Horses in the Wehrmacht

[waldzee]

[quote="Bronsky"]Just a couple of points.

1. I confirm that geldings are interchangeable with mares. If you look at farms or riding centers, you'll find that the equine population is split roughly 50/50 between geldings and mares. Stallions are a different proposition altogether and not to be teamed up. They can make nice cavalry mounts, though.

2. Regarding the discrepancy between the "peacetime establishment" figures and the "just before the war", Germany had already gone to general mobilization when the war started, so requisitioned civilian horses would be part of its establishment. Just a thought.

3. Regarding the WWII population being "much more used" to horses than we are today, that's true though only up to a point. The French - for which I have the most detailed figures - requisitioned a lot of unsuitable horses including stallions and pregnant mares. (post shortened).
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http://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-a-Pregnant-Mare
Actually, pregger mares would be very usefull for local patrol, as they tend to be' herd bound.
Another poster mentioned the 1260 horses in the Luftwaffe. The CDN home guard used mares around the BCATF airfields. One can surmise a similar use-esp when gasoline for jeeps is short...

[Jon G.]

From http://zweiter-weltkrieg-lexikon.de/ind ... macht.html

My free-form translation:

...army [Heer, not Wehrmacht] horse and mule establishment strength was 537,000 upon the outbreak of war in 1939, rising to 771,000 by 1940 [...] by the time of Barbarossa, nearly 1 million horses were in service.
...
Great losses were caused by the terrible Russian winter 1941-1942. Between Dec. 1 1941 and March 15 1942 179,600 horses perished, mostly due to cold and hunger. In the same period only 20,000 replacement animals were provided*. As further replacements 129,000 horses had flowed to the Ostheer by May 1 1942**, of which some 60,000 had to be brought up over distances of up to 1,000 kilometers.

Due to the loss of numerous vehicles, demands to horse-units ["bespannte Einheiten"] rose***, so another 118,000 horses were acquired from occupied territories. Also, the troops themselves captured many horses, including Soviet state-owned panje horses. This enabled the horse- and draft animal stock to increase to 1.38 million, despite further big losses in 1943...

* From internal (i.e. Ostheer) souces, as I read it, but raise your hands, German speakers
** From domestic sources as I understand it.
*** This would mean that motor vehicle losses, unlike horse losses, could not be replaced.

[waldzee]

Re: Horses in the Wehrmacht
by LWD on Yesterday, 16:08

Jon G. wrote:
... Actually it doesn't. The article seems to be focussing on late 18th/19th century horse artillery, a time when the superior mobility of horse artillery was used tactically to move around to critical spots on the battlefield. Warmbloods may be the preferable type of breed for that?

However, by the mid-20th century if not before, the range of artillery had increased so much that you didn't need horses for rapid movements to important spots anymore. Instead, you needed mobility to get out of the way before the enemy started counter-battery fire, but in such cases I presume that speed of limbering up is more important than the actual speed you are able to travel at once you are limbered up?
....
19th century artillery was also direct fire for the most part. Even the howizers often required a line of sight. Thus both horse artillery and regular artillery might need to displace in order to shoot. By WWI indirect fire directed by remote observers had pretty much obviated the need to do this tactically.
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While I’m not the ‘military harness expert’ Grant MacEwan was LWD, you raise an interesting point on ‘indirect fire’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_I showed that combat transport horse under 14.3 hands were preferred, esp. in the latter stages of combat when aerial strafing became intense. Air strafing of supply columns in world War Two
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II
was one of the major causes of Wehrmacht horse loss. Heavy draft horses are at a real disadvantage, compared to warm bloods, when you have to pull the linch pin & scatter the teams.
Grant McEwan’s books can be ordered through The Western Producer Press. http://ehttp://www.macewan.ca/wcm/index ... n_Producer
Or through Grant McEwan University Bookstore http://macewanbookstore.com/ebooks.cfm

[Jon G.]

...While I’m not the ‘military harness expert’ Grant MacEwan was LWD, you raise an interesting point on ‘indirect fire’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_I showed that combat transport horse under 14.3 hands were preferred, esp. in the latter stages of combat when aerial strafing became intense. Air strafing of supply columns in world War Two (...) was the major cause of Wehrmacht horse loss.

I am sure that the Wehrmacht lost many, many horses to aerial strafing, but are you sure that strafing was the 'major cause' of WH horse losses? It would take a lot of strafing to top the 179,600 horses lost in 3½ months on the Eastern Front, for example. I would like to see a source for it at least - the Wiki page you link to says nothing about losses caused by aerial strafing, just as the Wiki horse artillery page you linked to said nothing about horse artillery horses being warm bloods.

Heavy draft horses are at a real disadvantage, compared to warm bloods, when you have to pull the linch pin & scatter the teams...

I take it we are now agreed that Wehrmacht draft horses were cold bloods after all?

