What is scorched earth strategy?
Scorched Earth (disambiguation)
Scorched earth is the military strategy or operational policy of destroying everything useful to the enemy in areas that cannot be defended.
Cagayan de Oro
The Japanese army implemented a scorch earth policy. Filipino and American guerrilla forces fought back during this occupation and American planes bombed both the university and San Agustin church on October 10, 1944. The Japanese were never able to successfully move outside the city for any length of time due to the constant pressure and attacks from the Philippine resistant movement. American and combined Free Philippine forces landed in Cagayan de Oro on May 10, 1945, three years and 7 days after the Japanese occupation.
Eastern Front (World War II)
Stalin ordered the retreating Red Army to initiate a scorched-earth policy to deny the Germans and their allies basic supplies as they advanced eastward. To carry out that order, destruction battalions were formed in front-line areas, having the authority to summarily execute any suspicious person. The destruction battalions burned down villages, schools, and public buildings. As a part of this policy, the NKVD massacred thousands of anti-Soviet prisoners.
Queen's South Africa Medal
Many recipients of the medal were involved in the scorched earth policy that marked the last twenty months of the war, implemented when it became clear that the Boer guerrilla tactics could not be overcome by conventional means. To prevent Boer forces resupplying from a home base, many Boer farms were destroyed and non-combatants moved to concentration camps, where poor conditions led to nearly 28,000 out of 116,572 detainees dying over an 18-month period, 22,000 of them under 16.
Battle of Navarino
In the meantime, Ibrahim's scorched-earth policy continued unabated on land. The fires of burning villages and fields were clearly visible from Allied ships standing offshore. A British landing party reported that the population of Messinia was close to mass starvation.
Battle of Pressburg
Since the Hungarians knew about the attack well before the German army advanced, they probably evacuated all the inhabitants from the march areas, called "gyepű" in Hungarian, between the rivers Enns and Pressburg to east. As the Hungarians were still nomadic, it was much easier to accomplish this than for a settled society. They took livestock with them and destroyed food they could not take, thus using the scorched earth tactic, which denied the enemy anything useful. This tactic was used very often by the nomadic states and tribes, even in the ancient times. For example, the Scythians against Darius I and Alexander the Great, or the Avars against Charlemagne, and more than 100 years after the Battle of Pressburg (1030), Hungary's first king, Stephen I defeated the invasion of the German Emperor Conrad II, using scorched earth, causing famine among the enemy soldiers. In the same way king Andrew I of Hungary defeated another German invasion led by the emperor Henry III in 1051 using the same scorched earth tactic. Even after the establishment of the Christian and feudal state of Hungary, the principles of the nomadic warfare were still used as an effective way to defeat huge imperial armies.
Aventinus wrote that after the German army crossed the Hungarian border, the Hungarian commanders, sent small light armored mounted archer formations to disrupt the Germans communications lines, kill their envoys to each other, and harass the army groups. This put the Germans under constant pressure and in a continual state combat readiness, causing fatigue and demoralisation, then lured them into battle. It is likely when the Hungarian archers attacked, the Bavarians gave chase, but they rode away unharmed on their horses, since unlike the Bavarians, they were much faster due to having very little or no armor and no weapons other than bows and arrows, no other weapons (although some troops, who fought in hand-to-hand combat in the main parts of the battle were much better equipped, so heavier, with curved sabre, lance, battle axe, mace, mail, lamellar armour), The pursuing Bavarian cavalry was heavily armored, and this slowed them significantly. The constant harassment by the Hungarian mounted archers slowed the movement of the Bavarian army even more, forcing them to stop, defend themselves, thus demoralizing them prior to battle. This is why it took the Germans 18 days (between 17 June - 4 July) to cover 246 km from Ennsburg to Pressburg, an average of 14 km per day. This delaying tactic made it possible the Hungarians to pick where and when the battle would be fought. They concentrated their troops near Pressburg, because of its favourable conditions for a nomadic army.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched Earth (video game)
Wendell Hicken's official site for the original Scorched Earth offers a ZIP file download containing all officially released versions of the registered game (which are all known versions except for 1.0b). The ZIP file also includes a .MTN builder to create your own Scorched terrains and an HTML edition of the version 1.5 manual. The website offered special scholastic site licenses for the game until 4 August 2012.
Scorched Earth Operation
The Scorched Earth Operation refers to events in September 1999 in East Timor. The country had been under Indonesian occupation since 1975, and resistance by Timorese peaked in the later 1990s. A Referendum was held on Timorese independence and was successful. But the Indonesian military and militia rampaged through East Timor destroying vital infrastructure.
Scorched earth
During the Gulf War in 1990 when Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait, they set more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells on fire. This was done 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 were started between January to February 1991 and the last one was extinguished by November 1991.
