CHAPTER 10

LAST RECALL

THE 1ST CAVALRY CORPS, 1943–1945

The dissolution of the German army's 1st Cavalry Division in the autumn of 1941 seemed to mark the end of that army's formal cavalry tradition. True, the mounted squadrons of divisional reconnaissance battalions remained, but the presence of horse-mounted maneuver-units capable of independent action under the control of higher-echelon command appeared over for good. As things turned out, “for good” lasted for about twelve months. In fact, throughout the period from November 1941 to December 1942, various mounted units continued in existence in addition to, and sometimes amalgamated from, divisional reconnaissance squadrons. In July 1942, for example, an improvised cavalry brigade was authorized by the then-commander of Ninth Army, General Walther Model. It had the mission of helping eliminate Red Army forces, some 60,000 strong, still occupying a salient in the dense, swampy forests behind Ninth Army's lines, a result of the latter's near encirclement in the earlier winter fighting in the Battle of Rzhev. Comprised of elements of the reconnaissance battalions of the eight divisions under Model's command, the brigade included three cavalry regiments of one or two horse-mounted troops (companies) and three to four bicycle-mounted troops each.1 There was also a combat-engineer company, a medical company, and one motorized and one horse-drawn logistics column. Each cyclist troop's immediate supplies were carried in a two-wagon detachment hauled, as usual in Russia, by the ubiquitous panje horses. For their part, the troopers in the mounted elements rode regular military horses. The brigade remained a light formation, however, in that tanks and anti-tank units were seconded to it as required. Its organic artillery consisted of six (per regiment) of the same 75-mm guns typical of the 1st Cavalry Division before 1941. In its one major combat operation, from 2–13 July, the “Cavalry Brigade Model” as it was unofficially known successfully maneuvered and fought its way through more than ten miles of seemingly impenetrable terrain while the tanks of the panzer division to which it was attached sometimes found themselves literally stuck in their tracks. And while postwar German analysis admitted that the operation would likely have been successful even without the brigade's presence, that same analysis concluded that the cost to Ninth Army in men, matériel, and time would almost certainly have been greater owing to the inability of either purely infantry or armored formations to move as effectively as the brigade had done.²

The Cavalry Brigade Model's example may also have served as inspiration for another effort to resurrect the mounted arm when, later in 1942, then Rittmeister Georg Freiherr (Baron) von Böselager managed to convince the commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, that horse-mounted cavalry might still be useful on a fulltime basis, despite the 1st Cavalry Division's having been disbanded the year before. Given the terrible winter of 1941–1942 and the biannual rains, with all of the difficulties in maneuver that such weather always brought the German army on the Eastern Front, Kluge eventually agreed. Possessing a sort of provisional character, this “Cavalry Unit Böselager” was subsequently created by an army-group order in January 1943.³

Born in Hesse in 1915, Böselager came from a military family and in his youth became a successful competitive rider. In due course, he found his way into the army, and he became an enthusiastic cavalry officer even as he continued to compete in both show jumping and flat racing.⁴ His original regiment, the 15th Kavallerie-Regiment, was one of those that became part of the infantry's reconnaissance forces. In this case, his regiment became the eyes of the 6th ID. It was in his capacity as a squadron commander of the resulting 6th Reconnaissance Battalion that he made his case to Kluge.

By the end of March 1943, this unit was expanded to the size of a regiment and designated, because of its army-group assignment, Cavalry Regiment Center. Army Groups North and South followed suit shortly thereafter.5 Thus, even though the 1st Cavalry Division had earlier disappeared, the cavalry tradition lived on in at least an ad hoc fashion. That fashion, however, was soon formalized. The then-chief of staff of the army, Colonel-General Kurt Zeitzler, authorized a full-fledged cavalry corps under the initial command of Major General Oswin Grolig and, shortly thereafter, Lieutenant General Gustav Harte-neck, former commander of the 9th Cavalry Regiment in 1939–1940 and chief of staff of Second Army in 1943–1944. Orders establishing the I Cavalry Corps were issued on 25 May 1944, and the corps was supposed to be ready for operations (verwendungsbereit) by the beginning of August.⁶ Curiously enough, the Cavalry Corps first saw the organizational light of day in the very same region where both the 1st Cavalry Division and the 8th Waffen-SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer had already served, namely in the neighborhood of Pinsk in the western reaches of the Pripet Marshes. It was here that the Corps received assignment of its principal maneuver elements from the German army: 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades (outgrowths of the earlier Cavalry Regiments North, Center, and South). Also assigned was the 1st Royal Hungarian Cavalry Division. That division still carried the designation “royal” in light of the fact that Hungary remained a nominal monarchy, though it had been ruled since the 1920s by a regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya. It was at Pinsk, too, that General Harteneck assumed command of the Cavalry Corps on 22 June, the third anniversary of the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.⁷

More striking even than the bare fact of the Corps' establishment was the inclusion of an entire Hungarian division. The Hungarian division's heritage derived from the ancient Magyar tradition of the hussars. For centuries, Magyar light horsemen had enjoyed a reputation for dashing intrepidity and equestrian skill. They had even bequeathed the nineteenth-century accoutrement of the fur-trimmed, braid-covered pelisse worn rakishly over one shoulder of the fanciful hussar's dress. By the time of World War II, of course, much had changed. The Hungarian army, though officially fighting alongside Germany's since 1941, had frequently been regarded in Germany largely as an inferior force and, in truth, suffered from inferior equipment and logistics. Furthermore, relations in general between Germans and Hungarians had never been consistently cordial.8 Nevertheless, the Cavalry Corps' open inclusion of Hungarian horsemen could not be more different from the treatment so frequently meted out not only to Hungarians themselves but also to ethnic Germans from Hungary serving with Waffen-SS' 8th Cavalry Division.

Whether enjoying brotherly relations or not, several of the Corps' units saw action even before its official date for initial operational capability. While the 4th Brigade and the Hungarians still found themselves in the process of establishment and training (with troopers of the 4th Brigade also being assigned the German cavalry's by-now-standard Russian-theater anti-partisan mission), elements of the 3rd Brigade were deemed sufficiently ready to be sent into combat against regular forces of the Red Army.⁹ Their presence was sorely needed, as was that of every single German soldier available: June 1944 was the moment of the resumption of the great Soviet drive to the west through Belorussia. In fact the Red Army had opened its offensive the day after Harteneck assumed command of the Cavalry Corps.