[waldzee]

Jon g:
If you want to look up sites on Strafing horses, use your search engine.

[Jon G.]

I don't want to look up sites on strafing horses. I just want you to back the claims that you make. It's not my job to do that.

The Wiki page which you linked to certainly does not maintain that 'air strafing of supply columns in world War Two was the major cause of Wehrmacht horse loss' so I am a bit puzzled why you even make that claim in the first place.

[waldzee]

Objection duly noted. MacEwan's earlier works are not on line, unfortunatly. Suffice to say we named a University after him, in memorial.
thx
Reg

[waldzee]

'cold blood' is an archaic term, as all horses have the same blood temperature, more or less.. Heavy draft is the more accurate term.

[waldzee]

For the record I’ve given my reasons why a Wehrmacht rittermeister would selectively ‘prefer’ a Trakehner or similar warmblood gelding for mobile transport- If anyone wants to argue different- that’s ok. I concede that by 1944 German transport was no doubt using whatever was available.
Please read this site.
http://www.trakehners-international.com/history.html
A delicate subject with layers of contention to balance.

[Jon G.]

Objection duly noted.

Failure to back claim duly noted. Or should I consider your edit from '...strafing of supply columns in world War Two (...) was the major cause of Wehrmacht horse loss...' to '...was one of the major causes...' after my post, above, as an admission that you have changed your position?

MacEwan's earlier works are not on line, unfortunatly. Suffice to say we named a University after him, in memorial.

That's fine. It does not provide any documentation for your claim, however. Neither does a link to an online bookstore.

'cold blood' is an archaic term, as all horses have the same blood temperature, more or less.. Heavy draft is the more accurate term.

So why would you find it necessary to claim that artillery horses were warm bloods, in direct contradiction to findings posted on this very thread, I wonder?

I suggest you read through this thread before posting in it again. I also suggest you make yourself familiar with this forum's rules for claims, as expounded in this post

viewtopic.php?p=484996#p484996

Especially this part:

...Undocumented claims undercut the research purposes of this section of the forum. Consequently, it is required that proof be posted along with a claim. The main reason is that proof, evidence, facts, etc. improve the quality of discussions and information. A second reason is that inflammatory, groundless posts and threads attack, and do not promote, the scholarly purpose of this section of the forum. For more on this subject, see the announcement at viewtopic.php?p=990676#990676

This requirement applies to each specific claim. In the past, some posters have attempted to evade the proof requirement by resort to the following tactics, none of which are acceptable here:

A general reference to a website, or a book without page references; citations or links to racist websites; generalized citations to book reviews; and citations to unsourced articles.

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning...

(From the Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes section, but rules for documentation of claims apply across the entire forum)

[Jon G.]

An off-topic post by waldzee was removed by me, pursuant to topicality warnings given above.

Stick to the topic, waldzee, or don't post.

[Jon G.]

A second off-topic post by waldzee was removed by me.

Waldzee, take heed of what you claim and see if it is validated or otherwise verified by the site/s you decide to provide links to.

[LWD]

In regards to horse losses I did find the following:
http://www.germanmilitaryhistory.com/bl ... y-in-wwii/

And since horses and mules are not as sturdy as cars and trucks, during the war on the Eastern front the German Army lost an average of 1,000 horses a day. About 75 percent of these losses were due to combat, 17 percent to heart failure brought on by overwork, and the balance, 8 percent, to diseases, exposure, and starvation.
...
The total number of horses used by the German armed forces during the war is unknown, but losses appear to have totaled about 2.7 million, nearly double the 1.4 million that were lost in World War I. This includes animals killed for food:

If you it's really major cause rather then main cause it's still up in the air as to the strafing claim. I thought I'd read somewhere it was hunger and or cold but this indicates other wise.

[Jon G.]

For more figures, see my 2007 post upthread at viewtopic.php?p=1065973#p1065973

[waldzee]

[quote="Jon G."]There are clear consquences of moblizing horses for war - horse feed needs are the same or may actually increase a bit because military horses can't use pastures to the same degree that agricultural horses can. Also, fodder for military animals has to be transported over potentially long distances.

To boot, there will be fewer horses for agricultural production since agricultural horses were mobilized heavily and moved from the productive agrarian sector to the wholly unproductive military sector - that is, the agrarian sector will be left with significantly fewer horses to cover the same (or rising) needs.

Note how Polish oats production rises relatively and absolutely in the tables below - Poland was closer to the East Front, and horse fodder for the Ostheer was probably a much higher priority than keeping Poland well-fed was.

I've ruthlessly swiped these tables illustrating grain production in key European countries during WW2 from the article I quoted from earlier:

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the rule of thumb is that a horse on good grass only is good for an hour's moderate work per dayt on average. Supplementary feed for horse is limited , for health reasons, by the need for a grass mix to prevent colic, dry dumps, etc.

extensive horse work requires rotundas.