a motorized German supply column of thirty trucks with trailers heading to Bobruisk on the eastern leg of the road-triangle enclosing the marshes ran headlong into elements of a Russian cavalry force of some 2,500 men moving into position in a forested area south of Minsk. Heavy fighting ensued with the Russian horsemen bringing up anti-tank guns. They destroyed several vehicles and the German column managed to extricate itself only with the timely arrival of infantry reinforcements, including units of a machine gun battalion.8 In this particular battle the Russian cavalry in question may have been a unit isolated in the initial German invasion. Further, there would not be pitched battles in the Pripet Marshes between German and Russian horsemen as such. Nevertheless, whether intentional or not, the very fact of Russian cavalrymen's presence in such numbers both then and later indicated that the Red Army thought mounted combat forces still had a role to play. Indeed, in the summer of 1941, the Red Army undertook a massive expansion of its cavalry arm. In July, precisely when German cavalry were beginning operations in the Pripet River basin, orders went out from the Soviet high command (stavka) establishing thirty new light cavalry divisions of 3,447 horsemen each. Later in the same year the number of such divisions rose to eighty-two.⁹ Though the expansion may have been driven by alarm as the Soviets attempted to fend off a seemingly unstoppable onslaught, the fact remains that the Red Army high command felt that mounted forces were still useful. As events would show, these same Russian horsemen would prove effective in the long-range, guerrilla warfare that accompanied the immobilization of mechanized forces during the winter of 1941–1942.¹⁰ Furthermore, it is worth noting that in the specific instance cited here, the Russian horsemen executed a traditional mission of the cavalry: interdicting the enemy's supply columns and creating havoc in his rear. The Red Army's cavalry were also deemed to have an advantageous psychological effect upon German infantry. Soviet marshal S. K. Timoshenko, commander of the Red Army's Western Front (i.e., army group) in 1941, noted that German infantry tended to flee before onrushing horsemen and simply go to ground.¹¹

Whether in the Pripet Marshes or elsewhere, the war facing the German 1st Cavalry Division and all other German forces in 1941 and afterward in Russia was unlike any in modern European history. For sheer savagery, nothing surpassed it. From the beginning to the end, the war on what the Germans called the Eastern Front was a war of annihilation sparing no one. As is now universally recognized, Hitler's intentions were clear. The war in “the East,” as the Soviet Union was so often called in Nazi, and even non-Nazi, parlance, had as its objective not only the conquest and colonization of that country's land but also the suppression and, if necessary, the extermination of her people. Not all German soldiers would have seen the war in that fashion, but all too many did; and while the murderous treatment of the peoples of the Soviet Union was the particular hallmark of the formations of the SS, the German army did not escape complicity.

Some senior army commanders refused to publish orders issued by Hitler via the OKW calling for the summary execution of communist party officials (the “Commissar Order”) or effectively exonerating Germans in advance for whatever atrocities they might commit. Still, those same senior commanders were sometimes out of touch with junior officers and enlisted troops who had come of age politically during the Nazi years and who tended to be more ideologically committed to support the regime's heinous policies.12 In addition, years of nationalist prejudice against Slavs, as already witnessed during the war of 1914–1918, affected how the army behaved:

A large portion of the Wehrmacht regarded the Soviet people as bumbling and potentially treacherous subhumans. In itself this is by no means a unique psychological failing. Soldiers feel the need to dehumanize or demonize their opponents in order to overcome the natural reluctance to kill, and atrocities have all too frequently ensued. In dealing with Soviet prisoners and civilians, however, this unofficial German attitude produced widespread instances of brutality and murder. Quite apart from the moral implications of such conduct, the German behavior served to alienate potential allies and to spark widespread resistance.¹³

The same widespread resistance would greatly augment that of the Red Army and create the very front-behind-the-front whose dangers the men of the German 1st Cavalry Division would so often have to face.

They began this task when the division crossed its start line, the River Bug, on the invasion's first day, 22 June 1941. Along with the 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions and the 255th Infantry Division, it constituted an element of XXIV Panzer Corps. Not surprisingly accompanied by some confusion, the crossing of the Bug was nevertheless successful everywhere in the division's area of operations around Slawatycze, just south of Brest-Litovsk. Of course, there arose the inevitable unanticipated difficulties. Elements of the division's 1st Reiter Regiment, for example, encountered unexpected resistance from a line of bunkers on the river's eastern bank. In addition, unusable fords and unfavorable riparian shorelines prevented the division's horses being swum across. Consequently, captured bridges had to be used to make the crossing, this being made easier by the fact that “every bridge on all the border rivers from the Baltic to the eastern tip of the Carpathians” was seized within several hours of sunrise.14

