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GUERNICA

In 1937 Nazis bombed a town in Spain

GUERNICA IS A SMALL market town in the Basque country, 30 kilometers north-east of Bilbao in northern Spain . To the Basque people it is a spiritual home. On the grounds of the parliament building is an ancient oak tree that is regarded as a symbol of Basque culture and independence.

When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, the 6,000 inhabitants of Guernica stayed loyal to the Republican Government, who promised the Basques self-government. But General Francisco Franco, whose Nationalist forces invaded from Morocco , aimed to keep the whole of Spain under the direct control of Madrid .

Until the end of March 1937, the struggle for Spain centered on Madrid . To the people of Guernica , the war seemed a long way away, and their market town was protected by three battalions of Basque troops. However, fearing that Franco, their fascist brother, might lose this war, both Adolf Hitler and Bernito Mussolini secretly sent troops to help him. It was also a way for the two dictators to give their men combat experience before the European war they were planning. Along with 5,000 tough infantry soldiers, Hilter sent his Condor Legion under Hermann Goering, commander of the German Luftwaffe. These were handpicked pilots who would spearhead the revolutionary strategy of ‘Blitzkrieg' (lighting strikes) that allowed Hitler's armies to overrun most of Western Europe in a few months from September 1939 onwards.

The Legion's commander in Spain persuaded Franco to begin a new offensive in the north. The mountains that separated the Basque country from the rest of Spain would have made conventional warfare a long and tedious process. Artillery would have to be maneuvered across rugged terrain and the countryside was ideal for the Basques to launch guerrilla strikes at any advancing army. But under the Blitzkrieg strategy, the Condor Legion would act as aerial artillery, pounding enemy positions before they had a chance to dig in. This would keep the front fluid and the Nationalists' motorized infantry could easily outrun the ill-equipped Republicans.

Goering's aircraft could also be used to terrorize the civilian population. This was a new type of total warfare that gave Europe a taste of what was to come. Franco's formidable troops from Morocco had a fearsome reputation – men were shot after surrendering and women routinely raped. As the Nationalists attacked, the population fled. Refugees jammed the roads of Spain , making it harder for the Republicans to withdraw and regroup. Refugees poured into Guernica , believing that there they would be safe.

By 25 April 1937, the Nationalists were just 20 miles from Guernica . But between them and the town was rugged terrain and some 8,000 Basque troops to provide protection for the town's swollen population.

Monday 26 April was a market day. Although the livestock market had been suspended, the street market was in full swing by mid-day. At 4.30pm, the bells of Santa Maria Church began to toll, which puzzled the traders. By the time they realized that it was an air-raid warning, a single Heinkel III bomber was directly overhead. Some people ran for cellars and others took refuge in the Church of Santa Maria , and also in the railway station plaza.

The aircraft climbed high in the almost cloudless sky, then came screaming earthwards. But this was a ‘recce run', so that the bombardier could identify the target: the Renteria Bridge across the River Mundaca. The Heinkel climbed again, and Guernica 's anti-aircraft gunners could not elevate their muzzles high enough to harm it. As it turned away, the danger seemed to be over. People got to their feet and cheered. The plane then swooped low and turned again, and this time it dropped its payload of bombs as it roared over the town. The bombardier missed his target but unloaded 3,000 pounds of bombs near the railway station plaza in the centre of town.

One 550lb bomb sliced off the front of the Julian Hotel and the rubble engulfed children playing in the street alongside. Another exploded behind the station, causing the ceiling to collapse. Others fell in the station plaza killing people waiting for the next Bilbao train and those who had sought refuge there, believing it to be a safe place. Over 400 people died in that first devastating bombing run.

Some corpses had been decapitated, others stripped of their clothing. Many, though dead, did not have a mark on them: the force of the blasts had simply collapsed their lungs. The air was full of the screams of the wounded and bereaved. Soldiers left their posts to help, and people rushed out of shelters – no one was expecting another attack.