At the end of June, troopers from the 3rd Brigade were dispatched to Slutsk, not quite 150 miles (241 km) northeast of Pinsk to help fend off advancing Soviet forces. Tellingly, they were sent without their horses, indeed without most of their supplies. In Slutsk, designated to be held as a sort of hedgehog position (fester Platz), the cavalrymen served as part of a blocking force along with an attached assault-gun battery and a company of pioneers.¹⁰ Even though they were eventually reinforced by the bulk of the 4th Brigade and other noncavalry units (ultimately including 4th Panzer Division), and even though they inflicted occasionally heavy losses on advancing Soviet troops, the Germans could not hold out in Slutsk, not least owing to the insufficient defensive works constructed before the cavalrymen arrived. By 30 June the Corps' troopers had been driven out of the town by Soviet mechanized units. As July began, they were forced to retreat farther to the west so as to avoid encirclement. Interestingly enough, the Soviet troops driving them out included cavalry of their own. Part of Lieutenant General I. A. Pliev's cavalry-mechanized group consisting of the 4th Guards Cavalry Corps (including three cavalry divisions) and the 4th Mechanized Corps, the Soviet horsemen were executing the very sorts of reconnaissance and flanking missions, as well as dismounted combat, that the German horsemen themselves had so often conducted since 1940 but now on a much larger scale.11 Some indication of the intensity of the fighting in the often swampy and heavily forested region west of Slutsk may be gained from the fact that the Corps' own headquarters were directly attacked on 4 July by Russian infantry covered by supporting fire from heavy mortars. Nine staff personnel were killed and wounded and fully nineteen reported missing, presumably taken prisoner, by the time the attackers were driven off. And the Russians very nearly managed to capture or kill the commander of the German Second Army, General Walter Weiß, who happened to be attempting to land at the Cavalry Corps' headquarters at that very moment.¹²

As the Corps slowly withdrew under intense Soviet pressure toward Baranovichi, located at the midpoint on the road linking Brest-Litovsk and Minsk, friction arose between German and Hungarian units. Various reports surfaced in early July that the Hungarian cavalrymen appeared to be folding under the admittedly heavy weight of the Soviet advance. The Hungarian Division had been brought up to the line on 4 and 5 July to support the 4th Cavalry Brigade that had been sent forward earlier. The Hungarians were immediately and heavily attacked by Soviet armored elements. These attacks shook (erschüttert) the Hungarians badly, and, as a result, divisional elements began to withdraw, evidently without orders. As the fighting continued on 6 July, the Hungarian Division's commander reported that his unit was, at least temporarily, combat-ineffective (keine Kampfkraft mehr besitzt). He said his troops had been without supplies and ammunition for three days, were physically exhausted, and had been unnerved by the Soviet tanks. By way of reply he was told that assault guns from the already hard-pressed German 4th Cavalry Brigade would be sent to support him.¹³ Nevertheless, the 4th Brigade's right flank was uncovered by the Hungarian troopers' movement, and the German cavalrymen were threatened with encirclement. Harteneck therefore intervened personally. He went to the Hungarians' command post and peremptorily ordered the Magyar horsemen to stand fast. His mood can be imagined. He had already earlier intervened in a much more formal fashion, writing a two-page letter to the Hungarian divisional commander on 4 July and addressed to “Your Excellency.” In that missive, he had pointed out certain disciplinary deficiencies in the Hungarians' logistics elements (the very ones whom the Hungarian commander had said were missing), though he wished the Hungarian cavalrymen well in their “first major action” (ersten…einsatz im Großkampf).14 Evidently that letter had not had the desired effect. For his part, Hungarian commander General Vattay defended himself against accusations of overly rash withdrawal. In a situation report he indicated that because the Corps' headquarters had been temporarily out of communication owing to the attacks on it of 4 July, and beause he'd received the approval of (im Einvernehmen mit) the commander of the 4th Brigade, he'd ordered his men back to a more defensible position. In the same report he also incidentally requested rations for 17,000 men and 11,000 horses, as well as 16,000 gallons (60,000 L) of gasoline for his vehicles.¹⁵

Though it remains unclear from the Corps' records how the Hungarians managed to get their horses forward when so many of the Germans' mounts had initially been left behind, the Corps' defensive positions around Baranovichi were to be defended by more than just horse-mounted troopers. The Cavalry Corps now in fact represented, at least in its TOE, what the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, General Kurt Feldt, had so consistently advocated in 1940 and 1941: a combinedarms, corps-strength force. On 4 July 1944, just before the fighting around Baranovichi began in earnest, the Corps included not only the 4th Cavalry Brigade and the 1st Royal Hungarian Cavalry Division (both minus certain elements). It also temporarily included the 4th Panzer Division, the 904th Assault Gun Brigade, the 447th Regimental [Combat] Group, a security regiment, an additional field artillery battalion, an anti-aircraft artillery battalion, a combat engineer battalion, an anti-tank detachment, and a separate assault-gun detachment of ten guns. It even included two companies (five vehicles each) of Tiger tanks, the heaviest armored vehicles then available in the German army.16 Earlier in the war, at the time of the then-1st Cavalry Brigade's campaign in Poland, Feldt had maintained that at least divisional status for his unit would be necessary to prove whether horse-cavalry could still play an effective operational role. That status had been achieved by the time of the invasion of the Low Countries and France in 1940. Subsequently, at the end of the 1st Cavalry Division's campaign in Russia in 1941, Feldt had argued that even his by-then-successful division still didn't possess sufficient artillery firepower and support elements, particularly combat engineers. Cavalry could still be effective, he'd argued, but only if it operated at the organizational level of a corps. On that he'd insisted in his final report as divisional commander. Instead of being reorganized, however, the 1st Cavalry Division had been disbanded and its horses and men dispersed to other formations. Now, in the form of the 1st Cavalry Corps, Feldt's injunctions finally appeared to have been realized, even though he was no longer present. In the great defensive battles that began in the summer of 1944, however, it remained to be seen whether the Corps could hold its own in the face of a surging Red Army that had achieved all-season operational superiority on the Eastern Front.