Initially the division had the mission of guarding the southern flank of XXIV Corps' 4th Panzer Division advancing toward Pinsk, the local administrative center of the western reaches of the Pripet Marshes. The route meant that the cavalrymen would be skirting through the marshes' northern region. Evidently, the mounted elements of the division adequately managed the terrain. The division's motorized vehicles, however, found the sandy soil rough going even though it was still relatively dry, the spring rains and snowmelt having gone, the autumnal rains having not yet begun. This same deep, powdery sand completely exhausted marching infantry, wherever they were found. To the clear frustration of the cavalrymen's commanders, the main paved road running eastward, the so-called Panzerstraße or Panzer-Rollbahn, was reserved for armored and motorized-infantry units. Consequently, the Cavalry Division's vehicles made slow progress and led General Feldt to report that his entire unit would not be “combat capable” (Kampffähig) until his vehicles could get back on the road.¹⁵ Nevertheless, throughout the period to 30 June, the division pushed hard to the east, employing combined-arms attacks by its Reiter regiments, the Bicycle Battalion, and motorized reconnaissance elements to fend off sporadic Red Army counterattacks against the armored forces' flank. In this advance, the horsemen kept pace with, and sometimes got ahead of, neighboring armored units, though not without cost. On 24 June, for example, Russian air raids caused “heavy losses” among the division's horses. Nonetheless, three days later the mounted units cut loose from their motorized elements and pushed on without them. The Reiter regiments reached the divisional objective of Siniawka early on 29–30 June, with the motorized elements arriving in the afternoon of the latter day.¹⁶

As had occurred after the division's campaign in the Low Countries and France in 1940, so now in early July 1941 divisional staff prepared a lessons-learned report on the eastern campaign to that point. Not surprisingly, the report made the case for the unit's continued existence.17 The Cavalry Division was “particularly suited for flank protection of armored units in roadless areas (abseits der Strassen)” and for covering gaps in the line. Furthermore, until the armored pursuit of broken enemy forces actually began, the cavalrymen had demonstrated at least as good a marching ability as the mechanized units, even over the most difficult terrain and even on the part of the Bicycle Battalion. Therefore, command concluded that the Cavalry Division should still be included in a panzer corps. Nevertheless, the same report didn't shy away from pointing out problems, and in this respect Feldt seems to have been notably forthright. He observed that the reconnaissance element possessed insufficient personnel, cross-country capability, speed, and uniformity of equipment. Comprised of a collection of horse- and bicycle-mounted troopers, motorized vehicles, and even horse-drawn vehicles, it showed itself insufficiently nimble (wendig) and hard to manage. Similarly, divisional artillery and logistics needed greater off-road capability and lighter overall weight. Finally, total losses to 30 June were reported as 77 officers and men killed in action, 289 wounded, and 9 missing.¹⁸

By 7 July the division had advanced a straight-line distance some 250 miles (402 km) and had reached Bobruisk on the Berezina River where they paused before the next stage in the armored corps' drive on Smolensk. During the rapid advance to the Berezina, threats to the Cavalry Division's horses manifested themselves beyond the combat injuries sustained in the Pripet Marshes. Directives warned, for example, against rabies and glanders, a potentially fatal bacterial disease afflicting a horse's mucous membranes. The directives stipulated that Russian military and civilian horses were not even to be touched if they showed symptoms of nasal drainage or lesions. Russian stalls were not to be used, nor were Russian saddles or tack. Healthy-appearing Russian horses, if requisitioned, were to be screened by the division's veterinary officers before use. To prevent the spread of rabies, no unauthorized dogs were allowed in the division's bivouacs. All strays were to be shot.¹⁹ Despite such warnings about the hazards of employing panje or other Russian horses, particularly for logistical purposes, the necessity for it inevitably arose. As early as 5 July, General Feldt indicated that the troopers would have to “live off the land” owing to difficulties in bringing up re-supply columns.20 Living off the land obviously implied using not only Russian supplies but also Russian horses. This necessity also reflected the lingering concerns about Barbarossa's logistics, concerns that predated the actual start of the campaign and, because they were never resolved, contributed materially to the Germans' eventual defeat.²¹

Notwithstanding these initial difficulties, normal operations continued. The first week of July saw the cavalrymen providing security in various localities around Bobruisk including, at one point, forward-airfield security for the Luftwaffe's famous 51st Fighter Wing Mölders. Reports in this period tartly observed that the division was spread out over an area of fully 463 square miles (1,200 sq/km) of dense forests and was constantly engaged in clearing actions (Säuberungsaktionen) against enemy-occupied villages, isolated armored columns, and Soviet paratroopers.²² Even so, the horsemen were also tasked with helping secure the southeast flank of XXIV Panzer Corps as the latter moved east and slightly north to prepare a forced crossing of the next significant riverine barrier, the Dnepr. The corps' tanks began crossing on 11 July near the town of Novo Bykhov just downstream from the city of Mogilev, and the horsemen's fight was fierce for the next ten days on both sides of the river. While the panzers rolled away eastward from the Dnepr, the Cavalry Division fought off repeated Russian counterattacks against the crossing point from both north and south. Even bypassed Russian troops still on the river's western bank attempted to cut off the eastward-driving panzers by seizing the approaches to the crossing point from the western side of the stream. Thus the cavalrymen, out of contact with their own armor and being only slowly relieved by follow-on German infantry approaching from the west, played a major role in holding open a vital corridor—and at that moment the only bridge across the Dnepr—for General Heinz Guderian's entire 2nd Panzer Group.²³ Gradually, the German 17th and 112th IDs came up in support of the cavalrymen, and German lines on the eastern shore of the Dnepr were gradually pushed out in heavy fighting to the south and southeast.

