by Preston Paul
Steer regularly went to the front, more often than not accompanying a Frenchman named Jaureghuy, who claimed jokingly to be a correspondent for the Salvation Army paper Blood and Fire, although he was actually a French secret service agent called Robert Monnier who was a military adviser to President Aguirre.36 Steer continued to take far more chances than was prudent. On 26 April, along with Christopher Holme of Reuters, the Belgian Mathieu Corman of the Parisian Ce Soir and Noel Monks of the Daily Express, he spent fifteen minutes in a bomb crater at Arbacegui-Guerricaiz, west of Guernica, being strafed by the machine-guns of six Heinkel 51s. He was in Bilbao later that night in the Hotel Torrontegui having dinner with Corman, Captain Roberts and his daughter, along with Monks and Holme, when a distraught Basque official came in with news that Guernica was burning. They abandoned their table and immediately drove to Guernica, which was still ablaze when they arrived at 11 p.m. Like Monks and Holme, Steer had witnessed his share of horrors in Abyssinia and in Spain, but nothing prepared any of them for the desolation of Guernica. They watched helplessly as weeping Gudaris (Basque soldiers) frantically tried to dig the bodies out from the ruins. Steer stayed in the charred and still smoking ruins until the early hours of the morning of the 27th interviewing survivors – ‘my authority for all that I have written’. He picked up three silver tubes of German incendiary devices and returned to Bilbao, where he slept on his story. The next morning, he spoke with many of the refugees who had reached the capital, before driving the fifteen miles back to Guernica to view the damage in daylight.37
Holme’s reports appeared on 27 April in both the Glasgow Herald and the Manchester Guardian.38 Steer’s despatch was much more complete, which reflected his second visit to Guernica. His lengthy article, published on 28 April in The Times and the New York Times, subdued and unsensational in tone, was, in the opinion of Dr Southworth, probably the most important report filed by a newsman during the Civil War. More than any other commentator at the time, Steer managed to incorporate into his despatch a vivid sense not only of the scale of the atrocity, but of the extent to which it was an example of a new kind of warfare:
THE TRAGEDY OF GUERNICA
TOWN DESTROYED IN AIR ATTACK
EYE-WITNESS’S ACCOUNT
From our Special Correspondent. BILBAO, April 27
Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000 lbs. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields.
The whole town of Guernica was soon in flames except the historic Casa de Juntas with its rich archives of the Basque race, where the ancient Basque Parliament used to sit. The famous oak of Guernica, the dried old stump of 600 years and the young new shoots of this century, was also untouched. Here the kings of Spain used to take the oath to respect the democratic rights (fueros) of Vizcaya and in return received a promise of allegiance as suzerains with the democratic title of Señor, not Rey [de] Vizcaya. The noble parish church of Santa María was also undamaged except for the beautiful chapter house, which was struck by an incendiary bomb.
At 2 a.m. today when I visited the town the whole of it was a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflection of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains from 10 miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impenetrable debris. Many of the civilian survivors took the long trek from Guernica to Bilbao in antique solid-wheeled Basque farmcarts drawn by oxen. Carts piled high with such household possessions as could be saved from the conflagration clogged the roads all night. Other survivors were evacuated in Government lorries, but many were forced to remain round the burning town lying on mattresses or looking for lost relatives and children, while units of the fire brigades and the Basque motorized police under the personal direction of the Minister of the Interior, Senor Monzón, and his wife continued rescue work till dawn.
Church Bell Alarm
In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective. A factory producing war material lay outside the town and was untouched. So were two barracks some distance from the town. The town lay far behind the lines. The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race. Every fact bears out this appreciation, beginning with the day when the deed was done. Monday was the customary market day in Guernica for the country round. At 4.30 p.m., when the market was full and peasants were still coming in, the church bell rang the alarm for approaching airplanes, and the population sought refuge in cellars and in the dugouts prepared following the bombing of Durango on March 31st, which opened General Mola’s offensive in the north. The people are said to have shown a good spirit.
A Catholic priest took charge and perfect order was maintained. Five minutes later a single German bomber appeared, circled over the town at a low altitude, and then dropped six heavy bombs, apparently aiming for the station. The bombs with a shower of grenades fell on a former institute and on houses and streets surrounding it. The airplane then went away. In another five minutes came a second bomber, which threw the same number of bombs into the middle of the town. About a quarter of an hour later three Junkers arrived to continue the work of demolition, and thenceforward the bombing grew in intensity and was continuous, ceasing only with the approach of dusk at 7:45. The whole town of 7000 inhabitants, plus 3000 refugees, was slowly and systematically pounded to pieces. Over a radius of five miles round a detail of the raiders’ technique was to bomb separate caserios, or farmhouses. In the night these burned like little candles in the hills. All the villages around were bombed with the same intensity as the town itself, and at Múgica, a little group of houses at the head of the Guernica inlet, the population was machine-gunned for fifteen minutes.
