Editor's note: There are several items
included here. The first is courtesy of the Center for Basque
Studies (University of Nevada, Reno) and it is a
PDF outline of the Bombing of
Gernika. Then there is an article by Mark Kurlansky.
What concludes is drawn from two internet sources that
originally appeared online at
www.pbs.org and
eyewitnesstohistory.com that are reproduced here in case they
become no longer accessible; some minor changes have been made.
The German bombers appeared in the
skies over Gernika in the late afternoon of April 26, 1937 and
immediately transformed the sleepy Basque market town into an
everlasting symbol of the atrocity of war. Unbeknownst to the
residents of Gernika, they had been slated by their attackers to
become guinea pigs in an experiment designed to determine just what
it would take to bomb a city into oblivion.
Spain was embroiled in a convulsive civil war
that had begun in July 1936 when the right-wing Nationalists led by
General Francisco Franco sought to overthrow Spain's left-wing
Republican government. It did not take long before this bloody
internal Spanish quarrel attracted the participation of forces
beyond its borders - creating a lineup of opponents that
foreshadowed the partnerships that would battle each other in World
War II. Fascist Germany and Italy supported Franco while the Soviet
Union backed the Republicans. A number of volunteers made their way
to Spain to fight and die under the Republican banner including the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States.
Hitler's support of Franco consisted of the
Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe. The Condor Legion
provided the Luftwaffe the opportunity to develop and perfect
tactics of aerial warfare that would fuel Germany's blitzkrieg
through Europe during 1939 and 1940. As German air chief Hermann
Goering testified at his trial after World War II: "The Spanish
Civil War gave me an opportunity to put my young air force to the
test, and a means for my men to gain experience." Some of these
experimental tactics were tested on that bright Spring day with
devastating results.
 |
It was market day on a
Monday in Gernika when people from the surrounding areas
came to town. Because of this the day was chosen to
maximize casualties. |
It was market day
in Guernica when the church bells of Santa Maria sounded the alarm
that afternoon in 1937. People from the surrounding hillsides
crowded the town square. "Every Monday was a fair in Guernica," says
José Monasterio, eyewitness to the bombing. "They attacked when
there were a lot of people there. And they knew when their bombing
would kill the most. When there are more people, more people would
die."
 |
In 1937, Adolph Hitler's Luftwaffe indiscriminately
bombed the Spanish town of
Guernica, killing 1,650 civilians. The New
York Times reported, "The object of the bombardment
seemingly was demoralization of the civilian
population....not a military objective." Soon after, America
rightfully denounced the bombing as a "monstrous crime".
After World War II these German pictures of the bombing were
made public. |
For over three
hours, twenty-five or more of Germany's best-equipped bombers,
accompanied by at least twenty more Messerschmitt and Fiat Fighters,
dumped one hundred thousand pounds of high-explosive and incendiary
bombs on the village, slowly and systematically pounding it to
rubble.
One survivor Luis Aurtenetxea
recalled that
"we were hiding
in the shelters and praying. I only thought of running away, I was
so scared. I didn't think about my parents, mother, house, nothing.
Just escape. Because during those three and one half hours, I
thought I was going to die."
 |
"We
were hiding in the shelters and praying. I only thought of
running away, I was so scared. I didn't think about my
parents, mother, house, nothing. Just escape. Because during
those three and one half hours, I thought I was going to
die." (eyewitness Luis Aurtenetxea) |
Those trying to
escape were cut down by the strafing machine guns of fighter planes.
"They kept just going back and forth, sometimes in a long line,
sometimes in close formation. It was as if they were practicing new
moves. They must have fired thousands of bullets." (eyewitness Juan
Guezureya) The fires that engulfed the city burned for three days.
Seventy percent of the town was destroyed. Sixteen hundred civilians
- one third of the population - were killed or wounded.
News of the
bombing spread like wildfire. The Nationalists immediately denied
any involvement, as did the Germans. But few were fooled by Franco's
protestations of innocence. In the face of international outrage at
the carnage, Von Richthofen claimed publicly that the target was a
bridge over the Mundaka River on the edge of town, chosen in order
to cut off the fleeing Republican troops. But although the Condor
Legion was made up of the best airmen and planes of Hitler's
developing war machine, not a single hit was scored on the presumed
target, nor on the railway station, nor on the small-arms factory
nearby.
 |
Following
the bombing, Franco's regime immediately went into damage
control because they feared the negative backlash from the
world. Franco's forces insisted that the town had not
been bombed but instead retreating Basques had burned it. |
Gernika is the
cultural capital of the Basque people, seat of their centuries-old
independence and democratic ideals. It has no strategic value as a
military target. Yet some time later, a secret report to Berlin was
uncovered in which Von Richthofen stated, "...the concentrated
attack on Guernica was the greatest success," making the dubious
intent of the mission clear: the all-out air attack had been ordered
on Franco's behalf to break the spirited Basque resistance to
Nationalist forces. Guernica had served as the testing ground for a
new Nazi military tactic - blanket-bombing a civilian population to
demoralize the enemy. It was wanton, man-made holocaust.
