Saving the great horses of Europe

If you attend a performance by the Lippizzan stallions, as I have on at least three occasions, you are likely to hear a story about how Gen. George Patton saved these horses at the close of World War II. The whole dramatic story, in which Patton played a small but important part, is told in The Perfect Horse (2016) by Elizabeth Letts.

In 1941, the U.S. Army decided horses no longer had a role to play in modern warfare, and the cavalry switched entirely from horses to tanks. Not so most European countries already mired in war. Horses were still important. The German army, for example, used an estimated 2,750,000 horses, mostly to pull wagons and guns. Most of these horses became casualties of war. As the war made food scarce, horses became an important food source, especially for the advancing Russian army near the end of the war.

And so the threat against the Lippizans at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, as well as against other prized horses in Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe, became intense. Betts details the efforts of various people, including some German officers, to protect the most valuable horses. Yet the greatest threat came near the end of the war when these horses, which had survived the Nazis, were now threatened by the Russians.

Fortunately the U.S. Army still had officers, including Patton, who rode horses earlier in their military careers and continued to appreciate them. This led to a daring rescue of many valuable horses just before the end of the war, saving them from the Nazis, the Russians and the many hungry people in Eastern Europe.

Many of these horses were shipped to the U.S.,  where the Army, now out of the horse business, didn't know what to do with them. The horses were mostly unregistered and, despite their excellence, were not in great demand when the Army tried to sell them. So the ending of this story is not as as upbeat as we might wish. Yet the Spanish Riding School in Vienna was saved, and Arabian horses, such as the great stallion Witez from Poland, became recognized as the one of great horse breeds.