Italy and Its Eastern Border 9781138791749, 9781315762586, 9781317648734, 1317648730

Table of contents :
Introduction1. The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma2. From Irredentism to Nationalism3. World War I4. From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo: 1918-19215. Frontier Fascism6. The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia: 1941-19437. The Eclipse of the Italian State: From September 8, 1943 to the Eve of the Yugoslav Occupation of Venezia Giulia8. From the "Race for Trieste" to the London Memorandum9. From the London Memorandum to the End of the Long Post-War Era10. Conclusion

Citation preview

Italy and Its Eastern Border, 1866–2016

This is the first scholarly work in Modern European History which elucidates consistently how border issues affect the history of nations and states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book rethinks the Italian history of the last 150 years from the perspective of its eastern periphery and of the profound impact that events on the border had on the core of the country. Marina Cattaruzza is Emeritus Professor at the University of Bern (Switzerland), where she taught General European History until 2014.

Routledge Studies in Modern European History For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

27 Antifascism after Hitler East German Youth and Socialist Memory, 1949–1989 Catherine Plum 28 Fascism and Ideology Italy, Britain, and Norway Salvatore Garau 29 Hitler’s Brudervolk The vigneshDutch and the Colonization of Occupied Eastern Europe, 1939–1945 Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel 30 Alan S. Milward and Contemporary European History Collected Academic Reviews Edited by Fernando Guirao and Frances M.B. Lynch 31 Ireland’s Great Famine and Popular Politics Edited by Enda Delaney and Breandán Mac Suibhne 32 Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present Edited by Ofelia Ferrán and Lisa Hilbink 33 The Problem of Democracy in Postwar Europe Political Actors and the Formation of the Postwar Model of Democracy in France, West Germany and Italy Pepijn Corduwener 34 Meanings and Values of Water in Russian Culture Edited by Jane Costlow and Arja Rosenholm 35 Italy and Its Eastern Border, 1866–2016 Marina Cattaruzza

Italy and Its Eastern Border, 1866–2016

Marina Cattaruzza

Translated by Daniela Gobetti

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis First published as L’Italia e il confine orientale Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007 Translated from the Italian by Daniela Gobetti. The right of Marina Cattaruzza to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cattaruzza, Marina, 1950– author. Title: Italy and its eastern border, 1866–2016 / by Marina Cattaruzza ; translated from the Italian by Daniela Gobetti. Other titles: L’Italia e il confine orientale Bologna. English Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in modern European history ; 35 | “First published as L’Italia e il confine orientale Bologna, Il Mulino, 2007”—Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016030687 (print) | LCCN 2016038216 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138791749 (hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781315762586 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315762586 Subjects: LCSH: Italy—Foreign relations—Yugoslavia. | Yugoslavia— Foreign relations—Italy. | Territory, National—Italy—History—20th century. | Nationalism—Italy—History. | Borderlands—Italy—History. | Borderlands—Yugoslavia—History. | Italy—History—18701914. | Italy—History—1914–1945. | Italy—History—1945– Classification: LCC DG499.Y8 C3813 2017 (print) | LCC DG499.Y8 (ebook) | DDC 320.1/20945—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030687 ISBN: 978-1-138-79174-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76258-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Maps Acknowledgments to the Original Italian Edition Acknowledgments to the English Edition

vii ix xi

Introduction

1

  1 The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma

7

  2 From Irredentism to Nationalism

30

  3 World War I

50

  4 From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo: 1918–21

83

  5 Frontier Fascism

123

  6 The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia: 1941–43

154

  7 The Eclipse of the Italian State: From September 8, 1943 to the Eve of the Yugoslav Occupation of Venezia Giulia

180

  8 From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum

214

  9 The Long Post-War Era and Its End

250

10 Conclusion

281

Names Index

293

Maps

1.1  Austrian Littoral: internal administrative divisions 3.1  Treaty of London 1915 4.1  North Adriatic 1920–24 6.1  North Adriatic 1941–43 7.1  North Adriatic 1943–45 8.1  North Adriatic 1945–47 8.2  Peace Treaty, 10 February 1947 8.3  North Adriatic 1947–54

