World War 2 remains notorious for the frequency of bombs used during the conflict. Bombs, conventional and atomic, blasted places like Hiroshima, London, Tokyo, and many cities in Germany. Because of the horror and scale of the damage, these places overshadow, to some extent, what happened in the Spanish town of Guernica on April 26 of 1937. The bombing of Guernica, however, was a critical event in its own right.

No one has forgotten the bombing of Guernica entirely, of course. The famous painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, guarantees that. But what is the story behind the painting? What happened at Guernica in 1937?

Why Did the Bombing of Guernica Happen?

The bombing of Guernica was part of the Spanish Civil War. That war featured the fascist forces of Francisco Franco on one side. Typically, people call them the Nationalist forces, although I find this name misleading. They were fascist revolutionaries. (For more on what nationalism means, click here for my post about the difference between nationalism and patriotism.)  Opposing Franco were the soldiers of Spain’s democratically elected government, known as the Republicans.

That is the simple view of things, and it’s not false. But it also obfuscates several important things about the Spanish Civil War. Even though all the fighting took place in Spain, the war was actually international.

Francisco Franco had a great deal of help from Europe’s other two fascist nations, Italy and Germany. They sent weapons and supplies to Franco to help in his revolution against the government of Spain.

To put down Franco’s fascist uprising, the democratic government of Spain appealed for help from other democratic nations like Great Britain, France, and the United States. Their collective response was negligible. The only nation to send much aid was the Soviet Union (Mexico helped a little), but its distance from Spain mitigated against substantial assistance. (The Soviet Union was hardly democratic in the 1930s, far from it. But it appears Joseph Stalin viewed fascism as an extreme form of capitalism, and thus an enemy of the Soviet Union.)

Why Was the Bombing of Guernica Important?

In 1936, Franco began his fascist revolution against the Spanish government. Like I wrote above, he had substantial help from Germany and Italy. It was the German air force, the Condor Legion, that led the bombing of Guernica. Messerschmitt and Fiat planes dropped incendiary bombs and strafed the streets with bullets when people tried to flee. The bombing destroyed two-thirds of the town and killed up to 1,600 people. (It was a market day in Guernica, and people had gathered in the town.)

Franco and the Germans claimed the attacked was on a bridge to prevent retreat by Republican forces. But the bridge wasn’t damaged in the attack. Neither was a nearby railway, something of obvious help to retreating soldiers. Guernica itself had little military value. The purpose of the bombing of Guernica was demoralization and civilian deaths.

That is, looking back, probably the most important thing about the bombing of Guernica. It was destruction without direct military purpose. That is, maybe, one reason why Picasso’s great piece of art Guernica remains famous today. It shows the stark horror of war in a jarring, unsettling fashion.

I’m no art historian, so I won’t break down the painting here for you. I’m sure plenty of Internet sites can help you, if that’s what you want. But I’ll sum up my discussion of Picasso’s painting with this story. During World War 2, Picasso met with a Nazi official. The official had a photo of Guernica. He said to Picasso, “So it was you who did this.” Picasso answered, “No, you did.”

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Other Reasons the Bombing Matters

It was events like what happened in the bombing of Guernica that inspired many people from around the world to go to Spain and fight against Franco and the fascists. The most famous, perhaps, was the great British novelist George Orwell. He went to Spain to cover the war as a member of the press. But Orwell soon left the relative safety of that assignment to fight against fascism as a soldier.

Orwell wrote a terrific book, Homage to Catalonia, about his experiences. (I read it once, years ago.) He claims that he and the others in his unit fought for common decency. That was their reason for opposing Franco and fascism. Common decency.

In all, about 35,000 people went to Spain to volunteer to fight fascism.

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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade

About 3,000 Americans went to Spain and formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But few Americans know this little piece of national history. The reason, I suspect, was that most of these 3,000 volunteers against fascism were rather leftist, politically speaking. Not communists, necessarily, but people who believed in the international values taught by socialism.

These people were, it seems, mostly working-class types like factory workers, sharecroppers, volunteer nurses, and so forth. But they believed in social justice, and were willing to leave their homes to fight fascism and fight for humanity and common decency. And they continued the fight at home after leaving Spain in 1939. They campaigned for racial justice, opposed U.S. interventions in Latin America, and so forth.

It seems rather heroic, doesn’t it? Clearly, these folks were on the right side of history. So, why is the event invisible in the national memory of the United States?

The Cold War bears some blame. The idea of Americans being inclined to socialism, and then behaving heroically on top of that, didn’t fit the government narrative of the Cold War in the United States.

Also, I think the heroism of the Lincoln Brigade contrasts with the puny response of the American government to the crisis in Spain. Franco and the fascists won the war by 1939. This helped embolden fascists to the idea that their society was superior to that of (in their eyes) wimpy, flabby democracies like Britain, France, and America.

So, the great crime of the Lincoln Brigade, I suppose, was being anti-fascist when the American government wasn’t yet anti-fascist. That, along with the leftist tendencies of its members, made its activities unpalatable to “official” American memory. But it’s all part of the grand story that includes the bombing of Guernica.

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