Germany used more than 2.75 million horses and mules.

According to wikipedia:

German Army entered World War II with 514,000 horses,[13] and over the course of the war employed, in total, 2.75 million horses and mules;[16] average number of horses in the Army reached 1.1 million.

From the book: Horses of the German Army in World War II
By Paul Louis Johnson

The German military used the services of 37,000 farriers (blacksmiths) - think about that - and 236 companies of veterinarians. Their hospitals treated over 100,000 horses a day, with the remarkable success rate of 70 to 75% of sick and injured horses being sent back into service.

Also:

text from the U.S. Army Military History Institute publication MS #P-090. The participants of this study were prisoners of war who were among the most knowledgeable horse experts in the German army, and their conclusions constitute a critique of what probably was the last mass use of horses in warfare. These experts explained why the Germans mobilized over a million horses: they knew that a mechanized army could not survive in Russia, but that horses had a chance. Because of the "Cold War" tensions with the USSR after World War II, the US military was very interested in learning whatever they could about waging war in eastern Europe and Russia. The Germans were convinced that horses were crucial.

If one really means to understand the performance and tactics of the Germans fighting on multiple fronts on the ground in World War II, one must understand the horse and its logistic requirements.

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What I would like to discuss here is the notion that the Germans used horses because they had no choice, when, in fact, it was a tactical decision they made because motorised vehicles would not succeed in Eastern Europe.

Consider the logistics of looking after hundreds of thousands of horses: feed, water, medicine, and the veterinarians to look after them. Would it not be easier to look after a fleet of supply trucks? But the roads in Russia were not the best. Teams of horses could move artillery pieces quickly to nearly any point on the battlefield that a commander desired.

The Germans could have mass produced trucks, but they chose horse drawn supply instead, not out of necessity, but for tactical advantage.

Discuss.

 

the ww2 german army was 80% horse drawn! you'll find this subject discussed here, kulgion..

 

Fuel supply.

the only army to have totally forgone the horse in 1939 was Britain, which was the only European nation to believe it could always secure its fuel in times of war.

The idea that horses did a better job in areas with fewer roads might be true from some points of view and was definitely true of ww1 era trucks, but the speeds, loads and distances needed for a ww2 army could not be met adequately by horses.

The German reason for horses was primarily fuel.
secondarily lack of trucks (if they thought the horses were so much better why did they keep designing and making trucks specifically for the eastern front - OstSchlepper-rad, all the half tracks and maultiers etc. and why did they keep using obsolete captured trucks until quite late in the war?)
remember the German army increased in size 100-fold in the space of a couple of years - their manufacturing couldn't keep up.
There was a limited view that infantry on foot could be supplied by horse, but the moment that infantry was involved in combined arms warfare, it became almost impossible.
As a guide, it takes about 18 horses to carry a similar amount of supplies as 1 truck of mid ww2 vintage, or around 6 to pull it in wagons, but the truck can make more than 30 kph on any hard enough surface for days without much rest.

hence the military horse died out with the end of the war almost universally.

 

Thanks sniper1946, that is a good thread, but my point for discussion is not to argue how many horses the Germans used, but that they chose the horse over the truck for tactical advantage.