This superiority evidently continued to make itself felt, and so did the resulting tension in the Corps' command structure. Both the 4th Cavalry Brigade and the Hungarian Division received orders dated 5 July to hold off advancing Soviet forces so as to ensure that the roads running westward from Slutsk through Baranovichi to Bialystok and southwestward from Baranovichi to Brest-Litovsk wouldn't be cut. These perennially important roads had always been critical to the passage of German forces through the northern expanse of the Pripet Marshes. To help ensure that the roads stayed in German hands, all commanders of the Corps' various elements were explicitly ordered by Ninth Army's commander, General Nikolaus von Vormann, to personally lead operations to maintain the link between the Corps' own 4th and the neighboring 12th Panzer Divisions. General Harteneck, in turn, informed the Hungarian Division's General Vattay that Hitler himself had ordered (der Führer…ausdrücklich befohlen hat) that Baranovichi's road junction was so important to the situation on the Eastern Front that it simply had to be prevented from falling into Soviet hands, period. Harteneck curtly said that he expected the Hungarians to hold their defensive positions south of the place regardless of their own situation (unbedingt gehalten wird).

General Harteneck reiterated these orders on 7 July, as well as similar ones for the 4th Cavalry Brigade but added for emphasis that 4th Brigade had to ensure that the road running southwest from Baranovichi had to be held open until the 4th Panzer Division could be withdrawn along it. He closed by alluding to Field Marshal Model's stated expectation that all commanders lead from the front.17 As if he'd not said enough on the subject already, Harteneck then sent yet another two-page letter to Vattay on that same day, as well as several additional notes. Among other things, he observed that officers from the German cavalry and armored units felt that their Hungarian counterparts were not behaving in a manner routinely demanded of, and exhibited by, German officers. When properly led, he wrote, the Hungarian cavalrymen were just as worthy as the Germans. When Hungarian officers failed to act as combat leaders (Vorkämpfer), however, their troopers “failed immediately” (sofort versagen). He coldly pointed out that he'd found the Hungarians' entire 3rd Hussar Regiment in the town of Tartak without their ever having had contact with the enemy, indeed without their having conducted any reconnaissance. He rounded on Vattay for the lack of march discipline in the Hungarian columns and expressly forbade the withdrawal of any Hungarian unit without his (Harteneck's) prior concurrence. Under the enormous pressure of the continuing Soviet attacks, any sloppy behavior on the roads placed both Hungarian and German troops in danger.¹⁸ There was plenty of that in any case, and Harteneck's orders couldn't deflect it: the Soviets succeeded in driving the Cavalry Corps out of the area surrounding Baranovichi by the next day, 8 July.

Harteneck thereupon reported to Second Army that his Corps was executing a fighting withdrawal under extreme pressure from heavy Soviet forces supported by tanks. He also reported “heavy losses” (erhebliche Verluste) but did not further specify. At the same time, General Vattay was reporting to him that his own division was “completely exhausted from eleven days' fighting and marching” (durch die elf Tage hindurch andauernden hinhaltenden Kampf und Marsch) and that it was momentarily combat-ineffective. He further requested that the Hungarian cavalrymen be withdrawn from the front. As proof of the stress, he reported that his two principal mounted regiments had been reduced from a combined combat-strength of 2,895 men on 24 June to a mere 404 on 8 July. He did not indicate losses of horses.19 It remains unclear how Vattay's report was received at Harteneck's headquarters. Nevertheless, Vattay's report may not have been exaggerated. Various communications had earlier indicated that the main weight of the Soviet attacks in the Corps' sector had landed squarely on the Hungarian Cavalry Division, so the losses Vattay reported seem reasonable. Then, too, losses to the Corps' German units appeared to be equally severe. For example, one squadron of the 4th Cavalry Brigade's 41st Reiter Regiment was reduced to an effective strength of only 82 men and no heavy weapons at all. The entirety of the 4th Brigade's other mounted regiment, the 5th Kavallerie Regiment, numbered only 674 men, that is essentially one squadron. Neither unit indicated how many horses, if any, they had at that moment. Further, the 5th Regiment's entire complement of heavy weapons consisted of two 37-mm anti-tank guns, weapons that were virtually useless against Soviet armor of vintage 1944. Absent effective anti-tank guns, only German tanks or assault guns might ward off the Soviets' mechanized forces. Unfortunately, the Cavalry Corps' 4th Panzer Division was equally hard-pressed. Its effective combat-strength on 10 July consisted of only a number of Panzer IVs, four assault-guns, and two Tiger tanks. For his part, General Harteneck nevertheless doggedly continued to order “bitter resistance” by his troopers (müssen…verbissenen Widerstand lesiten).²⁰

He also attempted to instill an even greater will to resistance in his cavalrymen, infantrymen, and tankers by evoking in them a desire to fight for kith and kin. In a directive dated 11 July and sent to the commanders of the all of the Corps' major combat elements (the 4th Cavalry Brigade, the 4th Panzer Division, and the attached 129th ID that had replaced the by-then-withdrawn 1st Royal Hungarian Cavalry Division) Harteneck emphasized that the Corps had now crossed the borders of the Reich in its westward retreat. This was the border between the former Reichskommissariat Ostland—consisting between 1941 and 1944 of Soviet and Baltic territories overrun during the invasion of the Soviet Union—and occupied Poland. In Berlin's view, and therefore Harte-neck's, the latter constituted territory of the Reich proper. The Cavalry Corps was now fighting on soil that was supposed to be settled by Germans. If officers, noncoms, and enlisted men failed to understand this fact and accordingly do their duty as defenders of Germany, then the full severity of military justice would be felt. “I expect,” he went on grimly, “that use will be made of armed force and courts-martial where that is necessary” (Ich erwarte, daß von Waffengewalt und Kriegsgericht da Gebrauch gemacht wird, wo es notwendig ist).21

