“Gustav Rau (who was charged with overseeing their breeding program) didn’t have enough time to do serious damage. In fact, he probably helped the Lipizzan breed because he gathered up so many far-flung horses.”
WT: The Nazi plan for creating the perfect horse involved line breeding, with very closely related horses (siblings or parent and offspring, for example) bred to each other. Did this damage the Arabian or Lipizzan breeds in the long term? EL: Gustav Rau (who was charged with overseeing their breeding program) didn’t have enough time to do seri- ous damage. In fact, he probably helped the Lipizzan breed because he gathered up so many far-flung horses. The Lipiz- zans were divided after World War I—Austria, Yugoslavia and Italy all received a small group of horses. By the second World War, bloodlines in each country were becoming dangerously limited. It may have been inadvertent but he brought more diversity into the breeding stock by bringing the various groups together. Fortunately, he didn’t have enough time to alter the breed in the ways he wanted to. In the case of the Polish Arabians, though, they were
almost completely wiped out. It was tragic that Poland couldn’t get its horses back after the war. The American government thought the Polish government was controlled by the Bolsheviks—they thought any horses returned would be used as weapons of war. The British government returned horses to Poland, but the Americans did not.
WT: So many of these European horses were lost when the United States government imported them to this country and ultimately sold them after disbanding cavalry breed- ing stations. In the book’s epilogue, only two of the most famous of the horses brought to the United States are listed. Any idea what happened to the rest?
EL: I did figure out where many of the horses ended up. But it was impossible to trace them all. These horses were sold off in lots, so often I really couldn’t trace them. They had been originally chosen for import to the U.S. with an eye to breed- ing cavalry horses. Some became ranch horses. Sadly, a few were simply euthanized. The Austrian Lipizzans were returned to their country—
they were not among the horses brought to the United States. And some of the Lipizzans remaining in Germany went into the circus. Most of the Lipizzans brought here were Yugoslavian or Hungarian and were originally owned privately, not by a state-run stud farm. As I recounted in the book, they were later sold. Many were purchased by a man in the Midwest, a car dealer, who later sold them to Tempel Farms in Illinois (which is still famous today for its Lipizzans). Most of the Arabians in the group were sold to individu-
als. Many of them probably ended up in backyards around southern California! Most of the Thoroughbreds brought to the U.S. by the
Army never got to be used in American breeding programs. The Jockey Club couldn’t definitively authenticate the blood- lines, so they put up a big fight about registering these horses, saying it was impossible to know if they were truly the horses listed in their German registration papers. And some people felt that German blood should not be intro- duced into American breeding programs because it was impure. It was eugenics all over again!
WT: What kind of responses and comments have you gotten since the book was published last year? EL: I feel so lucky: response has been great. I started writing this book with a background in horses, not in the military. There’s been a great response from people who read this book as a military story. I worked really hard to get all the details right and was so glad to hear from them that I succeeded. I also heard from many people who had a personal connec-
tion to the Second Cavalry. That has been inspiring and heartwarming. There were some stories that were so moving I wish I could have used them in the book!
WT: So what’s next for you? EL: I don’t know for sure. I have another horse-related writ- ing project I’m working on but I don’t want to say too much about it. I really want to do another true horse story, one set in the 1950s this time. And I just finished a novel, my fifth! On a personal level, I really want to ride more. I rode
Elizabeth Letts, author of two popular non-fiction horse books, The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Cham- pion. Elizabeth was a Pony Clubber and evented when she was young.
34 September/October 2017
hunter/jumpers and Pony Clubbed as a kid, then started eventing when I was 14. I’ve only been riding occasionally for the last several years, though. Now I have an active ‘acquiring a horse’ fantasy—so active that it just might happen!
Courtesy Elizabeth Letts
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