70 Years in Infamy
Talk about things we seem to have forgotten... 70 years ago today, NAZI Germany "practiced" warfare on the Basques.
Doesn't much seem like a lot o' folks have learned anything from that insanity.
Too many moves and a leaky roof damaged it pretty bad, but someday I'll get another.
namaste yo.
Doesn't much seem like a lot o' folks have learned anything from that insanity.
April 26, 1937 was a Monday, a market day. Thousands of people were out on the streets of the Basque town of Guernica when around 4:30 in the afternoon, the bells suddenly began ringing. Air raid alarm! The first airplane appeared on the horizon, a German Heinkel 111 bomber -- in the cockpit was Lieutenant Rudolf von Moreau. When he was over the city center, von Moreau opened his bomb bay doors -- and death rained down on the city.For many years, an inexpensive replica of that anguished reminder hung on my wall. For a long time I thought the name Guernica was Spanish for "War". I guess in a way it is.Waves of bombers and fighter planes followed. They dropped explosives, fragmentation bombs and incendiaries, a total of 31 tons of munitions fell on Guernica that day. For two and a half hours, the bombs rained down on the city from German and Italian warplanes -- "with a brutality that had never been seen before," as the president of the Basque "Autonomous Republic" Jose Antonio de Aguirre said three days later. "They scorched the city and fired machine guns at the women and children who fled in panic, resulting in numerous deaths."
Too many moves and a leaky roof damaged it pretty bad, but someday I'll get another.
namaste yo.
Guess that was just another "shock and awe" to the war mongers. Stupid, stupid people!
ReplyDeleteWow. I had no idea this day had much significance at all. My son and I have always been puzzled by that painting, not in a way we don't get it, but where it came from. Thanks for enlightening. A trip to the Cleve Musee with all might be a good rainy summer Saturday adventure.
ReplyDeletePax,
MM
That's one of the more powerful paintings that Picasso created, or anyone else, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteTerrible, sad day, and - for what!?
I hate to admit this, but I didn't know about that bombing. Unbelievable, what man does to man and continues to do even right this second as I type this comment.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I doubt it will ever change.
I've always been drawn to that Picasso piece myself... sadly it appears we humans don't learn too quickly do we??
ReplyDeleteE
Ah yes, the Separadic Jews. And Basque is still in strife today. However, it's not so much a Jewish issue anymore.
ReplyDeleteP.S. AG saw that Picasso in Madrid many years ago.
Baines, an astute recollection of that day...the birth of the military-industrial complex. You know they say the Germans always were the innovative ones.
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ReplyDeleteChimpletons would dismiss Picasso's work as homo-librul mumbo jumbo, in much the same way that they dismiss the truth as a dirty librul conspiracy and the separation of church and state as persecuting christianity.
ReplyDeleteI was never a fan of Picasso.
ReplyDeleteBut man, I love Guernica. The look on the horse's face is truly scary.