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Old 08-08-2011, 09:54 AM
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Hatterasguy Hatterasguy is offline
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Yep, I had the percentages once broken down by theatre, I'll have to see if I can look it up.

Major Knappe was in a horse drawn artillery division and they were largely relegated to a reserve unit in Russia until December because they just couldn't keep up with the front. They were horse drawn until 1943 when they were moved to Italy and got Italian vehicles. They were very happy to get vehicles less upkeep and faster movement.

This was one of the reasons why the German high command wanted to wait until 1945 to go to war, so they could replace all the horses with vehicles.

Also contrary to popular belief the German Panzer divisions had pretty bad tanks until about 1942. In Poland and France they used a lot of Panzer 1 & 2's along with some captured Skoda tanks which were all obsolete. The Panzer 4 was really the back bone of the German tank force throughout the war and Guderian fought hard to prevent them from killing it in 1943 in favor of Panther production.

The French actually had a splendid tank division which they largely wasted. If used properly it could have cut the German advance off at its knees; Rommel had a bit of fun with it for awhile.
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