Bombing of Guernica - Media Reporting

Media Reporting

The first English-language media reports of the destruction in Guernica appeared two days later. George Steer, a reporter for The Times, who was covering the Spanish Civil War from inside the country, authored the first full account of events. Steer's reporting set the tone for much of the subsequent reportage. Steer pointed out the clear German complicity in the action. The evidence of three small bomb cases stamped with the German Imperial Eagle made clear that the official German position of neutrality in the Civil War and the signing of a Non-Intervention Pact was a sham. Steer's report was syndicated to the New York Times and then worldwide, generating widespread shock, outrage, and fear. There was coverage in other national and international editions also:

• The Times ran the story every day for over a week after the attack.
• The New York Post ran a cartoon showing Hitler brandishing a bloody sword labelled "air raids" as he towered over heaps of civilian dead littering "the Holy City of Guernica".
• The US Congressional Record referred to poison gas having been dropped on Guernica. This did not actually occur.
• During debates in the British Parliament Guernica was also inaccurately described as an "open city" which contained no military targets.

Overall, the impression generated was one which fed the widely held public fear of air attack which had been building throughout the 1930s, a fear which accurately anticipated that in the next war the aerial forces of warring nations would be able to wipe whole cities off the map.