What military strategy involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while passing through an area, first used by the Scythians against King Darius the Great of Persia around 500 BC., and best known for its use by both sides when Germany attacked and then retreated from the USSR in World War II?
Scorched earth population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of Protocol I of the 1977 Geneva Conventions. The relevant passage says: 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. 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
Scythians Catiaroi, Traspians, and Paralatae or "Royal Scythians". In 512 BC, when King Darius the Great of Persia attacked the Scythians, he allegedly penetrated into their land after crossing the Danube. Herodotus relates that the nomadic Scythians frustrated the Persian army by letting it march through the entire country without an engagement. According to Herodotus, Darius in this manner came as far as the Volga River. During the 5th to 3rd centuries BC, the Scythians evidently prospered. When Herodotus wrote his "Histories" in the 5th century BC, Greeks distinguished Scythia Minor, in present-day Romania and Bulgaria, from a Greater Scythia that