In November 1936 the people of Madrid received a map from the sky.

Aircraft dropped posters and radio stations announced it at the same time: the northeast quarter of the city would be a "safety zone," bounded on the west by the Castellana. The announcement came from the insurgent forces then besieging the city.

Those who drew the safe area were also deciding that the rest of the city was not safe.

I. A sentence ten years later

On March 14, 1946, in Nuremberg, Hermann Göring told the International Military Tribunal about Spain.

When the civil war broke out, he said, Franco asked Germany for help, above all in the air. Franco's troops were stuck in Africa and the fleet was in his opponents' hands, so the first task was to get the soldiers across. Göring said he urged Hitler to give support under all circumstances: first to stop the spread of communism there, and second "to test my young Luftwaffe at this opportunity in this or that technical respect."

He sent a large part of his transport fleet, a number of experimental fighter units, bombers and anti-aircraft guns, to find out under combat conditions whether the material was equal to the task. So that the personnel would gain experience too, he kept up a continuous flow, sending new people and recalling others.

"Test" was the word Göring chose afterwards, from the dock.

Spaniards in 1936 did not hear it. They only saw more and more aircraft.

II. The planes came first

On August 6, French Foreign Minister Delbos told the American chargé in Paris, Wilson, at a luncheon that France had conclusive proof: five German airplanes, three of them large transports, had been flown to Spanish Morocco and turned over to Franco, "and this could not happen without the approval of the German Government."

Italian Air Corps planes had flown toward Morocco as well, and two of them came down in French Morocco. The French had learned that the flight was led by an Italian air force colonel, and a pay slip found on one airman showed he had drawn his Italian Air Corps pay in advance through July 31.

On August 12 the American consul in Seville, Bay, cabled what had arrived there on August 9: ten new Savoia tri-motor bombers with about twenty Italian pilots; eighteen Junkers tri-motor bombers, mostly new, with about thirty German pilots; six German pursuit planes and six of the latest German anti-aircraft guns. Spanish aviators were being taught to fly them.

The first objectives, he reported, were said to be the Madrid aircraft that kept General Mola's army from deploying onto the plains before the capital, and the Madrid airfield.

The other side was not empty-handed. Two days later the cruiser Quincy relayed word that twelve pursuit planes had flown in from France and landed at a Government airfield, with French pilots, two Italians and one or two Germans, described as a rough crowd of soldiers of fortune. By late October, Government circles in Madrid were counting on material help from Russia.

The sky had become the business of many countries. On the ground, the homes were still Spanish.

III. Bomb first, call it military later

On August 18, San Sebastián was bombed from the air. The next day Ambassador Claude Bowers reported that many civilians had been killed, including children and old men.

He added a colder line: in accordance with a warning already given, to his personal knowledge reprisals would be taken on a number of political prisoners. Count Romanones was among those held.

A bombing did not kill only the people under the bombs. It could turn toward the people in the cells. The same chain would appear again in Madrid.

In October the State Department asked to be given ample advance notice before any bombardment of Mediterranean ports. On October 18, Franco answered through the command in Seville: only military objectives in cities and towns were bombed, and every effort was made to spare the surroundings, though an occasional shell might fall outside the mark; advance notice was impossible because operations had to be prepared in secret and carried out by surprise; foreign property, if distinctly marked, would be absolutely respected.

Only military targets; no warning of when; foreign houses spared.

A month later those three sentences became a map of Madrid.

IV. The northeast quarter

On November 9, Wendelin, third secretary at the American embassy in Madrid, reported that the safety zone proclaimed by the insurgents was bounded on the west by the Castellana, and that the embassy stood on the western side of that line, just outside it.

The announcement also required every embassy and legation to be prominently marked. Large American flags went up on all sides of the embassy grounds and on the roof.

Wendelin saw why. Many diplomatic missions were full of Spaniards who sympathized with the insurgents, and for that reason alone the insurgents would do their best to spare them.

The embassy was not an island. On the afternoon of November 10, Mariano Gómez, president of the Supreme Court, called on the diplomatic corps on his own initiative and saw the Chilean ambassador, the British and French representatives and Wendelin. The Government had wanted to move the Supreme Court to Valencia; he had refused, believing the judges could help the Junta keep order by staying. What worried him was that the crowds might get out of hand if the bombing of civilians went on.

Wendelin shared the fear. Every new bombardment of Madrid, he wrote, with women and children killed and wounded, added fuel to a popular wrath that might seek revenge on political prisoners.

V. Pleading in both directions

The diplomatic corps tried to plead with both sides.

To Franco they would ask an end to air attacks on Madrid and a limit on shelling to fortified positions. To the Madrid authorities they would ask guarantees for the political prisoners and order inside the city.

On November 11 the Mexican ambassador and the British and Argentine chargés called on the military governor of Madrid and offered "the fullest cooperation of the Diplomatic Corps" for the safety of the civilian population. As for asking the insurgents not to bomb civilians, the governor greatly doubted they could or would accept. That idea was dropped.

The next day El Socialista declared in an editorial that the people of Madrid were obliged to reciprocate, by showing that Madrid, in the hour of war, did not forget the respect due the vanquished.

Wendelin also wrote down the other side of it: many prisoners were known to have been executed without trial, despite the Government's efforts and pledges. He hoped the gesture might help prevent a general massacre driven by revenge for the air raids.

