Massacre of Badajoz - Consequences

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."