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| HE-111 Condor Legion (Picture I) |
Kimmo Huosionmaa
When we are thinking about surrealism and the artists like Salvador Dalí, we must notice, how those persons can transfer their ideas to the canvas, and, when we are looking the paintings like "Persistence of Memory", we must understand that those kind of paintings are not so innocent, as we might want to believe. There are many forgotten wars and crimes in the world, and one of them is the Spanish civil war. That war ended just before the Second World War began, and maybe one of the original reason for attacking Poland was hidden the actions, what Condor Legion made in that war. The reason, why we do not remember the crimes in that war, is that they remain in shadows of the Second World War.
At the end of the Spanish civil war, German Luftwaffe destroyed four villages in Spain, and there are askings, why those villages were exterminated? They were far away from the combat area, and those bombardments were pure terror. There were used Stuka-dive bombers in those actions, what killed 38 persons in the year 1937, but there were made many more bomb raids in that bloody war.
Sometimes there were claimed, that this bombardment was made for testing the Stuka, but in fact, I think, that they were made for hiding the real massacres, where the German Condor legion exterminated thousands of people. But were there something wrong in Spain? And why people want to be silent about those other bombings? In 1939 Germans used very effective weapons, and maybe the reason for transferring to use Stukas and other effective equipment was to end the civil war really fast because those planes were needed in the attack against Poland in September 1939.
Sometimes I have thought that was the bombardment of the villages in Spain gave influence for that painting. The bombardment of some villages was made by using Heinkel 53 biplanes, and the weapons that were used were filled with Thermite, the metallic pyrotechnic explosive, what causes extremely high temperature and the village was burned in the 3500 degrees Celsius. The results of that bombing were horrifying. Those bombs just caused, that all persons, who were in that village just disappear in the extremely existence of heat. Use of Heinkel 53 covered the use of many times deadlier bombers like Stukas, JU-52, what were modified as the cargo-plane and possible HE-111.
Sometimes the transformation of the JU-52 from bomber to the cargo plane was made for hiding the real equipment of the Condor Legion, what was far more sophisticated and advanced than Franco and Hitler wanted people to know. When we are thinking about the support, what Hitler and Mussolini gave to Franco, we must realize, that this equipment was so dominating, that Franco could not lose.
And in some rumors also German soldiers from the elite fighting squad "Brandenburg" took the part to the ground operations. Maybe they used the suits of Spanish Foreign legion, and we must notice that infamous SS-leader Oskar Dirlewanger served in the Spanish foreign legion under the command of Franco. And if the Germans were served in the ground troops, was their commander Franco or some German officer. I don't know sure, what kind of support for ground operations Germans gave, but there are stories that Germans used chemical weapons and in the worst stories Hitler and Mussolini forced Franco to continue actions against Republicans.
The houses remained because the bombs just burned the oxygen from the air, and that's why the trees remained, but they were turned to carbon. Those villages were the first target for mass bombing in history when Condor Legion bombed it And of course, the metal things like watches were curved, and maybe Dalí wanted to use his painting as the memory refreshment. In those cases, the paintings are using to make the memory stronger.
Sources:
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/03/inenglish/1525347336_693939.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_Legion
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/apr/05/guernica-anniversary-basque-country-picasso-painting-peace
Picture I
https://www.worldwarphotos.info/wp-content/gallery/germany/aircrafts/heinkel_he111/He111_Pedro_1_of_the_Legion_Condor.jpg
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