It was a time of death, a time of grief, and the full spectrum of what humanity could do to another in the name of hate.

World War II, the most brutal, grotesque, and inhumane war to date, killed between 40 million and 50 million people. The war between the Axis powers and the Allies lasted for almost seven years, and Hitler’s anti-Semitic regime killed six million Jews alone.

Amid the end of such a bloody fight, two armies battling against each other joined together to save a group of helpless animals.

In the countryside of Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic), Gustav Rau, horse master of the Third Reich, housed 675 horses in the name of creating the perfect German warhorse. Along with 375 of the prized “dancing” Lipizzans, Rau added the finest of Polish Arabians and Thoroughbreds– basically, the best of the best from the countries Germany conquered.

With the fall of the Axis powers at the hands of the Allies, the starving Russian army was moving on toward the stable, and they would rather shoot the horses for food instead of appreciating their significance to European history. Knowing that defeat was inevitable, a group of brave men stationed at the stables decided to attempt an operation that could get them killed for treason: asking the Americans to take over the stable to get the priceless horses to safety.

Thus started one of the least known and most unusual assignments in the history of World War II: Operation Cowboy.

THE PERFECT WARHORSE, THE PERFECT RACE

Why was Gustav Rau trying to create the perfect warhorse, anyway? By World War II the warhorse was almost extinct, as machines were proven to be far more suited to combat than flighty animals that needed to be trained and fed.

It wasn’t so much about the warhorse as what breeding the perfect warhorse symbolized. The Nazis believed in Blut und Boden, blood and land, a theory that the German race was the most superior in the world. In 1930s Europe, a country’s horses were parallel to the greatness of a nation. Poland had Arabians, England had the Thoroughbred, and Austria had the royal Lipizzan. Breeding both the perfect race and the perfect horse side by side would show the world that Germany was truly the most superior nation.

Rau’s theories on selective breeding for horses, later translated to humans, led to the mass genocide of millions. From the six million Jews, 1.8 million Poles, 250,000-500,000 Romani, 300,000 disabled, 1,700 Jenovah’s Witnesses, hundreds of blacks, and 35,000 asocials, the staggering amount of lives taken in the name of Rau’s theory didn’t even faze the horse breeder. He was pleased that his ideas were being put into practice on such a grand scale. The horrific use of eugenics even went so far as to collect 12,000 blue-eyed, blond-haired children to be used in a “breeding” program called The Lebensborn Project. 

The perfect warhorse, the perfect human race, and Germany would be known as the greatest nation in the world. There was only one element that Rau didn’t account for:

The Allies were winning the war.

THE IDEA

Amid the evil, Rau’s aide Rudolf Lessing was horrified at the genocide his superior’s theory was creating. No one, not even his father, believed him when he was speaking about the horrors he saw unfolding across the countryside. His loyalty was removed from the Third Reich early on, even as he was assigned to veterinarian of the secret warhorse breeding program.

The whispers that the Nazis were losing even reached the ears of Colonel Hubert Rudofsky, who ran the secret stud farm in Hostau for Rau. And when a visiting Colonel by the name of Walter Holters described to him the horrors of what the impeding Red Army of Russia would do to the precious horses, Rudofsky and Lessing had to make a decision.

It was Holters who had the only answer to the question: contact the enemy. The Americans were their only hope to save the horses.

THE VISIT

Mind made up, Holters drove into the headquarters of the American 2nd Cavalry, flying white flags of surrender . He was met by Captain Ferdinand Sperl, an interrogator of prisoners of war, and demanded to see the commanding officers. Suspicious, Sperl searched him for ID.

Holters had removed all his IDs, but he’d left two pictures of the Lipizzan horses in his wallet. After further investigation, Holters revealed that they were the royal Lipizzans of Austria, in danger of being captured by the Russian Army, and he had come to solicit help in rescuing them.

Sperl checked in with the CO Hank Reed, explaining the situation. Reed, a devout horseman himself, was surprised to find such purebreds in a war where thousands ate their horses to stay alive. Reed struck a deal with Holters: if he revealed the location and details related to the intelligence group Holters led, then they could begin negotiating a rescue.

Holters spoke with his intelligence group, and after agreeing to make it look like a firefight so the SS would think it was a forced takeover instead of a voluntary surrender, Holters and Reed created a plan.

THE PLAN

A day later, Lessing was contacted by Rudofsky and told of the plan that Holters had created. Lessing was reluctant, given that it was the middle of the foaling season and it would risk the lives of the foals and the pregnant broodmares. But there was no other choice.

Lessing rode horseback to contact Holters at an agreed-upon place, but Holters was in the custody of the Americans. After being taken in by the Americans himself, Lessing met with Reed and explained the complications of transporting the horses out of the farm. He said that it would be better for the Americans to occupy the farm, but such an event was impossible, as a recent deal between Russia, Britain, and America had deemed that everything east of the German border would be under Russian control.

Hank Reed decided to send Lessing back with Captain Tom Stewart to negotiate the plight of the horses, with the stipulation that Stewart had to be returned within a certain timeframe. Unfortunately, when Stewart and Lessing returned to Hostau, the chain of command had changed. A General with his troops was taking refuge at the stables, and if Stewart was found, Lessing and Rudofsky would be shot for treason. While they tried to keep Stewart a secret, the general found him and captured him as a prisoner of war. Lessing tried to explain the situation, but the general said that he would have to take it up with the brigade officer.

