I’m reading Mark Kurlansky’s The Basque History of the World in advance of our trip to San Sebastian and the Basque regions of Spain and France. (More about that to come.) The Spanish Civil War didn’t make it into my high school history classes. Generalissimo Francisco Franco was the butt of many Weekend Update jokes in the first season of Saturday Night Live when I was in college. I just finished the chapter in the book about the aerial attack on the city of Guernica on April 27, 1937 by Franco-allied German and Italian forces.
April 27 was a market day in Guernica, and the town was full of farmers and shoppers. German aircraft started bombing at 4:40 pm and continued for three hours. The purpose of the attack was to strike fear in the Basque people so they’d submit to Franco’s rule. Although the exact number of people killed will never be known (government records on the attack have never been released), Basques estimated over 1,600 mortalities in the three hours of bombing and machine gun strafing of those trying to escape. Franco tried to use the oldest alibi in the book: The Basques attacked Guernica themselves. Survivors and the few journalists in and around Guernica rapidly refuted Franco’s assertion.
If I changed the date, location, and name in the paragraph above, Guernica would be indistinguishable from what’s happening in Mariupol or other cities in Ukraine. For that matter, attacks on civilians from the air have been standard war operating procedure for the last 85 years. These are crimes against humanity, period, end of discussion.
1 comments
Excellent Book! I love all of Kurlansky’s writings, especially Salt. And 1968 has a chapter devoted another Russian atrocity, the clampdown on Prague Spring, which both of us remember, as do many in Ukraine I’m sure.