Horse dependancy=Rail dependancy=Air vulernability

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Pat Holscher
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I've been getting a lot of airport time recently, which means by extension that I've been getting to do a fair amount of reading and catch up on my stable of books I've been wanting to get to.

Included amongst these are A War To Be Won, which I started in Toronto two weeks ago and have now just about finished. I've been enjoying the book very much, including the conclusions and fresh analysis on World War Two it contains.

Amongst those was the observation that the German's dependency on equine transport meant it was by extension dependent on rail. I hadn't really thought of that in that sense, even though I knew the Germans to be dependent upon both. Anyhow, therefore by extension the Allied air targeting of rail in France leading up to the Invasion was devastating to German mobility. It all makes sense, in that without rail, there'd be no quick movement of anything, given the lack of trucks. But I hadn't thought of it quite that way before.
Kentucky Horseman
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Another point to add to that is how the Germans were always short of fuel and needing more oil. That might have had part of the reason why they used draft horses as late as they did.
Pat Holscher
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Kentucky Horseman wrote:Another point to add to that is how the Germans were always short of fuel and needing more oil. That might have had part of the reason why they used draft horses as late as they did.
That's quite true, although it might not explain, or at least fully explain, German horse dependency.

The Germans were nearly entirely dependent upon foreign sources of petroleum. The United States actually produced well over half the petroleum oil that was produced globally in the 1930s and 1940s. Other sources of petroleum oil were known, but were not produced to the same extent due to the cost of production and refining, creating a situation that is somewhat the reverse of today's in that the US still has vast petroleum resources, but it's cheaper to produce foreign sources, indeed some of the same foreign sources, than it was in the 1930s and 40s. None of that did the Germans any good, however, as the significant known foreign resources were largely beyond their reach, save for those in Romania and maybe the Soviet Union (which in fact turned out to be beyond their reach). All of that would have meant that a heavily motorized army would have been fuel starved.

That doesn't seem to have been the German consideration, however. Going into the war in the 1930s the Germans simply weren't as mechanized as often suspected, and a lot of that just seems to have been due to a sufficient industrial capacity combined with Nazi efficiency ineptitude. The Germans never managed to standardize on any one type of anything which really hindered their production. So, even though they were mechanizing, they weren't nearly as mechanized as popularly imagined and a lot of their army resembled their army of World War One. Included in that was that they remained extremely rail dependent, which at least made some sense as rail is very efficient.

By late war they'd grown more dependent upon horses for transportation, but a lot of that seems to be because they'd just weren't able to produce sufficient numbers of vehicles. Having said that, fuel problems in the German army were enormous. The Germans are often criticized for having made Soviet fuel sources a target of their operations and a factor in their strategy even as things were going wrong, but given how short of fuel they were, that criticism might be misplaced.

The flip-side of all of this is that, from the other side, it would be the case that only the Allies could have fought a war as mechanized as they did. The US and Commonwealth forces could depend on North American petroleum production and the Soviets had their own production. None of the Axis powers had sufficient production such that they could have fought a war that way if they'd had the industrial production to do so, which they really didn't. When people look at the various armies switching away from or retaining horses, they usually don't consider that switching to mechanization did mean that a nation doing so had to have a ready supply of petroleum oil for any long war.
Couvi
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If memory serves, the German Army used 3.5 million horses in WWII and lost 1.5 million horses on the Russian Front alone. As the war progressed, their dependence on horse traction increased.

I read once where the Germans credit their bicycle troops and horse mounted troops for the success of Blitzkrieg. While the mechanized troops sprinted down the main roads, the horse and bicycle troops mopped up between the mechanized spearheads.
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There were some areas where a few horsemen would have come in handy for various reason, and if I am not mistaken the idea of bringing back the horse cavalry was thought about for fighting the Japs in some areas of China if it came to that. Patton is quoted as saying that in North Africa if he had a few squadrons of horse cavalry and a pack train none of the Germans would have escaped
Pat Holscher
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Kentucky Horseman wrote:There were some areas where a few horsemen would have come in handy for various reason, and if I am not mistaken the idea of bringing back the horse cavalry was thought about for fighting the Japs in some areas of China if it came to that. Patton is quoted as saying that in North Africa if he had a few squadrons of horse cavalry and a pack train none of the Germans would have escaped
We have an old thread on it, but both Patton and Eisenhower were on record regretting that they didn't have some U.S. horse cavalry in North Africa, which given the conditions probably would have been useful.

I hadn't heard about that in the context of China, but it wouldn't surprise me. The Nationalist Chinese and the Japanese did both maintain cavalry units in China during World War Two. The Americans wisely decided that trying to mount a ground campaign (and ultimately even much of an air campaign) in China was pointless, but the conditions for that would have been something else indeed. Had the Nationalist been more proactive in engaging the Chinese in combat there may have been some interesting cavalry actions in China, assuming that there actually weren't (and I don't know that there weren't) but they proved largely unwilling to do that unless basically incorporated into American or Commonwealth efforts.
Couvi
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Kentucky Horseman wrote:There were some areas where a few horsemen would have come in handy for various reason, and if I am not mistaken the idea of bringing back the horse cavalry was thought about for fighting the Japs in some areas of China if it came to that. Patton is quoted as saying that in North Africa if he had a few squadrons of horse cavalry and a pack train none of the Germans would have escaped
Didn't know that about fighting the Japanese in China, but did know that about North Africa. If I am not mistaken, Omar Bradley made a similar statement about mounted troops in North Africa. Were not a couple of pack trains actually used in North Africa?
Pat Holscher
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Couvi wrote:
Kentucky Horseman wrote:There were some areas where a few horsemen would have come in handy for various reason, and if I am not mistaken the idea of bringing back the horse cavalry was thought about for fighting the Japs in some areas of China if it came to that. Patton is quoted as saying that in North Africa if he had a few squadrons of horse cavalry and a pack train none of the Germans would have escaped
Didn't know that about fighting the Japanese in China, but did know that about North Africa. If I am not mistaken, Omar Bradley made a similar statement about mounted troops in North Africa. Were not a couple of pack trains actually used in North Africa?
I'm not aware of the US using pack animals in North Africa, but of course we and the British both started using mules soon thereafter with the invasion of Sicily. Of course, there might have been mule use in North Africa by the US that I just don't know about.

There was Allied use of horses by the French however, which means, by ironic extension, that there was also Axis use as French forces in North Africa were Vichy forces until their leadership switched sides. Anyhow, the French at least had horse drawn artillery in North Africa and that artillery was part of the Franco American advance into Tunisia. I'd be curious what happened to those units as they were trailed artillery of the old type, not pack artillery, so my guess is that they were retrofitted with American guns and trucks soon thereafter, but I don't know that. The French did have pack units in Europe later, so they continued to use horses throughout the war.

The French also had mounted native forces in North Africa so they had true cavalry there that they took to Italy later on.
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