In reviewing the month's action, divisional command reported with satisfaction that the Cavalry Division's troopers had once again proven themselves. After-action reports struck a slightly newer tone, however. Whereas in Barbarossa's opening weeks the division's principal accomplishments had been rather traditional—hard-riding, rapid advances over long distances in the partisan-infested country of the Pripet Marshes—the battles along the Dnepr seemed to show that the cavalrymen could be equally effective in defensive fighting as dismounted infantry, in a sense a throwback to the concept of the nineteenth-century dragoon. The great superiority of Russian artillery was duly noted, but this was a fact of life for a division whose “gypsy artillery” was never organized or equipped to engage in sustained gun-on-gun combat. This unavoidable disparity, however, was made worse by difficulties in maintaining supplies of ammunition for the horse-artillery batteries. In mid-July alone, for example, the division's guns had expended a number of rounds equal to fifty percent of those used in the entire campaign of 1940. That expenditure, however, was merely one of ammunition. As always, the clearest indicator of the severity of the fighting was the number of losses incurred among divisional personnel. From 22 June to 29 July, the division lost 366 officers and men killed, 1,593 wounded, and 43 missing. Individual mounted squadrons' combat strength had been reduced by as much as 85 percent. After-action summaries made clear that for the division to be once more fully combat-effective, 1,280 noncoms and men and 1,435 remounts would have to be supplied, primarily for the Reiter regiments. These remained the division's cutting edge, and until replacements came up, the Reiter regiments would have to comb divisional and brigade staffs and other sources for spare personnel and horses. In addition to men and horses, however, more prosaic equipment was also badly needed. Among other things, such equipment included 350 bicycles for the Bicycle Battalion and totally unglamorous but absolutely essential items such as bicycle tires and spare parts for automatic weapons.24

As for the horses themselves, the division reported a strength of 12,153 on 10 August, of which 1,685 had earlier been captured or requisitioned (Beute-und beigetriebene Pferde).²⁵ When ridden, the requisitioned horses had shown themselves incapable of keeping up with the average German-bred mount and therefore had to be constantly replaced with other captured or requisitioned horses. By contrast, “nine-tenths” of the panje horses taken into the division's service solely as draft animals had held up without apparent difficulty. To date, 3,365 of the Cavalry Division's horses had “fallen out.” Of these, 2,551 had been sent back through the veterinary services' network: one-third as a result of wounds suffered; one-quarter owing to general lameness; the rest from various other causes such as exhaustion, colic, nervous stress, or problems with farriery. More than 550 had been killed or had died of natural causes, and 258 had bolted during artillery or aerial attacks and had not been recovered. In order to rebuild the stock of horseflesh, as well as to rest the men and re-equip, the division received orders for another much needed operational pause effective 1 to 11 August.26

During the same pause, the hard-hit Bicycle Battalion was reorganized from three squadrons to two owing to its reduced manpower. At this time the division also found itself transferred to Second Army's XIII Corps for a projected drive to the southeast on the city of Gomel. The division's mission would be to block a possible Soviet retreat via that city.²⁷ In this capacity, the horsemen prepared to participate in the great drive to the south ordered by Hitler. This meant, of course, that the movement toward the Soviet capital would have to wait. The strategic goal in the diversion was to seize the economic resources of the Ukraine before the resumption of the assault on Moscow. The operational objective was to smash the remaining Soviet armies in the Ukraine so that they might not threaten the eventual movement of Army Group Center toward Stalin's center of power.

As the drive on Gomel commenced, the Cavalry Division was ordered to hold up behind the 17th ID that had by now been brought forward. On the contrary, the cavalrymen should have been deployed ahead of the infantry. Coincidentally, this very same foul-up had occurred in the initial Prussian deployment against Austria in 1866. As one would expect, this arrangement generated evident annoyance in the division's command and necessitated a forced march by the horsemen of more than sixty miles (100 km) between midday on 12 August and dusk the following day in order to get out in front; that is before they even came into contact with Soviet forces. Consequently, both the cavalrymen and their horses went into action insufficiently rested.²⁸ Nevertheless, by 15 August they had cleared the important road junction of Chechersk, north of Gomel, of enemy troops. They had also fended off repeated Russian counterattacks, including ones by armored vehicles, employing the division's own armored reconnaissance and reinforced bicycle detachments. They had further bottled up Soviet troops attempting to avoid encirclement near the Dnepr River town of Rogachev in the face of a riverine assault executed there by XLIII and LIII Infantry Corps. Acidly, divisional after-action reports noted that the German infantry whom the horsemen preceded were able to “march” without fighting all the way to the last prepared Russian positions outside of Gomel.29 On 16 and 17 August, the Cavalry Division pushed on to Vetka, immediately north of Gomel on the River Sosh. An attack by one of the division's mounted brigades succeeded in capturing the place, and the cavalrymen immediately turned bridge builders. They threw two spans across the river and built up a considerable bridgehead on the eastern bank. Along the way, they just missed capturing the entire staff of the Soviet Twenty-First Army. The horsemen subsequently noted that their action made it possible for the German infantry to avoid assaulting Gomel directly from the west and northwest. Instead, the latter could now attack the city from the northeast by way of Vetka if necessary.³⁰ There the Russians' defenses were weaker, and on 19 August the German XIII Corps occupied this regional capital.

