A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. It is a military strategy where all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as food sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the people in the area. The practice is carried out by an army in enemy territory, or its own home territory. It may overlap with, but is not the same as, punitive destruction of an enemy's resources, which is done for purely strategic/political reasons rather than strategic/operational reasons. It was most famously used by Napoleon, by Sherman against the South in the American Civil War, by Kitchener against the Boers, and by Hitler during the Winter Campaign. A form of the policy was also used by the Allies to sever the logistics and sources for the whole of Europe in both the world wars, of which the latter would be made by "carpet-bombing" civilian structures such as the transportation network, although not by intent, the cold winter and lack of supplies long after the war would result in the deaths of many Europeans.