The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

On the following day, 27 April, news of the destruction of Guernica appeared in the British press. The next morning The Times and the New York Times published the article of George Steer which was to have a tremendous effect internationally.¹⁹ Aguirre denounced the event in the following words: ‘German aviators, in the service of the Spanish rebels, have bombed Guernica, burning the historic city venerated by all Basques.’²⁰

As with the account of Durango, the nationalists set out to reverse the story. Using the precedent of Irún, they said that the town had been destroyed by its defenders as they withdrew; Queipo de Llano specified Asturian dinamiteros.²¹ Franco’s GHQ issued a statement on 29 April: ‘We wish to tell the world, loudly and clearly, a little about the burning of Guernica. Guernica was destroyed by fire and gasoline. The red hordes in the criminal service of Aguirre burned it to ruins. The fire took place yesterday and Aguirre, since he is a common criminal, has uttered the infamous lie of attributing this atrocity to our noble and heroic air force.’²²

The Spanish Church backed this story completely, and its professor of theology in Rome went so far as to declare that there was not a single German in Spain and that Franco needed only Spanish soldiers, who were second to none in the world. It was a version that even Franco’s most fervent supporters abroad had difficulty in sustaining. General Roatta himself informed Count Ciano on 8 May that General Sperrle had told him that the Condor Legion had bombed Guernica with incendiaries.²³ An American journalist, escorted by a Falangist, met a staff officer from the Army of the North a few months later in August. Her Falangist escort, who totally believed the story put out by Salamanca, told the staff officer that ‘reds’ in Guernica had tried to tell them that the town had been bombed from the air, not burned. ‘But of course it was bombed,’ the staff officer replied. ‘We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it, and bueno, why not?’²⁴

Condor Legion veterans were later to claim that their squadrons were really trying to bomb the Renteria bridge just outside Guernica, but that strong winds blew their loads on to the town. The bridge was never hit, there was virtually no wind, the Junkers were flying abreast and not in line, and anti-personnel bombs, incendiaries and machine-guns are not effective against stone bridges. According to Richthofen’s personal diary, the attack had been planned jointly with the nationalists. Mola’s chief of staff, Colonel Vigón, agreed to the target the day before the raid and again a few hours before it. No nationalist officer mentioned the importance of Guernica in Basque life and history, but even if they had, the plan would not have been changed.

Richthofen’s war diary entry for 26 April, although terse, could hardly be clearer and completely contradicts the nationalist version of events. ‘K/88 [the Condor Legion bomber force] was targeted at Guernica, in order to halt and disrupt the Red withdrawal, which has to pass through here.’ The following day, he simply wrote: ‘Guernica burning’. And on 28 April, he wrote: ‘Guernica must be totally destroyed.’²⁵ The Condor Legion’s Gefechtsbericht (combat report) for the day does not appear to have survived for some reason. One intention of the raid may have been to block the roads, as he wrote, but everything else points to a major experiment in the effects of aerial terrorism.²⁶

As the retreat continued in this sector there were several brave and effective rearguard actions. At Guernica the communist Rosa Luxembourg Battalion under Major Cristóbal held back the nationalists for a time, despite the extraordinary incompetence of their formation commander, Colonel Yartz, who appears to have been incapable of reading a map. Then, on 1 May, as the withdrawal steadied, the 8th UGT Battalion laid a highly successful trap at Bermeo, on the coast, putting 4,000 men of the Black Arrows and their Fiat Ansaldos to flight.