Anti-tank dog

[Mark1]

It was a very bad time for animals, as well as people, on both sides of the eastern front in WW2.
It's well documented that the 200,000 survivors of the German 6th Army trapped at Stalingrad, faced starvation. By the first week of January 1943 they had eaten all 23,000 of their draught horses, some thousand or so bullocks and camels and all 600 of the military police dogs. Total losses of Wehrmacht horses during the failed Stalingrad campaign was over 150,000 animals.
That the German Army of the Nazi era was so dependent on draught animals was a surprise to me.

[4 Scale]

Originally Posted by Mark1

That the German Army of the Nazi era was so dependent on draught animals was a surprise to me.

I was also surprised to learn this. I've learned that 80% of German Army transport during WWII was by horse.

I was further surprised when I learned that German pistol production was on allocation to their service branches from the beginning of re-armament in 1933 to the end of the war.

The reason this information surprised me was, I had been taught in school that one of the reasons the U.S. entered WWII was to prevent the Germans from taking over the world. Reliance on horses and a shortage of pistols seemed odd for an adversary with such ambitions.