This remarkable feat was followed by an equally noteworthy one. In a move reminiscent of the uhlans of 1870, the division's 21st Reiter Regiment lunged (ausholen) eastward almost sixteen miles (25 km) on the same day Gomel was occupied to reach the bridge at Dobrush on the Iputs River. Though it had to shift slightly to the north to avoid being cut off from the rest of the division, the regiment had single-handedly and considerably extended the Germans' advance in a day. The extension nevertheless forced the 1st Reiter Regiment and the divisional armored reconnaissance detachment to cover the 21st Regiment's northern flank and rear against Soviet counterattacks. This they did successfully. As the cavalrymen had done on the Dnepr, so now they were once more forced to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously. Still, with support from a following infantry regiment, the cavalrymen cleared Dobrush and yet again forced a river-crossing by 22 August in the face of “well positioned and stubbornly resisting enemy forces” (geschickt eingebauten und zäh kämpfenden Feind).31 In the face of two full Soviet infantry divisions dug in on the Iputs' vast and swampy eastern bank, the cavalrymen could not seize their ultimate objective, an area of high ground beyond known as the Korma Heights. In this frustrated operation the troopers replayed, after a fashion but on a larger scale, their failure to seize the fortified Dutch positions at Kornwerderzand in 1940. Nevertheless, they had accomplished much. In four days, they'd materially hastened the capture of a major regional capital and numerous enemy troops between Gomel and the Dnepr. By so doing, they had forced Soviet commanders to withdraw still other formations to avoid the latter's being cut off. In the process, the horsemen had repulsed any number of Soviet counterattacks. Certainly not least, they'd significantly extended the Germans' furthest advance in an important sector of the front. Indeed, said after-action reports, had the 1st Cavalry Division been a cavalry corps instead, it would even have enjoyed the success of seizing the Korma Heights. This was because, had it been a corps, it would have possessed not only a much larger complement of artillery but also guns of heavier caliber. Further, there would have been more numerous armored reconnaissance elements, as well as combat engineers possessing heavier equipment.³² In the event, the division's 1st and 2nd Reiter Brigades, their four regiments once again united, only seized the Korma Heights on 24 August and then only in the wake of the more slowly advancing infantry of XIII Corps.³³

Without any real rest, the division subsequently continued its advance as part of XIII Corps' drive to the south toward the city of Chernigov. On 27 August the troopers were transferred once again, this time to the command of XXXXIII Corps. On the same day the cavalrymen crossed the Ukrainian frontier.³⁴ Throughout the period, division's troops fought a number of limited, though sometimes intense, actions in the vicinity of the small towns of Snovsk and Novi Barovichi, southeast of Gomel. As they had done earlier along the Dnepr, the Reiter regiments proved themselves capable of repeatedly alternating between mounted movement and dismounted combat; and, once again, the armored reconnaissance detachment and the Bicycle Battalion engaged often bitter Soviet resistance. The confusion of combat was exacerbated, however, by yet another transfer, this time to the command of the 2nd Panzer Group. In the view of the division's commanders, the resultant stream of conflicting orders materially complicated operations.35 Nevertheless, by 2 September this phase of operations was successfully completed, and the Cavalry Division could once again lay claim not only to having hindered a Soviet retreat via Snovsk but also to having blocked reinforcement of those same forces.³⁶

Looking back on the campaign since 22 June, General Feldt assessed the division's progress with an unsentimental eye. By some measures, the cavalrymen had performed extremely well. They had, for example, captured 13,872 Soviet soldiers since the start of Barbarossa. They'd also hauled in large quantities of Soviet equipment, including 48 tanks, 73 heavy guns, 230 machine guns and, somewhat improbably, 11 aircraft.³⁷ In the most recent fighting since 1 August, the division lost 185 officers and men killed, 816 wounded, and 11 missing. Not surprisingly, a significant majority of those losses (79 percent) had been suffered by the four Reiter regiments and the division's horse-artillery regiment. By contrast only 859 personnel had come up from the divisional replacement depots in East Prussia and elsewhere. As a panzer division commander put it in the face of similar losses to his own unit, the German armies in Russia were in danger of winning themselves to death.

