WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Picasso’s painting, “Guernica”
During the afternoon and early evening of Monday, April 26, 1937, the German and Italian air forces destroyed the Spanish town of Guernica in a raid lasting three hours. The war crime was ordered by the Spanish nationalist military leadership and carried out by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria. Designed to kill or maim as many civilians as possible, Operation Rugen was deliberately chosen for a Monday afternoon when the weekly town market would be at its most crowded. Guernica, in the Basque country where revolutionary sentiment among workers was deep, was defenseless from the bombers, which could fly as low as 600 feet.
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