But the rest of the Condor squadron – nine Heinkels with a fighter escort of six Messerschmidt 109 fighters – was circling over the village of Garay , ten miles south of Guernica . At 4.40pm, they lined up and moved in on the market town.

They began their descent along the River Mundaca. They came in lower this time, as the first tentative attack had drawn negligible flak. They were so low that Spaniards on the ground could see the crewmen. Spotters also noted that the German aircraft were spread out in a wide formation. This meant that they were not planning to attack one specific target. They aimed to destroy the whole town using the new technique of ‘carpet bombing' perfected by Goering's Condor Legion during an attack on Oviedo the previous September.

The first Heinkels came in at 2,000 feet, traveling at 170 miles per hour. One young anti-aircraft gunner emptied his ammo-belt, then dropped his weapon and started taking pictures of the air-raid. His photographs later formed a vital part of the propaganda war.

The first aircraft had dropped high explosives. The next three dropped incendiary bombs. A cluster hit a sweet factory, setting vats of boiling sugar on fire, along with the hair and overalls of the women working there. They ran out onto the street, screaming, living balls of fire.

People still had no idea what had hit them. An old woman sat outside her front door peeling potatoes with bombs dropping all around her. When she had finished, she got up and calmly walked indoors.

Two more waves of bombers bore in, each aircraft dropping 3,000lbs of explosives. One bomb hit a house where a girl was celebrating her 15 th birthday with her widowed mother. The house collapsed, killing them both, but by some freak circumstance, the birthday cake ended up sitting unscathed on top of a pile of rubble.

The incendiaries exploded with a white flash, then flared, burning fiercely as they scattered red and white fragments of Thermite. One landed in a bull pen in the market place, spraying two bullocks with burning Thermite. Maddened with pain, they broke free and went charging through the burning stalls, scattering people. They ran through the town still trailing fire before they fell to their deaths in a bomb crater.

Fire raced through the canvas-roofed stalls. There was no way to stop it. The concrete roof of the fire station had collapsed, flattening the fire tender to a third of its original height. Firemen had to do what they could with buckets of water.

Mercifully, some of the bombs did not explode. The canisters were later recovered and their German markings displayed by the Basque government to show the world who had been responsible for this brutal attack on a civilian population.

But the attack was not yet over. Ten Heinkels roared in, peppering the town with more incendiaries. Now Goering unveiled his new terror weapon: the Junkers JU87B, better known as the ‘Stuka' dive bomber. Ten of these gull-winged aircraft screamed down to 200 feet, pickling off their 250lb bombs and then spraying the ground with machine gun fire, cutting down those who tried to escape. A mother trying to help an injured child was torn apart by a hail of 20mm rounds. Her three children who rushed to her side were drilled with holes by the next Stuka that came sweeping in. The Heinkels and Stukas flew back and forth on strafing runs, killing fleeing civilians as they ran in fear. The pilots were enjoying themselves, but after half an hour they turned for home, low on ammunition and fuel.

Throughout the onslaught, the Renteria Bridge remained intact. People sheltering under it considered themselves very lucky. Little did they know that worse was yet to come.

Just after 6pm, the main German bomber force took off. The 23 Junkers 52's were carrying 100,000lbs of high explosive and they formed a tight formation over Garay.

They hit Guernica minutes later and the first salvo of bombs destroyed a restaurant and a bank. People in the streets and cows that had escaped from their pens were blown to pieces. Houses suddenly collapsed like packs of cards. Several bombs made direct hits on an air-raid shelter in Calle Santa Maria, hurling bodies out into the street. In other shelters, people were asphyxiated by lack of air. In the shelter of a basement in a house in Calle Allende Salazar, all twenty occupants died, suffocated by smoke. The Town Hall took three direct hits and three floors collapsed on the shelter beneath. A woman crawled to safety and screamed when she saw that someone's severed arm was caught in her belt.

The town was obscured by so much smoke that the German bombers now dropped their payloads indiscriminately. Italian baker Antonio Arazamagni saw a bomb hit his bakery. The building bulged outwards and then exploded. He decided it was time to get the hell out of Guernica .

