War is never simply about defeating enemy armies. To win, one must destroy an enemy’s means and morale to carry on the war. This kind of desolation was all too familiar to civilians from ancient times through the late Renaissance, but the Industrial Revolution’s many advancements turned rapid, wholesale destruction into a legitimate military strategy.

A scorched earth policy removes or destroys an enemy’s capacity to wage war—food, supplies, infrastructure, or anything else that the enemy could find useful. Czar Alexander I of Russia stalled and starved Napoleon Boneparte’s 1812 invasion by ordering the Russian countryside burned. This defensive scorched earth strategy allowed Alexander to destroy his nation’s own farmland rather than allow the Grand Army to live off the land. In the American Civil War, General William T. Sherman brought scorched earth to his enemy’s territory. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” ravaged hundreds of miles of railroad, ransacked millions of pounds of food, and burned military targets and civilian property alike.

While many nations practiced some degree of scorched earth warfare, World War II saw it occur on a grand scale—tragically apparent during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. What Soviet forces didn’t destroy during the German advance, German forces did when they retreated three years later. The horrendous, large-scale effects on the civilian population, seen again during conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, led to the strategy being banned under the 1977 Geneva Convention.