Scorched earth
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 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.
Scorched Earth (video game)
"Scorched Earth" is one of many games in the genre of "turn-based artillery games". Such games are among the earliest computer games, with versions existing for mainframes with only teletype output. "Scorched Earth", with a plethora of weapon types and power-ups, is considered the modern archetype of its format.
Counter-insurgency
One of the earliest examples of the strategy was applied by the British Empire during the Second Boer War; to segregate potential Boer supporters from Boer Commandos, scorched earth tactics were used to destroy Boer farmland while Boers were shipped abroad or confined to concentration camps converted from refugee camps for displaced Boers. The tactic was later refined in the Briggs Plan during the Malayan Emergency, when predominantly Chinese rural population centers with suspected Malayan Races Liberation Army sympathizers were gutted and their populations transferred to enclosed and guarded "New Villages" to control and monitor population activity; to improve local support for the British, New Villages were equipped with adequate basic amenities, including running water, electricity, and health and education services.
Destruction battalions
The fight against Anti-Soviet partisans and the implementation of the scorched earth tactics were accompanied by terror against the civilian population, which was treated as supporters or shelterers of Forest Brothers. The destruction battalions burnt down farms and some small boroughs. In turn, the members of the extermination battalions were at risk of repressions by the anti-Soviet partisans.
Operation Waldfest
The German plan was to destroy all villages in front of this protective wall to eliminate any shelter for Allied forces in the upcoming winter. The local population was to be evacuated and the male population aged between 15 and 60 was to be deported to Germany as forced labour. This policy of scorched earth had previously been predominately applied in eastern Europe but not on the Western front.
Scorched earth
During the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) has accused the Sri Lankan government of utilizing scorched-earth tactics.
Scorched earth
The Scythians used scorched-earth methods against King Darius the Great of Persia, during his European Scythian campaign. The Scythians, who were nomadic herders, evaded the Persians and retreated into the depths of the Steppes, destroying food supplies and poisoning wells. Many of Darius' troops died from starvation and dehydration.
Fantastic War
The allied army eventually stopped the Bourbon army’s march toward Lisbon in the mountains near Abrantes (which by its position dominated the country) and used a scorched earth strategy - in cooperation with the rural population - to starve the invaders: peasants abandoned their villages, destroying or taking with them all the food, while the guerrillas attacked their logistic lines. The invaders had to choose between stay and starve or withdraw.
Cherokee–American wars
At the end of 1781, the Cherokee invaded Georgia once again with a group of Muscogee, this time being met by South Carolina and Georgia troops under Pickens and Elijah Clarke at the Oconee River after much back country raiding. Evading the American force, the Cherokee withdrew, adopting a scorched earth strategy to deny their foes supplies. The force eventually retreated, opening the back country to further raids.
Golden-tipped bat
Foraging strategies
Endgame (Babylon 5)
With the Earth fleet disrupted, Sheridan's fleet easily bypasses it and reaches Earth's orbit. Sheridan broadcasts that they seek President Clark to be removed from office. Clark instead activates the Earth defense grid in a "scorched earth" strategy, targeting the satellites' missiles at both Sheridan's fleet and Earth, an action that would destroy nearly half of the planet. Clark then commits suicide. Senator Crosby informs Sheridan of Clark's death and the situation. Sheridan's fleet, along with help from the ships of the Non-Aligned Worlds, destroy most of the satellites. But one remains active, and only the damaged "Agamemnon" is nearby. Sheridan issues orders to ram the satellite but just then the "Apollo" jumps in and Lefcourt has his guns destroy the satellite. Lefcourt thanks Sheridan for doing the right thing though warns him he will likely face a tribunal.
Scorched earth
During the 1810 (third) Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, the Portuguese population retreated towards Lisbon, ordered to destroy all the food supplies the French might capture, forage and shelter in a wide belt across the country. (Although effective food-preserving techniques had recently been invented, they were still not fit for military use because a suitably rugged container had not yet been invented.) The command was obeyed as a 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.
Scorched Earth (video game)
Its slogan, "The Mother of all Games", was coined in 1991, during the Gulf War, after Saddam Hussein threatened the U.S. that if they stepped on Iraqi soil, it would be "The Mother of all Battles".
Samori Ture
Ture shifted his base of operations eastward, toward the Bandama and Comoe River in Dabakala. He instituted a scorched earth policy, devastating each area before he evacuated it. Though this manoeuvre cut Ture off from Sierra Leone and Liberia, his last sources of modern weapons, it also delayed French pursuit. After the spring of 1893, the French partially succeeded in cutting off Ture's sources of weapons which was supplied by the British traders since the late 1880s. Ture tried to negotiate with the British in their colonial domains in Ghana to work against the French interest, but the British would not intervene directly against France.