8 63 109 156 184 222 230 239

Acknowledgments to the Original Italian Edition

In the course of my research I have relied on the courtesy and competence of the staff of the Library of Modern and Contemporary History in Rome, of the Library of the Senate (Rome), and of the Municipal Library in Trieste. I could also count on the precious support of many colleagues, friends, collaborators, experts, and people who generously provided their expertise, suggestions, texts, materials, sources and, last but not least, their time. The Guido Carli Free International University for Social Studies (Luiss), where I spent a month as a visiting fellow, provided me with the possibility of carrying out research in libraries in Rome. I was able to discuss aspects of my work with Gino Bandelli, Cristina Benussi, Giorgio Conetti, and Paolo Segatti. I have had an extremely fruitful exchange of ideas on “frontier Fascism” with Emilio Gentile. I wish to thank Raoul Pupo, Giulio Mellinato, Giovanni Orsina, Paolo Sardos Albertini, and Roberto Spazzali for giving me important bibliographical information and access to archival sources, and for allowing me to read their manuscripts before publication. Claudio Boniccioli, Ludovico Sonego, and Gianfranco Battisti were expert interlocutors in the issues related to port traffic. Giulio Cervani and Giorgio Tombesi gave me access to the collection of the parliamentary minutes regarding the Treaty of Osimo, held in the private archive of Deputy Tombesi. Sergio Zilli helped me in transcribing correctly geographic names in the border region. Sacha Zala offered professional assistance in the choice and selection of Italian diplomatic documents. The idea of writing a book on the eastern border of Italy first came from Ernesto Galli della Loggia, who also encouraged me throughout to bring this work to completion. The responsibility for the positions expressed in the book, and for the reconstruction of the events is obviously mine.

Acknowledgments to the English Edition

The suggestion by Routledge-Francis and Taylor to publish “L’Italia e il confine orientale” in English came first from Eve Setch, Routledge publisher for Modern history, in the course of a conversation at the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Amsterdam. Eve supported me competently and reliably during the different stages of the publishing processes, helping me to overcome moments of discouragement and some administrative impasses. It is no exaggeration to say that without her support this book would never have appeared on the Anglo-Saxon market in its present version. Moreover, I am deeply indebted to the three anonymous referees, who enthusiastically advocated the English translation and expressed their readiness to endorse the volume for an Anglo-Saxon readership. During the translation and editing process I could rely for help and advice on Max Novick and Jennifer Morrow. Now that I have crossed the finishing line I am glad to thank them for accompanying me in this enterprise. During the updating of the text I was provided with valuable information by Mario Sommariva, general Secretary of the port-authority in Trieste and his collaborator Andrea Ghersinich. Paolo Radivo offered me insight in the databank of “L’Arena di Pola,” which was extremely useful for the drafting of the new politics of memory on Italy’s eastern border. The cartographic material was generously made available by Franco Cecotti. The Istituto per la storia del movimento di liberazione del Friuli-Venezia Giulia allowed me to reproduce the maps and Michele Pupo processed them for the printed version. The translation expenses were partly founded by the following institutions and associations: the University of Berne, the Società dalmata di ­Storia patria and the Associazione Nazionale Venezia-Giulia Dalmazia. All of them are here heartily thanked. It is finally a great pleasure for me to thank my translator, Daniela Gobetti, who invested in this project an enormous amount of competence, dedication, enthusiasm, and sensitivity. Daniela was indefatigable in discussing with me in depth the different formulations, unable to rest until we had found the most satisfactory one. Her professional ethos and her skills were remarkable; it was a real privilege and good fortune to have “Italy’s Eastern Border” translated by her.

