26 April 1937 is a fateful day for the Spanish Republicans, the Spanish Nationalists. The Germans and the whole world really.

The German Condor Legion was the away team of the Luftwaffe (Hitler didn’t want to be seen as getting involved in a war in Europe). It led by Hugo Sperrle and his chief of staff was Wolfram von Richthofen. Von Richthofen was the highly controversial cousin of the most famous World War I ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen – the Red Baron.

On 26 April 1937, von Richthofen was in command of launching the controversial bombing attack on the Spanish town of Guernica in the Basque region in the North of Spain. At that time, the Basque region was controlled by the elected socialist/Communist Republican government. The Nationalists rebels, commanded by General Francisco Franco, were in the process of prosecuting a campaign against the Republican forces to conquer that area. The Nationalists were supported by the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler and very substantially, only in terms of numbers, by military personnel of the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Their performance was mostly abysmal, which was something that wouldn’t change in the coming World War.

The air-raid on Guernica was reported on by the journalist on the spot (well he arrived there the day after the attack) George Steer. His article about the attack was published in both the Times of London, and the New York Times. Steer’s newspaper report read, in part:

The object of the bombardment seemingly was demoralisation of the civil population and destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.

That is, George Steer was calling this air raid a terror raid against a civilian population.

Pablo Picasso, the world famous ex-pat Spanish painter, was living in Paris at the time of that air raid. He was immediately commissioned by the Republican government to produce a painting about the bombing of Guernica. Picasso completed his painting just a few months after the attack, in June 1937. Picasso never returned to Spain to live.

Picasso’s finished painting was displayed at the International Exhibition of Arts in Paris in 1937. It’s the world’s most famous painting of war. Painted in blue, black and white, measuring 3.5 metres high by 7.8 metres wide, it is a powerful, and physically imposing, condemnation of the German terror raid on Guernica. The only problem with that description is that, well maybe it wan’t a terror raid. If it wasn’t, the left who were behind promoting it as that, rendered an enormous service to Adolf Hitler which I would say guaranteed the second world war in Europe. This series of programmes will reveal all.

Tag words: Antony Beevor; Pablo Picasso; James C CorumGuernica; Spanish Civil War; Wolfram von Richthofen; Hugo Sperrle; Baron Manfred von Richthofen; Red Barron; Francisco Franco; Adolf Hitler; Benito Mussolini; Condor Legion; General Wilhelm Wimmer; Herman Göring; Hans Udet; General Helmuth Wilberg; Nazi Germany; Carl von Clausewitz; On War; Hans Jeschonnek; Curtis Le May;