Clearly, Harteneck deemed such encouragement necessary. The Soviet offensive that had crashed into Army Group Center and the neighboring Army Group North Ukraine continued to roll forward despite the bitter resistance urged by the Corps' commander. In the fighting withdrawal of the Cavalry Corps and other German units, anti-tank weaponry necessarily assumed ever-greater importance. Therefore, the 4th Panzer Division by its very nature, the anti-tank elements of the Cavalry Brigade, and the 129th ID were continually forced to meet advancing Soviet forces head on throughout the month of July. By contrast, references to the Corps' horsemen as horsemen, not to mention their mounts, are almost entirely absent from daily reports in the Corps' war diary for the period. This makes sense, however, in light of the overall operational situation. The Red Army's summer offensive was grinding its way steadily into occupied Poland with Germany as the ultimate prize. In light of repeated orders to the Corps (and all other German troops) to stand fast and hold positions, its cavalry troopers simply did not have much opportunity to employ their mounted skills or their horses against an enemy that was constantly coming straight at them. Given those facts, and until the hold-at-all-costs orders changed, what counted was straightforward defensive firepower as supplied by the cavalrymen's precious tanks, assault guns, and anti-tank guns. The cavalry troopers themselves fought essentially as dismounted infantry. And ferocious though their resistance evidently often was, the Corps' daily reports speak repeatedly, indeed almost every day, of the “retreat continuing.”

In these reports, however, one also hears the old refrain, repeated so many times in so many places since 1941, that the terrain over which the Corps was now moving was unsuitable for either tracked or wheeled vehicles beyond the few paved roads in the Corps' operational area. The 4th Panzer Division's headquarters, for example, reported just that condition on 13 July. It warned further that any vehicles that got stuck would likely fall into the Red Army's hands.22 Such conditions, of course, were precisely one of the original justifications for retaining the cavalry in the first place. A more bitter pill for the German cavalrymen to swallow was the fact the advancing Soviet forces continued to employ their own cavalry for precisely the sorts of fixing-and-holding attacks that the German horsemen had so often undertaken in their own invasion of the Soviet Union three years before. General Harteneck apparently shared this frustration in that he recommended to his own superiors that a more mobile defense be undertaken. The 129th ID, he reported, was practically exhausted in any case and should be transferred to XXIII Corps, thus freeing the 4th Cavalry Brigade and the 4th Panzer Division to use their horses and vehicles, respectively, for the sort of mobile defense that he advocated. He seems to have felt, and implied, that if vehicles got stuck in the process and had to be abandoned, then so be it. He issued orders for just such a mobile defense to the Cavalry Brigade and 4th Panzer on 14 July, even though the 129th ID still remained part of the Corps. The wisdom of Harteneck's orders was borne out the very next day when the Corps' infantry division, weakened and stationary, was very nearly cut off by advancing Soviet forces. It was extricated only with great difficulty through the efforts of a detached armored reconnaissance battalion from the panzer division.²³

Mobile or not, the Corps' fighting withdrawal continued, as did that of the entire German army on the Eastern Front. By the end of July, the cavalrymen had reached the line of the River Narew, the very stream that the 1st Cavalry Brigade had triumphantly crossed into Poland in 1939. Crossing points and fords were determined, and on 26 July the Cavalry Corps' headquarters requested permission for a withdrawal across the river. The necessary orders were issued two days later. For their part, the horsemen of the 4th Cavalry Brigade were to prevent at all costs (mit allen Mitteln zu verhindern) any Soviet breakthrough to the bridge over the Narew at Lapy, about fifteen miles (24 km) southeast of Bialystok. They also ended up defending another crossing point just upstream (i.e., to the south) of Lapy at Suraż against repeated Soviet attacks supported by tanks; and even though the Soviet troops managed to get across the river, subsequent reports commended the cavalrymen's “smartly executed counterattacks” (schneidig geführten Gegenangriffen) and their containment of the enemy's bridgehead on the western bank. Nevertheless, another defensive line was already being evaluated, a so-called blue line running partially along the Nurec River that lay another twenty miles (32 km) farther to the south and west. Positions along this river were incorporated into the Cavalry Corps' defensive line by 31 July.24

By that point the Cavalry Corps had been in nearly daily contact with advancing Soviet forces for more than five weeks. The fighting had frequently been severe, and the losses told. On the same day, for example, that the defensive positions along the Nurec were being occupied, General Harteneck reported that the 4th Cavalry Brigade had been “burned out by heavy losses” (durch starke Verluste ausgebrannt). These losses hadn't been made good with replacements. Consequently, the brigade now consisted really of only one full-strength regiment and assorted bits and pieces. Only the mounted elements specifically remained combat-effective (kampfkräftig), but they were short of men and weapons (schwach an Zahl und Waffen). The combat-support elements (pioneers, anti-tank units, etc.) were combat-ineffective at that moment. The 4th Brigade's entire strength that day totaled 1,369 officers and men. In other words, its strength represented only about 20 percent of the 1st Cavalry Brigade's numbers when that unit had ridden into Poland five years earlier. Similar conditions obtained for the 129th ID whose combat-effectiveness Harteneck described simply as “zero” (gleich Null).²⁵

