Today in World War II History—September 16, 1939 & 1944
Monday, September 16, 2019 by Sarah Sundin
German Army horses towing an infantry gun, Poland, September 1939 (German Federal Archive, Bild 183-S54817)
80 Years Ago—September 16, 1939: In Poland, Germans take Brest-Litovsk and surround Warsaw.
First German U-boat attack on an Allied North Atlantic convoy; U-31 sinks British freighter Aviemore in convoy OB-4 off Land’s End.
75 Years Ago—Sept. 16, 1944: Soviets launch assault toward Gulf of Riga on the Baltic.
Nice photographic example of early war deployment of light field piece in the German army.
The Germans used more horses in World War Two than they did in World War One and by the end of the war were the least mechanized army in Europe. Early war German propaganda was so effective on their mechanization that its not only easy to forget that, its actually generally forgotten. We still recall the German army the way the Germans portrayed it, in that regard, rather than the way it actually was.
It’s so true. We think of the Blitzkrieg with the Panzers and Stukas – but the German army was highly reliant on horses and infantry.