Guernica

On 28 September 1937, Victoria, as Elsa Palm, arrives at the Paris International Exhibition to secretly rendezvous with her German contact, Werner Schlob. The unabashedly paunchy Schlob is adjutant to Goebbels and had arranged Elsa's foray into the Fatherland the previous spring.

The Propaganda Minister has arranged an engaging VIP itinerary for "his Elsa." She will visit several Condor Legion Airfields and fraternize with the general staff - "there's even a chance you will have an audience with Generalisimo Franco himself!" Schlob squeals.

However, most of Elsa's time in Spain will be spent shadowing "Hitler's Young Knights of the Air." Before taking leave, Schlob concurs that perhaps the journalist could coax one of the fighter pilots to take her up and personally show her his skills.

"Perhaps", the fraulein slyly smiles as Schlob promises to meet up with her in Pamplona and pittles off in search of some kleiner affen.

Though warned by Schlob to steer clear of the "so-called" Pavilion of the Spanish Republic with its "blatant tribute to Stalinism", Elsa enters and is stunned by the powerful depiction of suffering hanging before her…

Guernica.

Inspired by the Condor Legion's bombing of the cultural and religious capital of Northern Spain last April, Pablo Picasso's masterpiece is not a memorial to the action, but rather the holocaustic agony of war itself.

The dying horse, the human-headed bull.

Liberty vainly holding out her lamp of freedom whiles a dead soldier clutches a broken sword.

A wailing mother holding her lifeless child.

All owe their terrifying eloquence to a stark reality, the reality of unbearable pain.

Spain is dying, and like the Condor, Victoria has shamelessly come to claim her scraps.

Victoria Cross