It is impossible to state yet the number of victims. In the Bilbao Press this morning they were reported as ‘fortunately small’, but it is feared that this was an understatement in order not to alarm the large refugee population of Bilbao. In the hospital of Josefinas, which was one of the first places bombed, all the forty-two wounded militiamen it sheltered were killed outright. In a street leading downhill from the Casa de Juntas I saw a place where fifty people, nearly all women and children, are said to have been trapped in an air raid refuge under a mass of burning wreckage. Many were killed in the fields, and altogether the deaths may run into hundreds. An elderly priest named Arronategui was killed by a bomb while rescuing children from a burning house.
The tactics of the bombers, which may be of interest to students of the new military science, were as follows: First, small parties of airplanes threw heavy bombs and hand grenades all over the town, choosing area after area in orderly fashion. Next came fighting machines which swooped low to machine-gun those who ran in panic from dugouts, some of which had already been penetrated by 1000 lb. bombs, which make a hole 25 ft. deep. Many of these people were killed as they ran. A large herd of sheep being brought in to the market was also wiped out. The object of this move was apparently to drive the population underground again, for next as many as 12 bombers appeared at a time dropping heavy and incendiary bombs upon the ruins. The rhythm of this bombing of an open town was, therefore, a logical one: first, hand grenades and heavy bombs to stampede the population, then machine-gunning to drive them below, next heavy and incendiary bombs to wreck the houses and burn them on top o
f their victims.
The only counter-measures the Basques could employ, for they do not possess sufficient airplanes to face the insurgent fleet, were those provided by the heroism of the Basque clergy. These blessed and prayed for the kneeling crowds – Socialists, Anarchists, and Communists, as well as the declared faithful – in the crumbling dugouts. When I entered Guernica after midnight houses were crashing on either side, and it was utterly impossible even for firemen to enter the centre of the town. The hospitals of Josefinas and Convento de Santa Clara were glowing heaps of embers, all the churches except that of Santa Maria were destroyed, and the few houses which still stood were doomed. When I revisited Guernica this afternoon most of the town was still burning and new fires had broken out. About 30 dead were laid out in a ruined hospital.
The effect here of the bombardment of Guernica, the Basques’ holy city, has been profound, and has led President Aguirre to issue the following statement in this morning’s Basque Press: ‘The German airmen in the service of the Spanish rebels have bombarded Guernica, burning the historic town which is held in such veneration by all Basques. They have sought to wound us in the most sensitive of our patriotic sentiments, once more making it entirely clear what Euzkadi may expect of those who do not hesitate to destroy us down to the very sanctuary which records the centuries of our liberty and our democracy. Before this outrage all we Basques must react with violence, swearing from the bottom of our hearts to defend the principles of our people with unheard of stubbornness and heroism if the case requires it. We cannot hide the gravity of the moment; but victory can never be won by the invader if, raising our spirits to heights of strength and determination, we steel ourselves to his defeat. The enemy has advanced in many parts elsewhere to be driven out of them afterwards. I do not hesitate to affirm that here the same thing will happen. May today’s outrage be one spur more to do it with all speed.’
Steer’s view that this was a new kind of warfare ensured that his despatch would have a more disturbing impact than those of his colleagues. The New York Times editorial on the following day condemned ‘wholesale arson and mass murder, committed by Rebel airplanes of German type’. On 6 May, Senator William Borah of Idaho made an eloquent denunciation of the bombing in language prophetic of Picasso’s painting:
Here Fascism presents to the world its masterpiece. It has hung upon the wall of civilization a painting that will never come down – never fade out of the memories of men. So long as men and women may be interested in searching out from the pages of history outstanding acts of cruelty and instances of needless destruction of human life they will linger longest and with the greatest horror over the savage story of the fascist war in Spain.
