Arson as a Policy
As the French Commission of Inquiry remarked, arson was a common German practice, sometimes used as a weapon of destruction, sometimes as a means of intimidation. “The German army,” adds this Commission, “in order to be prepared for it, has a regular equipment, including torches, grenades, fuses, petrol-sprinklers, rockets which carry inflammable matter, and even little bags containing pastilles of a very inflammable compressed powder. Its incendiary fury is chiefly manifested against churches and monuments interesting from the point of view of art or of history.”
Often the invader was not content with sprinkling the beds of dwelling-houses with petrol, he took care also to heap straw under agricultural machines to destroy them, as well as dwelling-houses, harvests, and the cattle remaining in the stalls. This was done at Château-sur-Morin by the 76th German regiment.
Often, also, arson was employed as a means to compel people to leave their houses, and to make it easier to pillage. As soon as they entered the villages the Germans, with this object in view, set fire to them. On other occasions they resorted to this method only when the loot was over: then the destruction of the houses of a village was only the crown of their work.
It would be impossible to record in detail acts of this kind committed by Germans on all the invaded territories. We must be content with noting those cases in which parts of large towns were destroyed and whole villages disappeared.