ABSTRACT
After they had repeatedly failed to take Madrid by the spring of 1937, the Nationalists decided to shift the focus of their military operations. Franco himself had not given up on the idea of capturing the capital, but at this point in the fighting he believed that defeating the isolated northern zone of the Republic would greatly improve his chances of achieving this goal. At the end of March General Mola, chief of the Army of the North, launched a major offensive in the Basque country. This was to be the opening battle the Nationalist campaign to conquer republican territory not only in Vizcaya but also in the adjoining regions of Santander, Gijón, and Oviedo. It was shortly after the Basque offensive had begun that one of the most controversial and emotionally stirring episodes of the war occurred. On the afternoon of 26 April several squadrons of German and Italian aircraft carrying an estimated 60,000 pounds of high-explosive and incendiary bombs took off from airfields in Burgos and Vitoria en route to the small market town of Guernica. Their mission was to destroy a bridge (Rentería) and railway station that linked the Basque town nestled in a mountain valley with the outside world. The first planes arrived in the late afternoon. The incoming HE-111 bombers immediately swooped down over the station area, dropping high-explosive and incendiary bombs. Soon afterwards, the target area was hit again by a wave of Heinkels and Junkers-52 bombers. 1 Within half an hour the smoke and dust surrounding the town was so thick that further bombing sweeps carried out by both German and Italian aircraft were done blindly. As a result, a number of houses and public buildings which could not be regarded as legitimate military targets were also hit. By the time the last planes departed around 7.30 p.m., most of the town lay in ruins. In the mounds of rubble and debris left from the burning buildings were the charred and mutilated remains of several hundred men, women, and children. (Estimates of those actually killed range from fewer than a dozen to more than three thousand.) An untold number of other civilians had been wounded by the fighter planes who strafed men, women, and children scrambling to find shelter in the closest refugio. Those who survived the attack could not easily erase from their memories the scenes of devastation and carnage to which they were subjected that fateful afternoon (Document 8.1). News of their anguish and suffering inspired the renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso to immortalize Guernica’s tragedy in what many critics now regard as his most famous painting. Across the massive canvas of this daring work – first exhibited on 4 June 1937 at the International Exhibition in Paris – are strewn grotesque figures painted in the sombre hues of white, black, and grey. Through his use of colour and startling imagery Picasso managed to tell to the world a profoundly moving story not only of the aerial bombardment of Guernica but also of the senseless death and destruction that inevitably results from the tactics of modern warfare. The Bombing of Guernica
Today we flew to Guernica. It has been totally destroyed, and not by the Reds, as all the local newspapers report, but by German and Italian bombers. It is the opinion of all of us that it was a rotten trick to destroy such a militarily unimportant city as Guernica. There are certainly thousands more dead beneath the rubble, unnecessary victims. Everywhere is smoking rubble, bomb craters, empty facades.
Source: Ries, K. and Ring, H. (1992) The Legion Condor, West Chester, PA, p. 62.
The fighters dived down and machine-gunned people trying to flee across the plain. The bombers were flying so low you could see the crewmen, recalled Father Dionisio AJANGUIZ. It was a magnificent clear April evening after a showery morning …
People started to panic, recalled Ignacia OZAMIZ. ‘The house is on fire, we’re going to be burnt alive,’ they screamed. Gudaris guarding the shelter let no one leave. One man tried to force his way out with his young child. ‘I don’t care if they kill me, I can’t stand it here.’ He was pushed back. ‘Keep calm,’ the soldiers shouted …
Source: Fraser, Ronald (1979) The Blood of Spain, New York, pp. 399 and 400.
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 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.’
In the good ‘I’ tradition of the day, 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 figures. 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 Aronategui was wonderful. He prayed with the people in the Plaza while the bombs fell.’ The man had no idea who I was, as far as I know. He was telling me what had happened at Guernica.
Source: Monks, N. (1955) Eyewitness, London, pp. 96–7.