Note: On May 12, 1999, the New York Times reported that, after
sixty-one years, in a declaration adopted on April 24, 1999, the
German Parliament formally apologized to the citizens of Guernica
for the role the Condor Legion played in bombing the town. The
German government also agreed to change the names of some German
military barracks named after members of the Condor Legion. By
contrast, no formal apology to the city has ever been offered by the
Spanish government for whatever role it may have played in the
bombing
.
 |
Seventy
percent of the town was destroyed. Sixteen hundred civilians
- one third of the population - were killed or wounded. |
70
years of 'shock and awe'
The 1937 air
raid on the Basque city of Guernica ushered in the modern
concept of total war.
By Mark
Kurlansky
MARK KURLANSKY often writes on Basque history and is the author,
among many other books, of "The Basque History of the World."
His most recent book is "Nonviolence: Twenty-five lessons from
the History"
April 26, 2007
SEVENTY YEARS AGO, on April 26, 1937, at 4:40 in the afternoon
when the stone-walled, medieval Basque town of Guernica was
packed with peasants, shoppers and refugees for its Monday
afternoon market along the riverfront, a church bell rang out.
The townspeople had heard the warning before. It meant that
enemy planes were approaching.
Since ancient times, Basques had gathered in this town under an
oak tree to reaffirm their laws. Even today, the elected head of
the Basque government travels to Guernica to take his oath of
office under an oak tree, "humble before God, standing on Basque
soil, in remembrance of Basque ancestors, under the tree of
Guernica…."
This tree, a few thousand residents, the people who had come to
the market and thousands of refugees from other parts of the
Basque provinces who had fled the ongoing Spanish Civil War were
the only targets. Oddly, the oak tree survived.
Because Guernica had no air defenses, dozens of planes from the
German and Italian air forces, including the newest experimental
warplanes, were free to come in low in daylight, dropping with
great accuracy an unusual payload of incendiary and splinter
bombs chosen by the Germans for maximum destruction of
buildings. People who fled were chased down by planes with
heavy-caliber machine guns. The planes came in so low that there
are still eyewitnesses who remember seeing the pilots and who
note that they looked like Germans.
Three hours later, the planes were gone, the historic town had
been reduced to burning rubble and the Basque government
estimated that 1,645 civilians were dead out of a population of
7,000. It's hard to know just how accurate that number is. The
only ones who had a chance to accurately count the dead were the
rebel troops of Francisco Franco — on whose behalf the German
and Italian planes had swept in in the first place. They at
first denied that the attack had taken place; later, they
admitted to only 200 deaths. The records of what they actually
found have never been released. But given the intensity of the
attack, reports of survivors and the number of missing
relatives, the Basque government figure has been recognized as
at least being closer to the truth.
Two days after the attack, London Times correspondent George
Steer's eyewitness account was published in the London Times and
the New York Times, and the world responded with outrage at this
new type of warfare — randomly attacking civilians from the air
on a large scale. It was widely seen as a crime that should
never be allowed to happen again.
It was not the first time civilians had been bombed from the
air; not even the first time in the Spanish Civil War. Gen.
Emilio Mola of Franco's pro-fascist rebel forces had vowed to
destroy the Basque province of Viscaya for its fierce opposition
to the insurgency. "Starting with the industries of war," he had
said. But instead he started with the rural town of Durango, a
town of ancient churches, rambling cobblestone streets and no
industries of war. Next was Guernica.
Durango had passed with little notice, but Guernica did not.
Pablo Picasso, who had been commissioned by the Spanish
government to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937
Paris World's Fair, chose Guernica as his subject, and his stark
depiction of mayhem and destruction permanently fixed this image
of war in Western culture. To many previously apolitical
Americans and Britons, it was the bombing of Guernica that
convinced them of the brutality of fascism.
