Scorched earth

Not to be confused with Slash-and-burn.

For other uses, see Scorched Earth (disambiguation).

Kuwaiti oil wells set alight by retreating Iraqi forces in 1991.

A scorched earth policy is a military strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. It is a military strategy where all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as food sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the people in the area. The practice can be carried out by an army in enemy territory, or in its own home territory. It may overlap with, but is not the same as, punitive destruction of an enemy's resources, which is done for purely strategic/political reasons rather than strategic/operational reasons. It was most famously used by Joseph Stalin against the German Army in the Second World War, by William Tecumseh Sherman during his March to the Sea in the American Civil War, by Lord Kitchener against the Boers, and by the Russian army during the failed Napoleonic invasion of Russia.

The strategy of destroying the food supply of the civilian population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. The relevant passage says:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

Despite being prohibited, it is still a common military practice. The protocol only applies to those countries that have ratified it; notable countries that have not ratified it are the United States, Israel, Iran and Pakistan.

Ancient times

The Scythians used scorched earth methods against King Darius the Great of Persia. Nomadic herders, the Scythians retreated into the depths of the Steppes, destroying food supplies and poisoning wells. As a result, Darius the Great was forced to concede defeat. A large number of his troops died from starvation and dehydration.

The Greek general Xenophon records in his Anabasis that the Armenians burned their crops and food supplies as they withdrew before the advance of the Ten Thousand.

The Greek mercenary general Memnon suggested to the Persian Satraps the use of the scorched earth policy against Alexander as he moved into Asia Minor. He was refused.

Roman era

The system of punitive destruction of property and subjugation of people when accompanying a military campaign was known as vastatio. Two of the first uses of scorched earth recorded both happened in the Gallic Wars. The first was used when the Celtic Helvetii were forced to evacuate their homes in Southern Germany and Switzerland due to incursions of unfriendly Germanic tribes. To add incentive to the march, the Helvetii destroyed everything they could not bring. After the Helvetii were defeated by a combined Roman-Gallic force, the Helvetii were forced to rebuild themselves on the shattered German and Swiss plains they themselves had destroyed.

The second case shows actual military value: during the "Great Gallic War" the Gauls under Vercingetorix planned to lure the Roman armies into Gaul and then trap and obliterate them. To this end, they ravaged the countryside of what are now the Benelux countries and France. This did cause immense problems for the Romans, but Roman military triumphs over the Gallic alliance showed that this alone was not enough to save Gaul from subjugation by Rome.

During the Second Punic War in 218–202 BC, the Carthaginians used this method while storming through Italy. After the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC, the Roman Senate also elected to use this method to permanently destroy the Carthaginian capital city, Carthage (near modern-day Tunis). The buildings were torn down, their stones scattered so not even rubble remained, and the fields were burned. However, the story that they salted the earth is apocryphal.

In the year AD 363, the Emperor Julian's invasion of Persia was turned back by a scorched earth policy:

"The extensive region that lies between the River Tigris and the mountains of Media...was in a very improved state of cultivation. Julian might expect, that a conqueror, who possessed the two forcible instruments of persuasion, steel and gold, would easily procure a plentiful subsistence from the fears or avarice of the natives. But, on the approach of the Romans, the rich and smiling prospect was instantly blasted. Wherever they moved...the cattle was driven away; the grass and ripe corn were consumed with fire; and, as soon as the flames had subsided which interrupted the march of Julian, he beheld the melancholy face of a smoking and naked desert. This desperate but effectual method of defence can only be executed by the enthusiasm of a people who prefer their independence to their property; or by the rigor of an arbitrary government, which consults the public safety without submitting to their inclinations the liberty of choice."

Middle Ages

Viking Period

During the great Viking invasion of England opposed by Alfred the Great and various other Saxon and Welsh rulers, the Viking chieftain Hastein in late summer 893 marched his men to Chester to occupy the ruined Roman fortress there. The refortified fortress should have made an excellent base for raiding northern Mercia, but the Mercians are recorded as having taken the drastic measure of destroying all crops and livestock in the surrounding countryside in order to starve the Danes out.

Harrying of the North

In the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror's brutal conquest and subjugation of the North of England, William's men burnt whole villages from the Humber to Tees, and slaughtered the inhabitants. Foodstores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would soon succumb to starvation over the winter. The survivors were reduced to cannibalism, with one report stating that the skulls of the dead were cracked open so that the brains could be eaten. Between 100,000 and 150,000 perished and the area took centuries to recover from the damage.

