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Riders of the Apocalypse: German Cavalry and Modern Warfare, 1870-1945. By David R. Dorondo. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012. Pp. 312. Cloth $36.95. ISBN 978-1612510866.
Every good book offers a moment of epiphany, something that makes the reader sit up and take notice. In David Dorondo's history of modern German cavalry, the epiphany is not a heroic battle-a thundering charge by the arme blanche or a last-ditch defense of an irrevocably lost position-but a moment of abject surrender. While the Treaty of Versailles has received its share of analysis, few scholars have paused to take note of Annex IV: the clauses that required Germany to surrender to France 500 stallions of unspecified breed aged three to seven years, along with 30,000 fillies and mares-the latter specified as being of Ardennais, Boulonnais, or Belgian stock, all of which had to be "very large draft-horse breeds" weighing up to 1,000 kilograms and standing between sixteen and seventeen hands.
As late as 1919, Dorondo implies, one of the measures of national power was how many horses a nation possessed. He thus places himself in opposition to one of the foundational arguments of modern military history: the "obsolescence of cavalry," usually dated to the mid-nineteenth century and the introduction of the rifled musket, but sometimes pushed all the way back to the introduction of gunpowder. As firearms became ever more efficient in the 1800's, the once-feared man on horseback gradually morphed into nothing but a big target. Moreover, in the age...