Historians argue whether the phrase "weapons of mass
destruction" was first used about Guernica or Hiroshima. Steer
wrote in the Times: "In the form of its execution and the scale
of its destruction … the raid … is unparalleled in military
history." But 70 years after Guernica — after the bombings of
Coventry, London, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, Hanoi, Hue, Beirut and Baghdad — it has become clear
that modern war is fought from the air and that the greatest
number of casualties are civilians.
Guernica was destroyed with 1937 state-of-the-art weaponry, the
latest in German and Italian attack aircraft. But, of course,
those weapons are primitive compared to what was unleashed on
Baghdad for "shock and awe" at the start of the Iraq war. Shock
and awe had also been the intention of the fascists in Spain.
But such attacks on civilians today are met not so much with the
outrage of 1937 but with casual television viewing.
On this, the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the little
Basque village of Guernica, it would be good to contemplate the
direction the world is going in and whether we want to continue
or alter the course.
Noel Monks was a correspondent covering
the civil war in Spain for the "London Daily Mall." He was the first
reporter to arrive on the scene after the bombing. We join his story
as he and other reporters drive along a dusty Spanish road:
"We were about eighteen miles east of
Guernica when Anton pulled to the side of the road jammed on the
brakes and started shouting. He pointed wildly ahead, and my heart
shot into my mouth, when I looked. Over the top of some small hills
appeared a flock of planes. A dozen or so bombers were flying high.
But down much lower, seeming just to skim the treetops were six
Heinkel 52 fighters. The bombers flew on towards Guernica but the
Heinkels, out for random plunder, spotted our car, and, wheeling
like a flock of homing pigeons, they lined up the road - and our
car.
Anton and I flung ourselves into a bomb
hole, twenty yards to the side of the road. It was half filed with
water, and we sprawled in the mud. We half knelt, half stood, with
our heads buried in the muddy side of the carter.
After one good look at the Heinkels, I
didn't look up again until they had gone. That seemed hours later,
but it was probably less than twenty minutes. The planes made
several runs along the road. Machine-gun bullets plopped into the
mud ahead, behind, all around us. I began to shiver from sheer
fright. Only the day before Steer, an old hand now, had 'briefed' me
about being strafed. 'Lie still and as flat as you can. But don't
get up and start running, or you'll be bowled over for certain.'
When the Heinkels departed, out of
ammunition I presumed, Anton and I ran back to our car. Nearby a
military car was burning fiercely. All we could do was drag two
riddled bodies to the side of the road. I was trembling all over
now, in the grip of the first real fear I'd ever experienced."
Monk and his fellow reporters drive on,
traveling near Guernica where they can hear what they think may be
the sounds of bombs. They continue to the city of Balboa, where
after filling his report to London, Monk joins his colleagues for
dinner. His story continues as his dinner is interrupted by the news
from Guernica:
"...a Government official, tears
streaming down his face, burst into the dismal dining-room crying:
'Guernica is destroyed. The Germans bombed and bombed and bombed.'
The time was about 9.30 p.m. Captain Roberts banged a huge fist on
the table and said: 'Bloody swine.' Five minutes later I was in one
of Mendiguren's limousines speeding towards Guernica. We were still
a good ten miles away when I saw the reflection of Guernica's flames
in the sky. As we drew nearer, on both sides of the road, men, women
and children were sitting, dazed. I saw a priest in one group. I
stopped the car and went up to him. 'What I happened, Father?' I
asked. His face was blackened, his clothes in tatters. He couldn't
talk. He just pointed to the flames, still about four miles away,
then whispered: 'Aviones. . . bombas'. . . mucho, mucho.'
...I was the
first correspondent to reach Guernica, and was immediately pressed
into service by some Basque soldiers collecting charred bodies that
the flames had passed over. Some of the soldiers were sobbing like
children. There were flames and-smoke and grit, and the smell of
burning human flesh was nauseating. Houses were collapsing into the
inferno.
In the Plaza, surrounded almost by a
wall of fire, were about a hundred refugees. They were wailing and
weeping and rocking to and fro. One middle-aged man spoke English.
He told me: 'At four, before the-market closed, many aeroplanes
came. They dropped bombs. Some came low and shot bullets into the
streets. Father Aroriategui was wonderful. He prayed with the people
in the Plaza while the bombs fell.'..
...The only things left standing were a
church, a sacred Tree, symbol of the Basque people, and, just
outside the town, a small munitions factory. There hadn't been a
single anti-aircraft gun in the town. It had been mainly a fire
raid.
...A sight that haunted me for weeks
was the charred bodies of several women and children huddled
together in what had been the cellar of a house. It had been a
refuge."
For more
information click on:
PDF outline of the Bombing of
Gernika.