Scorched earth
Notable historic examples of scorched-earth tactics include the Russian army's strategy during the failed Swedish invasion of Russia, the failed Napoleonic invasion of Russia, William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea in the American Civil War, colonel Kit Carson's subjugation of the American Navajo Indians, Lord Kitchener's advance against the Boers, the initial Soviet retreat commanded by Joseph Stalin during the German Army's invasion of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, and the subsequent Nazi German retreat on the Eastern Front.
Coastal defence of colonial Chile
When the Spanish learned about the impeding Dutch expedition to Valdivia in the 1640s Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru, sent letters ordering local Spanish authorieties use a scorched earth strategy against the invaders.
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.
Expedition of Dramali
Kolokotronis pursued a scorched earth policy, aiming at starving the Ottomans out. The Greeks looted the villages, burned the grain and foodstuff they could not move, and damaged the wells and springs. Dramali's army was trapped in the sweltering Argolic plain. However, Kolokotronis was not in a position to coordinate all the Greek forces, for many operated under their own leaders, refusing to follow his orders. If Kolokotronis had in fact commanded the Greek armies, and thus been able draw up a general military plan, Dramali's forces might have been completely annihilated and Nafplion would have been captured with little difficulty.
Three Alls Policy
As with many aspects of Japan's World War II history, the nature and extent of Three Alls Policy is still a controversial issue. Because the now most well-known name for this strategy is in Chinese, some nationalist groups in Japan have even denied its veracity. The issue is partly confused by the fact that scorched-earth tactics were also used by the Kuomintang government forces in numerous areas of central and northern China, against both the invading Japanese, as well as against the Chinese civilian populations in rural areas where there was strong support for the Chinese Communist Party. Known in Japan as , Chinese soldiers would destroy the homes and fields of their own civilians in order to wipe out any possible supplies or places of shelter that could be utilised by the over-extended Japanese troops. This similar military policy used in contested areas by the NRA affecting their own civilians greatly confuses matters. Nevertheless, as far as Japan is concerned, almost all historians agree that Imperial Japanese troops widely and indiscriminately committed war crimes against the Chinese people, citing a vast amount of material evidence and literary documentation.
Roman infantry tactics
The systematic wastage and destruction of enemy economic and human resources was called "vastatio" by the Romans. Crops and animals were destroyed or carried off, and local populaces were massacred or enslaved. Sometimes these tactics were also used to conduct punitive raids on barbarian tribes which had performed raids across the border. In the campaigns of Germanicus, Roman troops in the combat area carried out a "scorched earth" approach against their Germanic foes, devastating the land they depended on for supplies. ""The country was wasted by fire and sword fifty miles round; nor sex nor age found mercy; places sacred and profane had the equal lot of destruction, all razed to the ground.."" (Tacitus, "Annals"). The Roman "grind down" approach is also seen in the Bar Kokba Jewish revolt against the Romans. The Roman commander Severus avoided meeting the hard-fighting Jewish rebels in the open field. Instead he relied on attacking their fortified strongpoints and devastating the zone of conflict in a methodical campaign. This "attritional" aspect of the Roman approach to combat contrasts with the notion of brilliant generalship or tactics sometimes seen in popular depictions of the Roman infantry.
Scorched Earth (2018 film)
Scorched Earth is a 2018 Canadian-American post-apocalyptic science fiction/action film directed by Peter Howitt starring Gina Carano.
Biosequestration
Biochar (charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass) is a potent form of longterm (thousands of years) biosequestration of atmosphereic CO derived from investigation of the extremely fertile Terra preta soils of the Amazon Basin. Placing biochar in soils also improves water quality, increases soil fertility, raises agricultural productivity and reduce pressure on old growth forests. As a method of generating bio-energy with carbon storage Rob Flanagan and the EPRIDA biochar company have developed low-tech cooking stoves for developing nations that can burn agricultural wastes such as rice husks and produce 15% by weight of biochar; while BEST Energies in NSW Australia have spent a decade developing an Agrichar technology that can combust 96 tonnes of dry biomass each day, generating 30-40 tonnes of biochar. A parametric study of biosequestration by Malcolm Fowles at the Open University, indicated that to mitigate global warming, policies should encourage displacement of coal with biomass as a power source for baseload electricity generation if the latter’s conversion efficiency rose over 30%, otherwise "biosequestering" carbon from biomass as a cheaper mitigation option than geosequestration by CO capture and storage.
Scorched earth
The method was used during the Yugoslav Wars, such as against the Serbs in Krajina by the Croatian Army, and by Serbian paramilitary groups.
Second Boer War
The British saw their tactics of Scorched Earth and concentration camps as ways of controlling the Boers by "eliminating the decay and deterioration of the national character" and as a way of reinforcing the values, through subjugation of citizens and the destruction of the means for the Boer soldiers to continue fighting, of British society that the Boers were rejecting by engaging in a war against the Commonwealth. The Boers saw them as a British ploy designed to coerce the Boer soldiers into a surrender. With approximately 10% of their population confined, many of whom were women and children, the Boers suggested that the British were forcing the Afrikaners to return to their homes and protect their families who were in danger of internment.
Armenia
From 1604, Abbas I of Iran implemented a "scorched earth" policy in the region to protect his north-western frontier against any invading Ottoman forces, a policy that involved a forced resettlement of masses of Armenians outside of their homelands.
In the 1813 Treaty of Gulistan and the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, following the Russo-Persian War (1804–13) and the Russo-Persian War (1826–28), respectively, the Qajar dynasty of Iran was forced to irrevocably cede Eastern Armenia, consisting of the Erivan and Karabakh Khanates, to Imperial Russia.
Sherman's March to the Sea
By employing the scorched earth policy that ripped through Georgia, Sherman demonstrated for the first time in the modern era the power of total war in breaking an enemy's will to resist. This concept would come into full bloom during World War II when both Axis and Allied powers deliberately and indiscriminately bombed enemy and enemy-controlled cities to create terror or disrupt war production in order to win the war by any means at their disposal—including extensive incendiary raids and the dropping of two atomic bombs.
Panzer General III: Scorched Earth
"Panzer General III: Scorched Earth" is set in World War II on the Eastern Front. It shares the same engine as "Panzer General 3D Assault", although the graphics are improved. It is considered by some to be the eastern Front expansion for "Panzer General 3D", which only deals with the western front. The game features four campaigns for German and Russian forces from Moscow to Berlin. Due to the success of "Panzer General 3D", it kept the same leader management system. The player begins the game with a pool of leaders that grows as the game progresses. Each leader specializes in a particular equipment class.
Scorched Earth (video game)
In addition to the possible in-game changes, the text messages the AI players can display before firing (e.g., "I shall smash your ugly tank!") and before dying (e.g., "Join the army, see the world they said") are read in from two text files, TALK1.CFG and TALK2.CFG, respectively, free for creative users to change or translate.
The weapons range from small missile rounds to MIRV warheads to high-yield nuclear weapons. All weapons can be upgraded with tracers which allow the player to more accurately adjust the trajectory on their next turn. In addition to conventional warheads, there is also such ordnance as napalm, wildly bouncing bombs, and earth weapons, allowing the player to dump dirt on other tanks or to remove ground from beneath them. A tank which is covered with dirt has to shoot itself free and may get damaged in the process; one which falls from too high a level may be destroyed. A variety of utilities, such as deflector shields, recharge batteries, and tank parachutes, make it much harder to score a kill with a single hit even with the more bizarre and advanced weapons, adding another dimension to the game's tactics.
Wars of Alexander the Great
In these early months, Darius still refused to take Alexander seriously or mount a serious challenge to Alexander's movements. Memnon of Rhodes, the Greek mercenary who aligned himself with the Persians, advocated a scorched earth strategy. He wanted the Persians to destroy the land in front of Alexander, which he hoped would force Alexander's army to starve, and then to turn back. The satraps in Anatolia rejected this advice, considering it their duty to defend their land. Eventually, with Alexander advancing deeper into Persian territory, Darius ordered all five satraps of the Anatolian provinces to pool their military resources together and confront Alexander. This army was guided by Memnon, while absolute command was split among the five satraps.
Scorched earth
During the Second Punic War in 218–202 BC, the Carthaginians used this method selectively 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.
Scorched earth
Another event, in response to Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas, and the many civilian casualties including killing 180 men, Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr., Sherman's brother-in-law, issued U.S. Army General Order No. 11 (1863) to order 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. 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.
Early thermal weapons
Devastation by fire was not only used as an offensive tactic; some countries and armies employed 'scorched earth' policies on their own land to deprive invading armies of all food and forage. Robert I of Scotland reacted to the English invasion of 1322 by launching punitive and diversionary chevauchées into north-west England, then retreating to Culross, burning as he went the Scottish lands which lay in the path of the English army. The English ran out of food and had to abandon the campaign. Kitchener employed scorched earth tactics to subdue Boer forces in South Africa when three years of warfare had resulted in a stalemate.
Scorched earth
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).
Belhaven Neighborhood
Fortification Street, which runs East and West through Belhaven, is paved over what was once one of the last Confederate battle lines during the Siege of Jackson. Although most structures in Jackson were burned by Union soldiers employing a Scorched Earth Policy during and after the siege (under the direction of General Ulysses S. Grant), many of Belhaven's older structures remained untouched.
Scorched earth
During the 2011 Libyan civil war, forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi 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 Moammar Gadhafi such as Sirte and Tawargha.