There was only one legitimate military target in the town – an arms factory to the west. The owner was pro-Franco and believed that was why his business was saved. In fact, the German pilots did not know about the factory or his sympathies. It was left unscathed because the line that the bombers took across the town did not pass over it, and the Stukas did not bother wasting ammunition by strafing it as it was built of solid concrete. Nevertheless the owner was appalled when his mansion, some 300 meters from the factory, was suddenly wiped out by a German bomb.

German aircraft of the second squadron now bore in on the Renteria Bridge . They unloaded high explosives and a shower of smaller incendiaries. But not one bomb hit the bridge – they simply rained down on the battered town once more. One 550lb HE bomb hit the Augustine monastery, smashing it completely, and an incendiary dropped through the roof of the church of Santa Maria . Father Eusebio grabbed a vase and emptied it over the canister. The incendiary gave off clouds of smoke, but no flames and was finally snuffed out when Father Iturran urged the congregation to pour communion wine on it. “If our Lord could work a miracle by turning water into wine”, said Father Iturran, “then perhaps he will allow us to use wine as water.”

Soon after 6.30pm, the last of the Junkers droned away from the town. This last attack had killed a further 230 people and injured 400 more. Three-quarters of the buildings in Guernica had been destroyed, or soon would be – by flames. The Renteria Bridge was still intact. Refugees streamed up the Arteaga road to the safety of caves in the rocky hillside, and over 500 people found safety there.

Others were caught out on the road. As civilians ran from the town, they were joined by deserting Basque soldiers, hoping that the German pilots would spare them. They were wrong: a squadron of six Messerschmitt 109's came roaring in low and strafed everyone on the ground with cannon fire. Bodies of dead civilians and soldiers choked the road. “We used tracer to walk the rounds in,” said one exultant German pilot later. “We shot up anything that moved. It was wonderful sport!” This was modern warfare without valour or chivalry. These fighter aircraft were flown by psychopaths who enjoyed killing. Welcome to Blitzkrieg, people.

Eventually, just after 7.30pm, the German airplanes turned for home. The attack on Guernica , the first war crime of 1937, was finally over. Miraculously, the houses of prosperous people on the western slopes of the town were largely intact. The rich supported Franco and it was rumored that they had been spared intentionally. In fact they had survived by chance simply because of the northeast-to-southwest bombing run favored by the Germans. In all, 1,654 were killed in the attack and 889 wounded. Many of the bodies lay face down, having been gunned down as they ran away.

That night the Condor Legion celebrated their ‘victory' in the bars and brothels of Vitoria . The commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richtofen, a cousin of the famous ‘Red Baron' (WW1) fighter ace, secretly reported to Hitler in Berlin that the concentrated attack on Guernica had been ‘the greatest success'.

On Thursday, 29 April 1937, the Nationalists reached the now devastated town of Guernica . Spanish, Italian and Moroccan troops marched over the Renteria Bridge at 8.30am. They met some resistance from Republicans defending the shattered town, but by 10.30am, Franco's flag fluttered over the parliament building. Goering's merciless Condor Legion had softened up the target exactly as planned.

General Franco issued a statement that Guernica had been burned by retreating Republicans and that it was “wrong to attribute this atrocity to our noble and heroic German friends”. The Spanish Church backed this version and a professor of theology in Rome said, “The truth is that there is not a single German in Spain .” However, the photographs taken by the AA gunner and the unexploded incendiaries that Father Eusebio took to Bilbao proved this to be a cynical lie.

The famous painter Pablo Picasso, from nearby Galicia , condemned the brutal German attack in a huge painting entitled ‘ Guernica ' which became one of the great icons of pacifism. In July 1940, when German troops marched into Paris , a group of officers entered his studio where the painting was leaning against a wall.

“Did you do that?” a high ranking officer demanded, pointing to it.

“No”, Picasso replied, “your noble Luftwaffe did it.”

(Research: ‘War Crimes' by Chancellor Press, 2001).

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