VI. The city outside the line

On November 17 Wendelin added a detail. The original insurgent announcement had been qualified: the zone would be spared "unless the Government forces use it as a focus for military operations." So far the insurgents had avoided the embassy district and the zone, although a few bombs and shells, probably misdirected, had fallen inside.

On November 18 the diplomatic corps met and passed an oral resolution, unanimously: each head of mission would draw his government's attention to a Madrid under artillery and air bombardment, a wide zone of the city devastated and heavy loss of civilian life, with a view to moving the League of Nations or another body to act.

Then the representatives offered one observation and reservation after another. Wendelin's verdict was short: a friendly gesture doomed to failure.

The next day the radio said the zone had been extended to the south and west, taking in the American, British, Belgian, Dutch, Danish and other missions. Thousands of refugees from other parts of the city and the suburbs were crossing into it, Wendelin wrote, filling every available house and apartment.

On November 22 he gave its size: about a mile long from north to south and half a mile wide. Inside the embassy were thirty-five American citizens, seven Spanish wives and children of Americans, fourteen guards supplied by the Government, seventy-three Spanish employees and servants with their families, a Canadian and an Italian wife. Many had come from districts under fire; some had lost their homes.

A space a mile long and half a mile wide held people who had fled from all over the city. Outside the line was the rest of Madrid.

VII. What Bowers saw, and what Franco said

On November 20, Bowers wrote a long report from Saint-Jean-de-Luz: the indiscriminate bombing of the center of Madrid and its residential sections, killing many women and children, and the incendiary bombs that set disastrous fires, showed "the utterly ruthless character of the war."

The Telephone Building, the tallest in Madrid, had been deliberately shelled. Bowers understood that Government commanders had for a time used its tower to direct artillery fire, and that war correspondents and Colonel Fuqua had used it for observation since; the insurgents could see people up there through their glasses. If they believed those people were soldiers, he thought, shelling to drive them out was legitimate under the rules of war.

That was how elastic "military objective" could be. A telephone company that kept the lines open for both sides could become a target because officers had once stood in its tower.

On November 21 the French ambassador told Bowers he thought Franco could not take Madrid and was losing prestige, and feared that Franco might at last, in desperation, try to carry out his threat to destroy Madrid utterly.

VIII. The zone Madrid would not accept

On November 25 the Spanish Republic's ambassador in Washington, De los Ríos, came to the State Department. His government had told him that more than a thousand women and children had so far been killed in Madrid by the attackers' bombing, not counting the men.

Then he explained a decision that surprised: his government refused to admit that there was any neutral zone in Madrid that would not be bombed. To admit that one area could not be bombed would be to admit that the rest of the city could.

The insurgents had drawn a line and called the inside safe. The Madrid government would not sign it.

By then Washington had decided to move its nationals and officials from Madrid to Valencia. The acting secretary of state took care to tell the ambassador that politics had nothing to do with it; it was only for American safety.

IX. Epilogue

Ten years later, Göring said in Nuremberg that he had used Spain to test his young air force and rotated men through to gain experience.

For his airmen, Spain may have been an exercise with replacements. For the embassies, it was a flag on the roof. For the people of Madrid outside the line, there was no rotation and no rehearsal.

The map that fell from the sky did not tell them where the bombs would land. It only said where they would not, and it came with an "unless."

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. U.S. diplomatic telegrams: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1936, vol. II, "The Spanish Civil War" (documents 355–841). Read in full for this story: doc. 386 (Wilson, Paris, Aug. 6); 405 (Bay, Seville, Aug. 12); 406 (Quincy relay, received Aug. 14); 427 (Bowers, Aug. 19); 490 (Wendelin, Oct. 29); 641 (Wendelin, Aug. 9); 768 (Bay, Oct. 18, relaying Franco's reply); 791 (Nov. 9, with the editors' note quoting "radio and in posters from airplanes"); 793, 796, 803, 805, 810, 818 (Wendelin, Nov. 10–22); 514 (Bowers, Nov. 20, section III); 817 (Bowers, Nov. 21); 519 (Dunn memorandum, Nov. 25). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1936v02/ch40 2. German testimony after the fact: Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, vol. 9, morning session of March 14, 1946, Göring's testimony (around p. 280 of the English record), read in the Avalon Project transcription. This is a defendant's statement in 1946, not a 1936 order. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/03-14-46.asp 3. Nature of the voices: Delbos, Mariano Gómez, the French ambassador, De los Ríos, El Socialista and Franco's reply are all known here through American diplomats' English records or summaries; French and Spanish originals were not examined. The figure of more than a thousand women and children is the Spanish government's, passed on by its ambassador and not verified by the U.S. side. The zone's boundaries come from U.S. summaries of the insurgent announcements; "a mile long and half a mile wide" is Wendelin's description of the extended zone. 4. Limits: these sources do not establish the nationality of the crews in each November air raid on Madrid, so the story does not attribute those raids to German or Italian airmen; Göring's testimony is used only for how the German side later explained its role. No raid dates, casualty figures (beyond the Spanish government's), weather or residents' thoughts are supplied, and no unverified memoirs or photo captions are used. The executions of prisoners in Madrid are mentioned only as doc. 796 reports them. 5. Rights: U.S. government diplomatic documents and the Nuremberg trial record are public records; the narrative is original with brief quotation. No protected modern narrative is reproduced.