This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians.

He passed in 2002, but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at Our American

Stories, thanks to those who run his estate.

Our next story is the story of weapons used in World War II.

Here is Stephen Ambrose.

Transport in the Second World War, again utilized nothing really new. Trucks were used,

of course, trucks had been used in the First World War, especially at the Battle of Verdun by

Marshall Payton. The railroad was extensively used in the Second World War, it had also been extensively used in the First World War.

Much of the Second World War transported in the European armies, especially the Red Army and the German Army, was horse-drawn.

Hitler tried to give the world the impression that he had the most modern army, and in a lot of ways he did, but wasn't as modern as he liked to pretend that it was or the German propaganda portrayed it as being.

For all the pictures that Gerville's released of German tanks rolling down French roads, and German trucks following behind for the most part the

logistical supply system of the German army was was rail drawn from depot to

depot and then from the depots out into the field was horse drawn that was even more

the case with the Red Army which in fact used horses as extensively

in the Second World War as it had in the First. Although in the First World War, there

were still some cavalry units that were attempting to join the battle in the old-fashioned way

with the drawn saber and the charge, and that came to a quick end even in the First World War and was never used in the Second World War and as a bit of a side there's a canard here that is repeated all over the place and is not true it is that the Poles in 1939 tried to fight German armor with cavalry charging tanks And it's a story told to illustrate, I guess, how poorly prepared the Poles were, and

it's very often told by people who want to make you think that the

poles aren't very bright.

There was no Polish cavalry attack of German tanks in the Second World War.

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