The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#16

Post by wm » 03 Mar 2015, 19:40

No, it means your enemy is not your civilians keeper. You have your duty too - to evacuate them from battle zones, from places with obvious targets like production centers/communication hubs, to provide them with air shelters, warning networks.

Kurt_Steiner wrote:The army was retreating to defend Bilbao, the recent losses of the Republican Air Force made air d efence im0possible and there was no reason to expect that Gernika was to be bombed.

The city was defenceless and, almost, open for the enemy to take it.

Instead of doing that, the Legion Condor just destroyed it.
The Legion destroyed it, but a Spanish official gave the order.
And a mistake is not a war crime. In war mistakes are to be expected.

User avatar
Kurt_Steiner
Member
Posts: 3980
Joined: 14 Feb 2004, 14:52
Location: Barcelona, Catalunya

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#17

Post by Kurt_Steiner » 03 Mar 2015, 19:55

A quite curious mistake, if you ask me.

It's quite strange that the Condor Legion "forgot" to do the usual pre-attack reconnoisance flight. Reconnaissance missions had been ordered as a prerequisite before raids around built-up areas on 6 January 1937. The intent of the order was to minimize civilian deaths and it had been issued by Mola, then Supreme Commander of the Air Force Salamanca.

And, suddenly, there's no reconnoisance at all of Gernika.

It doesn't matter if the order was given by Franco or by Richthofen on his own (hardly possible). The thing is, in attackin a defenceless city, the Condor Legion commited a war crime.

You can make a mistake once. But to bomb mistakenly the same city twice in the same day it's too much.


User avatar
Topspeed
Member
Posts: 4785
Joined: 15 Jun 2004, 16:19
Location: Finland

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#18

Post by Topspeed » 03 Mar 2015, 20:52

Kurt_Steiner wrote:A quite curious mistake, if you ask me.

It's quite strange that the Condor Legion "forgot" to do the usual pre-attack reconnoisance flight. Reconnaissance missions had been ordered as a prerequisite before raids around built-up areas on 6 January 1937. The intent of the order was to minimize civilian deaths and it had been issued by Mola, then Supreme Commander of the Air Force Salamanca.

And, suddenly, there's no reconnoisance at all of Gernika.

It doesn't matter if the order was given by Franco or by Richthofen on his own (hardly possible). The thing is, in attackin a defenceless city, the Condor Legion commited a war crime.

You can make a mistake once. But to bomb mistakenly the same city twice in the same day it's too much.
WM said it is ok when it was civil war to bomb civilians. I recall Galland said there were enemies but used civilians as a human shield.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#19

Post by wm » 03 Mar 2015, 21:01

Kurt_Steiner wrote:You can make a mistake once. But to bomb mistakenly the same city twice in the same day it's too much.
Well, it could be a war crime if they knew the bombing served no military purpose, for example it was an act of vengeance or punishment.

Topspeed wrote:I don't get it..so its okay in a war to kill civilians as much you like is this how it goes ?
Generally it wasn't OK, unless they found themselves on a battlefield - then you didn't have to pay attention to them and their fate. And cities were considered valid battlefields.
Topspeed wrote:Here is a soviet partisan ( a decorated hero ) slaughtered finnish female..is this ok ?
This one is easy. Pillage and everything connected with it was forbidden. The customary punishment was death.

User avatar
Kurt_Steiner
Member
Posts: 3980
Joined: 14 Feb 2004, 14:52
Location: Barcelona, Catalunya

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#20

Post by Kurt_Steiner » 03 Mar 2015, 21:09

wm wrote:
Kurt_Steiner wrote:You can make a mistake once. But to bomb mistakenly the same city twice in the same day it's too much.
Well, it could be a war crime if they knew the bombing served no military purpose, for example it was an act of vengeance or punishment.
They knew it too well.

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#21

Post by Sid Guttridge » 08 Mar 2015, 20:59

Hi Guys,

One has to look at the law as it then stood and the particular operational circumstances.

In the late 1930s the Germans, Italians and Japanese believed they had aerial superiority, whereas the Anglo-French were convinced of their own inferiority. Both sides also believed aerial bombing would be more decisive than turned out to be the case. The Anglo-French therefore made largely self-interested efforts to get more legal restraints placed on aerial bombing, but for similarly self interested reasons the Germans, Italians and Japanese resisted. As a result, I suspect international law was well behind developments in the air and that Guernica was not technically a war crime by the standards of the time.

Secondly, it should be remembered that Guernica was immediately behind an advancing battlefront and in use as a communications hub by the defending Republicans. If memory serves me, the Nationalists and their allies entered Guernica the day after the bombing. Thus the raid was not simply an armed assault on defenceless civilians, but tied in with combat operations.

Had the Republicans declared Guernica an Open City, they would have to have given up all military use of the town, including transit rights for their retreating troops. They neither declared it an Open City, nor desisted from using the town for the transit of their forces.

I therefore don't think, by the standards of the time (which are the only ones either side can be reasonably expected to have adhered to) that Guernica was a war crime.

Cheers,

Sid.

User avatar
wm
Member
Posts: 8753
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 21:11
Location: Poland

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#22

Post by wm » 09 Mar 2015, 22:27

Unfortunately law didn't lagged behind, and it wasn't the Germans fault. The laws were as the great powers wanted them to be.
For example, according to the Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923 - at that time Germany's Air Force didn't even exist):
bombardment is legitimate only when directed exclusively at the following objectives: military forces; military works; military establishments or depots; factories constituting important and well-known centers engaged in the manufacture of arms, ammunition, or distinctively military supplies; lines of communication or transportation used for military purposes.
The bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces is prohibited. In cases where the objectives specified [...] are so situated, that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment.
But the 1923 Rules weren't adopted, and nothing was done to restrain aerial bombing till 1939.
In 1939 Roosevelt's initiative forbidding bombing of towns/cities was initially accepted by Germany and the Allies, but later independently rejected by both sides because it was seen burdensome and harmful to their war efforts.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#23

Post by David Thompson » 18 Mar 2015, 22:28

The posts on Laus Dei Saxell have been split off and given a thread of their own, since the discussion was off-topic here -- DT.

Laus Dei Saxell
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=214538

Jan-Hendrik
Member
Posts: 8695
Joined: 11 Nov 2004, 13:53
Location: Hohnhorst / Deutschland

Re: The bombing of Guernica - a war crime?

#24

Post by Jan-Hendrik » 08 Feb 2016, 17:47

Article by Klaus A.Maier in the issue 1/2007 of the journal Militärgeschichte, edited by the MGFA.

Jan-Hendrik

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”