A new plan was created: ride twenty-five miles to the Generalmajor’s headquarters in Klattau, while Lessing’s assistant veterinarian went to the Americans to explain the delay.

At the Generalmajor’s, Stewart laid out the terms: the Americans were offering a temporary truce to evacuate the horses across the border to Bavaria. General Weissenberger argued with Lessing, telling him that the war wasn’t over and the Reich would consider such a stunt as treason. Lessing argued that the war’s ending wasn’t in their favor and that Germany would soon fall to the Allies. After more negotiating, Weissenberger agreed and wrote a note to General Schulze at Hostau.

The 42nd Squadron of the 2nd Cavalry moved in on April 28, and under the white flags of surrender, an American flag replaced the swastika on the flagpole, and Americans captured the Hostau farm.

THE ESCAPE

Four days after Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 12th, 1945, the evacuation plan started to take shape. The pregnant mares and foals would ride in the trucks, and the rest of the horses would be herded out cowboy style. Two weeks after Hostau was taken into American hands, Tom Stewart led the procession out of the stables back to Germany, with the trucks in front and the horses herded in back. A few stallions were lost when they broke away from the group to gallop back home, but other than a few footsore horses, the first day passed without much eventfulness.

Trouble came on the second day when they came to the Czechoslovakian border. Soldiers barricaded them in, saying that the horses were the property of the country and were not allowed to leave. Under threats by the Americans that they would shoot and destroy the barricade themselves if they were not allowed to pass, the guards conceded and the procession continued. On May 16th, four days later, they arrived at Kozting, Germany, the planned destination.

However, all was not well. The city was crowded with seventeen thousand German POWs and refugees fleeing from the Russians. There was little room to keep the horses fed and watered. News of the horses spread to Alois Podhajsky, the director of the Austrian Riding School where most of the horses had been taken from. He was able to find temporary housing arrangements for all but fifteen of the Lippizans and the Arabians. On May 22nd, 219 royal Lippizan mares and foals were trucked to St. Martin, Austria, back in the hands of their birth country, leaving the Polish Arabians and the other fifteen Lippizzans in the custody of the 2nd Cavalry.

There was only the remaining hundred-plus horses left in Hank Reed’s custody, and the food to support such a group was running out. It was almost impossible to return the horses to their original owners, so they became property of the US as spoils of war. Some were sold to farmers, others were distributed as military horses, and finally the last 150 were shipped back to the United States for breeding purposes on October 1, 1945.The Stephan F. Austin departed for US waters on October 12th. Storms drew the boat off course, turning a twelve-day trip into a sixteen-day voyage, and at one point all the stallions escaped and fought each other to the point of blood.

Despite all this, the Stephen F. Austin safely docked in Newport News, Virginia on October 28th, 1945, without loss.

The horses stayed in the Aleshire Army Remount Depot in Front Royal, Virginia, in seclusion until they were open for public view on April 7th, 1946. Shortly after, the horses were separated to different breeding farms across the US, but the lack of pedigrees and suspicion over the German blood made it almost impossible to register any of them. The use of machinery made horses worthless in the eyes of the army. The horses were auctioned off to various homes, some good, and some bad. One stallion, Lotnik, ended up suffering neglect for several years. Others, like the famous stallion Witzek, ended up as fine sires for the Arabian horse breed.

CONCLUSION

Some may ask why they would choose to spend resources on rescuing horses when there were thousands of people dying in concentration camps across Europe. Shouldn’t we value those humans over the horses?

While I agree that human life is more valuable than horse life, I would also add that by this point a lot of concentration camps had already been raided and shut down. And there is something beautiful in the fact that these men were on opposite sides of the war. Many of the Germans became prisoners of war after Operation Cowboy, and they knew this when they asked the Americans for help with the horses.

But they still worked together, and in the end, over three hundred horses were rescued from being slaughtered. Austria’s Lippizans were returned, and the Arabians ended up siring the finest lines in America.

Hitler wanted to create the perfect race, from Rau’s idea of creating the perfect horse. The Allies destroyed both plans by defeating the Third Reich, freeing the concentration camp prisoners, and rescuing the Hostau horses. So while the stories following the aftermath of Operation Cowboy weren’t all happily ever afters, in that moment, when German soldiers and American GIs rode side by side for a common goal, it gave a hope, that perhaps one day the wounds of war would heal, the prices would be paid, and we would be enemies no longer.

Colonel Charles Hancock Reed said it perfectly: “We were so tired of death and destruction; we wanted to do something beautiful.”

And it was beautiful indeed.

***

Sources

Letts, Elizabeth, The Perfect Horse: The Daring Rescue of the Horses Kidnapped During World War Two, Penguin Random House LLC, 2019. Print

Davis, Susan, “OPERATION COWBOY IN 1945 A GROUP OF U.S. SOLDIERS LIBERATED 375 LIPIZZANS FROM NAZI CAPTIVITY, Sports Illustrated Vault, Online.

Harvey, Ian, “The Lebensborn Project Was One of the Most Secret and Terrifying Nazi Projects”, War History Online.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia, “How Many People Did the Nazis Murder?”, The Holocaust Encylopedia, Online

Chimielweski, Kenny, “Casualties of World War II”, Britannica, Online

Felton, Mark, “Operation Cowboy: How American GIs and German Soldiers Joined Forces to Save the Legendary Lipizzaner Horses in the Final Hours of WW2”, Military History Now, Online