Books
Much ado about something
Raymond Carr
Guernica, Guernica Herbert R. SouthWorth (California UP 215) Some events in history acquire a symbolic Significance out of all proportion to what one might call their quantative importance. Probably more column inches (and certainly more books — Mr Southworth's fivehundred-page opus included) have been written on the bombardment of the Basque market town of Guernica on 26 April 1937 than on the destruction of Dresden or Hiroshima.
Why should this be so? It was the first destruction of an open town by aerial bombardment — a portent of things to come at a time when fears of a world war haunted men's minds. 'If a European war comes', wrote Canon Green of Manchester, 'the scenes in Guernica will be repeated in every town in Europe.' The Spanish Civil War was a great emotive experience and remains so for the left, who see in the bombardment itself and the false cover-up story of Franco's GHQ a proof of Fascist ruthlessness and mendacity. Guernica is the Spiritual capital of Basque nationalism and the Basque problem still haunts Spain. In 1970 a Republican, who had been present during the bombardment, as an act of Protest set light to himself in Franco's presence. Finally it was immortalised by Picasso's picture: Proust's thesis that great art creates its own reality. It is now accepted by all historians — except a few irrepressible apologists for the Nationalist version of history like Mr Brian Crazier— that Guernicia was bombed by the German Condor Legion sent to Spain to help Franco's Nationalist army; that it was destroyed by a mixture of high explosive and incendiary bombs in a fire driven through the town by a strong wind. Yet there are still some questions to answer. Why was Guernica bombed? Did the Nationalist Command know—and this is all-important now to Basque nationalists and other opponent of Franco — that it was going to be bombed? Why did Nationalist apologists so long stick to their cover-up story that it was not bombed at all, but burnt down by retreating Basque troops or anarchist incendiaries? Why was Guernica bombed? It was about ten miles behind the advancing Nationalist troops. Was it bombed to destroy the road and bridge over Which the Republican armies might retreat? Hardly. Why, in that case, as Mr Southworth argues, did the bombers load up with incendiaries? This seems to weaken the German apologia that the whole thing was a ghastly mistake due to faulty bomb-sights, mist and dust. (Galland, the German air ace who arrived after the bombing, professed to find his comrades wrapped in embarrassed silence.) I tend to share Mr Southworth's view that it was a deliberate attempt to destroy civilian morale (however nasty, still a legitimate tool of war) and to test out the efficiency of the new Heinkel bombers and the effect of a carpet at incendiary bombs.
The great strength of Mr Southworth's meticulous detective scholarship is his dissection of the creation, on 27 April, of a cover-up story by the Nationalist propaganda machine and its dissemination in the press when The Times correspondent, George Steer, had told the truth. The unravelling of the relations of the Havas press agency with the French Foreign Office is a real contribution to history; it was the report of the Havas reporter Botto that became one of the key documents in the Nationalist version.
Mr Southworth shows with great expertise hqw this version has changed. At first the Franco regime stuck to the cry of 'Lies Lies Lies' sent out on 27 April: the bombing was a fabrication of leftist propaganda; Guernica had been burnt by 'reds'. Once it realised the enormous propaganda potential it had handed over to the Republicans it had no alternative but to stick to its version at all costs — Bolin, possibly the creator of the incendiarist version, was still defending it in 1967. When this could no longer be maintained (the Republican version, because it was the truth, won out) the Nationalists had to invent an escape clause:i the Germans had bombed Guernica on their own initiative without telling the Nationalist Command and Franco was furious when he learnt of the bombardment. Mr Southworth regards this as all my eye.
Yes. It is a preuy unlikely tale. Someone on the Nationalist side must have known something before 27 April. Yet the proof of Nationalist complicity is feeble (the Condor Legion's archives were destroyed) and there is only one telegram (sent on 7 May) which implies that the bombardment was commissioned by the Nationalist Command. As to Franco's personal involvement or pre-knowledge — and hence his subsequent 'indignation' — we may never know the answer. Nor, for instance, shall we ever know whether the 'Havas agency's publication of Botto's report, in spite of his 'coded' warning that it was unreliable, was the result of carelessness or accident. Not all historical problems are soluble, even by Mr Southworth, astonishing and impressive though his erudition is. One thing even he has not spotted is the possibility of Italian participation in the bombardment. The mark of Mr Southworth's work is his rigidadherence.to written texts—sometimes he reads like a classical scholar working on a particularly difficult set of inscriptions— and his refusal to investigate fully other sources. On the critical question of Nationalist complicity Mr George Hills advances important evidence on the strained relations of the Nationalists and the Germans, infuriated at the slowness of the Nationalist advance. General Kindelan, in command of the Nationalist Air Force, told me the same story. Rather than seek to discredit hintas a neo-Francoist, surely Mr Southworth might have investigated Mr Hills's evidnece more seriously. Mr Hills, neo-Francoist or not, is an honourable man who knows, as Mr Southworth does not, some of the Nationalist officers concerned. When he wrote, Mr Hills could not reveal his sources, as Mr Southworth must know. Mr Southworth would regard contact with Francoist officers as moral and intellectual contagion. Some of them are still alive and their stories are evidence, however carefully they must be checked.
There are other living soul-C.-es. Gabrielle Herbert, who brought to the Foreign Office a letter from Franco and her own report on the destruction of the town, is alive and living on Exmoor. Evelyn Shuckburgh is alive and living in Watlington. He might have explained his now much-quoted remark on..a despatch, as a young member of the Foreign Office, that Guernica told us what we had to expect from the Germans.
If living diplomats' youthful marginalia are going to be quoted by historians it is high time we amended the rule which allows Foreign Office papers to be seen by scholars after thirty years. If we don't, the marginalia of young .Foreign Office officials will be pretty non-committal and .historians will have succeeded in suppressing the stark • truth. Imagine the fate of a young diplomat who speaks frankly about a political leader when that diplomat is posted, years latcr, as ambassador to the leader now a head of state, and the ambassador is brought face to face with his youthful comments.
Mr Southworth's scholarly addiction to the printed word is excessive. He makes me out to be a leader of a neo-Francoist school. Part of his evidence is that I once had Ricardo de la Cierva to dinner; this dinner was misreported in the press and he takes the report as gospel. I have also had Federica Montseny in my house and invited her to give a lecture at Oxford. Am I, there fore, a leader of some neo-Anarchist school? Some of my works Were banned in Franco Spain (one article of mine got a whole issue of the TLS confiscated) and my wife and I were distributing home-made anti-Franco propaganda in Spain when Mr Southworth was alive and well in Tangier. I am not a neo-Francoist. I am., as an outraged correspondent of the New York Review of Books observes, an 'unreconstructed Oxford Don'. Such ancient monuments can house liberal sentiments, though to be a liberal nowadays is a dangerous occupation.
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