Scorched Earth (video game)
Scorched Earth is a popular shareware artillery video game. The game was developed in the DOS era, originally written by Wendell Hicken (using Borland C++ and Turbo Assembler), in which tanks do turn-based battle in two-dimensional terrain, with each player adjusting the angle and power of their tank turret before each shot.
Arthur Chichester, 1st Baron Chichester
During the Nine Years' War Chichester commanded royal troops in Ulster. His tactics included a scorched earth policy. He encircled O'Neill's forces with garrisons, effectively starving the Earl's troops. In a 1600 letter to Cecil he stated ""a million swords will not do them so much harm as one winter's famine"". While these tactics were not initially devised by Chichester, he carried them out ruthlessly, gaining a hate-figure status among the Irish. O'Neill's weakening military position forced him to abandon and destroy his capital at Dungannon.
Battle of Blanchetaque
On 16 August, Edward burnt down Poissy and marched north. The French had carried out a scorched earth policy, carrying away all stores of food and so forcing the English to spread out over a wide area to forage, which greatly slowed them. Bands of French peasants attacked some of the smaller groups of foragers. Philip reached the River Somme a day's march ahead of Edward. He based himself at Amiens and sent large detachments to hold every bridge and ford across the Seine between Amiens and the sea. The English were now trapped in an area which had been stripped of food. The French moved out of Amiens and advanced westwards towards the English. They were now willing to give battle, knowing that they would have the advantage of being able to stand on the defensive while the English were forced to try and fight their way past them.
British concentration camps
flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children ... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy—including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells and salting of fields—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps, as the Spanish had used internment in Cuba in the Ten Years' War, but the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.
Scorched earth
The U.S. employed Agent Orange, as a part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, to destroy crops and foliage in order to expose possible enemy hideouts during the Vietnam War. Agent Blue was used on rice fields to deny food to the Vietcong.
Japanese war crimes
Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" ("Sankō Sakusen") was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians. This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All". Additionally, captured Allied servicemen and civilians were massacred in various incidents, including:
House demolition
House demolition is primarily a military tactic which has been used in many conflicts for a variety of purposes. It has been employed as a scorched earth tactic to deprive the advancing enemy of food and shelter, or to wreck the enemy's economy and infrastructure. It has also been used for purposes of counter-insurgency and ethnic cleansing. Systematic house demolition has been a notable factor in a number of recent or ongoing conflicts including the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Darfur conflict in Sudan, the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav wars and the Caucasian conflicts of the 1990s.
Scorched earth
The concept of "scorched earth" is sometimes applied figuratively to the business world, where a firm facing a takeover attempt will make itself a lesser prize by selling off its assets.
Battle of Tulifinny
In early December 1864 Major General William T. Sherman and his formidable army numbering an estimated 62,000 men approached the South Carolina border and their final objective of Savannah, Georgia. Sherman had ordered his men to apply "scorched earth" tactics which resulted in the burning of crops and homes, confiscation and killing of livestock and the consumption of any supplies available for his army. This total war strategy, though brutal was believed to cause mass desertion among Confederate troops and break the South's will to fight.
List of carbon ranches
This is a working list of Carbon Ranches a term referring to regenerative agriculture practices that specifically accomplish carbon sequestration in the soil. "The world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock." (Lal) "A mere two percent increase in the carbon content of the planet’s soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere."(Lal) Grasslands cover 350 billion hectares, comprising 70% of global agricultural land making carbon ranching an especially climate beneficial alternative to meat produced as part of a Concentrated animal feeding operation. Carbon ranching may include, but is not limited to Managed intensive rotational grazing, Compost application, Holistic management (agriculture) and Tree planting.
Tara (plantation)
Unlike the homes of most of the O'Haras' neighbors, Tara is spared the torch during the Union's Scorched Earth Policy. The life-threatening illness, from typhoid, of Ellen O'Hara and her younger daughters, Suellen and Carreen, causes Gerald to stand firm in the doorway of his house, "as if he had an army behind him rather than before him", and earns the sympathy of a Union officer who orders his surgeon to treat the O'Hara women with laudanum and quinine. The officer commandeers the house for use as a Union field headquarters, but as a courtesy, it is spared. However, movable items of value (including Ellen's rosary, pictures, and china) are confiscated (or stolen), and larger items are vandalized by the withdrawing Union troops. Mammy hides the family silver in the well.
La Libertad, El Petén
On 6 December 1982, during the "de facto" presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt, over 200 people – including women, the elderly, and children – were killed there by commandos working as government forces as a part of the government's scorched earth policy.
