The Spanish Civil War broke out on July 17, 1936. On October 30, 1936, the first day of that war, 100 schoolchildren were killed playing in the sunlit streets of Getafe, near Madrid. Three of the Nazi German dive bombers supporting Franco's forces flew over the small village. They dropped their bombs on the street where the children were playing. The bombs exploded, killing about 70 school children of both sexes. A British journalist saw Spanish parents searching for the bodies of their children. The group of bodies was put into a small delivery truck owned by a local grocery store. The scene was so horrific. The pictures also showed the destroyed bodies of small victims of fascism and the bodies of children lying dead in the schools they attended.
In the middle of the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi Germans dropped bombs on four small villages in the middle of the province of Castellón in the Valencia region in May 1938. A few days later, Nazi German soldiers jumped into a car to survey the damage caused by the air raid. They verified from the swept wreckage the center of the crater caused by the impact of the bombs, while recording the impact of the bombing. The Nazi German group then returned to the air base near Rathenia, Tarragona, where they wrote down and reported the details of their mission. The four villagers of Benazar, Arbocacel, Ares del Maestre and Villardecanes, the center of the village in May 1938, were hit by three new dive bombing stalks, killing about 38 relatives and neighbors, records suggested. Nazi Germany's Condor Legion raided four Spanish villages as a testing ground for future dive bombings in preparation for World War II.
In its Thursday, November 12, 1936 issue, the DAILY WORKERS newspaper published the casualties of school children of the Spanish Civil War. Until then they had been playing peacefully. However, the attack of the fascist regime brought death threats to the children as well. Twelve days earlier, on October 30, Nazi German dive bombers had killed about 70 Spanish children who were playing in the same way. Until then, we refrained from publishing photos showing the massacre of men and women by the barbaric armed forces of Franco's regime during the Spanish Civil War. Mere fear alone, then, will not help strengthen our resolve to fight fascism and defend democracy.
But the newspaper's photos of the indiscriminate massacre of children are more than just horror. Fascism suggested the most horrific toll of the civil war that is hurting the people of Spain. They in the pictures only hinted at the reality. Modern warfare, with fighter planes and poison gas, has reaped mass deaths on a peaceful population. The corpses of dainty doll-like girls and horrible brutal boys were strewn about. There is an abomination in war, and it has engulfed children in the horrors of war. Shocking, of course, but shocking to realize that dead children were the price of brutal, militaristic attacks on peaceful people. The same price of death must be paid by the butchers of death themselves until they are destroyed. Make up your mind by looking at the war photos, and blow by blow, democracy will be your reply to us until we win the only path to peace.
