It has been a while since I featured a podcast on here and the latest from School of War was a really good one. I was listening to one of their lates podcasts where Aaron MacClean interviews historian and author of Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive, Prit Buttar, on the drive to work yesterday. If you are at all interested in WWII this is a very good listen. While they discuss the immense Russian campaign that broke the German Army on the Eastern Front, this quote completely caught me off guard:
“They [Russians] figured out how to crack the German front line. Numerous veterans say they were told, “Just remember, it’s the first 3 or 5 kilometers that’s difficult. Once we are through that, everything gets easier…” even at this stage of the war, the Germans are massively dependent on horse drawn transport, particularly for their infantry divisions.”
For some reason I thought WWI was basically the end of horse drawn transport in modern warfare. Honestly, other than perhaps Poland, I didn’t think there was much use of horses. But then I remembered this picture from the family history book the I wrote a couple years ago.
This is a photo of the first tractor my grandparents owned. They were fairly large landowners in the 1920-30s prior to losing everything in the Great Depression. While the official year and location of the picture is unknown, the conversations that it inspired during the subsequent family reunion indicated that the photo was taken in the late 1930s on the farm my grandparents were renting in Botna, IA. (I have previously written about my grandpa’s time in service here.)
Regardless, the podcast was very good and discussed aspects of WWII that I was not very familiar with and is a very good listen. 5 out of 5 stars, highly recommend!