The Bombing of Guernica

[Sylvester Stadler]

Recently the Military Channel featured a 30-minute program entitled Weapons of World War 2: Heavy Bombers in which the narrator claimed that the Luftwaffe began terror bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War with the raid on Guernica. The narrator claimed that there were no military targets in Guernica and that the bombing was clearly intended to kill only civilians, although no evidence was provided. The mention of this bombing raid was intended to excuse the later Allied bombing of German civilians and several times the narrator quoted and also showed "Bomber" Harris stating that "The Germans had sown the wind, now they must reap the whirlwind."

The book Guernica: How Hitler's Air Force Destroyed a Spanish City for Franco in Practice for World War II clearly states that the city had as a legitimate target Republican military forces in and around the town. Another source, Hitler's Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War, which uses original German sources including von Richthofen's diaries, basically states there is no evidence that the raid was to intimidate civilians and that it was part of a strategy to trap Republican ground forces during the Nationalist advance to Bilbao.

The Spanish Republicans may have lost the civil war but they and their Communist cohorts have won the propaganda war which still goes on today with British sources like the TV program mentioned above repeating this lie.