For the division's horses Feldt had only unstinting praise and deep sympathy. They had made an immeasurable contribution (Unendliches geleistet) to the division's success in spite of what they'd endured. The campaign's pace and bitterness had prevented effective farriery, general care, and the regular delivery of oats. Further, the horses had all too often simply been unable to rest owing to the fighting going on around them, a lament doubtless echoing the concern of cavalry commanders since the dawn of firearms. The division's East Prussian-bred horses—the majority would almost certainly have been Trakehners and crosses bred from them—came in for specific praise. Feldt lauded what he called their “iron” constitution and their ability to keep themselves relatively well nourished even under difficult circumstances (sich einigermaßen im Futter hält).³⁸ Nevertheless, he openly recognized the fact staring him in the face in early September: the condition of the division's horses could “hardly be described as satisfactory” (kaum noch als genügend zu bezeichnen).

Just as he did in praising the division's horses, so the commanding general also recognized his men. Here he singled out the division's horse-mounted reconnaissance riders (Spähtruppreiter). Whether he intended to or not, Feldt invoked the image of the uhlans of 1870 and 1914 in describing their accomplishments. As he explained, these troopers almost always had to rely solely on themselves while on their missions. They had only poor maps, if they had any at all. Yet they still regularly managed to secure valuable information for divisional commanders. In short, they deserved more recognition. Just as infantrymen, artillerists, and panzer troops had their own specific assault badges, he said, so should the reconnaissance riders. Notwithstanding their achievements and those of the rest of the division's personnel, however, Feldt also recognized that, for the moment at least, the division was played out.

He also confronted other unsavory realities. Even while maintaining that the division had shown itself entirely capable of rendering valuable service in closing the gaps between corps and other units and staying out in front, Feldt asked rhetorically whether a panzer division of some sort might not be more effective in fulfilling the cavalry's mission. The cavalrymen had often been hampered by being assigned to follow infantry divisions rather than leading them, a condition made worse by the division's having been shunted around much too frequently among higherechelon commands. This fact had necessitated not only a great deal of ultimately useless marching and counter-marching. It had also generated mountains of paperwork, the torment of all commanders. A much more pressing concern, however, remained the division's lack of artillery firepower, a concern dating back at least to the division's operations in the Netherlands the year before and one which had arisen again in the fighting on the Iputs River around Dobrush. Trying to get heavy guns from neighboring infantry units caused friction, Feldt opined, but in those instances where assault-gun artillery had been available to the horsemen, cooperation had been good and successes enhanced. Consequently, he urged that heavy motorized (i.e., towed) artillery and self-propelled assault guns be added to the division's establishment.

In this brutal contest in Russia, a contest not yet won in September 1941, the Cavalry Division's mobility, if not its speed, would be crucial in justifying its continued existence. Feldt understood this. Wherever motorized or mechanized columns could operate freely on dry roads, the Cavalry Division seemed to be at a relative disadvantage, and, as already noted, road congestion had plagued the Germans' advance since the start of the invasion. Its troopers—indeed all units in Fourth Army—were therefore ordered to maintain strict march discipline.39 And however much such an order might tell on any formation having horses, which is to say almost the entirety of Fourth Army outside the mechanized forces, it would disproportionately affect a predominantly horse-mounted unit such as the 1st Cavalry Division. The division's columns were to stick solely to the right shoulder with a ten (horse)-length interval between mounted formations. While single vehicles of other units were always to be given right of way, wheeled or tracked columns from other formations would have to wait for the ten-length gap before intersecting the horsemen's line of march. At that point, ten vehicles could pass. The following mounted unit could then carry on, then ten more vehicles, and so forth. This procedure would spare the division's horses and keep mounted columns intact while simultaneously allowing the vehicular columns to exploit their greater speed. Coincidentally, these orders went out at precisely the time when the annual autumnal rains had begun to fall in Russia, rains that would soon frequently bring much of the army's vehicular traffic to a halt. As would so many German records, an order of the day dated 13 September 1941 commented on the “continuing rain and nearly bottomless tracks (Wege),” conditions demanding the equally continuous employment of the Cavalry Division's combat engineers to help ensure the hoped-for regular delivery of supplies.⁴⁰

Despite such conditions and the increasing psychological and operational intensity of the anti-partisan war being waged behind the front, the Cavalry Division's accomplishments were recognized in at least some higher-echelon commands, no doubt to Feldt's satisfaction. The XIII Corps' commander, General Hans-Gustav Felber, credited the division with making possible XIII Corps' earlier taking of Gomel. The mounted forces' “rapid exploitation of favorable opportunities” (schnelles Erfassen günstiger Gelegenheiten) were critical, he wrote, in the successful German advance on that city. He also commended the cavalrymen with containing (binden) “strong enemy forces” on the corps' flank in the subsequent advance to the southeast.41 Securing the flanks of advancing infantry was as traditional a mission for the cavalry as ever there was, even though the troopers also received a rather firm warning about the dangers inherent in allowing their minds to fall into a “partisan psychosis.” Such a mental state among the division's troopers might “undermine the pacification of the [occupied] territory” through overly harsh treatment of civilians. Unfortunately, other German units, such as the SS cavalry in Russia, had no such scruples.

