Allied success Nazi Germany Operation Cowboy was fought in the town of Hostau, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Hostouň in the Czech Republic), on 28 April 1945, in the last days of fighting in the European theater of World War II.

After the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Lipizzaner Breeding Mares of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna were transferred to an experimental farm in the town of Hostau, in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

[1] The head of the Spanish Riding School, Alois Podhajsky, was a famed German horseman and dressage expert, who had been a bronze medallist at the 1936 Olympics.

[2] In the final phases of World War II, Hostau was on the advancing path of the Soviet Red Army from the East, and the German soldiers on the farm were unenthusiastic about surrendering to the Russians.

On the other side, to the West, the XII Corps of the American Third Army was also advancing towards the farm, commanded by General George Patton, racing with the Soviets for the liberation of Prague.

Luftwaffe intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Walter Holters, not part of the farm personnel but forced there due to a fuel shortage, tried to arrange an agreement with the advancing US troops.

Assigned were two small cavalry reconnaissance troops with M8 scout cars, some M8 howitzer motor carriages and two M24 Chaffee light tanks and a screening infantry force of 325 men.

As the horses outnumbered the men in the task force, Andrews enrolled many Allied POWs, including British, New Zealanders, French, Poles and Serbs, who were freed from concentration camps in the area.

[1] The 1963 American adventure war film Miracle of the White Stallions released by Walt Disney, is loosely based on Operation Cowboy.