Introduction

“The Diaspora in Kilosa [Tanzania] is dwindling. Every evening the three Indians sit together on ragged armchairs covered in cheap fabric, in an overheated side room of ‘L’Inn Zodiaque.’ They eat chicken with chipsi and stare at the blurred pictures of a war film set in the Persian Gulf. Theirs is the softness of those who have given up leaving a trace of themselves.” —Ilija Trojanow, Nomade auf vier Kontinenten. Auf den Spuren von Sir Richard Francis Burton (Munich 2008)

The border is the organ of the state on its periphery. As such, it marks the boundary of the territory over which a group of people, incorporated as a body politic, exercises sovereignty. Therefore, a border is a political “fact,” located on a specific part of the earth’s surface. This “fact” is tightly linked with other geographic, physical, and human “facts” that man has arranged so as to create a characteristic landscape. This is the definition of “border” offered by the geographer Giorgio Valussi in the introductory pages of his book, Il Confine Nordorientale d’Italia [Italy’s Northeastern Frontier],1 published in Trieste in the 1970s. From the point of view of the relationship with neighboring states, we should think of the border as the line “where political pressure between two states finds a point of equilibrium; this line, though, becomes subject to tensions and evolutionary trends in step with changes in power relations and in the political doctrines that govern the definition of frontiers.”2 Political geography’s notion of frontier thus conjures up the image of a “sovereign political community,” combined with considerations proper to the idea of “power relations.” In the nineteenth century, the widespread adoption of the nationality principle as the fundamental criterion of legitimation of the state led to the replacement of the “natural,” that is, geographic frontier, typical of regional states, with the idea of “national” frontier. Valussi goes on to say that “the new doctrine of national frontier introduced an element of great uncertainty and a permanent source of conflict into political geography.”3 It has indeed proven highly problematic to establish the geographic limits of the “imagined

2 Introduction community”4 that legitimates “national” sovereignty. In an important essay published some years ago, Charles Maier remarks that a territory can give a community the feeling of permanent belonging only if “the space of identity,” which alone can guarantee the geography of allegiance, is identical with “the space of (political) decision-making,” that is, the space that seems to guarantee physical, economic, and cultural safety.5 This twofold requirement generates instability, to various degrees, in regions inhabited by people of mixed national identity. The split between state sovereignty and national allegiance may affect substantial portions of the population and become more disruptive, especially when it manifests itself in frontier areas, to the point of posing a serious challenge to the state’s control over that territory. This is essentially what happened with the collapse of plurinational empires and with the successful spread of the nationality principle in central-eastern Europe at the end of World War I.6 The success of the nationality principle turned it into the basic criterion of legitimation for establishing borders. But by itself it did not make obsolete the criteria that had governed the demarcation of border lines before the age of nationalism. These criteria were merely inserted within a discourse centered on the principle of nationality and on the related principle of selfdetermination. (Hence the value attributed to plebiscites in sanctioning a change in territorial sovereignty). Territorial claims continued to be staked on traditional grounds: the need to defend a territory (strategic border); the need to maintain an area with a well-integrated economy (economic border); and even pure and simple expansionist arguments (imperial border). A good example is the famous Treaty of London of 1915, whereby Italy entered World War I on the Entente’s side. Italy’s objectives were manifold. It wanted to complete the process of national unification by annexing the Trentino and Venezia Giulia; it wished to establish a strategic border in the north and the east (at the Brenner Pass and at Mount Nevoso) [Schneeberg, Snežnik]; it aspired to obtain a hegemonic position on the Adriatic Sea at Austria’s expense; and it also aimed to consolidate its position as a great power, a precarious and uncertain position until that point, while guaranteeing its own national cohesion. As Eric Hobsbawm emphasized several years ago, nothing like the proven capacity for conquest can make a people conscious of its collective existence as such.7 Through participation in the Great War Italy was indeed recognized as a great power. Yet, as Fascism’s war adventures would demonstrate unequivocally, Italy always remained a subordinate power, incapable of determining autonomously the guiding lines and goals of its foreign policy. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1946, both the Italian and Yugoslav delegations presented several arguments in favor of their territorial demands. As a defeated nation, Italy gave up the principle of “strategic” border, falling back onto the idea of “ethnic” border, similar to the one proposed by the American President Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, resurrected the concept of “natural” border, set

