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Times Online - Bombing of Guernica: original Times report from 1937
This article by George Steer of The Times brought to the world news of the massacre by German pilots of more than 1,000 civilians in the Basque town. The outrage inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterwork, and Steer has now been honoured for the piece

THE TRAGEDY OF GUERNICA

TOWN DESTROYED IN AIR ATTACK

EYE-WITNESS’S ACCOUNT

From Our Special Correspondent

BILBAO, April 27 1937

Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders.

Right, so, this is interesting if the most you know about the event you learned from looking at a slide of Picasso’s Guernica, but it’s interesting from a journalistic point of view, the way it’s written and structured and the language used and all that. But also, in the The Times They Are A-Changin’ category, the paragraph beginning with:

The tactics of the bombers, which may be of interest to students of the new military science, were as follows:

And isn’t that interesting. The paragraph’s existence, I mean, though the tactics themselves are as well, but uh, yeah.

Update:

Okay, just to drive home the The Times They Are A-Changin’ point, here’s a modern journalist:

Nicholas Rankin, the British author and former journalist for the BBC, who has written a biography of Steer called Telegram from Guernica, will be at the ceremony along with Steer’s son, George Barton Steer.

Mr Rankin told The Times: “Steer told the world the Germans were secretly bombing Spain which caused outrage around the world. It was a great story, like the Iran-Contra scandal.

Right. Reagan and a political scandal, and Hitler and 1,600 massacred peasants. Quelle comparaison.