Theword Nichteinmischungsausschuss—German for the international
Non-intervention Committee that was set up in 1936 to prevent personnel
and material from reaching the parties involved in the Spanish
Civil War—is written in large graffiti-like letters on one of the walls
in the gallery space. Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German representative
at the committee’s first meeting, would later write in his
memoirs, “It would have been better to call this the Intervention
Committee, for the whole activity of its members consisted in explaining
or concealing the participation of their countries in Spain.”
One of the most dreadful examples of this intervention was German
support for the carpet-bombing of the town of Guernica.