Horses in World War II
The trench warfare of the Western Front of World War I resulted in a strategic stalemate: defensive weapons and tactics prevailed over the offensive options available.
[6] British experimental armored units had performed impressively since 1926,[7] but, facing resistance from the traditional branches of service, remained unpopular among senior officers until the Battle of France.
[10] Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania followed the French mixed pattern; Austrian and Czechoslovak mobile divisions were similar but with a higher share of horses.
[11] The United States Cavalry commanders approved the French strategy[9] but made no radical changes until the 1940 reform that completely eliminated horse troops.
[9] The Wehrmacht had its own opponents of mechanization, but with Adolf Hitler's support Ludwig Beck,[a] Werner von Fritsch[a] and Heinz Guderian succeeded in forging a compact but effective panzer force that coexisted with masses of traditional foot infantry and horse-drawn artillery throughout World War II.
Only the German blitzkrieg achieved in the Battle of France finally persuaded the militaries of the world, including the United States, that the tank had replaced the horse on the battlefield.
[19] Hard-working horses required up to twelve pounds of grain daily;[19] fodder carried by the troops made up a major portion of their supply trains.
As late as the 1940s the Chinese People's Liberation Army included approximately 100,000 mounted soldiers, grouped in 14 cavalry divisions and considered as an elite.
[10] At the onset of World War II France mobilized over half a million horses,[10] arguably draining the resources that should rather have been invested into true mechanized and tank formations.
[35] Several mounted regiments of North African spahis and Circassian cavalry formed part of the Vichy controlled Army of the Levant in 1941, where they saw action during the occupation of Syria and Lebanon by British Empire and Free French forces.
[39] By 1945 the only French mounted troops retaining an operational role were several squadrons of Moroccan and Algerian spahis serving in North Africa and in France itself.
[26] In an earlier envelopment, the Demyansk Pocket, 20,000 horses were trapped together with 95,000 men and airlifting fodder drained precious air transport capacity.
Continuously engaged against Soviet troops, it increased in size to six regiments[28] and in the beginning of 1942 was reformed into the 24th Panzer Division that later perished in the Battle of Stalingrad.
The SS Cavalry Brigade, formed in 1940, was engaged against civilians and partisans in the occupied territories and then severely checked by the Soviet Rzhev-Sychevka offensive.
These units proved effective in the rough terrain of the Greco-Albanian border region[59] Hungary entered the war with two traditional horse-mounted cavalry brigades.
[29] In 1941 the 1st Cavalry Brigade, part of the Mobile Corps, performed a 600-mile dash from Galicia to the Donetz Basin that ended in the loss of most of its motor vehicles.
Despite high casualties, in 1942 Mussolini sent reinforcements – the 227,000-strong Eighth Army, renamed Armata Italiana in Russia ( ARMIR), primarily an infantry force.
[63] On August 24, 1942, when the Italian front was crumbling, Savoia Cavalleria charged the Red Army near Izbushensky and managed to repel two Soviet battalions.
[65] After World War I the Japanese Army blended the majority of its cavalry regiments into 32 existing infantry divisions to provide mounted reconnaissance battalions.
[66] This wholesale integration created a perceived weakness in the Japanese order of battle which persisted into the late 1930s, although by 1938 four cavalry brigades had been set aside from the infantry for independent service in the wide Chinese hinterland.
[67] In the early stages of World War II, mounted units of the Mongolian People's Army were involved in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol against invading Japanese forces.
[73] Soon afterwards the Poles themselves were gunned down by German armored vehicles and retreated with heavy casualties; the aftermath of the beating was fictitiously presented as a cavalry charge against tanks.
[26] Red Army logistics, aided with domestic oil and American truck supplies, were mechanized to a greater extent than the Wehrmacht, but the Soviets employed far more combat cavalry troops than the Germans.
[18] The First Cavalry Army's experience and elevation of its commanders to the top of the military significantly influenced development of Soviet war doctrine in the interwar period.
[85] In real life cavalry and infantry units were stripped of their tanks[86] and trucks,[87] being purely horse and foot troops with reduced mobility and firepower.
[33][90] Losses of tanks and trucks in the summer of 1941 made these eighty[33] divisions, combined into Cavalry Corps, "about the only mobile units left intact to the Soviets".
They became the main strike weapon and cavalry was relegated to auxiliary offensive tasks requiring all-terrain mobility – usually involving encirclement and mopping up of an enemy already shattered and split by tank forces.
During the Voronezh Front operations in the Upper Don area under Golikov, Soviet cavalry struck out very successfully for Valuiki and under the pale winter sun on 19 January the horsemen in black capes and flying hoods charged down the hapless Italians, killing and wounding more than a thousand before the brief resistance by the fleeing, hungry and frostbitten men of the 5th Italian Infantry Division ended.
[115] The office of Chief of Cavalry was eliminated in March 1942, and the newly formed ground forces began mechanization of the remaining horse units.
George S. Patton lamented their lack in North Africa and wrote that "had we possessed an American cavalry division with pack artillery in Tunisia and in Sicily, not a German would have escaped".