Such warnings appeared justified given the horsemen's next mission. In the second half of September, the Cavalry Division was transferred once more, this time from XIII Corps to XXXXVII Panzer Corps, and assigned to relieve 18th Panzer Division. Following a brief stint as army group reserve, the cavalrymen's mission throughout late September and into October was evidently confined to a sort of security role on the front lines and immediately to the rear while the LIII Infantry Corps prepared to assault the major city of Bryansk east of the River Desna.⁴² Its area of operations in this period lay east of Gomel around the town of Novgorod Severski and the bridgehead there on the Desna's eastern bank. The cavalrymen also operated southward along the Desna to Trubchevsk, a distance of about fifty miles (80 km). Though Russian cavalry—the 4th and 52nd Cavalry Divisions and the 118th Cavalry Regiment—were reported in the vicinity, there does not appear to have been mounted contact between them and the German horsemen. Just the same, the Cavalry Division's constant operations required continuous replacements of both men and horses. On 28 September divisional staff officers were requisitioning two hundred saddles from rear-area supply depots for an expected shipment of remounts, though tack and saddle blankets were evidently harder to come by.43 Furthermore, panje horses had to be rounded up for distribution to troopers from the Bicycle Battalion. Because of the large number of mechanical breakdowns already noted and the ever-poorer roads as the division pushed eastward, these troopers had left their two-wheeled mounts behind at various stages in the division's march. As occurred so frequently on the Eastern Front, such troops were effectively immobile until the ubiquitous Russian horses could be collected. Divisional headquarters ordered that this particular situation be rectified by 30 September.44

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Map 5. Eastern Front, General Situation, Late September 1941

Despite constant references in this period to the threat posed by partisans and the emphatic order that the men should always carry loaded weapons except when in their quarters, divisional command also kept insisting that soldierly discipline be maintained. Unauthorized shooting, apparently widespread, was expressly forbidden because it wasted ammunition and revealed defensive positions. Furthermore, graffiti and stuffed animals were not to be used to decorate the division's vehicles, the stuffed animals evidently being attached to radiator-caps as hood ornaments. Furthermore, men were strictly ordered not to appear out of uniform. Decorations were to be worn and military courtesies always observed. Such observances remained the “calling card of any unit.” In sum, as General Feldt wrote, the Cavalry Division was to be known as a unit in which “exemplary discipline reigned.”⁴⁵ Perhaps he felt that the strain of the campaign could only be rectified by discipline and good order. Perhaps, too, he felt that he had other good grounds for urging such exemplary discipline. As it turns out, in September 1941 the division was in the process of beginning a reorganization, with all of the administrative and personal tumult that a reorganization in wartime brings with it. Fate and the OKW/OKH had decreed that the 1st Cavalry Division was to give up its horses and replace them with tanks. It was to become a panzer division.

In 1939 the ultimate fate of the then-1st Cavalry Brigade had still been uncertain. Even earlier, the German cavalry's corps and divisional structures had been ordered abolished, effective 1936; and, as has been seen, the army's cavalry regiments had been tasked at that time to provide squadrons for the infantry divisions' organic reconnaissance battalions, as well as cavalry troops (i.e., companies) for individual infantry regiments. Only the 1st Cavalry Brigade had remained as an autonomous, dedicated, horse-mounted unit. Following its expansion in the winter of 1940–1941, the Cavalry Division had been ordered, in addition to its actual operational objectives, to determine whether horse-cavalry in the eastern campaign could still execute useful missions or whether its role could be better served by armored formations. Now, in the autumn of 1941, General Feldt submitted his answer to that question.⁴⁶

He began by noting that throughout the eastern campaign, the division had been assigned the following missions: screening the flanks of German armies and panzer groups; closing the gaps between friendly units; pursuing Soviet forces along the flanks and in front of German infantry corps; rapidly seizing and holding sections of the front until follow-on forces came up; attacking the flanks and rear of enemy formations; and executing wholly dismounted defensive infantry operations. With the exception of the last-named task, all of these were traditional functions of the cavalry. In Feldt's view, all of these missions had been completely accomplished. By itself, as he also noted, the Cavalry Division could not contribute decisive combat power, and other German formations had done quite as well with no attached cavalry at all. Nonetheless, he believed that a single cavalry division could do good work even if it was not absolutely necessary to the army's success as a whole.