Canadian defamation law
Also commonly employed are extra-legal approaches including the so-called "scorched earth" defense wherein, by way of justification, every embarrassing fact in the plaintiff's entire history is publicly exposed, along with those of personal friends and associates, in an attempt to counter libel chill with a similar fear of being totally exposed. Such tactics can backfire seriously however if a powerful defendant such as a mass media organization is perceived as abusing its access to the public, sometimes resulting in large awards. Such tactics are also sometimes employed in other kinds of suits.
Scorched earth
In 1827, Ibrahim Pasha led an Ottoman-Egyptian combined force in a campaign to crash Greek revolutionaries in the Peloponnese. In response to Greek guerrilla attacks on his forces in the Peloponnese, Ibrahim launched a scorched earth campaign which threatened the population with starvation and deported many civilians into slavery in Egypt. He also allegedly planned to bring in Arab settlers, in order to replace the Greek population. The fires of burning villages and fields were clearly visible from Allied ships standing offshore. A British landing party reported that the population of Messinia was close to mass starvation. Ibrahim's scorched-earth policy caused much outrage in Europe, being one of the reasons the Great Powers (Great Britain, France and Russia) decisively intervened against him in the Battle of Navarino.
Scorched earth
Further British use of scorched-earth policies in a war was seen during the 16th century in Ireland, where it was used by English commanders such as Walter Devereux and Richard Bingham.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched Earth (video game)
The last version (1.50) was not released until 1995. In 1.5, the registration feature was removed and instead, only a shareware version was released freely while the registered version could only be obtained through a mail order. Purchasing the registered version allowed the player to use the triple-turreted tank as well as removing the shareware reminders. New to this version were lasers and SuperMags as well as a couple of new skies and the introduction of scanned mountain ranges.
Pacific War
The Three Alls Policy ("Sankō Sakusen") was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China, the three alls being: ""Kill All, Burn All and Loot All"". Initiated in 1940 by Ryūkichi Tanaka, the "Sankō Sakusen" was implemented in full scale in 1942 in north China by Yasuji Okamura. According to historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta, the scorched earth campaign was responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians.
Albert Speer
By February 1945, Speer was working to supply areas about to be occupied with food and materials to get them through the hard times ahead. On March 19, 1945, Hitler issued his Nero Decree, ordering a scorched earth policy in both Germany and the occupied territories. The plan included forcing millions of people on a long trek without food or supplies which would have resulted in a "hunger catastrophe" according to Speer; Hitler had no compunction about this, believing that only the "inferior ones" would have survived the battles.
South African Wars (1879–1915)
General Herbert Kitchener was the famed British military leader, sent out by Milner to complete the defeat of the Boers in 1899. Unable to defeat the Boer commandos and their guerilla warfare tactics, Kitchener resorted to systematic burning of Boer civilian settlements and homesteads, as "Scorched Earth" tactics to initiate a famine. He also made large-scale use of concentration camps for the Boer civilian population. Roughly 26,370 Boer women and children (81% were children) died in these concentration camps, and roughly 20,000 Black African prisoners died in similar camps. However, in 1902 they eventually succeeded in pressurising the Boer commandos to surrender and sign the Treaty of Vereeniging.
Total war
In The American Revolution, also known as the American Revolutionary War, many basic tactics of Total War were created in a modern form, I.E. Scorched Earth. in 1779, The Sullivan Expedition began, marching through Western Pennsylvania and up through New York, burning Iroquois villages to the ground, leaving nothing behind but smoldering ruin and dead bodies. In the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, The British and American Militia did similar campaigns of Extermination, but to their neighbors. Whole towns where depopulated. The British Cavalry led by Banastre Tarleton join the militia in the creation of the inferno called "South Carolina".
Three Alls Policy
The Three Alls Policy (, Sankō Sakusen) was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all" (). This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940. Contemporary Japanese documents referred to the policy as .
Battle of the Dnieper
Additionally, on 7 September 1943, the SS forces and the Wehrmacht received orders to implement a scorched earth policy, by stripping the areas they had to abandon of anything that could be used by the Soviet war effort.Despite a great superiority in numbers, the offensive was by no means easy. German opposition was ferocious and the fighting raged for every town and city. The "Wehrmacht" made extensive use of rear guards, leaving some troops in each city and on each hill, slowing down the Soviet offensive.
French conquest of Algeria
Bugeaud instituted a strategy of scorched earth, combined with fast-moving cavalry columns not unlike those used by al-Qādir to progressively take territory from al-Qādir. The troops' tactics were heavy-handed, and the population suffered significantly. Al-Qādir was eventually forced to establish a mobile headquarters that was known as a "smala" or "zmelah". In 1843 French forces successfully raided this camp while he was away from it, capturing more than 5,000 fighters and al-Qādir's warchest.
