Album page with 6 original photographs of the bomb damage inflicted on the Basque town of Guernica by the German Legión Cóndor during the Spanish Civil War.

5 photos 8.5x5.5, 1 photo 6.5x9.

137. The photographs are from the album of Gunther Kasche of the the Motorized Radiotransmissions Company of the Legión Cóndor. Six of the photos show the ruins of the town, while the seventh shows Kasche with a group of comrades amid the destruction wrought by their own military unit. The Legion, raised from serving members of the Luftwaffe was Hitler's most direct contribution to the Spanish Civil War, providing Franco with an up to date airforce which carried out bombing raids on towns and cities throughout loyalist Spain. The most notorious of theses raids was carried out on the Basque town of Guernica, the traditional capital of the region. Kasche arrived in Spain in November 1936 and remained until December of the following year. During this time he travelled widely through the Nacional (fascist held) areas of Spain taking photographs, largely of bomb damage, probably as part of his military role. The destruction of Guernica on the 26th April 1937 at the hands of the Nazi aviation has become one of the most powerful symbols of the devastation of war wrought on the civilian population, due to Picasso's great painting shown in the Paris Exhibition of 1937, and is considered to have been an early essay for the carpet bombings carried out during the second world war.