During this time, Hitler formed a pact with Benito Mussolini, the Fascist Dictator of Italy. His march on Rome inspired Hitler’s Munich Putsch in 1933.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/12/31/1231652b-8531-4350-9d5f-98093eb8edbe/bundesarchiv_bild_146-1969-065-24_munchener_abkommen_ankunft_mussolini-wr.jpg)
They also wanted Spain to join the pact but were currently in the middle of a civil war, between Manuel Anzaña’s Republicans and Francisco Franco’s Nationalists, the latter of which piqued Hitler’s interest. He sent multiple bombing raids and armoured troops to Franco to help with the war effort. One of the most famous raids was that of Guernica.
Guernica was an old town in North Spain with, at the time, a population of 7,000 people. At around 4:30 in the afternoon on the 26th of April 1936, a Luftwaffe Dornier Do 17 flew above the quaint town and dropped 50 kg worth of bombs onto the town. For an hour and a half, Italian and German planes flew over and bombed the town, killing between 170 and 300 people. This event was painted by Pablo Picasso in one of his most well-known works, simply titled Guernica. Picasso was in Paris at the time of the German Occupation of France. When a German Officer came into his apartment, he spotted a photograph of Guernica. The officer asked Pablo, “Did you do that?” to which Pablo replied, “No, you did.”
Hitler’s attempts to get Spain into his pocket failed, although the Nationalists won, so he decided to turn his eyes to the east.
By 1938, Japan had colonised Korea, multiple islands in the Pacific, Manchuria, a puppet state of China controlled by the Soviet Union, other parts of China and Taiwan. They had control over most of eastern Asia and started the rape of Nanking, in which 40,000 to 300,000 people were killed and 20,000 to 80,000 peopled raped. Hitler formed an alliance with the Japanese Empire.