Scorched Earth (Law &amp; Order: Special Victims Unit)
"Scorched Earth" is the premiere of the police procedural television series "" and the 273rd episode overall. It originally aired on NBC in the United States on September 21, 2011. In the episode, which was inspired by the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, an Italian diplomat is arrested when a hotel maid accuses him of rape. The District Attorney's office then brings the case to trial, which becomes increasingly complicated as the defense questions the maid's credibility. Meanwhile, Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) struggles to cope with the aftermath of the .
Wilmon Newell
His approach to control invasive insects and diseases has been criticized as a "scorched earth" approach, eliminating pests without regard to the environment or to economic losses to growers.
Fabian strategy
However, as with the original Fabius, Fabian strategy is often more popular in retrospect than at the time. To the troops, it can seem like a cowardly and demoralizing policy of continual retreat. Fabian strategy is sometimes combined with scorched earth tactics that demand sacrifice from civilian populations. Fabian leaders may be perceived as giving up territory without a fight, and since Fabian strategies promise extended war rather than quick victories, they can wear down the will of one's own side as well as the enemy. During the American Revolution, John Adams' dissatisfaction with Washington's conduct of the war led him to declare, "I am sick of Fabian systems in all quarters!"
Scorched earth
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 Sultan Mehmed II to withdraw from battle and instead send Radu, Vlad's brother, to fight Vlad the Impaler.
Jakob Walter
Walter was shaken by the efficiency of the Russian scorched earth policy. He recorded that
Isaaq genocide
Oxfam Australia (formerly known as Community Aid Abroad) described the situation in El Afweyn as follows:It is known that many people have fled from the town of Elafweyn following bombing attacks by the government forces. A "scorched earth" policy applied to the villages in the Elafweyn plains. These displaced people are hiding in the bush without adequate access to food and medical supplies.
Second Boer War
flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children ... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.
As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy—including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells and salting of fields—to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps, as the Spanish had used internment in Cuba in the Ten Years' War, but the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.
Hut Tax War of 1898
As frustration grew, Governor Cardew realized that the war not easily winnable so he ordered a "scorched earth policy" wherein the British would burn entire villages, farmlands, and pastures. This change in tactics tremendously affected Bai Bureh's war effort due to the reduction of provisions to feed not only his warriors but his subjects as well. He also realized that the cost of reparations was getting insurmountable as the British were relentless in pursuing the new policy.
Scorched earth
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.
Battle of Boykin's Mill
Union troops pursued the fleeing Southerners unsuccessfully, and the mill was burned to the ground according to Major General William T. Sherman's "Scorched Earth" policy. The engagement proved to be the bloodiest battle of the campaign for the 54th which had had the highest casualty rate of the operation. However, the two opposing units (Potter's and the Kentuckians) continued to skirmish through April 19 at Dinkin's Mill where they fought the last major conflict of the Eastern Theater. The preliminary cessation of hostilities was announced to both sides two days later though Confederate General Johnston did not officially surrender until 26 April.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched earth
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 he managed to continue doing so even after Hitler became aware of his actions.
Plan de Sánchez
Plan de Sánchez is a village in the municipality of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz department, Guatemala. On July 18, 1982, while General Efraín Ríos Montt was President of Guatemala, a massacre was committed there by government forces during which over 200 people were killed. The massacre was a part of what is known as the scorched earth policy where the Guatemalan army eliminated up to 200,000 Mayan and indigenous peoples in a 36-year civil war until 1996. In 2000 President Alfonso Portillo admitted that the government was responsible for the massacre in the village.
Pacification of Algeria
Bugeaud instituted a strategy of scorched earth, combined with fast-moving cavalry columns not unlike those used by al-Qādir to progressively take territory from al-Qādir. The troops' tactics were heavy-handed, and the population suffered significantly. Al-Qādir was eventually forced to establish a mobile headquarters that was known as a "smala" or "zmelah". In 1843 French forces successfully raided this camp while he was away from it, capturing more than 5,000 fighters and al-Qādir's warchest.
Tiobóid mac Walter Ciotach Bourke
Throughout 1600 the English made stunning gains across Ireland, primarily due to Baron Mountjoy’s scorched earth policy, which led to widespread famine across the country rendering it difficult for the Irish Alliance to hold onto the land they had taken. The English had a deliberate policy of bringing Irish lords onto their side, thus dividing the alliance. There are numerous examples of this, but the so-called masterstroke of the war came when Niall Garbh betrayed the alliance and allowed 4,000 English soldiers led by Henry Docwra to land at Lough Foyle, gutting the once impenetrable core of the rebellion, Tyrone and Tyrconnell. It was against this backdrop that Kittagh opened up negotiations with the English, hoping to betray O'Donnell in exchange for security of his own lands.
