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From 4.40 to 7.45 in the late afternoon of Monday 26 April 1937, the small Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by sustained bombing attacks by Adolf Hitler<\/a>\u2019s Condor Legion and Mussolini\u2019s Aviazione Legionaria. The operation was supervised by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, the Condor Legion\u2019s chief of staff, a brilliant and ruthless Prussian aristocrat with a doctorate in engineering.<\/p>\n A cousin of the First World War fighter ace \u2018the Red Baron\u2019 (Manfred von Richthofen), Wolfram had planned the entire operation as an experiment in terror \u2013 as he would later mastermind the Blitzkrieg<\/a> in Poland and France. His choice of projectiles aimed to cause the greatest possible number of civilian victims. A combination of explosive bombs and incendiaries rained on the residential sector of the town, which was largely made of wood. And to prevent the fires being put out, the municipal water tanks and the fire-station were the first targets.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Terrified civilians fleeing to the surrounding fields were herded back into Guernica by the machine-gun strafing of German fighter aircraft that circled the town in what Richthofen called \u201cthe ring of fire\u201d.<\/p>\n Monday was market day in Guernica. Between the townspeople, refugees, peasants bringing goods to the market, and train loads of visitors from Bilbao coming to buy food, there were at least 10,000 people crammed into the town that day. They were attacked by 28 German and three Italian bombers together with 10 Heinkel He 51 and 12 Fiat CR32 biplane fighters and possibly six of the first ever Messerschmitt Bf109s. It was an operation on a scale that could hardly have been organised by the Germans behind the backs of the Spanish staff, with whom there was, in any case, constant liaison.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The horror unleashed that day was captured in the eyewitness account of the Basque priest Father Alberto Onaind\u00eda. \u201cThe explosion of the bombs, the fires which were beginning to break out and the harassment of the machine-gunning planes forced us to take cover under trees, under house entrances, dropping to the ground in the field when we saw a plane approaching. There was no anti-aircraft defence, no defence of any kind, we were encircled and corralled by diabolic forces in pursuit of defenceless inhabitants. Through the streets wandered the animals brought to market, donkeys, pigs, chickens. In the midst of that conflagration we saw people who fled screaming, praying, or gesticulating against the attackers\u2026 I had other bombing experiences later in England during the Second World War. But I never felt so unprotected and so much a defenceless victim as on that April 26th of 1937.\u201d<\/p>\n The exact number of victims of the bombing that day will never be known because of the immediate chaos and the fact that forces of General Francisco Franco<\/a> \u2013 one of the leaders of the rebels whose military uprising had triggered the Spanish Civil War the previous summer \u2013 occupied the town three days later.<\/p>\nDiabolic forces<\/h3>\n