The whole truth?
Philip Knightley
The Day Guernica Died Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Hodder and Stoughton £4.95) Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts are two authors who specialise in disasters: the Martinique volcano, the San Francisco earthquake, the St Louis refugee ship, the Morrow Castle fire. Their way of working is to read every word previously published on the subject, then go off hunting for diaries, journals, contemporary newspaper accounts, photographs, and eyewitnesses with whom they tape-record interviews. All this material is then processed by a formidable team of secretaries, translators, and other specialists ranging, in this case, from a psychiatrist to an expert on strategic bombing. The authors digest the refined product and write a book. A string of awards and fat film contracts testifies to their success, so it was with some expectation that I turned to their latest work to see what their saturation technique had been able to discover about one of the most controversial acts of war this century: the bombing of Guernica.
I was disappointed. Thomas and Morgan-Witts have written a vivid and moving account of what happened in this little Spanish town on that dreaful day in April 1937, and they have succeeded in uncovering much that is new. But, in the end — and this is not their fault — the new material only adds to the mystery of Guernica, and the truth, or certainly the whole truth, turns out to be as elusive as ever.
The Guernica story began with one man: George Steer, war correspondent with the Republican side for the Times. Steer went into Guernica late on April 26 and his story appeared in the Times and the New York Times on April 28. It began with a reasonably accurate account of the bombing but then went on to say, "Guernica was not a military objective... The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race." The response from the Nationalist side was an immediate and categorical denial of the charge, backed, at the urging of the Germans, by a statement on May 5 from Franco himself: "Guernica was not bombed by my air force ... it was destroyed with fire and gasoline by the Basques themselves." Thus began the controversy which echoes on today. Steer's charge and, later, Picasso's painting, turned Guernica into a symbol of everything hateful about Fascism, a turning point in history at which total war was said to have begun, the indiscriminate bombing of a civilian target as a deliberate experiment in terror.
Although, if he had bee6 asked on his deathbed Franco would no doubt have repeated his 1937 accusation that the Basques themselves destroyed Guernica, no serious historian has believed this for years. Herbert Southworth's impressive book, La Destruction heavy bombers, ten HE-51s and six 24, 19 de Guernica, published in Paris last year makes it clear how untenable this charge has always been, and now Thomas and Morgan-Witts document the bombing beyond all doubt with a series of vivid accounts, both from those dropping the bombs and those receiving them. But the bombing versus the burnt-it-themselves controversy obscured a more important question: Why did the Germans bomb Guernica? Was it, as the legend would have it, a deliberate experiment in terror? Or was Guernica a military target and the German attack on it no more barbarous than any other act of war? Before this book, the experts divided like this: Hugh Thomas believed that the bombing was probably not intended to be a shock attack on a specially prized city, but as one on a town where the Republican-Basque forces could regroup; Herbert Southworth believed that it was to demoralise the Basques and prevent a siege of Bilbao; Commander H. Pursey, RN, one of a British delegation which went to Spain to investigate Guernica, is convinced that Steer's original report was absolutely correct.
What does this book tell us that is new, and what conclusions does it reach? A lot of interesting detail comes from interviews with surviving members of the German force, the Condor Legion (who may or may not have told the authors the truth). But the real coup concerns the Condor Legion's leader, Wolfram von Richthofen, a cousin of the legendary First World War flying ace. A diary of von Richthofen's Spanish days is in the West German Goverment's military archives at Freiburg. But Thomas and Morgan-Witts persuaded von Richthofen's widow to allow them access to his unpublished private papers and personal diary and this is the basis of the new material.
The picture the book builds up from this material of the Legion's raid on Guernica goes like this. The Republican-Basque forces were retreating westwards. There appeared to be only one place where they could hold — Guernica. (This was a correct -assumption on the Germans' part; the Basques were in fact preparing to fight for the town street by street, to make it "our Alcazar which we shall defend to the last brick.") The best way to stop the Republicans from establishing themselves in Guernica was to smash the one vital roadway leading into the town from the East, together with its bridge, the Rentaria.
None of the Germans knew that Guernica was one of the most historic towns in all Spain, deeply cherished by the Basques for its cultural and religious significance, and at the conference with Colonel Juan Vigon, chief of staff to General Emilio Mola, commander of the Nationalist Army in the North, Vigon, the authors say, did not mention it. So four Heinkel pathfinders, twenty-three Junkers, fifty-two
Spectator January The mitt BF-109s, the largest force until then ever assigned for an air attack in Spain, assembled 76 to knock out a bridge thirty feet wide and seventy five feet long, only three hundred yards from Guernica. Even if we accept that the bridge was the target, two factors made it inevitable that a high percentage of the bombs would fall on the town instead. The bomber of a JU-52 had to do his aiming from a Pot lowered by a hand-winch until it was suspend" ed under the fuselage between the wheels like a huge egg, and he had to guide the pilot bY pushing buttons that flashed red, green or white lights in the cockpit. The system was s° inefficient that it was a wonder the bomber ever hit anything at all. Next, the golden rules of the Condor Legion were that it attacked only military targets, but that it did so "without regard for the civilian population", and that if smoke hid the target area the bombs were dropped blind, aga,i_u without regard for civilians. At Guernica tne first bombs went wide of the bridge and hit the town itself and by the time subsequent waves of bombers arrived "the town was obscured by dust and smoke so we had to drop our bombs the best we could ... we couldn't tell what they were hitting." This is all very convincing as far as it goes' But what about the bomb mix? Von Richthofeel ordered a mix that included incendiaries, On al well over 2,500) because they were "idealpf„°t( creating panic among a retreating enemY•" one Condor Legion officer, Captain Ehrha", von Dellmensingen Krafft, interviewed h) Thomas and Morgan-Witts, said he had objected to the use of incendiaries because "they would fall like autumn leaves, out c.if control." He told the authors that when his objection was overruled he protested, we are to assume there are wooden bridges a.; Guernica." The bomb mix was wrong then' the roads and the concrete bridge were the on') target. But if they were not the target, what was, and why? And it is here that the authors of this book fall down. They have no answer. TheY tell us — and this is both new and important — that von Richthofen records in his diary that just before the raid he and Colonel Vigon alone in a field near Monte Mouchetagul studied reconnaissance photographs, discussed the military situation, then "without referenc.e to higher authority, a Spaniard from Madrid and a German from Silesia settled the fate o the Basques' spiritual home."f
But what did they decide? How did the decide it? What did they say to each other at this vital meeting? The authors do not know so a throwaway line, they they cannot tell us. And then, a little later, almost as
pose the question at the heart of this book. "Did von Richthofen really intend his flying armada to rain most of their 100,000 pounds of bombs only on the bridge, or was it no concern of his ANthether they were scattered over a large area and killed defenceless civilians, so long as the retreating troops were delayed and disrupted. And the only answer they have is: "If that, question troubled von Richthofen as he nos% drove north towards the front line 'to see the action' he did not share it with Lieutenant Asmus [the authors' informant]". So at the end of three hundred and eleven adimittedly exciting pages, we are back wherde we ,started, if anything even more mystififor e • One can believe that Guernica was bombed tactical military reasons, as I do, or as an experiment in terror bombing, or to demoraliste the Basques and prevent a siege of Bilbao. Bu_: reevmenaiwnsithhytphoethheesIpts.of this new book, it all still
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