The Destruction of Guernica
A powerful and searing account of the destruction of Guernica by Hitler’s Condor League in April 1937 written by Paul Preston – foremost historian of 20th century Spain and best-selling and critically acclaimed author of The Spanish Holocaust.The destruction of Guernica seventy-five years ago, on 26 April 1937, is burned into European consciousness as the first time aerial bombardment wiped out an undefended civilian target in Europe. The events of that day have provoked more savage polemic than any single act of war since. With the help of Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica is now remembered as the place where the new and horrific warfare came of age.It was market day in the sleepy Basque town. Guernica was packed with farmers and traders flocking to sell their wares, to catch-up on the news and purchase goods, little-expecting the devastation that was about to fall upon them. Just before 5pm, planes from Hitler’s Condor League began their assault, bombing and shelling the town for over three hours, swooping low to machine-gun civilians as they fled.In this book, Paul Preston – the foremost historian of 20th century Spain – tells the story of this tragedy and examines not only the tactics and motivations of Hitler’s Condor Legion, their subordination to Franco’s orders; the obsessive cruelty of Franco’s commander in the north, General Emilio Mola, and the purpose of the attack on Guernica within Franco’s war effort; but also the vital part played by journalists like George Steer whose eye-witness reports for The Times from Guernica roundly disproved Franco’s mendacious denials of involvement, focused the eyes of the world on the tragedy, and helped persuade the British government to allow over 4,000 Basque child refugees into Britain.Published to tie-in with the 75th anniversary of the bombing, this book cuts through the lies, manipulative comments and misunderstandings that have surrounded this tragedy to give an authoritative, deeply moving account of what happened that day in Guernica.
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THE DESTRUCTION OF GUERNICA
REVISED EDITION
Paul Preston
Copyright
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by Harper Press
Revised edition published by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Paul Preston, 2012, 2017
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007491391
Version: 2017-03-20
Contents
The Destruction of Guernica
On 19 July 1936, shortly after his declaration of martial law in Pamplona, Emilio Mola called a meeting of the mayors of the province of Navarre. What he told them would characterise his subsequent treatment of the Basque Country. He said: ‘It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we vacillate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot.’>1 What this meant for the Basques was soon revealed by an early precursor of what was to happen to Durango and Guernica in the spring of 1937. On 22 July, two aircraft from Vitoria bombed the village square of Otxandio in the south of Vizcaya, killing more than sixty people of whom at least twenty-four were children and mutilating a further eighty. In justification, the rebel command in Vitoria announced that ‘our aircraft have struck a heavy blow against a group of rebels gathered in the rearguard at Otxandio’.>2 Otxandio is the Basque name of the village called Ochandiano in Spanish.
Because of his early reverses in the sierra north of Madrid, Mola’s first major campaign against the Basque Country did not begin until after the arrival of German and Italian aid in early August which enabled him to launch an attack on the province of Guipúzcoa and Franco to begin the march on Madrid. Already on 23 July, Carlist troops from Navarra had entered the southern part of Guipúzcoa through Cegama and Segura. Although they encountered no resistance, in Cegama and Segura, they sacked the headquarters of Republican parties and the Batzoki (offices) of the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (Basque Nationalist Party). Now, in early August, Mola began a campaign to capture Irún and the provincial capital San Sebastian and cut off Guipúzcoa from the French border. Irún and Fuenterrabía were being shelled from the sea and attacked daily by German and Italian bombers. The British (born in South Africa) correspondent George Steer noted that the rebels had dropped pamphlets threatening to deal with the population as they had dealt with those in Badajoz. The use of pamphlets describing earlier atrocities as a threat of what would happen if surrender were not immediate would happen again eight months later when the experience of Guernica would be used as a threat against Bilbao. San Sebastián was also heavily shelled from the sea. Irún’s poorly armed and untrained militia defenders fought bravely but were overwhelmed on 3 September. Thousands of panic-stricken refugees fled across the international bridge to France. The last defenders, largely anarchists enraged by their lack of ammunition, shot some rightist prisoners in Fuenterrabía and set parts of Irún on fire.>3
Rebel troops and Carlists occupied San Sebastián on Sunday 13 September and by the end of the month, virtually all of Guipúzcoa was in Mola’s hands.>4 A substantial number of the city’s 80,000 inhabitants had fled either westward towards Vizcaya or else by boat to France. Nevertheless, the number of executions in San Sebastián would be the highest carried out by the rebels in any Basque city. Mass detentions began immediately, beginning with the wounded Republicans who, given the seriousness of their condition, could not be evacuated from the Hospital Militar. Soon the prisons of Ondarreta and Zapatari, the offices of the Falange in the centre of the city, the San José hospice and the Kursaal cinema were all bursting to the seams with detainees.>5 Among the hundreds of executions that took place in Guipúzcoa, the most notorious were those of thirteen Basque priests, which were carried out at the behest of the Carlists. In total, the rebels murdered at least sixteen priests in the entire Basque region and imprisoned and tortured many more. Father Alberto Onaindía, whose brother was one of the victims, said prophetically, ‘If this was how the army behaved with the Basque clergy, what would it be like for civilians!’ The testimony of Father Onaindía (a friend of the
