Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Horses in World War II

Starting point is 00:00:00 Most people think the Second World War as being a mechanized war fought with tanks and planes and cheeps and ships. This is certainly true. It was a mechanized war. However, there's a part of the war which is often overlooked. Aspects of ancient warfare, which actually played a part in how the conflict was fought. Learn more about horses in the Second World War. There are surprising numbers and the important role that they played on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:00:52 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. If the subject of horses in World War II seems rather odd for an episode, it's only because we don't think of the Second World War as a horse war. Before the 20th century, almost every war involved horses to some degree. Whether it was heavy cavalry, light cavalry, or draft animals carrying equipment, horses were a major component of almost every major army for thousands of years. With the advent of the 20th century, motorized vehicles took over the role which horses once held. Trucks could carry more equipment further and faster. Motor vehicles could also be armored, allowing for tanks and armored personnel carriers, something which was

Starting point is 00:01:41 practically impossible to do with a horse. Yes, vehicles need fuel, but then again, so did horses. While a horse can graze on grass, if you want to get to where you're going quickly, you'll need some sort of grain that supplies more energy than grass does. When asked what the last war was where horses played a major role, I'm guessing most people would probably say World War I. During the First World War, motorized vehicles were just beginning to take hold, so horses were definitely used during the war. Estimates have placed the total number of horses used during the First World War at somewhere around 6 to 8 million. One of the major traditional uses of horses was to deliver supplies.

Starting point is 00:02:19 In World War I, much of the heavy lifting of supplies was handled by railways. The distribution of horses between the various belligerent parties in the First World War was relatively equal. The Americans contributed about a million horses to the war effort. The Germans had about a million, as did the British, Austrians and Russians. Between the wars, the total population of horses worldwide decreased dramatically, as motor vehicles became more popular. Moreover, World War I necessitated changes in military tactics. Mounted cavalry attacks no longer made sense in a world where belt-fed machine guns could fire

Starting point is 00:02:52 from a protected trench. Many horse-mounted cavalry units were converted to what became known as armored cavalry, which was just a fancy way of saying, tank. The country which moved first to transition away from horses was Britain. One of the events that necessitated this move was actually Ireland's independence, where Britain had gotten much of its supply of horses. The United States also transitioned away from horses in the interwar period as well. The U.S. had the luxury of being the world's largest oil producer at the time, so they were able to transition to vehicles easier than most countries. By the beginning of World War II, the United States had only a single horse-mounted cavalry unit, the 26th Cavalry Regiment,

Starting point is 00:03:31 and this unit was stationed in the Philippines. On January 16, 1942, Lieutenant Edwin P. Ramsey ordered the last cavalry charge in American history on Japanese positions in the Filipino village of Morong. The French army did not entirely motorize. They developed a hybrid approach that used both vehicles and horses. Other European countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania followed the French model. Austria and Czechoslovakia took a similar approach, but with more horses. There were several concerns about mechanization which many countries had. The first was the issue of fuel. Every country was able to produce feed for horses, but not every country was able to produce petroleum, which was a problem if you relied on vehicles. Another issue was the size of the units and their

Starting point is 00:04:15 vulnerability. A mechanized division would take up 52 kilometers of road if it was on the move. An equivalent horse-mounted unit would only be about 11 kilometers. The Japanese weren't very reliant on horses either. They used some in China and in other territories that they controlled, but they were never what you would call a horsepower. So far, I probably haven't painted a positive picture for the use of horses in World War II, at least by focusing on the Western Allies in Japan. Other than France, who, quite frankly, wasn't involved in the war very long, the U.S. and the U.K. were beyond horses by the start of the war.

Starting point is 00:04:50 But you also might have noticed that I have not mentioned two countries that were major players in the war, Germany and the Soviet Union. And these countries used a lot of horses. It surprises many people that Germany used so many horses. horses. After all, they were the innovators of the Blitzkrieg, which involved rapidly moving mechanized units. The truth is, the German Vermeck used 2.75 million horses, which is almost double the number that they used in the First World War. I should probably do a future episode on the German Blitzkrieg, but suffices to say that the power of the Blitzkrieg has been

Starting point is 00:05:26 dramatically overblown. The German historian Carl Heinz-Frieser noted, quote, the image of the German Blitzkrieg army is a figment of propaganda imagination. End quote. The German army at the start of their invasion of Poland in 1939 had 120,000 vehicles, compared to France at that time, which had 400,000, and the British had even more. So, yes, the German mechanized forces did move through Poland quickly. That's the part that everyone remembers. But what is often forgotten is that everything else, including all of the artillery and infantry, followed behind either on foot or being pulled by horses. Motorized units represented only about 10% of the German military. This is something that seldom depicted in war films or in documentary footage from the war.