Introduction  3 on the line that separated the Carnic and Dinaric Alps from the Friuli plain. Nonetheless, the ethnic criterion was also crucial for Yugoslavia. As a victor state, it could assert a broad interpretation of that principle, by pushing its application as far as the extreme limits of the western Slovenian settlements.8 The peace treaty forced Italy to give up almost all the territories on the Adriatic Sea that had been conquered in World War I. Thanks to the London Memorandum of 1954, Italy recovered 7.7 per cent of the territory of Venezia Giulia. In demographic terms the losses were smaller, but only because Yugoslav policy in the newly acquired territories prompted Italians to leave in great numbers.9 They mostly settled in the small part of Venezia Giulia that had remained Italian. As a result of the process of “ethnic simplification,” population losses in Venezia Giulia were “only” close to 50 per cent.10 With this book I wish to reconstruct the vicissitudes of the eastern Italian frontier, from the formation of Italy as a nation state to the “elimination” of that border after Slovenia’s entry into the European Union and the Schengen Area (2004–08). These events are inextricably linked to crucial moments in the history of Italy as a modern European nation, and have greatly contributed to determine its position in the international context. We have a number of excellent studies on the different phases of the history of the frontier territories and their interaction with the Italian state. As of now, though, we don’t yet have a long-term synthesis that attempts to identify continuities and ruptures within that history. In my opinion, only such a long-term reconstruction can highlight the “Italian” features of that history, which provide a useful interpretive tool for Italian history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Regarding the period and themes under consideration, Italian historiography has analyzed three issues in depth: events in diplomatic history related to the Italian intervention in World War I; the peace negotiations in the aftermath of World War II; and, partially, the question of Trieste as one of the first manifestations of the Cold War at the end of World War II. It is significant that, as of today, there is no monograph on the Treaty of Osimo, through which, in 1975, Italy renounced any claim to zone B of the (never implemented) Free Territory. Instead, Italy proposed to Yugoslavia the establishment of a free zone to be managed jointly, which would straddle the border between the two states. The process that led to the definitive setting of the border between Italy and Yugoslavia found no echo in national public opinion; even the historiography on Italian foreign policy after World War II barely mentions it. In this regard it might be appropriate to state the obvious. When Italy entered World War I, and during the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Rapallo, the country was a major player in Europe: so much so that its aim was to acquire the status of great power once and for all, as has been remarked already. Instead, the conditions of the Paris Peace Treaty and the London Memorandum itself, through which only Trieste was returned to

