This is a worthwhile and important strategy, and is taught in almost all major military schools in the world today. After the Civil War, Europe sat up and took notice of the new way of war invented by W.T.Sherman.
The United States achieved total victory in Europe in WWII by wiping out the industrial capacity of Germany, which the victorious allies had failed to do in the Great War.
That's a great book isn't it?
I've lived most of my life in the South and from time to time have had to listen to nitwits like the guy who posted this topic.
Hanson's book had it exactly right. Sherman was the most innovative general not only of the Civil War but of the entire 19th century. While Lee and Grant were still chasing chasing each other around the countryside and losing huge numbers of soldiers on both sides, Sherman figured out that if he couldn't kill every confederate soldier, he could kill the South's will to fight and keep his men alive at the same time. Hanson's book gave evidence of this when he recounted that Lee's army was losing hundreds of soldiers to desertion every day.Why? To go home and try to protect their property because they had gotten the news that
Sherman was loose in the South and was "making Georgia howl".
Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, London, and Tokyo were NOT industrial targets.
The 'victorious allies' efforts to hamstring Germany and its industries after WW1 gave Hitler his entry to power and led to everything that followed.
And, note, after WW2 we jumped through fiscal and diplomatic hoops to reestablish our enemies' ability to recover and thrive. Best that can be said for Southern "reconstruction" is....not close.