High and Late Middle Ages

Robert the Bruce

During the Hundred Years' War, both the English and the French conducted chevauchée raids over the enemy territory to damage its infrastructure.

Robert the Bruce counselled using these operational methods to hold off the English King Edward's forces when the English invaded Scotland, according to an anonymous 14th-century poem:

...in strait places gar keep all store,
And byrnen ye plainland them before,
That they shall pass away in haist
What that they find na thing but waist.
...This is the counsel and intent
Of gud King Robert's testiment.

In 1336, the defenders of Pilėnai in Lithuania set their castle on fire and committed mass suicide in order to make the attacking Teutonic Order's victory a costly one.

The strategy was widely used in the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Prince Mircea I of Wallachia used it against the Ottomans in 1395 and Prince Stephen III of Moldavia scorched the earth in his country as the Ottoman army advanced in 1475 and 1476.

Corfe Castle was slighted during the English Civil War so that its defences could not be reused.

A slighting is the deliberate destruction, partial or complete, of a fortification without opposition. Sometimes, such as during the Wars of Scottish Independence and the English Civil War, the intention was to render the structure unusable as a fortress. In England during the Middle Ages adulterine (unauthorised) castles if captured by the king would usually be slighted. During the Wars of Scottish Independence King Robert the Bruce adopted a strategy of slighting Scottish castles to prevent them being occupied by the English. A strategy of slighting castles in Palestine was also adopted by the Mamelukes in their wars with the Crusaders.

Early Modern era

Further British use of scorched earth policies in war was seen during the 16th century in Ireland, where it was used by English commanders such as Walter Devereux and Richard Bingham. Its most infamous use was by Humphrey Gilbert during the wars against the native Irish in Munster in the 1560s and 1570s, actions which earned the praise of the poet Edmund Spenser in his A View of the Present State of Ireland in 1596.

The Desmond Rebellions are a famous case in Ireland. Much of the entire province of Munster was laid waste. The poet Edmund Spenser left an account of it:

In those late wars in Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the wood and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked Anatomies [of] death, they spoke like ghosts, crying out of their graves; they did eat of the carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue therewithal; that in a short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man or beast.

In 1630, Field-Marshal General Torquato Conti was in command of Imperial forces during the Thirty Years' War. Forced to retreat from the advancing Swedish army of King Gustavus Adolphus, Conti ordered his troops to burn houses, destroy villages and generally cause as much harm to property and people as possible. His actions were remembered thus:

To revenge himself upon the Duke of Pomerania, the imperial general permitted his troops, upon his retreat, to exercise every barbarity on the unfortunate inhabitants of Pomerania, who had already suffered but too severely from his avarice. On pretence of cutting off the resources of the Swedes, the whole country was laid waste and plundered; and often, when the Imperialists were unable any longer to maintain a place, it was laid in ashes, in order to leave the enemy nothing but ruins.

During the Great Northern War, Russia scorched earth in the way of Swedish king Charles XII's forces.

Wallachian-Ottoman Wars

The forces of Vlad the Impaler were associated with torches, particularly outside Târgovişte.

In 1462, a massive Ottoman army led by Sultan Mehmed II marched into Wallachia. Vlad the Impaler retreated to Transylvania. During his departure, he conducted scorched earth tactics to ward off Sultan Mehmed II's approach. When the Ottoman forces approached Tirgoviste, they encountered over 20,000 people impaled by the forces of Vlad the Impaler, creating a "forest" of dead or dying bodies on stakes. This atrocious, gut-wrenching sight caused the Ottomans to withdraw.

Mughal-Maratha Wars

Shivaji Maharaj had introduced scorched earth tactics known as Ganimi Kava—his forces looted traders and businessmen from Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb's empire, and burnt down his cities. But they were strictly ordered not to rape or hurt the innocent civilians, and not to cause any sort of disrespect to any of the religious institutes.

Shivaji's son, Sambhaji Maharaj, was detested throughout the Mughal Empire for his scorched earth tactics until he and his men were captured by Muqarrab Khan and his Mughal Army contingent of 25,000. On 11 March 1689, a panel of Mughal Qadis indited and sentenced Sambhaji to death for condoning casual torture, arson, looting, and massacre of the emperor's subjects, but most prominently for giving shelter to Sultan Muhammad Akbar, the fourth son of Aurangzeb, who sought Sambhajiraje's aid in winning the Mughal throne from his emperor father. Sambhaji was particularly condemned for the three days of ravaging committed after the Battle of Burhanpur.

