Minesweeper its frontiers That was mainly because the Stavka was devoted to the highly aggressive prewar offensive doctrine of deep battle, which insisted that the enemy be engaged forward of Soviet territory Moreover, the annexations of 1940 moved the Soviet frontier west of the Stalin Line to hastily prepared fortifications, which Germans derisively called the Molotov Line Thereafter, the Red Army developed several revolutionary land mines, including an advanced ASK tilt-rod actuated blast mine The Wehrmacht took that a step farther by adding a shaped charge, but the Germans produced their advanced Hohl-Sprung Mine 4672 too late in the war for it to be used In contrast, by war’s end the Soviets laid more mines than any other Army The Wehrmacht developed a series of antipersonnel shrapnel mines that came to be much hated by all enemy troops Most despised was the “S-mine” (“Schrapnellmine”), commonly known as the “Bouncing Betty” among Anglo-American soldiers Deployment of millions of AT and antipersonnel mines by engineers or pioneers forced all armies to develop anti-mine capabilities The U.S built a variety of mine-clearing vehicles based on the Sherman One was popularly known as the “Aunt Jemima.” It used massive rollers to explode mines by applying pressure Infantry-operated mine detectors included the SCR625 Its handle configuration required sweeping back and forth in an arc Because it weighed nearly lbs, men tired quickly while using it In all armies throughout the war the principal method of detection of antipersonnel mines remained the highly dangerous “prod-andremove” system, using bayonets or special wire prodders After the war the Allies forced German prisoners of war to clear vast minefields Several thousand Germans were killed or wounded while doing so Using prisoners to clear mines was a violation of the letter of the Geneva Conventions It was defended as a form of natural justice, and in any case was surely inevitable: the only other choice was to have Allied troops or liberated civilians the dangerous job and absorb even more casualties than they already had Using defeated Axis troops to clear mines they or their comrades had laid was politically and psychologically inescapable in the aftermath of a terrible war, whatever the letter of international laws the Wehrmacht had itself seldom respected or obeyed See also dogs; Gardening; Hobart’s funnies; Minenkästen; minesweepers MINESWEEPER A small warship used to clear sea mines from shipping lanes An innovative method for dealing with magnetic mines was the “Double-L (or Longitudinal) Sweep” of the harbor floor This was a slow maneuver by two wooden minesweepers working together, each towing an electric cable The result was a pulsating magnetic field that passed over the sea bed, triggering any magnetic mines resting on the bottom Convoy routes were swept regularly by this method, which meant that it was mostly independents that were sunk by mines: over three-fourths of all cargo ships lost to mines were independents traversing unswept passages The Kriegsmarine developed “influence mines” later in the war They ignored initial passes by sweepers so that an area or passage had to be swept more than once After the war the Royal Navy took control of all surviving German minesweepers 731