This article was translated by John R. Bopp
An article published on the History Reloaded blog hosted by Swiss newspaper Basler Zeitung struck us as extremely interesting. Penned by historian Josef Lang, it analyses the treatment some Swiss newspapers gave to the news of the destruction of Guernica in the days following the bombing.
It’s amazing how the media can twist the truth into something that is entirely the opposite of fact. Two newspapers analysed by the historian, the Catholic-conservative Fatherland, published in Lucerne, and the Zurich daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung did everything they could in the days following the attack to make their readers believe that Hitler’s Germany and the Francoist insurgents had had nothing to do with the destruction of the Basque city, and that it had in fact been burned by Republican forces.
The attitude of these Swiss papers was hardly an exception. A large part of the European press refused to believe that “agents of order” like the Francoist insurgents and their Nazi allies were capable of committing such a barbaric act as was committed at Guernica.
It’s especially amusing to see the lengths the Catholic paper is willing to go to deal with the “problem” of the fact that the Basque population was fervently Catholic, meaning “Asturian dynamiters” who were Socialist-Communist-anarchists, had to be the cause of the destruction…anything to avoid accepting that the guilty parties were really guilty.
This is yet another example of the reasons that lead us to disbelieve the media just because it was they who reported on it. Media are there to serve their owners’ interests, which do not always align with the Truth.
Basler Zeitung – 18/4/2017 – Suiza
«Die Basken haben Guernica selber angezündet»
Als Guernica am Abend des 26. April 1937 von der deutschen «Legion Condor» zerstört wurde, herrschten im Baskenland klare Wetterverhältnisse. Ebenso klar war die Nachrichtenlage nach der dreistündigen Bombardierung.
(Continue) (Automatic Translation)
Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country