Unfortunately for the 4th Brigade, the Soviets had no intention of granting the horsemen a breathing space. Renewed armored attacks by an entire corps were launched against the cavalry troopers' positions on 3 August. Emerging from the Soviets' bridgehead at Suraż, the attacks inflicted heavy, though unspecified, losses on the brigade, and it should have been overrun. Nonetheless, the cavalrymen's defenses remained steadfast enough to warrant Harteneck's recommendation to Second Army that they be mentioned in OKW's official dispatches. The cavalrymen killed more than seven hundred Soviet troops and captured nearly eighty. Furthermore, they destroyed (among other things) six Soviet assault guns, seventeen anti-tank guns, thirty-nine machine guns, and eight panje wagons loaded with ammunition. In the process, however, the 4th Brigade had reached a stage at which, in Harteneck's assessment, it was “dissolving itself in the aggressive fulfillment of its mission” and was—he reiterated the phrase—“burning itself out” (Die ihre Aufgabe stets angriffsweise lösende 4.Kav.Brig. brennt zunehmend aus).26 Barely three days later, however, the brigade repeated the accomplishment. This time they fended off an attack by a Soviet infantry division. In this battle, the commander of the 41st Reiter Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Rojahn, and fifteen men of the regimental staff personally succeeded in bringing the entire Russian attack to a standstill (den feind[lichen] Ansturm zum Stehen brachte). Similarly, Rittmeister Count Plettenberg, the commander of the Brigade's Heavy Cavalry Detachment, which was essentially a small assault-gun battalion, distinguished himself. Despite having been wounded earlier, Plettenberg led from the front and helped plug gaps in the German lines, thereby re-establishing contact with the brigade's neighboring units. In this fierce fighting, the 4th Brigade's troopers killed another 750 Soviet soldiers. They also destroyed 9 tanks, 6 artillery pieces, and 36 anti-tank guns. For these actions, Harteneck recommended Rojahn for the Knight's Cross.²⁷ In a period of four days, the brigade's cavalrymen had inflicted casualties on the enemy totaling more than the entire strength of their own unit.

Of course, the 4th Brigade's own casualties also demanded redress. In light of the larger situation facing German armies on the Eastern Front, however, these replacements were increasingly hard to come by. Two hundred fifty stragglers (Versprengte) were ordered to be picked up from the rear-area train depot at Zichenau (Ciechanów), about eighty-five miles (137 km) northeast of Warsaw, and assigned to the 4th Brigade. The 69th Cavalry Replacement Detachment was to provide another fifty NCOs and men. A further forty-nine were assigned to the 3rd Cavalry Brigade that only now resurfaced in the Cavalry Corps' order of battle.²⁸ Interestingly, the Corps' daily reports for early August 1944 also began to note, at least indirectly and really for the first time since the Corps' establishment, the general situation regarding the Corps' horses. General Harteneck, for example, insisted that at least horse-mounted reconnaissance elements remained essential to the Corps' mobile defensive operations. Consequently, the 69th Cavalry Replacement Detachment received orders on 6 August to continue mounted training. Furthermore, horses were now being shifted around within the Corps as various units were cannibalized for personnel to serve as infantry. The 69th Field Security Battalion, for example, was ordered to turn over one hundred horses and their tack to a sister unit of anti-Soviet Cossacks before moving up to the Corps' forward area for frontline duty. To the extent that the Cavalry Corps' horses may at this point have been restricted primarily to the reconnaissance elements, it risked ending up looking like a mere armor-reinforced infantry corps. Again, however, in the defensive fighting on East Prussia's borders, the Corps' horses were not as essential as they would have been in offensive operations had an offensive been possible.29

What Harteneck most emphatically did not want, even as replacements, were more Hungarian troops. On 5 August he wrote to Second Army's commander, General Weiß, that his (Harteneck's) experience with the Hungarian troops was the “worst imaginable.”³⁰ All of the Hungarian hussar regiments were failures, he said. They suffered constant shortages of ammunition because they always threw it away when they fled. And if they were equipped with German weapons and ammunition, they'd simply throw that away, too. While recognizing that the Cavalry Corps had been established precisely to bring together German and Hungarian cavalrymen, Harteneck wrote that he “view[ed] with dismay the day when the Hungarian Cavalry Division would once again be at the side of my brave German horsemen.” He maintained that if the Hungarian division were again to fight alongside his men, then the Hungarians would not only have to be directly reinforced with German personnel but also be placed directly under German command. He did not, however, think that the Hungarians would agree to these conditions. “As I see it,” he added, “the only correct solution is to send the entire Hungarian Cavalry Division, and any other Hungarian troops, back home.”

Even as Harteneck was rejecting the possibility of adding more Hungarian troops, the Cavalry Corps underwent yet another reorganization. As August wore on and the Soviet offensive continued, the 4th Panzer Division was withdrawn and redeployed. In its place came two new infantry divisions. In an attempt to mitigate the loss of the armored division, additional miscellaneous mechanized units were assigned to the Corps. When the next push by the Red Army occurred in the cavalrymen's sector of the front on 22 August 1944, the Corps included the 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades; the already sorely tested 129th ID; the newly arrived 14th and 102nd IDs; and assorted assault-gun and panzer units, none at the divisional level, though there was evidently some thought of adding the 6th Panzer Division.31 Interestingly, at this time the Corps' two mounted brigades were placed on the flanks adjoining the operational areas of the XXIII and LV Army Corps, in other words on the weak seams that had frequently been the targets of earlier Soviet attacks. This seems a clear indication of the cavalrymen's reliability, in this case with their being entrusted the crucial mission of maintaining contact with neighboring formations. Their placement also seems to have been a mark of General Harteneck's appreciation of their fighting qualities.

Such tenacity found itself in heavy demand. Throughout the last ten days of August, the Corps fought a series of defensive battles generally east and south of the Narew River and between that stream and the River Bug against large Soviet formations. The infantrymen and cavalry troopers bore the brunt of the bitter combat in the stretch of river running southwest from Łomža past Ostrolenka (renamed Scharfenwiese by the Germans in 1941), a town lying only about twenty-five miles (40 km) from the prewar border of East Prussia. The hard-pressed troops suffered accordingly, both physically and in their morale (seelisch). Their condition deteriorated rapidly under the pounding, particularly from the apparently massive preparatory barrages that the Soviets' artillery could bring to bear without fear of German counter-battery fire. Harte-neck reported to Second Army headquarters that the result from this Soviet preponderance in uncontested artillery fire was “disproportionately large human and material losses” for his units.³² The additional formations that had just been assigned to the Cavalry Corps were clearly inadequate to the task. Therefore, all of the Corps' staffs, logistics units, horse-handler elements, emergency reserves (Alarmeinheiten), and irreplaceable maintenance personnel were combed through for additional manpower. These troops were slotted into the front at every opportunity. Furthermore, all riding horses not absolutely required had been sent to rear-area veterinary companies not only to keep valuable horse-flesh out of harm's way but also so that they wouldn't impede the defense. By 1 September, the fifth anniversary of the start of the war, the Corps' troops had destroyed fully 154 enemy tanks and self-propelled guns and 76 pieces of artillery in these river-line battles, and that day passed relatively quietly. Still, in Harteneck's estimation, the Cavalry Corps would simply not be able to prevent a major Soviet breakthrough much longer.33