King's South Africa Medal
Many recipients of the medal were involved in the scorched earth policy that marked the last two years of the war, implemented when it became clear that the Boer guerrilla tactics could not be overcome by conventional means. To prevent Boer forces resupplying from a home base, many Boer farms were destroyed and non-combatants moved to concentration camps, where poor conditions led to nearly 28,000 out of 116,572 detainees dying over an 18-month period, 22,000 of them under 16. Exact mortality figures in the 64 camps for displaced black farm workers and their families were probably higher.
History of guerrilla warfare
To counter these tactics, the British under Kitchener interned Boer civilians into concentration camps and built hundreds of blockhouses all over the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Kitchener also enacted a scorched earth policy, destroying Boer homes and farms. Eventually, the Boer guerrillas surrendered in 1902, but the British granted them generous terms in order to bring the war to an end. This showed how effective guerrilla tactics could be in extracting concessions from a militarily more powerful enemy.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched earth
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.
Scorched earth
The strategy of destroying the food and water 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:
Scorched earth
During the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22), the retreating Greek army carried out a scorched-earth policy while fleeing from Anatolia during the final phase of the war. Historian of the Middle East, Sydney Nettleton Fisher wrote that: "The Greek army in retreat pursued a burned-earth policy and committed every known outrage against defenceless Turkish villagers in its path." Norman M. Naimark noted that "the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation".
Scorched Earth (video game)
There have also been numerous clones made (and still being made) such as "Atomic Tanks", "Nasty Armoured Tanks of War", "xscorch" (Open Source clone), "Scorched 3D", which attempt to modernize the gameplay and graphics, and others such as "Charred Dirt" that take a different approach by using a unique graphical style. In 1999 a clone written in Java was released called "Scorched Earth 2000" which runs from a web browser and supported online multiplayer games. There are also several variants, such as "WarheadsSE" in which the players fire missiles between planets, with the trajectories curving as missiles pass through gravitational fields.
Western Theater of the American Civil War
Sherman's Savannah Campaign is more popularly known as the March to the Sea. He and Grant believed that the Civil War would end only if the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological capacity for warfare were decisively broken. Sherman therefore applied the principles of scorched earth, ordering his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is one of the key tenets of a strategy of total war.
Jacob Thompson
One plot was a planned burning of New York City on November 25, 1864, in retaliation for Union Generals Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman's scorched-earth tactics in the South.
Flying column
In the 1920s Defence Scheme No. 1, the proposed Canadian response to an invasion by the United States, Lt. Col. James "Buster" Brown suggested "immediate dispatch of flying columns on the declaration of war" in order to counter-invade across the border and enact a scorched earth policy, forcing the USA to divert military resources towards the defense of its northern cities.
Desmond Rebellions
The second is from the View of the Present State of Ireland, written by English poet Edmund Spenser, who fought in the campaign, approved the scorched earth method, and suggested it as a useful method of enforcing English ways:
Edmund Spenser
He pressed for a scorched earth policy in Ireland, noting that the destruction of crops and animals had been successful in crushing the Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–83), when, despite the rich and bountiful land:
Late Roman army
A critical advantage enjoyed by the late army over all its foreign enemies except the Persians was a highly sophisticated organisation to ensure that the army was properly equipped and supplied on campaign. Like their enemies, the late army could rely on foraging for supplies when campaigning on enemy soil. But this was obviously undesirable on Roman territory and impractical in winter, or in spring before the harvest. The empire's complex supply organisation enabled the army to campaign in all seasons and in areas where the enemy employed a "scorched earth" policy.
Scorched earth
British monk Gildas, whose sixth-century treatise "On the Ruin of Britain" wrote about an earlier invasion "For the fire of vengeance … spread from sea to sea … and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island."
Lines of Torres Vedras
5) The "scorched earth" policy. North of the lines everything that could supply the invading army was collected, hidden or burnt. A vast tract of land was deserted and perhaps 200,000 inhabitants of the neighbouring districts of the lines were relocated inside the lines. That the French were able to campaign in their vicinity at all was a remarkable feat, according to Wellington:
The Anglo-Portuguese Army was forced to retreat to the lines after winning the Battle of Buçaco (27 September 1810). The French army under Marshal André Masséna discovered a barren land (under the scorched earth policy) and an enemy behind an impenetrable defensive position. Masséna's forces arrived at the lines on 11 October and took Sobral de Monte Agraço the following day. After driving in the Anglo-Portuguese skirmish line on 13 October, the VIII Corps tried to push forward on the 14th. In the Battle of Sobral they were repelled in an attempt to assault a strong British outpost.
Scorched 3D
Scorched 3D is a free and open source artillery game modeled after the MS-DOS game "Scorched Earth". "Scorched 3D" offers a new game-play approach compared to the 2D original, such as: fully destructible 3D environments, devastating weapons and defensive gadgets, LAN play, online multiplayer, free player generated content, and a choice of real-time or turn-based play modes.