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Germany Army Drops Name of Nazi Pilot

January 28, 2005
https://p.dw.com/p/6AxY

Germany stripped a late fighter pilot's name from two military institutions Friday because his squadron participated in the devastating bombing of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. A spokesman said Defense Minister Peter Struck decided to remove

the name of Werner Mölders from the sites after a television news program revealed last year that the pilot had belonged to Nazi Germany's infamous Condor Legion, which served with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco's forces in the raid. Barracks in the northern town of Visselhoevede and the fighter squadron 74 in the southern town of Neuburg an der Donau will now bear new names, which have not yet been chosen. The lower house of parliament voted in 1998 to no longer allow military sites to carry the names of Condor Legion soldiers. The defense ministry spokesman said Struck had spoken with officials from the German air force and a relative of Mölder before making the decision. The pilot, who was not personally

involved in the Guernica raid, died in a crash in 1941 in Poland at the age of 28. The 1937 bombardment, which Pablo Picasso captured in a celebrated painting, killed hundreds of civilians. Franco's forces took the city two days after the atrocity.