<The Arabs think of "scorched earth"? Nah, they never translated those books on WW2 into Arabic>
Maybe they studied the tactics of General Sherman:
Sherman preferred to avoid, if possible, making direct attacks against the fortified positions of the opposition. Even if such attacks had succeeded, they undoubtedly would have resulted in significant Union casualties. Instead, Sherman's practice was to maneuver a substantial portion of his forces around the enemy's position; to attack or to threaten its lines of supply and communication; and thereby to force the opposing army to leave its fortifications and to withdraw.
In Sherman's mind, war was not merely a contest between the soldiers; rather, it was a struggle which involved the populace and total resources of the societies engaged in the conflict.
Although his cavalry commanders claimed to have destroyed miles of track on each of the lines which ran into Atlanta, Sherman distrusted his horsemen's work ethic for manual labor after he found that the Confederate forces quickly repaired the damage.[49] As a result, he sent large groups of his infantry to destroy substantial portions of track or otherwise to disrupt traffic on these lines.[50] A technique that Sherman favored for destroying track was to remove sections of the iron rails, heat them in large fires fueled by burning cross-ties, and bend the pieces around trees and other fixed objects.[51] Such track could not be so easily repaired.
To Halleck, Sherman wrote: "If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war."
When the general left the city for his journey across Georgia to the Atlantic coast, he noted the vast extent of the destruction and described Atlanta as "smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city."
"I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!"
Sherman left little to chance. While planning the march, he studied the 1860 census figures for the State of Georgia and devised a route that would permit him to exploit areas of the state where he expected supplies for his army to be the most plentiful. His expectations were realized because the movement began shortly after the fall harvest, and the barns, storage bins, and granaries of the state were full.
law.emory.edu
"War is all Hell"
"This may seem a hard species of warfare, but it brings the sad realities of war home to those who have been directly or indirectly instrumental in involving us in its attendant calamities."
Confederate Col. Charles Colcock Jones, who opposed Sherman under Lt. Gen. William J. Hardee, summed up the feelings of many Southerners when he wrote: "The conduct of Sherman's army and particularly of Kilpatrick's cavalry and the numerous parties swarming through the country in advance and on the flanks of the main columns during the march from Atlanta to the coast, is reprehensible in the extreme ... the Federals on every hand and at all points indulged in unwanton pillage, wasting and destroying what could not be used. Defenseless women and children and weak old men were not infrequently driven from their homes, their dwellings fired, and these noncombatants subjected to insult and privation. The inhabitants, white and black, were often robbed of their personal effects, were intimidated by threats — and occasionally were even hanged to the verge of strangulation to compel revelation of the places where money, plate and jewelry were buried, or plantation animals concealed, — horses, mules, cattle and hogs were either driven off, or were shot in the fields, or uselessly butchered in the pens."
sherpaguides.com
Charleston:
“The 18th of February dawned upon a city of ruins…Nothing remained but the tall, spectre-looking chimneys. The noble-looking trees that shaded the streets, the flower gardens that graced them, were blasted and withered by fire. The streets were full of rubbish, broken furniture and groups of crouching, desponding, weeping, helpless women and children….That long street of rich stores, the fine hotels, the court-houses, the extensive convent buldings, and last the old capitol, where the order of secession was passed…were all in one heap of unsightly ruins and rubbish.” –David Conyngham
shermansrevenge.com |
