When von Richthofen ordered, and had carried out, the bombing of Guernica, he knew what he wanted from the bombing. It wasn’t to terrorise his opponents, the Republicans, or the people of Basque, or even just the people of Guernica. What he wanted to do was to block the roads through the town so that when the Nationalist Army attacked, soon after the bombing raid, the 23 Basque battalions, whose only escape route was through Guernica and over its bridge, would be destroyed. Did he get what he wanted?

The world wrongly came to believe that his aim was to inflict mind numbing terror on his opponents. Why did the world think that?

Tag words: Antony Beevor; Wolfram von Richthofen; Basque; Guernica; Condor Legion; Spanish Civil War; Eric Blair; George Orwell; Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty Four; Homage to Catalonia; Victor Gollancz; Graham Greene; The Quiet American; José Antonio Aguirre;