Starting point is 00:06:14 When Germany invaded France in 1940, despite their success, their mechanized units vastly outran their soldiers who were all either mounted or were on foot. In 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the vast majority of German equipment was transferred into the Soviet Union by horse. Documents from the German military showed that in 1943, two years after the invasion of the Soviet Union, the average German infantry division consisted of 256 trucks and 2,652 horses. One of the reasons why the Germans couldn't advance faster through Russia was because of how slow their horse units were. One of the significant problems the Germans had at the Battle of Stalingrad and in other Uren battles was the inability to find feed or grazing ground for their horses.

Starting point is 00:06:59 During a siege, horses had to be sent to the rear, which hampered their ability to move artillery. In addition to hauling gear, the Germans also had limited cavalry units, all of which served in the Eastern Front. One interesting bit of trivia, on September 23rd, 1939, outside Crest-Nobroad Poland, the last battle ever took place between two cavalry forces. Most of the other mounted cavalry units by the Germans were used for civilian control or while fighting in mountains. While the Germans had a large number of horses during the war, the Soviets actually had more. As with many countries, the Soviet horse population decreased dramatically in the interwar period. However, the reason for the decline in horses in the Soviet Union was farm collectivization.

Starting point is 00:07:42 The Soviet horse population went from 34 million in 1929 to 21 million in 1941 at the start of the German invasion. The Germans basically had very little in the way of petroleum production, which was one of the reasons why they relied on horses. The Soviets had ample petroleum production, but were lacking in horses. Despite that, the total number of horses used by the Soviet Union during the war was approximately 3.5 million. When the Germans had a 10-to-one ratio of horses to vehicles in 1943, the Soviets had a ratio of about five horses to every vehicle at the same time. Horses, and in particular dead horses, were a ubiquitous part of the Eastern Front. One German soldier was reported to have said, quote,

Starting point is 00:08:23 A curious odor will stick to this campaign, this mixture of fire, sweat, and horse corpses. The total number of horses used in World War II by all parties was somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 8 million. Depending on how you do the accounting, World War II might have been the largest military conflict with horses in world history. The reason why there were more horses used in the Second World War, compared to other conflicts like the U.S. Civil War or the Napoleonic Wars, was simply the scale of the conflict. It was a bigger war with larger populations. Germany's failure in the Soviet Union showed that a modern mechanized army could no longer rely on horses. Despite Germany's initial success at the start of the war, it was in spite of their large reliance on horses, not because of it. After the war, the use of horses in combat dropped quickly and dramatically.

Starting point is 00:09:12 The U.S. Army horse breeding program was ended in 1948, and all assets were transferred to the Department of Agriculture. horses became used almost exclusively for ceremonial purposes. There have been a few minor uses of horses in war since the end of World War II. The best-known example was a small battle in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces in late 2001, where they attacked a Taliban stronghold on horseback, but that was neither planned nor a regular part of their strategy. The day of the horse in warfare is long over, but the ending didn't happen until after World War II,

Starting point is 00:09:46 which, despite what most people think, was perhaps the greatest war involving horses in history. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Aaron Ten from Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, The Best Podcast. This podcast is the best podcast in the history of the internet. Trust me, after binge listening to the last 845 episodes,

Starting point is 00:10:20 I now know everything about everywhere. Gary mixes accurate information, historical facts, and adds just a dash of humor to make this delightful podcast. I have to say, I'm a little sad, though, as I can no longer binge Gary's episodes. Today, I officially joined the Completionist Club. Gary, I will await my electronic key to the clubhouse, an instructional video on the secret handshake, and my official certificate of completion. I hope everything is still flavored in pumpkin spice. Keep up the great work, Gary. Thanks, Aaron. I hate to inform you that Pumpkin Spice was only for a limited time in October. But the good news is that we will have free McRibbs on the menu during their farewell tour,

Starting point is 00:10:58 their third farewell tour. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Horses in World War II

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.