German Horse Drawn Transport.

[Kyt]

Not just horses:

[Owen]

Other great colour photos from our own gallery.
http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1008


http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=983


http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=981


http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=956


http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=932


http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=860

http://www.ww2talk.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=810

[von Poop]

This all raises an interesting question; what're the resources better spent on? Mechanised/Motorised transport as achieved early on (with varying degrees of success) by many allied participants, or concentration on the armour based on a somewhat old fashioned transport structure as largely practiced by Germany?
Strikes me as another example of the strange way Nazi Germany had of balancing needs, demands and capacity.

[Owen]

Reading of the Blitzkreig in the West and the Barbarossa campaign a constant remark is "......the Panzer units had to wait for the marching troops to catch up."
I suppose Germany only had a finite amount of resources and it was best to concentrate on the Panzerwaffe.

Churchill was constantly moaning about the size of the British logistical tail, with all those lorries and other vehicles they needed alot of mechanics, petrol etc.

Did the German use of horses free up more men for the front or did the transport of horse-fodder create more problems?

[Owen]

German troops using horse-drawn transport make their way towards the British forces in Hamburg to surrender.

[Gerard]

Given the fact that the Wehrmacht was so dependant on the horse it makes the achievements early in the war even more astonishing. Actually were horses used in North Africa or was that the most mobile of war theaters?

[morse1001]

Originally Posted by Gotthard Heinrici

Given the fact that the Wehrmacht was so dependant on the horse it makes the achievements early in the war even more astonishing. Actually were horses used in North Africa or was that the most mobile of war theaters?

There seems to be no mention of horse drawn transport in North Africa but remember we used used mules in all theatres of land operations

[Owen]

A aspect of using horses by the Germans I hadn't thought of was the veterinary problems caused by captured animals.

CHAPTER XIX

For example

............Elsewhere in the army combat areas, no precautions were taken against the collection and disposition of captured animals which might have been diseased. Aside from the shortages in the numbers of Veterinary Corps officers in such areas, little could have been accomplished anyway because, in the spring of 1944, there was a shortage of veterinary animal service equipment and supplies which was not relieved until the winter of 1944-45. In the interim, captured German Army animals, untested for glanders, were being used at a ground forces replacement depot and a prisoner-of-war inclosue in the Seine Base Section and the Brittany Base Section of the theater's communication zone (16).

Following the start of the Fifth U.S. Army's final offensive through Bologna which saw the capitulation of the German Armies in northern Italy on 2 May 1945, an estimated 5,000 German Army horses and a few mules were found in the Po Valley.............................. While some of there were sick—a few having epizootic lymphangitis—the most serious disability in these horses was burns (figs. 85 and 86). Whether the burns were caused by Allied artillery fire and aerial bombing or by the Germans setting fire to their abandoned material was undetermined.<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><O:P> </O:P>

[von Poop]

Trucks do have the logistical advantage that no hungry soldier's going to start seeing them as a walking pork-chop. At least I don't think I've ever read about any encircled armies eating their vehicles.

Don't think I've ever seen pictures of massed horse-drawn German transport in the desert either? Always seems to be Blitz's, Fords, captured gear etc.?? Horses must need a lot of water. Camels used much? I know I've seen a few shots of 'em but mostly in a 'holiday snap' kind of way.

The Mule's a good point. It's almost a specialist vehicle in it's own right isn't it, probably still capable of going where vehicles find it extremely difficult to go... and then of course there's this recently posted pic :

[Owen]

Now does this photo belong in this thread or the captured ammo thread?


Private Stanley Davis of 5th Seaforth Highlanders rides a pack mule with a swastika emblem branded on the animal's neck, 16 August 1943. The animals were now being employed by 51st Highland Division in the hilly terrain near Mt Etna.(IWM NA5924)