Scorched earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy while it is advancing through or withdrawing from a location. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, for example food sources, water supplies, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the locale's people themselves.
Scorched earth
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, many district governments took the initiative to begin a 'partial' scorched-earth policy in order to deny the invaders access to electrical, telecommunications, rail, and industrial resources. Parts of the telegraph network were destroyed, some rail and road bridges were blown up, most electrical generators were sabotaged through the removal of key components, and many mineshafts were collapsed. The process was repeated later in the war by the German forces of Army Group North and Erich von Manstein's Army Group Don, which stole crops, destroyed farms, and razed settlements of at least city size and smaller during several military operations. The rationale for this policy was that it would slow pursuing Soviet forces by forcing them to save their own civilians, though in Manstein's postwar memoirs at the very least the policy was justified as a means of preventing the Soviets from stealing the food and shelter from their own civilians. The best-known victims of the German scorched-earth policy were the people of the historic city of Novgorod, whose hometown was razed during the Winter of 1944 to cover Army Group North's retreat from Leningrad.