While the Spaniards stick to the stories that Francisco Franco told, the Germans atone for what happened over 60 years ago.
The official story of what happened in Gernika in 1937 is that it was the Basques the ones that set the town in fire, just because.
The Germans apologized for what the Kondor Legion did a couple of years ago.
Today the went a step forward, they removed the name of one of the pilots from a couple of military installations.
Here is the story from Deutsche Welle:
Germany stripped a late fighter pilot's name from two military institutions Friday because his squadron participated in the devastating bombing of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. A spokesman said Defense Minister Peter Struck decided to remove the name of Werner Mölders from the sites after a television news program revealed last year that the pilot had belonged to Nazi Germany's infamous Condor Legion, which served with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's forces in the raid. Barracks in the northern town of Visselhoevede and the fighter squadron 74 in the southern town of Neuburg an der Donau will now bear new names, which have not yet been chosen. The lower house of parliament voted in 1998 to no longer allow military sites to carry the names of Condor Legion soldiers. The defense ministry spokesman said Struck had spoken with officials from the German air force and a relative of Mölder before making the decision. The pilot, who was not personally involved in the Guernica raid, died in a crash in 1941 in Poland at the age of 28. The 1937 bombardment, which Pablo Picasso captured in a celebrated painting, killed hundreds of civilians. Franco's forces took the city two days after the atrocity.
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Everybody kowns what happened in the foral villa. Even Franco recognized the help of the Luftwafe in the destruction of Guernika (he was quite proud of it).
ReplyDeleteJust make a search in Google for bombardeo+Guernika and you will see that each and every of them talk about the first massive and indiscrimate aerial bombing against a civil target (one of the best definitions of it was said by Bergamin to Picasso, who would later immortalize it in his painting: 'it's like a mad horse that comes into a glasswork').
Some weeks ago the world witnessed the destruction of another city by the hand of the most powerful army in the World. Fallujah and, like it happened with Guernika, nobody says a word about it.
There is many around the world that still side with the pro-Franco version that it was actually the Basques who destroyed Gernika.
ReplyDeleteSad but true.