14 - Scorched Earth

Context

As Axis forced advanced deep into the countries that they have invaded, leaders of the defending nation-states are left with a tactical and moral dilemma. They have the option to destroy their own infrastructure, such as bridges and railways, and resources, such as farms, food stores, homes, and factories, so that the invading enemy cannot use them. Should the defenders attempt to deprive the invaders of resources, knowing that the civilians left behind enemy lines may be left without homes and food?

This is particularly true for the Republic of China and the Soviet Union, two immense countries whose armies were forced to retreat before the Japanese and the Germans, respectively. Since 1937, Japanese military was able to capture most of the major Chinese cities along the coast, where Japan's dominant navy to move and resupply the army with relative ease. However, the rugged Chinese interior and the sheer size of the Chinese Nationalist Army made advances deep into China costly and time-consuming. The German blitzkrieg into the Soviet Union surprised and overwhelmed the Red Army, resulting in the destruction of multiple Soviet armies and the capture of many key cities. While the key cities of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad remained in Soviet hands, much of the heavily-populated regions in the Baltic states and Ukraine were occupied by the Nazi army.

The Event - Breaking the Yellow River Dikes

With the Japanese poised to capture Wuhan, the collapse of China’s entire war effort seemed a distinct possibility. As the tide of war turned against them, Nationalist military officers raised the possibility of breaking the Yellow River’s dikes to impede the Japanese.

The objective was to cut the Long-Hai railway, which ran along the river’s southern bank, before the Japanese could reach Zhengzhou, thereby halting the enemy’s advance and ensuring the retreat of Chinese armies. Otherwise, Wuhan would fall in only a matter of days, the Nationalist regime might not have time to withdraw, and China would likely have to surrender. Breaking the dikes was a product of utter desperation. Nationalist leaders accepted this stratagem as a military necessity. For them, national survival outweighed the damage they knew the floods would cause.

The flood coincided with the peak agricultural season, when wheat stood ripe in the fields or lay newly harvested, ready for threshing. Hesitant to abandon crops and fields, rural residents left their farms only reluctantly. Those not caught completely by surprise stacked their possessions on wheelbarrows and ox-carts or carried them on shoulder poles, joining the long lines of refugees. People tried to rescue young children and the aged. They tried to save tools, livestock, grain, and other belongings but there was not enough time to salvage everything. Many people drowned in the flooding; far more would succumb to illness or hunger in the difficult months and years that followed.

Refugees of the Flood

"The flood region’s area extends to over ten counties... Among the population affected by the disaster, those who will perish without relief amount to over 600,000.... The displaced masses have left and returned only to return and leave again. They are already in a dilemma and their livelihoods have been cut off. ... In Xihua the [number of] flooded villages has also reached over 430. Over three hundred disaster victims and over three hundred draft animals have drowned, so one can imagine the severity of the disaster. ... In addition, before the Yellow River flood [these areas] were occupied one or more times [by the Japanese]. Rape and pillaging left them in ruins and their vital energies had already been greatly harmed. After they were flooded, bandits and traitors have also pounded their bones and sucked out their marrow, extorting grain, draft animals, and property so that nearly all houses are empty and have no reserves. Residents who have not died in the floods perish from hardship. Those who have fortunately stayed alive are already urgently gasping for breath and groaning in agony."

(Nationalist government report, 1940)

Wartime flooding killed well over 800,000 people and displaced nearly 4 million people in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu. The wartime floods also turned almost four million people – over 20 percent of the total population – in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu into refugees.

The Event - "Scorched Earth" in Occupied Soviet Territories, 1941-44

"“The Red Army, the Red Navy, and all citizens of the Soviet Union must defend every inch of Soviet soil, must fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages, must display the daring, initiative and mental alertness characteristic of our people.

In case of forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated, the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway truck, not a single pound of grain or gallon of fuel. Collective farmers must drive off all their cattle and turn over their grain to the safe keeping of the state authorities, for transportation to the rear. If valuable property that cannot be withdrawn, must be destroyed without fail."

(Joseph Stalin, radio speech, June, 1941)

Scorched earth is military policy whereby retreating armies destroy or dismantled everything in their path in order to deprive the advancing armies of food, shelter, natural resources, manufacturing, communications, or anything else that may be of use to them. Scorched earth has a devastating impact on civilian populations left behind by retreating armies.

Scorched earth was practiced with great ruthlessness and efficiency by the Red Army under direct orders of Stalin. Thousands of factories in Ukraine were destroyed or removed, the Dniprohes Dam (see right) at Dnipropetrovsk, the largest hydroelectric dam in Europe, was blown up, Khreshchatyk Street, Kyiv’s main street, was mined and blown up. Collective farms were ordered to destroy their crops and animals or to surrender them to the retreating armies. Because all of Soviet Ukraine was occupied by the Germans, the Ukrainian people suffered terribly from the scorched earth policy. The economy of Soviet Ukraine was almost completely destroyed by the retreating Red Army. The civilian population was thus abandoned by the Soviet regime.

During WWII, Ukraine suffered through two episodes of scorched earth – as the Wehrmacht retreated from Ukrainian territory in 1943-44, Hitler also ordered a scorched earth policy; some 28 000 villages were burned by the retreating Germans, and any and all resources that could be used by the advancing Red Army were either evacuated or destroyed.

It is true that starvation was widespread in the large cities of the German-occupied Soviet Union, that large numbers of Soviet prisoners-of-war died of hunger, that the Soviet cities were in ruins after the German armies retreated, and that the Soviet population suffered tens of millions of dead during the Second World War. However, we also know that the inhumane Soviet scorched-earth strategy was the cause of hunger in the German-occupied Soviet territories, of an orgy of destruction previously unknown in warfare, and of the death of up to 20 million Soviet civilians, many of whom had been deported to the frozen wastes of Siberia and the Urals where epidemics, lack of housing and medical care, unimaginably hard work loads, and an extreme climate allowed only the toughest to survive. Add the costly human-wave tactics of Soviet military strategy and it is evident that Soviet brutality alone was responsible for the unbelievably huge losses of life suffered by the peoples of the Soviet Union - more than 30 million dead!

Source(s): Disasterhistory.org and Institute for Historical Review