In the year 1747, the Marathas, led by Raghoji I Bhonsle, began to raid, pillage and annex the territories in Odisha belonging to the Mughal Empire's Nawab of Bengal, Alivardi Khan. The Maratha cavalry numbering 40,000 had sacked the town of Midnapore and set granaries and villages ablaze.

Nineteenth century

Napoleonic Wars

During the 1810 (third) Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, the Portuguese population retreated, destroying all the food supplies the French might capture (it should be reminded that the recent invention of effective food preserving techniques was still not fit for military because a suitably rugged container had not yet been invented). This attitude was the result of French plundering and general ill-treatment of civilians in the previous invasions. The poor, angered people would rather destroy anything that had to be left behind rather than leaving it to the French.

French soldiers reported that the country "seemed to empty ahead of them". When Massená reached the city of Viseu, wanting to replenish his armies' dwindling food supplies, none of the inhabitants remained, and all there was to eat were grapes and lemons that, if eaten in large quantities, would be better laxatives than sources of calories. After the subsequent defeat at Bussaco, Massená's army marched on to Coimbra where much of the city's old university and library were vandalised, houses and furniture were destroyed and the few civilians that did not seek refuge further south were murdered. While there were instances of similar behavior by British soldiers, considering that Portugal was their ally, such crimes were generally investigated, and those found punished. Coimbra's sack made the populace even more determined in leaving nothing and when the French armies reached the Lines of Torres Vedras on the way to Lisbon, low morale, hunger, disease, and indiscipline had rendered the French Army of Portugal into a much weaker force. This method was later recommended to Russia when Napoleon made his move.

Napoleon's retreat from Moscow

In 1812 Czar Alexander I was able to render Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Russia useless by utilizing a scorched-earth retreat method, similar to that made by the Portuguese. As Russian forces withdrew from the advancing French army, they burned the countryside (and, allegedly, Moscow) over which they passed, leaving nothing of value for the pursuing French army. Encountering only desolate and useless land Napoleon's Grand Army was prevented from using its accustomed doctrine of living off the lands it conquered. Pushing relentlessly on despite dwindling numbers, the Grand Army met with disaster as the invasion progressed. Napoleon's army arrived in a virtually abandoned Moscow, which was a tattered starving shell of its former self due largely to the use of scorched-earth tactics by retreating Russians. Having essentially conquered nothing, Napoleon's troops diminished. Tragically, the effects of this policy on the civilian population in those areas in which it was applied was equally, if not more, devastating than they were on the Grande Armée.

South American War of Independence

On August 1812, Argentine General Manuel Belgrano led the Jujuy Exodus, a massive forced displacement of people from the present-day Jujuy and Salta provinces to the south. The Jujuy Exodus was conducted by the patriot forces of the Army of the North that were battling a Royalist army.

Belgrano, faced with the prospect of total defeat and territorial loss, ordered all people to pack their necessities, including food and furniture, and follow him, in carriages or on foot, together with whatever cattle and beasts of burden could endure the journey. The rest (houses, crops, food stocks, and also any objects made of iron) was to be burned, so as to deprive the loyalists of resources, following a strict scorched earth policy. On 29 July 1812 Belgrano asked the people of Jujuy to "show their heroism" and join the march of the army under his command "if, as you assure, you want to be free". The punishment for ignoring the order was execution and the destruction of the defector's properties. Belgrano labored to win the support of the populace, and later reported that most of the people had willingly followed him without the need of force.

The exodus started on 23 August and gathered people from Jujuy and Salta; people travelled south about 250 km, finally arriving at the banks of the Pasaje River, in the province of Tucumán, on the early hours of 29 August.

Philippine-American War

U.S. attacks into the Philippine countryside often included scorched earth campaigns where entire villages were burned and destroyed, torture (water cure) and the concentration of civilians into "protected zones". Many of the civilian casualties resulted from disease and famine.

In the hunt for the Guerrilla General Emilio Aguinaldo American troops also poisoned water wells to try to force out the Filipino rebels.

