Mechanized Juggernaut or Military Anachronism? Horses and t

[TL Foster]

Was the German Army the highly efficient mechanized force that conquered Europe and nearly the Soviet Union? Were they fighting the WWII with transportation technology little better than that used by Napoleon? Was the extensive use of horses by the Wehrmacht a reflection of poor logistical planning, or the only possible response to the requirements of the strategic planning by Hitler and his staff. DiNardo Brings scholastic rigor to those and other questions in this very readable book. I feel that is a must read for no other reason, that his substantial bibliography supplies the reader with multiple avenues to expand their own research into the how’s and whys of the need for the German military to organized their logistic train with both the state of the art, and the huge numbers of horses that were vital to the war effort.
As an aside, I stumbled on the book while conducting a Kindle search for “War Horse”.
Tom

[TL Foster]

My apologies. I didn’t realize the subject line limitations.
Mechanized Juggernaut or Military Anachronism? Horses and the German Army of World War II. R. L. DiNardo

[Pat Holscher]

Was the German Army the highly efficient mechanized force that conquered Europe and nearly the Soviet Union? Were they fighting the WWII with transportation technology little better than that used by Napoleon? Was the extensive use of horses by the Wehrmacht a reflection of poor logistical planning, or the only possible response to the requirements of the strategic planning by Hitler and his staff. DiNardo Brings scholastic rigor to those and other questions in this very readable book. I feel that is a must read for no other reason, that his substantial bibliography supplies the reader with multiple avenues to expand their own research into the how’s and whys of the need for the German military to organized their logistic train with both the state of the art, and the huge numbers of horses that were vital to the war effort.
As an aside, I stumbled on the book while conducting a Kindle search for “War Horse”.
Tom

So what were his conclusions?

Frequently, the Germans are criticized for their reliance on horse transportation (when the subject is addressed at all) but of the various nations that fought World War Two, only three of them had the industrial base necessary to fully mechanize prior to the war, which none of them actually did. Those three would have been the UK (whose industrial capacity is typically underestimated for the 1919 to 1939 time frame), Canada, and the United States. Germany, which is often assumed to be the paragon of mechanization, lacked a sufficient industrial base to do that, and beyond that, the spastic, disorganized nature, of Nazi efforts kept it from occurring. So they relied on horse power by necessity. The USSR, which was quite mechanized by 44-45, only achieved the level it did (and still used horses) because of American industrial might, which produced surplus motor vehicles to the benefit of the USSR.

[Pat Holscher]

Bump.