At a time when the theorists were talking of all-tank armies, the Germans had a virtually all-horse army. The ordinary infantry division had 5,375 horses and 942 motor vehicles. An infantry division like this would require over 50 tons of hay and oats per day and about 20 tons of motor fuel. Motor vehicles only needed fuel when they were working, but the horses needed food every day without fail and 50 tons of hay and oats is very bulky. And horses also demanded much manpower, for they had to be fed, watered, cleaned, and exercised, and their harness and equipment cleaned and checked daily. There had to be a constant back-up of health checks and veterinary care for both healthy and sick animals.
A motorized army was more efficient and less demanding, but in 1939 there was not the slightest chance of the Germans ever having a motorized army. In fact, there was every sign that the motorized part of the army they had was falling apart.
The shortage of motor vehicles was not unconnected with the great variety of vehicles being manufactured during the 1930s. By 1938 there were 100 different types of commercial trucks in army service, 52 types of cars, and 150 different types of motorcycles. A drastic scheme—the Schell-Programm—had reduced this chaos, but still the German motorized columns looked like a parade of used cars and the supply of new vehicles was no more than a trickle.
At the outbreak of war in 1939 the German armed forces resorted to the desperate measure of commandeering civilian motors. They took some 16,000, but these were swallowed up immediately to replace worn-out vehicles, bring army units to their full allotments, equip new divisions, and for training. None of the civilian trucks could be kept to form a reserve, so there was no reserve. Civilian vehicles were flimsy by military standards, with only two-wheel drive, a far cry from the six-wheel (four-wheel drive) Krupp trucks that were the army’s preferred equipment.
By February 1940 the situation was getting worse day by day. The Polish campaign, with its fighting, dust, and very bad roads, had caused some units to write off 50 per cent of their trucks. Replacements from the factories (many of these with only two-wheel drive and unsuited to combat conditions) were pitifully inadequate.
The army’s normal peacetime loss of trucks through wear and tear was about 2,400 trucks each quarter year, but only 1,000 new vehicles were arriving each quarter. In other words, the army’s supply
FIGURE 16 Opel Medium Truck, type S.
Of trucks was dwindling at the rate of 1,400 trucks each quarter year without fighting.
General Franz Haider, from whose journal the above figures are taken, was at the time the Chief of the Army General Staff. So alarmed was he by the situation that he proposed a drastic and far-reaching “demotorization program” which would at once start procuring horses, horse-transport vehicles, and harnesses so that the German Army could begin replacing some of its motor vehicles with horses.
And yet the reports of the Polish campaign had shown repeatedly that horsedrawn units could not keep up with motorized and tank units. It also showed how dangerous things could become when they failed to do so. By now there were enough tanks from Czechoslovakia to increase the number of armored divisions. But there could be no increase in the equally vital motorized infantry divisions. On the contrary, at the end of 1940 these divisions had been reduced in size.
World History
