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Well, it is nearly sure that Hannibal's military strategy was probably derived from the lesson of his father, Hamilcar, who always believed in the use of elephants as a "fear creation" machine.
Also, it is worth to mention that the Carthaginians have not been the first to use elephants in battles. When Alexander the Great, marched to India, he had to fight them in the battle of the Hydaspes river (326 b.c.) against the empire of king Porus.
Nevertheless, crossing the Alps with such an army and with these animals was a very challenging goal. While his plan was nearly perfect and he designed to go through the mountains at the end of the summer, he didn't expect the countereaction of some local population. Clearly, they couldn't stop the Carthaginians army who were better trained and bigger in size nevertheless, they slowed them that when the whole army was marching through the mountains, it started snowing, making the crossing of the Alps really dangerous.
But that "vision" was transformed by Hannibal into one of the most audacious plans being executed in the whole history: to beat the Romans on their homeland by invading Italy from the North……
The only possibility to make this strategy work, was to prepare an extremely detailed analysis of the logistics to support a march of an army of more than 40,000 people (some say 60,000) through half of Spain - Hannibal headquarter was located in New Carthage, in the South of Spain - till the North of Catalonia, crossing the Pyrenean mountains, marching through Southern Gaul (i.e. France) and, eventually, after having crossed the Alps, arriving in Northern Italy.
You may easily imagine the challenge to face in order to be sure that nothing could go wrong: from supply of the water to the type of indumenta the soldiers should have carried considering they had to cross snowy mountains and hot valleys.
For more than 6 months the best Carthaginian logisticians were together to prepare one of the greatest military journey of history. Probably, only the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great was similar in terms of logistics difficulties also considering the poor knowledge available at that time about the different countries and geographies.
In spring of 218 B.C., Hannibal brought his plan into execution, starting a march of nearly 1600 kilometers with an army consisting of highly trained Carthaginians mixed with strong and reliable Spaniard infantry and the Numidian cavalry (also famous for his courage), as well as 37 elephants.
So, not only, he went for the most difficult path to reach Italy but he also decided to take with him the elephants counting on them as a significant competitive advantage when engaging a battle against the Roman army. But on the other side, he was very conscious that making such a march with the elephants would have slowed significantly the whole journey.
"So, why also the elephants" (that became so famous but, at the end irrelevant, for the result of the whole war campaign)?