By contrast, and with what seems to have been more than a touch of bitterness, General Feldt maintained that had his division been a corps instead, then the horsemen could indeed have made decisive contributions to the campaign in Russia, whether in the Pripet Marshes, around Gomel, or even in the massive operational encirclements that were at that moment occurring farther southeast in the Ukraine. Even so, Feldt still recognized that the establishment of a cavalry corps didn't seem likely, since effective cavalry forces couldn't simply be improvised on the spur of the moment. Therefore, if a cavalry corps' establishment were not in the offing, then he felt it would be better simply to disband the division despite its three successful campaigns in Poland, the west, and Russia, and despite the constant demands for its services by other formations, not to mention the troopers' genuine love for their horses.

No sentimentalist, Feldt listed the reasons for his conclusion. The ever-increasing number of motorized and mechanized divisions meant that the Cavalry Division would no longer have a useful place, even if the vast majority of the army's divisions always remained ground-pounding infantry. As he'd already noted, a single cavalry division couldn't deliver decisive, battle-winning combat power at an operational level; and a panzer division could accomplish the same results as the cavalrymen had done and do so more quickly. Evidently believing, as so many German officers still did, that the war in the Soviet Union could have only one outcome—German victory—Feldt maintained that the division would have no reasonable geographic area of operations for its employment beyond the spring of 1942 in any case.47 More parochially, he pointed out that German youth had increasingly little interest in things equine, the automobile having become their passion. Consequently, younger officers interested in a cavalry career were harder to come by, even as their older cavalry comrades were already finding it difficult to rise to higher command.⁴⁸

Feldt judged that not even the cavalry's vaunted cross-country capability was sufficient to save the horsemen for the simple reason that a purely horse-mounted cavalry was no longer possible. Even the Cavalry Division had ultimately required motorized vehicles for its combat engineers; some of its anti-tank and reconnaissance detachments; and, increasingly, for the all-important logistics elements. When such units had been entirely horse-drawn, they'd simply not been able to keep pace with the hard-riding Reiter regiments. However, when those same supporting elements converted to vehicles in the interest of speed, they lost whatever cross-country capability they'd earlier enjoyed while horse-drawn. Only appropriately outfitted, fast-moving, tracked vehicles, said Feldt, would possess the speed to keep up with the Reiter regiments and the off-road capability of the division's horses. Furthermore, if vehicles ran out of fuel and were idled for a prolonged period, barring mechanical failure or battle-damage, they could nevertheless resume full-speed operations once they were refueled. By contrast, when the division's horses didn't get proper feed and fodder and/or were immobile for an extended period of time, they could well require periods of muscular and cardiovascular reconditioning before they could resume their missions. Facing his own apparently unavoidable conclusions, Feldt nonetheless pleaded that there had to be found a way to keep the art of riding available and accessible to all officers. Precisely because of the army's degree of motorization, one that Feldt evidently presumed to be a matter of endlessly increasing percentages, only Reitsport (though he did not use this word) could provide German officers, especially panzer commanders, with the combination of self-control, daredevil risk-taking, and lightning-fast decision making so essential for modern officers' success.⁴⁹ To that end, he urged, every officer in every armored division should have his own mount, at least once the war ended.

All things considered, Feldt clearly believed that he could not avoid recommending that the Cavalry Division be converted to an armored formation. He further recommended that the transformation be quick and en masse so as to avoid disrupting the division's battle-born cohesion. Speeding the conversion would avoid missing the perceived opportunity to acquire up-to-date motorized vehicles. He also urged, however, that rapid conversion should not result in abandoning the cavalry's heritage and traditions such as the cavalry's yellow-gold piping on troopers' uniforms or the “Leaping Horseman” divisional insignia. These, said Feldt, should be transferred to whatever new panzer formation assumed the division's role. Lest they be forgotten, Feldt also addressed the matter of the mounted elements of the infantry divisions' reconnaissance battalions, at least by way of saying that the Cavalry Division did not feel competent to make recommendations for their future status. They, too, he nevertheless pointedly noted, were heirs in fact as well as in name to the German cavalry's traditions and should by no means be ignored. In completing his recommendations, General Feldt fully acknowledged the wide-ranging ramifications of his decision. However much the Cavalry Division had accomplished to that point in the war, and however much the cavalrymen genuinely loved their mounts, the practical experiences to date forced him to make the recommendations he'd made. “The cavalry,” read his report's last sentence, “feels compelled to go with the times since no combat arm (Waffe) may be allowed to stand still.”