Despite this continuing threat of a breakthrough, the Cavalry Corps earned highest recognition for its accomplishments between the Rivers Bug and Narew. On 2 September the commander of Second Army, General Weiß, forwarded to Harteneck a statement that he (Weiß) had received from the commander of what remained of Army Group Center, Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Georg-Hans Reinhardt. In the ten days preceding the end of August, Second Army had managed, according to Reinhardt, to hold off at least thirty Soviet infantry divisions; three armored brigades; and numerous independent armored and assault-gun regiments. The steadiness and bravery of the German horsemen and infantry was “above all praise” (über jedes Lob erhaben). Combat leadership had been excellent, and these qualities manifested themselves even more strongly in light of the fact that air support from the Luftwaffe had been minimal. The Cavalry Corps was therefore singled out for Reinhardt's “unreserved recognition” (uneingeschränkte Anerkennung) in that it had carried the heaviest burden of the defensive battles. Nevertheless, Reinhardt also made clear that further fighting awaited the cavalrymen and their comrades: “Inspired by this spirit,” he wrote, “we can await the coming battles with confidence.” But such confidence demanded a great deal of faith, for on the same day that Reinhardt issued his statement, the Cavalry Corps reported a total combat-strength of a mere 9,022. Fully one third of these (3,504 altogether) were the officers and men of the Corps' principal maneuver elements, the 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades.³⁴

Following several days of relative quiet on the Corps' sector of the front, the Soviet advance resumed. In the meantime, the elements of the Corps had been withdrawn to “Defensive Position East Prussia II” hard by the Narew. As the name of the new positions indicated, the cavalrymen were now for all practical purposes defending the prewar German homeland. Furthermore, they were also defending the final redoubt of the Prussian-German cavalry tradition. The emotional significance of both facts was surely lost on no one. Not coincidentally, and in order to stoke the defensive effort, the specter was raised once again of threatening Asiatic hordes, a threat overlaid with the veneer of an all-devouring communist menace. On 12 September General Harteneck issued a directive to all commanders aimed at increasing the Corps' defensive effectiveness.35 The Cavalry Corps now stood on the Reich's very borders in positions dug by German men and women, German boys and girls. They'd dug with the sure hope that Corps' soldiers would protect them and their homes from the Red Terror. Not one trooper or infantryman would be allowed to withdraw without orders, and only then if live enemy fire forced him from his position. Cowardice would be summarily punished with armed force if necessary. Commanders at every level would remain at their posts to the last possible moment, always leading from the front. Every position to a depth of six miles (10 km) behind the lines was to be dug in (einzubunkern) for protection from Soviet artillery fire. No man, no horse, no vehicle was to be without a foxhole or antishrapnel revetments. Furthermore, the Corps' horses, such as those of the 4th Brigade that Harteneck noted specifically, were to be kept hidden in woods and not kept in villages, evidently to protect them from aerial attack and long-range artillery-fire. But even as these preparations continued, so too did combat training for unit leaders and technical specialists such as combat engineers, radiomen, and machine-gunners. Almost incredibly, at the same time Harteneck also ordered that even riding, driving, and horse-feeding training was to continue, with 55 officers and men being ordered to Fordon near Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), 160 miles (257 km) in the rear for that purpose.³⁶

No doubt surprisingly, the next several weeks passed with relatively little large-scale fighting, though regular and sometimes intense contact with Soviet troops continued. The Corps' positions along the west bank of the Narew came under regular artillery and light weapons fire from Soviet forces on the other side of the river, the latter's objective being to expand several bridgeheads that they'd managed to achieve on that stream's western bank. On the Germans' side, time was spent improving defensive positions and scraping together replacements from stragglers in the rear. In addition, yet another infantry division, the 292nd ID, was attached to the Corps on 22 September. This gave the Corps a total of three nominal infantry divisions on its TOE and brought its total combat-strength at the end of that month to 14,283 (a figure approximately representing the strength of a normal division of the German army in 1939). Since 29 June, the Corps' units had killed a reported total of 8,942 Soviet troops, almost 40 percent of whom had fallen at the hands of the troopers of the 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades.37

During the period roughly between 1 October and 31 December, the Red Army entered a time of regrouping and resupply following its crushing summer offensive against German Army Group Center. During the Soviets' operational pause, the Cavalry Corps was now at least able to catch its breath, even if replacements continued to be hard to come by. In that late fall of 1944, the Corps continued to hold its positions along a forty-odd-mile stretch of the Narew between Rozan and Nowogrod. Because of the continuing Soviet pressure and the inevitability of a renewal of the Red Army's drive toward Berlin, it also began another reorganization and redeployment of its various elements. One of the most significant of those reorganizations was the detachment of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade. It was moved to Fourth Army whose center of gravity at that moment lay to the east of the Masurian Lakes, the very lakes where Russian armies had come to grief in 1914.³⁸ This transfer was noteworthy not only in that it meant that the Red Army's forces had reached, and in many places crossed over, the borders of East Prussia. The transfer also meant that the Cavalry Corps had to temporarily relinquish fully half of that operational component that gave the Corps its very name and character, namely horsemen. With the 3rd Brigade's departure for duty with Fourth Army, the Corps retained the 4th Cavalry Brigade as its only dedicated mounted element. The remainder of the Corps' strength consisted in this period of four infantry divisions. They, of course, still had their horse-drawn logistics and artillery trains, along with various mounted reconnaissance elements. Before year's end, other formations, both infantry and armored, would also be assigned to the Corps for various and usually brief periods of time. These included a scratch force named “Combat Group Hannibal.” About 1,400 strong, it comprised personnel from the 4th SS Police Regiment. The entire Corps would also be transferred briefly to the command of Fourth Army, even though its defensive positions remained the same.

