Horses

[Leutnant G.M.W.]

Im not sure where to post this but "equipment" seemed the most apropriate place:

How prevalent were horses in the Wehrmacht? I have read a ridiculous amount of conflicting information concerning the horse / motor transport ratio.
I know the Wehrmacht would be unable to function without horses but im still lost.

Whats your impression.

[Admiraal]

The Wehrmacht used everything they could get there hands on, captured horses and vehicles, so i would say allot.

[JPhilip]

A big part of the german army was still horse-drawn

[jan r]

Hallo,

The German Army had a total of 2 750 000 horses in use during the war, about 85% of the field army where horse drawn units, that is a ratio of around 3 soldiers-1 horse. In a Infantry Division; the Artillery Regiment, Supply Regiment and the supply echelons and heavy weapons Komp. of the Infantry Regimenten where all Horse drawn. Up to the end of the war many Infantry Regimenten had also a "Infantry Reiter zug" a mounted recce platoon.
(or a Regiment Radfahr zug, the same but on bicycles)
Then there where also the Heer and Waffen-SS cavalry divisions.
A good source for infomation is the serie of books written by Klaus Richter,
"Die bespannten Truppen de Wehrmacht" and Die Geschichte der Deutschen Kavallerie 1919-1945. Die Kavallerie der Waffen-SS from Hanns Bayer, and a a US Army publikation, the Intelligence Bulletin from march 1946.

Regards,
Jan

[Simon O.]

The German armed forces were utterly reliant upon the horse and mule throughout the war. Our perception of the Wehrmacht in the West has been coloured by the 'sexy' units that were motorised or armoured but the panzer and panzergrenadier divisions only ever made up a fraction of the total. The vast bulk of the Germany army was made up of infantry divisions.

In alex buchner's book 'The German Infantry Handbook' he uses the example of the 6 Infanterie Division at about the time of the start of the Western campaign in 1940. It consisted of 1743 riding horses, 3632 draught horses, 895 horsedrawn vehicles, 500 bicycles, 530 motorcycles, 394 motorcars and 536 trucks.

The the use of horses didn't decrease as the war progressed either, quite the opposite in fact. Strangely even the cavalry arm saw an expansion during the last 2 years of the war after almost disappearing in 1941.

From my own research i can tell you that in the area controlled by the 6 Gebirgs division in North Norway in 1945 they had over 4200 horses and mules at the end of the war. The 270 Infanterie Division, which neighboured the previous unit mentioned, a weak, static coastal defense division had more than 1200 horses.