Even as Feldt's recommendations went up the line, however, the division's operations continued unabated, especially in the period from 8 to 20 October.50 Having received one thousand men and four hundred horses as replacements late in the previous month, the cavalrymen along the western bank of the Desna now found themselves fighting not only battles with Russian troops trying to retreat to the east but also large numbers of partisans, both soldiers and civilians, attempting to help their comrades flee. In a phrase sadly reminiscent of orders repeatedly heard elsewhere on the Eastern Front, divisional reports indicated that “this partisan monster (Partisanenunwesen) will be fought with the ruthless arrest of all civilian persons suspected of being fit for military service; with [the taking of] hostages; and with the shooting of the guilty.” Operating alongside various infantry and panzer divisions, the horse-men also found themselves fighting the weather. On 9 October the autumnal clouds broke once again, and snow now began to mix with the frequently heavy rain that had been regularly noted in the division's war diary since early September. By the next day every dirt track had been turned to bottomless muck, every stream had become a torrent, and even the smallest blown bridge became a matter of long delays in the pursuit of retreating Soviet troops. Even so, the division's bicyclists managed to form a bridgehead across the 300-foot-(100-m)-wide Desna on 11 October and link up with the Germans' 29th ID near Sytenki as the latter attempted to encircle retreating Russians from the eastern bank. This feat the cavalrymen followed up with the construction of a five-ton capacity bridge that allowed the 1st Reiter Brigade to continue the advance to the southeast. As had occurred before, however, the region's horrible roads, particularly at that season, as well as persistent fuel shortages, prevented many of the division's vehicles from following the riders.51 For the next nine days, the various Reiter regiments and the division's Bicycle Battalion saw almost constant, and sometimes fairly large-scale, action against retreating Russian forces. With the exception of a major battle on 17 October, however, most heavy fighting ended in the immediate aftermath of the crossing of the Desna. At a cost of 122 officers and men killed, 410 wounded, and 8 missing, the division had captured 8,132 Soviet troops by 20 October, the number killed not being indicated. The cavalrymen had also taken 3 tanks, as well as 39 guns, 91 motor vehicles of various types, and some 250 horse-drawn wagons. They'd even managed to capture an entire ammunition train and a Soviet field hospital complete with “six omnibuses.” After-action reports proudly noted that the cavalry's mobility on the march and in combat had once again proven itself. “A panzer division,” the reports concluded smartly, “could hardly have done better.”

Nevertheless, the writing appeared to be on the wall regarding the 1st Cavalry Division's future. Orders arrived at divisional headquarters at the end of the first week of November indicating that the division would be reorganized as the 24th Panzer Division.⁵² The cavalrymen were ordered to move by train and motorized columns back to their old home in East Prussia prior to their ultimate relocation for armored-forces training at Ohrdruf in Thuringia. While in East Prussia, the division's units were dispersed for preliminary billeting. Divisional elements such as the combat engineers and logistics units were assigned to Insterburg and Angerapp. The Reiter regiments took over camps in the large (more than 24,000 acres) prewar military training area around the small town of Stablack that lay about twenty miles south of the East Prussian capital of Königsberg. The principal changes in the division's organization saw the 2nd and 21st Reiter Regiments becoming panzer regiments. The 1st and 22nd Reiter Regiments were designated rifle regiments (Schützenregimenter). Analogous changes were made for the Bicycle Battalion and other subordinate commands.

Throughout the process of reorganization, however, the division's horses still required their regular attention. Veterinary care and daily maintenance thus continued throughout November and December and was duly noted in activity reports, often with the laconic marginal notation “nothing out of the ordinary” being inserted in the appropriate space on the form.53 Nonetheless the reduction in the numbers of horses proceeded fairly rapidly. On 1 November, for example, the division's combat-strength in horses was still 8,969. The ration-strength was 10,681. By 21 November, a week before the official date of the division's redesignation, those numbers were 2,498 and 3,899, respectively.⁵⁴ Further reductions followed to the end of the year. As deemed necessary by their condition, sick or injured horses were sent back to veterinary hospitals at Potsdam and Neustettin and even as far away as Frankfurt am Main. Others were transferred to infantry and artillery units and various riding and driving schools, such as the one at Soltau in Hannover. In the three Studs under the division's command, at least 428 mares were designated as fit for breeding. Of these, it appears that 153 were sold to the Stud Book Society, the organization then maintaining official breeding standards in Germany. Given the traditional emphasis on quality in modern German horse breeding, this disposition of mares would certainly seem to demonstrate that high-quality breed stock was still to be found in mounted units. At this still successful stage of the war, such a disposition would not seem indicative of a desperate search for brood mares. In addition to those sold to the Society, an unspecified number of other mares were sold directly to the division's personnel. Interestingly, at least one presumably valuable horse from 22nd Reiter Regiment, Sonnengott (Sun God), came in for particular attention. He was sent directly to an unnamed recipient serving on the General Staff of the army and stationed at Angerburg and was the only horse singled out by name in the division's daily activity reports. Finally, most of the division's staff-level veterinary officers were transferred.55 As a tribute to the new panzer division's heritage, and in keeping with General Feldt's wish, its insignia remained the Cavalry Division's “Leaping Horseman,” depicting a rider in profile jumping to the viewer's left over a fence and surrounded by a reversed “C.” Whether for reasons of tactical simplicity or mere speed of application, the horse and rider were later sometimes represented by a mere diagonal bar. In whatever form, the “Leaping Horseman” would now find his way onto the hulls of tanks. Though the newly minted panzer troops could not know it at the time, those same tanks and the division's troops would in turn meet their end at Stalingrad one year later.