The “Gernika” Case in the Post-War German Investigation and the Evasion of Responsibilities
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Abstract
The Drum Report was an account of the Luftwaffe´s role in the Spanish Civil War. It included a summary of the bombing of Gernika.
Some references to the Report are found in pioneering works by German historians in the 1960s. I have focused on the most important, that of Professor Manfred Merkes, because in many respects it has not been surpassed in subsequent literature.
The thesis of this article is that Nazi aviators avoided telling the truth regarding their responsibility in the destruction of Gernika. At that time the U. S. Air Force, under whose aegis the report was written, did not object to that version because it was presented as an episode in the struggle against communism in the Spanish Civil War. By the 1950s the U. S. Air Force had spearheaded the rapprochement between the United States and the Franco dictatorship in the framework of a common defence against the Soviet Union.
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Gernika, Spanish Civil War
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