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The Real Story Behind Pablo Picasso’s Most Famous Masterpiece

Khalid Elhassan March 7, 2025 13 min

2. Guernica’s Destruction Was a Live Experiment to Test the Effectiveness of Terror Bombing

Guernica - Victory parade for the Condor Legion in Berlin — Victory parade for the Condor Legion in Berlin. Pinterest

Contra fascist propaganda, Wolfram von Richthofen’s diary noted that the attack had been planned with the Spanish fascists, with the aim of disrupting the Republican withdrawal through Guernica. It is quite possible that one of the attack’s goals had been to block the roads leading through the town. However, all else points to the raid having been conducted as a live experiment on the effects of aerial terror bombing. A few years later, many European cities shared Guernica’s fate beneath German bombers, including Warsaw in 1939, Rotterdam and Coventry in 1940, Belgrade in 1941, and Stalingrad in 1942 – the last one a raid so devastating that it claimed the lives of more than 40,000 civilians in a single day. Among those greatly moved by the fate of Guernica was Pablo Picasso. Feverishly working in his Paris apartment, Picasso completed a mural-sized masterpiece on canvas in June, 1937.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.