Elizabeth Letts' account of the little-known Nazi plan to build an equine master race is a compelling tearjerker and an important addition to the slim catalogue of wartime animal stories, says Roshni Nair.
Title: The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis
Author: Elizabeth Letts
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Price: Rs 1286 (Hardcover; Amazon)
400 pages
Man's bloodiest wars were won by animals. This is not to take away from some of history's greatest generals – from Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun to Hannibal Barca and the Polish Hussars. But take away their cavalries, the war elephants from Gangaridai and Nanda empires (which stopped Alexander's march into India) and the camelry from the Achaemenids, and you wonder if their might would have been if not for their mounts.
The scope of military animals goes well beyond combat. If mastiffs were used by Spanish Conquistadors to kill natives in Mexico and Peru, other breeds were (and are) used for landmine and bomb detection. Pigeons were used for espionage. Animals have not been spared from doubling as live bombs either.
But no creature has been as pivotal to humanity's lust for empire as the horse. And nowhere was the need for the perfect steed as pronounced than in Nazi Germany.
This is where Elizabeth Letts' The Perfect Horse, an account of the little-known Nazi plan to build an equine master race, stands out from the reams of World War II literature. Taking off from the 1936 Berlin Olympics – where Alois Podhajsky, director of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, bagged a bronze for the equestrian sport of dressage – it walks us through the brutal impact WWII had on Europe's prized horses.
Eugenics was central to Hitler's dream of a global Aryan empire. And the Nazi obsession with propagating a 'pedigree' race extended to the equine world. Post-World War I, where Germany suffered a crushing defeat, cavalries and equestrian sports became hallmarks of military grandstanding. Eager to have his country get pride of place, German 'chief of horse breeding' Gustav Rau usurped – among others – the Spanish Riding School, Piber and Hostau stud farms (in then-Czechoslovakia) and Poland's Janów Podlaski farm. His eye was on two breeds: the fabled Lipizzaner and the majestic Arabian.
But with Allied Forces – especially Russia – closing in, Nazi Germany's dream horses faced uncertainty and looming death.
In the Eeyorish atmosphere surrounding the animals' fate during WWII, four heroes emerge: Podhajsky, German army veterinarian Rudolf Lessing, Hostau stud farm director Hubert Rudofsky, and Colonel Charles Hancock 'Hank' Reed, commanding officer of the US army's 2nd cavalry. It is a wonder that the lengths an invading US army went to to save an enemy's purebreds – under direct approval of General George Patton – has not been written about as much as their other heroics. More so when the 2nd cavalry consisted almost entirely of African-Americans, who bore the brunt of intense racism not only in their own country, but within the military establishment itself.
Despite the jingoism and violence that peaked during a bloodbath of this magnitude (an estimated 60 million died during WWII), sworn enemies joined hands to aid a cause they viewed as bigger than their nation states. There was Luftwaffe spy Colonel Walter Holters – the first to alert American soldiers about the plight of the horses – and the exemplary Rudolf Lessing, who travelled a gutted Germany to treat animals in distress and accepted no payment (other than an occasional pail of fresh milk). As Colonel Reed said, when asked why the US army thought it so important to save the equines: "We were so tired of death and destruction. We wanted to do something beautiful."
Letts is an equestrian herself and her love for horses underlines every page in this book. This is not a bad thing; her prose, never weighed down by equestrian jargon, is a welcome note to non-horse folks, who will be moved by the tradition of intimacy between horse and handler. Particularly heart-rending (keep a tissue handy) are detailed accounts of equine panic and fear during air raids, broodmares and tiny foals fleeing for miles to reach safety, and the fate that befell some horses after being brought to the US. The Perfect Horse is also peppered with interesting factoids – such as cereal magnate WK Kellogg's love for Arabians and his role in sustaining the American cavalry, and how a young Richard Nixon tried to safeguard the interests of the rescued European horses.
If at all the book falters, it is in Lett's unquestioning take on the motive behind the US army's equine rescue operation. While General Patton's and Colonel Hank Reed's inspirations for executing this crazy rescue mission are understandable, the same cannot be said of Remount Service chief Colonel Fred Hamilton. In Letts' own (few) words: "...among his selections [of rescued horses to be brought to the US] were some of the world's most valuable racehorses, a choice that would engender no small measure of controversy."
But this is a tiny dent in the scheme of things, more so because the book does not absolve the American bureaucracy of failing the rescued horses in later years.
An important addition to the slim catalogue of wartime animal stories, The Perfect Horse is a compelling tearjerker reminding us that sometimes, the love of an animal is all to takes to tame the beast within.
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