Hey, so Ive been diving into some world war 2 history, and Ive been reading that germany, who was known for technology and industry, was primarily a horse drawn military??? Is this true? Did the axis have “cavalry”? Or were they just draft animals/ beasts of burden? Did the allies have cavalry????
I know that by 1943 the axis were over stretched and operating with a fraction of the fuel they needed. Was the panzer corps a much smaller force relative to rest of the wehrmacht? Its popular to depict them as basically a tank oriented military.
Anyways. Im eager to year about german cavalry charges during battle of the bulge or something.
The Panzerwaffe at the time commanded most of the motorized and mechanized forces the Germans had. They needed the trucks to keep with the rest of the armored forces to support and supply them. But for the leg infantry and rear units, horses and trains were usually used.
Horses were what brought up most of the German supplies and weren’t really used in a frontline unit. Sure an infantry division might have some trucks and cars for support, but the horse drawn carriage and wagon were mostly used. Even if Germany did want to fully motorize it’s units, it would be a lot of fuel it just didn’t have. While these horses were not meant to ride into battle, there were rear units who did use cavalry. These units were nothing more than glorified police units; tracking down Jews, partisans, or Russian soldiers behind enemy lines. There are a lot of SS units who did use cavalry and fit this role as well. These units weren’t meant to fight battle hardened Russian troops or tanks head on. They patrolled and made sure occupied lands were firmly under their control. Frontline units did have some cavalry units that did fight on the frontline, but these were not like the days of old. The cavalry would dismount and fight on as a form of mobile infantry. Germany mostly used the panzer divisions to exploit and create breakthroughs, while the infantry occupied and dealt with stubborn resistance. All the while the infantry were supplied by their horse drawn wagons.
The Soviets would also use cavalry during the war and use horses as their transportation for supplies. After the massive loss of material during Barbarossa, Russians used cavalry in different roles. The cavalry corps were used instead of tanks sometimes when tank brigades were unavailable. These units fought dismounted, but were mobile and could exploit weaknesses in stretched out lines. Later on these cavalry corps would be reformed into a mechanized cavalry corps. These units contained horses, motorized vehicles, tanks, self, propelled guns and artillery. The Soviets would rely on horses less and less due to the abundance of lend lease trucks from the US and large oil reserves to fuel the trucks.
For the Germans and Soviets, using horses were essential to the war. And while the Germans had to rely on horses due to a lack of fuel. The Soviets would recover enough to not rely on horses as much and could use trucks more and more.