Consequences
The massacre of Badajoz was of great significance in the development of the war. In late August, as the Basque towns of Irun and Fuenterrabia were being shelled from the sea and bombed from the air, the rebels dropped pamphlets threatening to deal with the population as they had 'dealt with' the people of Badajoz. In consequence, panic-stricken refugees headed for France. The publication in the foreign press of the events meant that Franco ordered that such massacres were to cease, as they would harm the image of the rebels. On the other side, Republican propaganda publicised the massacre enormously and used it to justify atrocities on their side, such as the Paracuellos massacre of November 1936.
Arising out of the events in Badajoz, the German Nazi officer Hans Von Frunk, one of the few high ranking German soldiers present with the Nationalist Army of the South, sent a report to Berlin advising against the deployment of regular German troops in Spain. He wrote that he was, "a soldier used to combat, who has fought in France during the Great War, but he has never seen such brutality and ferocity as that with which the African Expeditionary Force carried out their operations. For this reason he advised against sending German regulars to Spain, because before such savagery, the German soldiers would become demoralised."
Read more about this topic: Massacre Of Badajoz
Famous quotes containing the word consequences:
“There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would ... be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)