Guernica has the happiest people in the world, regulating their affairs by a body of peasants under an oak, and always conducting themselves wisely.

—Jean Jacques Rousseau, eighteenth century

Your fight in Spain was a lesson to our opponents.

—Adolf Hitler to German

troops returning from Spain,

June 1939

Spain gave me an opportunity to try out my young air force … and for personnel to gather experience.

—Hermann Göring at Nuremberg

War Crimes Trials, March 1946

The first squadron dropped their bombs, I saw them, but by the time I was over the target, the town was obscured by dust and smoke, so we had to drop our bombs as best we could … we couldn’t tell what they were hitting.

—Hans Henning, Freiherr von Beust,

squadron leader over Guernica,

April 26, 1937, as reported

to the authors, 1974

It is impossible to give an adequate picture of the indescribable tragedy.

—José Labauría, mayor of

Guernica, on Radio Bilbao, May 4,

1937

Please induce Franco to issue an energetic and sharp denial that German fliers attacked Guernica.

—Joachim von Ribbentrop,

German ambassador in London,

to Foreign Ministry, Berlin,

May 4, 1937

Guernica was not bombed by my air force … it was destroyed with fire and gasoline by the Basques themselves.

—Press release from Franco

headquarters, May 5, 1937

An international investigation of Guernica is to be rejected under all circumstances.

—Adolf Hitler to Von Ribbentrop,

May 15, 1937

Guernica was … an experimental horror.

—Winston Churchill, in

The Gathering Storm, 1948

World War Two began in Spain.

—Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador

to Spain, in My Mission to

Spain, 1953

Guernica can offer nothing of interest to anyone concerned with its past, nor is there any value in discussing what happened then with anyone here.

—Gervasio Guezuraga, mayor of

Guernica, to authors, 1974