Throughout the last half of October and the whole of November, Soviet artillery and aerial attacks continued as did ground combat, the latter sometimes intense and often at battalion strength. Though the widely anticipated, front-wide Soviet offensive did not occur, the Corps' units suffered from this near-constant contact. As they had in the fighting retreat to the Narew, the Cavalry Brigades recorded many of those casualties. Alone in the period from 15 to 27 October, for example, the Corps' two mounted brigades suffered 961 troopers of all ranks killed, wounded, and missing.39 And these losses occurred in a period when the Corps' morning reports very frequently stated that the preceding day or night had passed quietly. The sacrifices in the mounted elements did earn another formal recognition. Second Army's commander explicitly commended the “outstanding service” (hervorragende Bewährung) of the 3rd and 4th Cavalry Brigades and wrote further to General Harteneck that the cavalrymen had delivered the “best proofs of the cavalry spirit” (Beweise besten Reitergeistes geliefert haben) in the defensive battles. Presumably the cavalrymen appreciated the sentiment. Such glowing praise, however, wouldn't provide the horsemen with fresh mounts or those mounts with feed (deliveries for the entire Fourth Army area had been stopped), much less gasoline for the Corps' vehicles or ammunition for its artillery. Neither could Hitler's ferocious order of 29 October to the Ostheer, which commanded every German soldier to do one of two things: “stand or die.”⁴⁰ Perhaps, however, the troopers took greater comfort in the fact that dismal autumnal weather was now frequently grounding Soviet fighter-bombers. They certainly needed the respite. Both of the Corps' mounted brigades had been much reduced. By the end of November, the 3rd Brigade's combat-strength (2,054) was only about 41 percent of its total ration-strength (6,055). The 4th Brigade could show a slightly better percentage, namely about 50 percent (2,181 out of 4,350) even though its overall number of personnel was lower. Similar figures (approximately 50 percent) obtained in the Corps' other units such as the now-attached 558th Volks-grenadier-Division.⁴¹

Even as the Corps attempted to recoup the losses it had suffered since June, General Harteneck evidently attempted, and in keeping with Army-level directives, to ensure that whatever training could be done was done. In one order, for example, he indicated that certain veterinary personnel and feeding specialists were supposed to attend a three-day school for instruction in winterizing the Corps' horses and care and maintenance schedules.42 Attendees would subsequently act as training cadre for other soldiers. More significantly, he'd also issued a four-page directive entitled “The Basics of Cavalry Leadership” on 5 November.⁴³ In it Harteneck re-emphasized most of those doctrinal elements of the cavalry that had last been formalized in 1935 in Truppenführung, the same ones that General Kurt Feldt had stressed in his own repeated statements regarding the earlier 1st Cavalry Brigade/Division. Despite nearly six years of war and all of the vicissitudes that the war had brought to the German army's mounted arm, the cavalry's essential characteristics remained the same in Harteneck's view: mobility, flexibility, audacity, tenacity. True, the last physical vestiges of the cavalry's traditional weapons—sabers—had disappeared in 1940–1941. True, as well, at least since the invasion of the Soviet Union if not earlier, the German cavalryman was now essentially a dragoon. He rode to battle but fought dismounted. And now, in 1944, he just as often fought his battles alongside attached armored and infantry formations. Nevertheless, a stubborn cavalry spirit hung on, and Harteneck hammered it home in his directive, not only as regarded his men but also as regarded the Corps' horses. He also made it clear at the end that he expected his commanders to inculcate a National Socialist bearing in the Cavalry Corps. Whether his statement regarding this matter rested on personal conviction or expediency in the wake of the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944 cannot be determined from the directive itself. Furthermore, the degree of subsequent Nazi indoctrination of the Corps' various formations after November 1944 cannot be reliably deduced from the documents at hand. Nevertheless, Harteneck's insistence in this regard sheds a disturbing light on the Cavalry Corps' leadership as it faced the chaotic last six months of the war. And in light of his repeated and fairly ruthless advocacy of summary courts-martial, his urging on of stringent political indoctrination at least seems consistent.

As December arrived, the Cavalry Corps received new orders, ones that took it far away from the Soviet avalanche that was to bury East Prussia beginning in January 1945. Unfortunately, those orders took the Corps to Hungary. There a similar fate awaited the remaining horsemen. Between 18 and 23 December 1944, the Cavalry Corps' command elements and logistics units were loaded onto trains at Lyck in the southeastern corner of East Prussia. From there they traveled south. The 4th Cavalry Brigade went as well. There followed a circuitous route by rail through Posen, Beuthen in Silesia, and western Slovakia. Upon arrival in Hungary—from Lyck an airline distance of some five hundred miles (800 km) and much more by train—the Corps was assigned to the area north of the eastern end of Lake Balaton (Plattensee). Orders arrived on Christmas Day placing the Corps under the command of Sixth Army and, shortly thereafter, Second Panzer Army. Three days later the Corps, in turn, received command of the 1st and 23rd Panzer Divisions.44 From now on, the I Cavalry Corps was essentially an armored formation containing large horse-mounted and horse-drawn components. Its mission was to help stabilize the then S-shaped front stretching northward from Lake Balaton to the borders of prewar Czechoslovakia, to protect a vital oil refinery at Petfürdö and, possibly, to assist in the relief of Budapest, the Hungarian capital having been encircled by advancing Soviet forces on 24 December. By a curious twist of fate, the 8th Waffen-SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer found itself trapped in the city with the remaining German garrison. It had ended up there following its anti-partisan campaign in the Balkans in 1944 after being earlier withdrawn from Russia. There was even a second, nominal SS cavalry division, the 22nd Volunteer SS Cavalry Division (sometimes carrying the moniker Maria Theresa) in the city as well. In this last week of December, the Corps was in constant combat with Soviet forces attempting to solidify their lines while other Red Army units lay siege to Budapest, a siege that would continue until the city's fall in February. Though the combat was sometimes heavy—regimental-strength attacks or better by Soviet forces—the cavalrymen and their sister armored divisions held, even though they had to do so without being able to call on reserves. At that moment, there weren't any. As it turned out, the Cavalry Corps and the other German units in Hungary were aided by the fact that Soviet forces there went over to the operational defensive throughout January, February, and into March 1945.⁴⁵