A few days later, Bishop Francis J. McConnell, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, published an ‘Appeal to the Conscience of the World’ signed by several hundred prominent Americans, including senators and congressmen, professors and writers, union leaders and non-Catholic religious readers. It specifically cited Steer as a witness. On 10 May, Congressman Jerry O’Connell of Montana quoted Steer in the House of Representatives as proof of German participation in the Spanish Civil War.39
More important than these echoes of Steer’s report was perhaps the fact that it was reprinted in full on 29 April in the French Communist daily, L’Humanité, where it was read by Pablo Picasso.40 At the time, he was working on a commission by the Spanish Republican Government to provide a mural for the great Paris Exhibition being planned for the summer of 1937. Prior to the news of the destruction of Guernica, his series of preliminary sketches had concerned the relationship between the artist and his model in the studio. On 1 May 1937, he abandoned this project, deeply affected by the reports of the bombing, and he began work on what would become his most famous painting.41
Despite, or rather because of, the overwhelming verisimilitude of Steer’s report, the Nationalists immediately denied that Guernica had happened. The head of the Francoist foreign press bureau, Luis Bolín, spread the view that Guernica had been dynamited by Basque saboteurs. He was already beginning to experience some unpleasant press as a result of the international campaign to free Arthur Koestler, and his Guernica lie would also bring negative consequences. Nevertheless, Bolín’s views were rapidly taken up by a number of English friends of the Francoist cause, Douglas Jerrold, Arnold Lunn and Robert Sencourt. The most consistent feature of their writing was the denigration of George Steer’s personal and professional integrity.42
The Times cabled George Steer in Bilbao: VIEW OTHER SIDES DISMISSAL YOUR GUERNICA STORY FURTHER JUDICIOUS STATEMENT DESIRABLE. Steer’s reply, sent on 28 April, was published the next day:
The denial by Salamanca of all knowledge of the destruction of Gernika has created no astonishment here, since the similar but less terrible bombing of Durango was denied by them in spite of the presence of British eye-witnesses. I have spoken with hundreds of homeless and distressed people, who all give precisely the same description of the events. I have seen and measured the enormous bomb-holes at Gernika, which, since I passed through the town the day before, I can testify were not there then. Unexploded German aluminium incendiary bombs were found in Gernika marked ‘Rheindorf factory, 1936’. The types of German aeroplane used were Junkers 52 (heavy bombers), Heinkel 111 (medium fast bomber), and Heinkel 51 (chasers). I was myself machine-gunned by six chasers in a large bomb-hole at Arbacegui-Gerrikaiz, when they were returning from Gernika. According to a statement made by the German pilots captured near Ochandiano early in April at the beginning of the insurgent offensive, they are manned entirely by German pilots, while nearly all the crew are German, and the machines left Germany in February. It is maintained here that the entire insurgent air force used in this offensive against the Basques is German, except for seven Italian Fiat fighters and three Savoia 81 machines. That they bombed and destroyed Gernika is the considered judgement of your correspondent and what is more the certain knowledge if that is possible of every wretched Basque civilian who was forced to suffer it.
Fearing that The Times might not publish it, Steer copied his original telegram to Philip Noel-Baker, urging him to use it in the House of Commons and get the information to Lloyd George and Anthony Eden.43 He refuted Francoist denials again in The Times on 6 May and, on 15 May, was able to report the shooting down near Bilbao of a German pilot whose log-book showed that he had taken part in the attack on Guernica.
Accusations that Steer had lied about Guernica continued to be made until the 1970s. In the early days, material that was found by the occupying forces in the telegraph office in Bilbao included The Times’ cable to Steer requesting more information. It was given by Bolín to the American Catholic propagandist for Franco, Father Joseph Thorning. When he published it in 1938, Thorning claimed that it proved that The Times suspected the accuracy of his report. The cable was among large quantities of documents seized by the rebels in Bilbao and taken to Salamanca for sifting for information to be used in the repression. The British partisan of Franco, Major Francis Yeats-Brown, went to Salamanca, where the Francoists showed him a correspondence between ‘an English MP’ (Noel-Baker) and ‘a journalist in Bilbao who excelled himself in describing the Guernica affair’ (Steer). Without any sense of the irony of his own position as a propagandist for Franco, he wrote delightedly that the cables showed conclusively that ‘both were very much mixed up in Basque affairs, too much so in fact’.44
Although the publication of the despatch had probably led to the Nazi expulsion of Norman Ebbutt, the Times man in Berlin, the paper continued to accept the veracity of Steer’s report. The Times had published Steer’s despatch in the period of the most avid appeasement demonstrated by the paper’s editor, Geoffrey Dawson. In response to the virulent Anglophobia with which the controlled German press had reacted, Dawson wrote to The Times’ acting correspondent in Berlin, H. G. Daniels:
I did my utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their susceptibilities. I can really think of
nothing that has been printed now for many months past which they could possibly take exception to as unfair comment. No doubt they were annoyed by Steer’s first story of the bombing of Guernica, but its essential accuracy has never been disputed, and there has not been any attempt here to rub it in or harp upon it.
It was to no avail. As Daniels informed him, Nazi propagandists had noticed that Times spelt backwards is Semit, which was broadcast as proof that the newspaper for which Steer wrote was a Jewish-Marxist operation.45 George Steer’s name was placed on the Gestapo’s Special Wanted List of 2,820 persons who were to be detained after the Germans occupied Britain in 1940.46 Steer received threats from abroad that, if he was caught alive by the Francoists, he would be shot immediately. He continued to go to the front, carrying now a machine pistol which he did not know how to use.47 Holme and Monks were also denounced by General Queipo de Llano in his infamous radio broadcasts.48
Steer stayed in what was left of Euskadi through the next six weeks of relentless bombing, going to where the fighting was thickest with Monnier and reporting almost daily on the dogged defence against the Francoist advance on Bilbao despite the lack of air cover. Indeed, aware that rebel air superiority was the key issue to the defence of the city, he bombarded Noel-Baker with requests to use his influence to get the French to permit Republican aircraft to fly over their territory. Writing from Aguirre’s office, the Presidencia, he wrote:
