Hitler’s Guernica bombing served as target practice for impending war at Franco’s request

Evidence

On April 27, 1937, Nazi warplanes flew from Germany to the town of Guernica in the Basque region of Northern Spain and dropped bombs on the unsuspecting town for several hours. The town burned for 3 days, and most of the surrounding area was destroyed. More than 1,600 innocent civilians, one third of the local population, were killed. The obliteration of the Spanish town, little more than target practice for Hitler’s incipient war machine, had been requested by a Spaniard, General Francisco Franco, the ultimately successful leader of a fascist coup to overthrow the democratically elected Spanish government. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 90

Categorization

• SHARE: For the reader who works on the Spanish Civil War or military history — the detail that Guernica was expressly requested by Franco as target practice for Hitler’s war machine is a sharp, specific fact.
• XREF: connects to: Franco requested a Nazi bombing that killed one third of Guernica’s population — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 90