American Civil War

Sherman's troops destroy a railroad near Atlanta

In the American Civil War, Union forces under Sheridan and Sherman used the policy widely. General Sherman utilized this policy during his March to the Sea. In another Civil War event, in response to Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Kansas, and the many civilian casualties there, the U.S. Army General Order No. 11 (1863) ordered the near-total evacuation of three and a half counties in western Missouri, south of Kansas City, which were subsequently looted and burned by U.S. Army troops. The commander of Union Forces who issued General Order No. 11, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr., was Sherman's brother-in-law. Under Sherman's overall direction, General Sheridan followed this policy in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and subsequently in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains.

When General Grant's forces broke through Richmond's defenses, Jefferson Davis ordered the destruction of Richmond's militarily significant supplies; the resulting conflagration destroyed many – mainly commercial – buildings and some Southern warships docked on the James River. Civilians in panic were forced to escape the fires started by Grant's army.

Native American wars

Navajo on the so-called "long walk"

During the wars with Native American tribes of the American West, under James Carleton's direction, Kit Carson instituted a scorched earth policy, burning Navajo fields and homes, and stealing or killing their livestock. He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes. The Navajo were forced to surrender due to the destruction of their livestock and food supplies. In the spring of 1864, 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were forced to march 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Navajos call this "The Long Walk." Many died along the way or during the next four years of their internment.

A military expedition led by U.S. Army Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was sent to the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Territory Panhandle area in 1874 to remove the Indians to reservations in Oklahoma. The Mackenzie expedition captured about 1,200 of the Indians' horses, drove them into Tule Canyon, and shot them all. Denied their main source of livelihood and demoralized, the Comanche and Kiowa abandoned the area (see Palo Duro Canyon).

Boer War

Boer civilians watching British soldiers blow up their house with dynamite: Boers were given 10 minutes to gather belongings

Lord Kitchener applied scorched earth policy during the latter part of the Second Boer War (1899–1902) when the Boers, not conforming to classic military defeat when their two capital cities were captured, but never on the battlefield, adopted the first modern form of what we know today as guerrilla warfare, in order to rid their republics of the British. As a result the British ordered destruction of the farms and the homes of civilians in order to prevent the still-fighting Boers from obtaining food and supplies. An eloquent description of this comes from an Army officer at the time. This destruction left women and children without means to survive since crops and livestock were also destroyed.

The existence of the concentration camps was exposed by Emily Hobhouse, who toured the camps and began petitioning the British government to change its policy. In an attempt to counter Hobhouse's activism, the British commissioned the Fawcett Commission, that confirmed Hobhouse's findings. The British later perceived the concentration camps as a humanitarian measure, to care for displaced persons until the war was ended, in response to the Hobhouse and Fawcett reports. Negligence by the British, lack of planning and supplies and overcrowding led to much loss of life. A decade after the war P.L.A. Goldman officially determined that an astonishing number of 27,927 Boers died in the concentration camps: 26,251 women and children (of whom more than 22,000 were under the age of 16), and 1,676 men over the age of 16, of whom 1,421 were aged persons.

Other

In 1868, Tūhoe sheltered the Māori leader Te Kooti, and for this were subjected to a scorched earth policy, in which their crops and buildings were destroyed and their people of fighting age were captured.

Twentieth century

World War I

In World War I, Imperial Russian army forces created a zone of destruction by using a large scale scorched earth strategy during their retreat from the German army in the summer/autumn of 1915. The Russian troops, retreating along a front of more than 600 miles, destroyed anything that might be of use to their enemy, including crops, houses, railways and entire cities. They also forcibly removed huge numbers of people. In pushing the Russians back to their homeland, the German army gained a large area of territory from the Russian Empire (in an area that is today Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Lithuania).

On 24 February 1917, the German army made a strategic scorched earth withdrawal from the Somme battlefield to the prepared fortifications of the Hindenburg Line, thereby shortening the front line they had to occupy. Since a scorched earth campaign requires that there be a war of movement, World War I provided little opportunity in general for this policy as it was a stalemated war fought mostly in the same concentrated area for its entire duration.

Second Sino-Japanese War

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army had a scorched-earth policy, known as "Three Alls Policy". Due to the Japanese scorched-earth policy, immense environmental and infrastructure damage have been recorded. Additionally, it contributed to the complete destruction of entire villages and partial destruction of entire cities like Chongqing or Nanjing.

The Chinese National Revolutionary Army destroyed dams and levees in an attempt to flood the land to slow down the advancement of Japanese soldiers, further adding to the environmental impact. This policy resulted in the 1938 Huang He flood.

