Bullet that wounded Dr. Georges Henny, delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Madrid

On December 8, 1936, a plane belonging to the French embasy was shot down over Madrid. The famous reporter Louis Delaprée and the head of the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Georges Henny, were on board. Delparée died after being taken to a hospital in Guadalajara. Henny was wonded and managed to leav ethe countryy a few weeks later. 

This tragic episode has been the subject of a historical controversy. Some historians have accused Soviet intelligence of being behind the attack because Henny was going to send a report on the massacres at Paracuellos del Jarama to the Council of the League of Nations. With rebel troops approaching Madrid, between November 7 and December 4, some 2,300 prisoners were removed from jails in Madrid and murdered in Torrejón de Ardoz y Paracuellos, in the outskirts of the capital. Henny had been seen in Torrejón de Ardoz in the company of the chargés d’affaires of Norway and Argentina, Félix Schlayer and Edgardo Pérez Quesada. 

This bullet was removed from Henny’s leg by Manuel Bastos Ansard in the Hotel Palace in Madrid, which had been converted into a military hospital. The size and mass of the projectile are compatible with those used by Soviet fighter planes. 

Henny had witnessed the massacre of Nationalist prisoners. Did this make him a target of the Soviet secret service ? The testimony of Andrés García Lacalle, the first Spanish pilot in the Soviet squadron commanded by Pavel Rychagov, confirms that planes commanded by Nikolay Shmelkov and Georgy Nefiodovitch Zakharov did intervene, although he also said that Zakharov, who would become an important figure in Soviet aviation, would have fired as a reaction to reflections of the sun in his cockpit. 

This explanation is more convincing than the thesis of a Soviet « attack ». In late 1936, one of the objectives of the Soviet Union’s Popular Front policy was to achieve an alliance with France. Moreover, Delaprée had written several articles denouncing the rebels’ aerial attacks on Madrid. From the Swiss perspective, for a delegate of the ICRC, a private organization, to denounce Republican violence to the League, went against its way of working, which was to be extremely prudent in its dealings with major states. Additionally, the ICRC was subject to the policy of the Confederation which, in the second half of the 1930s, was characterized by a withdrawal from international organizations. 

On the other hand, the French plane was probably carrying lists of the prisoners who had been executed and plans of Republican positions to General Dávila, head of the general staff of Franco’s army. As well as his commitment to protecting Nationalist prisoners and refugees, this episode reveals Henny’s collaboration with the diplomats who were engaged in transmitting military intelligence. 

After returning to Geneva, Henny decided to stop working for the ICRC and returned to practising medicine.