In the meantime, and at that moment unbeknownst to the Corps, Hitler was planning what turned out to be his last operational offensive on the Eastern Front, code-named Operation Spring Awakening. Its objective would consist of the preservation of the oil fields north and south of Lake Balaton by Sixth SS Panzer Army (transferred from the Western Front) and Second Panzer Army, respectively. More airily, Hitler yet dreamed of the recovery of Budapest and the destruction of Soviet forces in Hungary. While the bulk of the offensive's armored strength was comprised of the Sixth SS Panzer Army, the Cavalry Corps also took part. Officially it remained an element of Second Panzer Army but also seems later to have been temporarily assigned to Sixth SS Panzer Army. At some point between January and March, the 3rd Cavalry Brigade—or elements of it—rejoined the Corps. Furthermore, at least on paper, both it and the 4th Cavalry Brigade were re-formed as cavalry divisions by order of OKH effective 23 February 1945. They did not, however, receive reinforcements to flesh out the redesignation.46 Consequently, whether there would be enough men, equipment, vehicles, and horses for continued effective operations remained an open question. For instance, losses of horses by early 1945 were high enough to have drawn the attention of Hitler himself. In a conference with the head of Army Administration in the Army High Command, SS Obergruppenführer (General) August Frank, on 29 December 1944, Hitler had been informed that the attrition specifically of horses and vehicles could no longer be sustained.⁴⁷ For the cavalrymen on the ground, the matter no doubt seemed clear enough, and though the Soviet forces facing them remained on the operational defensive, the fighting nevertheless continued.

For example, in an earlier effort to relieve the garrison encircled in Budapest, the Cavalry Corps' troops had been heavily engaged. On 7 January, in bitterly cold weather, they'd punched a ten-mile-wide (13 km) hole in the Russian lines southeast of the city and had fought their way forward about the same distance. Nevertheless, and despite several days of intense fighting, neither they nor their counterparts to the northeast of Budapest could force their way into the city itself, though unsubstantiated reports maintained that some of the Cavalry Corps' patrols reached the suburbs. By the end of January, the defenders remaining in the fortress of Buda on the Danube's western bank, like their French counterparts in Paris in 1870, were reduced to eating horsemeat and bread. In the final attempted breakout on 11 February, fewer than 700 members of the garrison reached German lines. Total German losses in the city amounted to some 51,000 killed and 92,000 taken prisoner.48 The suitability of the cavalrymen for such a relief mission may be questioned, though the heavy armor of several of their formations (even if in depleted strength) now theoretically made their employment for such a task conceivable. Nevertheless, Harteneck and other commanders on the scene weren't the only ones wondering whether mounted formations might still be useful. Once again, Hitler and his most senior commanders in Berlin seriously discussed, on 2 March, the defensive use of cavalry on the eve of the spring offensive that began seven days later. Though the Cavalry Corps had clearly shown in occupied Poland and on the borders of East Prussia what the cavalrymen could do on the defensive, the specific suggestion at Hitler's conference—the employment of pro-German Cossacks—seems to have been more or less dismissed.⁴⁹

Ultimately, Operation Spring Awakening began on 5 March. Initially it made headway but in appalling conditions. Hampered from the outset by cold rain and flurrying snow, mud, a serious lack of fuel, and stiffening Russian resistance, the offensive had stuck fast by the middle of that month. The Soviets then responded by launching their own spring counteroffensive in reply. It would roll forward inexorably, and the Germans would retreat just as inexorably until their final surrender. Indicative of the changing fortunes in Hungary, the OKW on 16 March no longer reported news of German attacks but rather news of a “successful defense” and “counterattacks” along Lake Balaton. In other words, Spring Awakening had been stopped, and the German troops in it had gone over to the defensive. By 19 March OKW was reporting a “bitter defense” by German troops in the region. On 24 March the high command's announcements indicated that “‘the Bolshevists’ forward attack groups had been brought to a standstill on both sides of Veszprém…after heavy enemy losses.”⁵⁰ Lying just west of Lake Balaton's northern end and on the edge of the Bakony Forest, the city of Veszprém happened to be defended by none other than the now redesignated 3rd and 4th Cavalry Divisions of the Cavalry Corps. Just as had been the case in East Prussia, the cavalrymen's efforts in defense of Veszprém earned them notice, again at the highest levels. At a conference on 23 March, Hitler was specifically informed that the cavalry divisions, along with the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, had at least temporarily and successfully re-established “security” not only east of Veszprém but also along a nearby railway line. Successful or not, however, the Germans simply could not hold off the weight of the Soviets' forward movement. And as the German armies retreated, they began slowly to disintegrate. On 10 April 1945, the New York Times' war correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin reported that an unspecified number of German troops had effectively been isolated in a pocket around Vienna as the German army “melted away,” and by the end of that month OKW would have to admit in a public statement that German troops had been forced to withdraw to the southeastern borders of the Reich. These events were accompanied by reports that the Red Army was “storming the last German defenses in Vienna.” The city fell on 13–14 April, and the Soviet High Command reported 200,000 German troops killed or captured. Furthermore, other Soviet units had already begun their march up the valley of the Danube toward Bavaria.51

As the Soviets advanced and shifted the brunt of their efforts to the drive on Berlin, the German retreat continued and followed two general routes. The Sixth SS Panzer Army and related forces moved more or less to the northwest. The Second Panzer Army, including the Cavalry Corps, moved generally southwest. This route took the Corps through Lower Austria and into the province of Styria. The cavalrymen, like the rest of the Second Panzer Army, were trapped by Russian armies advancing into the eastern province of Burgenland and the British Eighth Army marching steadily northward toward the Italo-Austrian border. Here the Cavalry Corps found itself when Germany's unconditional surrender was signed on 8 May. On 10 May 1945, the Cavalry Corps also officially surrendered to British forces. Its reported total of 22,000 men and 16,000 horses—The (London) Times spoke of the “immense task” of collecting “vast hordes” of both men and horses from many different units—now went into Allied captivity. ⁵² The day of the German horseman was done.