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Marcel van Hulst

This original (K.F.) Kavallerie-Fibel or Cavalry Primer was written by Rittmeister und Eskadron-Chef von 18. Reiter-Regiment, Heinz-Joachim Werner-Ehrenfeucht, a highly decorated German World War I Cavalry Officer who became the commander of a Panzerregiment during World War II and ended up as an American POW in May of 1945 (probably around 1935 according to archive data). This heavily illustrated Cavalry Primer is undated but from the Third Reich period in Germany. The 192 images illustrate the subject perfectly: how to care for and groom a horse; cavalry formations and riding techniques; weapon, sword and ammunition training for the cavalry; judging distances while riding a horse; the use of horses in the Signal Corps and Engineer Corps, how to protect your horse from gas attacks; etc.This rare 5-1/4 x 7-5/8 inch, 132 page softcover example of a Third Reich Kavallerie-Fibel is in very good condition with the book plate of a previous owner on the back of the title page.

Nice and rare manual! 



Horses in the German Army 

Germany
The German Army entered World War II with 514,000 horses,[13] and over the course of the war employed, in total, 2.75 million horses and mules;[16] the average number of horses in the Army reached 1.1 million.[26]

Logistics
Most of these horses were employed by foot infantry and horse-drawn artillery troops that formed the bulk of the German Army throughout the war.[1][5][13][37] Of 264 divisions active in November 1944, only 42 were armored or mechanized (November 1943: 52 of 322).[26] In addition to work horses each infantry division possessed a reconnaissance battalion with 216 cavalrymen[37] – the legacy of disbanded cavalry regiments.[38] They wore cavalry insignia until September 1943.[39] Over the course of the war these horse elements were reduced, and the 1945 divisions lacked horsemen altogether.[26] Reconnaissance and antitank battalions were the only mobile elements in a German infantry division.[26]


German horses stuck in Rasputitsa
The organization of infantry troops and the mindset of their commanders were radically different from those of advance panzer forces.[37] Mechanization of the German Army substantially lagged behind the Red Army,[24] although the blitzkrieg of 1941 temporarily reversed the tables: the Germans captured tanks, trucks and tractors but were losing horses: 179,000 died in December 1941 and January 1942 alone.[1] A German soldier wrote: "A curious odor will stick to this campaign, this mixture of fire, sweat and horse corpses."[40]

A German division was supposed to be logistically self-sufficient, providing its own men, horses and equipment to haul its own supplies from an Army level railhead.[41] Soviet divisions, on the contrary, relied on the Army level transports. The supply train of a 1943 German infantry division employed 256 trucks and 2,652 horses attended by 4,047 men,[41] while other divisional configurations had up to 6,300 horses.[26] The supply train of a lean 1943 Soviet infantry division, in comparison, had only 91 trucks and 556 horses attended by 879 men.[41][42] Luftwaffe Field Divisions were designed to be lean and rely on trucks and halftracks but in real life these were substituted with horses and mules.[43] Incidentally, psychotherapist Ernst Göring, nephew of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, used therapeutic horseback riding to rehabilitate wounded pilots, but in 1942 the program was shut down as too expensive.[44]

Horse logistics slowed down the German advance. The 6th Army, engaged in urban warfare in Stalingrad, was unable to feed or graze their horses and sent them to the rear.[24] When the Soviets enveloped the 6th Army in November 1942, the German troops were cut off from their horse transport and would have been unable to move their artillery had they tried to evacuate the city.[24] 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.[45] However these horses also provided food for soldiers in an environment where the "axe rebounds as a stone from a frozen horse corpse."[46]

Cavalry troops

German cavalry with a capture Soviet T-26 light tank, 1944.
During the war German cavalry units increased in numbers from a single brigade[26] to a larger but still limited force of six cavalry divisions and two corps HQ.[26] All regular cavalry troops served on the Eastern Front[47] and the Balkans[26] and a few Cossack battalions served on the Western Front.[48]

German and Polish mounted troops fought one of the last significant cavalry vs cavalry clashes, during the Battle of Krasnobród in 1939.

The German Army of 1941 had a single cavalry division assigned to Heinz Guderian's panzer group. Continuously engaged against Soviet troops, it increased in size to six regiments[26] and in the beginning of 1942 was reformed into the 24th Panzer Division that later perished in the Battle of Stalingrad.[26] In April–June 1943[49] the Germans set up three separate cavalry regiments (Nord, Mitte, Süd)[49] – horse units reinforced with tanks and halftrack-mounted infantry. In August 1944 these regiments were reformed into two brigades and a division[50] forming, together with the Hungarian 1st Cavalry Division, Gustav Harteneck’s Cavalry Corps that operated in Belorussia.[26][51] In February 1945 the brigades were reformed into cavalry divisions (German stud farms in East Prussia were not affected by the Allied air raids that crippled German industry[26]).


SS Cavalry Brigade in Russia, 1941
The SS operated both paramilitary horse units (23 cavalry regiments in 1941[26]) and military Waffen SS cavalry. The SS Cavalry Brigade, formed in 1940, was engaged against civilians and guerrillas in the occupied territories and then severely checked by the Soviet Rzhev-Sychevka offensive. In 1942 the SS reformed the brigade into the 8th SS Cavalry Division manned by volksdeutsche, which operated on the Eastern Front until October 1943. In December 1943 the 8th Cavalry spun off the 22nd SS Cavalry Division[26] manned with Hungarian Germans. These divisions were properly augmented with heavy, field and anti-aircraft artillery.[26] Another SS cavalry division, the 33rd Cavalry, was formed in 1944 but never deployed to full strength.

The Germans recruited anti-Soviet cossacks since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, although Hitler did not approve the practice until April 1942.[52] Army Cossacks of 1942 formed four regiments[53] and in August 1943 were merged into the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division (six regiments,[35] up to 13,000 men) trained in Poland[53] and deployed in Yugoslavia.[26] In November 1944 the division was split in two[26] and reformed into the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps.[35][54] The Kalmyks formed the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps, employed in rear guard duties.[55]

In February 1945 German and Hungarian cavalry divisions were thrown into the Lake Balaton offensive; after a limited success, German forces were ground down by the Soviet counteroffensive. Remnants of Army cavalry fell back into Austria; 22,000 men surrendered to the Western allies, bringing with them 16,000 horses.[56] Remnants of SS cavalry, merged into the 37th SS Division, followed the same route.[26]

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Swiss Cavalry Equipment / instruction manual - Hussars - 1939

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