World War II

Albert Speer defied Adolf Hitler's order to destroy Germany's infrastructure before the advancing Allies

When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered both soldiers and civilians to initiate a scorched earth policy to deny the invaders basic supplies as they moved eastward. The process was repeated later in the war by the retreating German forces, which burned or destroyed farms, buildings, weapons, and food to deprive Soviet forces of their use.

At the close of World War II, Finland, which had made a separate peace with the Allies, was required to evict the German forces, which had been fighting against the Soviets alongside the Finnish troops in the Northern part of the country. Finnish forces, under the leadership of general Hjalmar Siilasvuo, struck aggressively in August 1944 by making a landfall at Tornio. This accelerated the German retreat, and by November 1944 the Germans had left most of northern Finland. The German forces, forced to retreat due to overall strategic situation, covered their retreat towards Norway by devastating large areas of northern Finland using scorched earth strategy. More than one-third of the dwellings in the area were destroyed, and the provincial capital Rovaniemi was burned to the ground. All but two bridges in Lapland Province were blown up and roads mined. In Northern Norway which was at the same time invaded by Soviet forces in pursuit of the retreating German army in 1944, the Germans also undertook a scorched earth policy, destroying every building that could offer shelter and thus interposing a belt of "scorched earth" between themselves and the allies.

In 1945, Adolf Hitler ordered his minister of armaments Albert Speer to carry out a nationwide scorched earth policy, in what became known as the Nero Decree. Speer, who was looking to the future, actively resisted the order, just as he had earlier refused Hitler's command to destroy French industry when the Wehrmacht was being driven out of France, and managed to continue doing so even after Hitler became aware of his actions.

Vietnam War

Throughout the 1960s, the US employed herbicides (chiefly Agent Orange), as a part of its herbicidal warfare program Trail Dust to destroy crops and foliage in order to expose possible enemy hideouts. Agent Blue was used on rice fields to deny food to the Vietcong. Napalm was also extensively used for such purposes.

According to Jeanne Stellman of Columbia University, 4.8 million people have been exposed to Agent Orange, with some 3 million of them suffering health problems related to the exposure.

Gulf War

During the Gulf War in 1990 when Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait, they set the oil wells on fire. The possible reasons for this are discussed in more detail in the article on the Kuwaiti oil fires. The Kuwaiti oil fires were caused by Iraqi military forces setting fire to more than 600 oil wells as part of a scorched earth policy while retreating from Kuwait in 1991 after invading the country but being driven out by Coalition military forces (see Gulf War). The fires started in January and February 1991 and the last one was extinguished by November 1991.

Central America

Efraín Ríos Montt utilized this method in the Guatemalan highlands in 1982-3. His policies resulted in the death of approximately 10,000 indigenous peoples, and caused 100,000 to leave their homes.

Southeast Asia

The Indonesian military and pro-Indonesia militias used this method in their Timor-Leste Scorched Earth campaign around the time of East Timor's referendum for independence in 1999.

21st Century

Darfur region of Sudan

The Sudanese government has used scorched earth as a military strategy in Darfur.

Sri Lankan civil war

During the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) has accused the Sri Lankan government of carrying out the scorched-earth tactics.

Libyan civil war

During the 2011 Libyan civil war, forces loyal to Muammar al-Gaddafi planted a large number of landmines within the petroleum port of Brega to prevent advancing rebel forces from utilizing the port facilities. Additionally Libyan rebel forces practiced scorched earth policies when they completely demolished and refused to rebuild critical infrastructure in towns and cities formerly loyal to Muammar al-Gaddafi such as Sirte and Tawargha.

Syrian civil war

During the Syrian civil war, forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad based in northern Syria burnt large swathes of trees and forests which were being used as cover by refugees fleeing to Turkey and also by Free Syrian Army fighters who hid among the trees when not in combat. The forests were mostly burnt in northern parts of the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia, with the fires occasionally spreading across the border into Turkey. At first the forests were burnt by premeditated arson, but once the Assad loyalists withdrew from those areas, they relied on artillery fire to burn the forests. Environmental damage is said to take up to 80 years for full recovery.

See also

• Area denial
• Burmah Oil Co. v Lord Advocate
• Carthaginian peace
• Chevauchée
• Early thermal weapons
• Ecocide
• Environmental impact of war

• Harrying of the North
• Sherman's neckties
• Soviet Winter
• Total war
• Area bombing
• Aerial bombing of cities