4 Introduction Italy, represented the conclusion of an era of failed policies, which led to the national catastrophe of September 8, 1943, and to the loss of territories that had cost Italy six hundred thousand fallen soldiers. Besides, throughout the course of these events, Italy was subjected to decisions taken by others and shaped by power relations at the international level, and it was condemned to what has been defined “the politics of impotence.” The historian Brunello Vigezzi has correctly reminded us that, between 1943 and 1950, the history of Italy is to a large degree the history of “the end of a great power.” Both Carlo Sforza, Foreign Minister between 1947 and 1951, and the ambassadors to the most important posts stressed Italy’s new status in their official statements and private correspondence.11 And yet, these circumstances are not sufficient to explain why the events of the eastern frontier vanished from national historiography and public awareness. We need to add that Italy’s downgrading to the rank of subordinate power coincided with the crisis of the idea of fatherland on which the movement for Italian unification had been based, and which was the foundation for a system of values that came to be shared by larger and larger strata of the population. The nationbuilding process may have been contradictory and only partially achieved; nonetheless, it had responded to an authentic yearning.12 Former Ambassador Sergio Romano rightly remarks that the demonstrations in favor of “Italian Trieste” during the negotiations for the London Memorandum in 1954 were what we might call an “Indian summer” of national consciousness.13 Emilio Gentile also calls the mobilization in favor of Trieste the expression of a “residual national sentiment, which still flickered, bursting at times into flames of patriotic passion.”14 In other words, it was something that represented the end of an era rather than the beginning of something new. According to the historian of the Risorgimento Rosario Romeo, thirty years after the end of the war one could say that, in the country that had known Fascism’s nationalistic frenzy, “no significant nationalistic currents exist any longer; national values occupy an increasingly weak and inferior position among the shared principles that govern our society.”15 This monographic essay thus wishes to offer a contribution to understanding an essential aspect of Italian contemporary history, by studying the issue of the waxing and waning of Italian patriotism seen from the particular angle of the eastern border. In the last fifteen years, Emilio Gentile, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, Elena Aga Rossi, and Gian Enrico Rusconi,16 to cite only a few, have devoted several important studies to the theme of “the crisis of the idea of ‘the Nation.’ ” Until now, though, no study has analyzed the role played in national history by the “liberation of ‘unredeemed’ lands” and by their dramatic loss just a quarter of a century after national unification had been accomplished. This work is intended to fill that lacuna. I have reconstructed the events in the eastern frontier region from the point of view of the Italian state, that is, of its political élites. In any case, these found themselves interacting all the time with the lobbies and the political forces of the frontier’s territories, in a complex relationship between center

Introduction  5 and periphery. The main actors include the Yugoslav state in its different configurations, the Slovenian and Croatian national movements, the Yugoslav partisan movement led by the Communists, and, finally, the Slovenian and Croatian Republics. The counteracting pressures that those actors exercised on those frontier territories are responsible for that area’s heightened instability. In brief, we can say that the power relations established in the region in the last 150 years, marked by instability and uncertainty, prevented any of the participants from asserting its unquestionable sovereignty in this complex context. Finally, this work deals extensively with the international dimension of these events. The great powers made decisions regarding the most desirable arrangements of that region that were highly consequential for the eastern border of Italy. This essay, however, does not wish to be only a contribution to diplomatic history, but rather the comprehensive reconstruction of a set of specific historical events, within which the diplomatic dimension has its proper place.

Notes 1 Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1972, p. 11. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 15. 4 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London-New York, Verso, 1983. 5 See C.S. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era,” American Historical Review, vol. 105, 3, 2000, pp. 807–31, especially p. 816. 6 This theme has been an object of renewed interest ever since the dissolution of the Soviet empire. See, at least, K. Barkey and M. Von Hagen (eds.), After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empire, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1997; A. Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, 1914–1923, London-New York, Routledge, 2001. 7 E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 38: “. . . for the nineteenth century conquest provided the Darwinian proof of evolutionary success as a social species.” 8 On the argumentative strategy of the Italian and Yugoslav delegations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, see Valussi, Il Confine Nordorientale, pp. 187–94. 9 On the issue of the exodus of Italians from the territories along the northeastern Adriatic coast, see R. Pupo, Il Lungo Esodo. Istria: Le Persecuzioni, le Foibe, l’Esilio, Milan, Rizzoli, 2005. 10 Valussi, Il Confine Nordorientale, pp. 251–3. 11 See B. Vigezzi, “De Gasperi, Sforza, la Diplomazia Italiana e la Politica di Potenza dal Trattato di Pace al Patto Atlantico,” in E. Di Nolfo, R.H. Rainero and B. Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza in Europa (1945–50), Milan, Marzorati, 1990, pp. 3–57, especially pp. 4–5. 12 About this issue, see especially E. Gentile, La grande Italia: Ascesa e Declino del Mito della Nazione nel XX Secolo, Milan, Mondadori, 1997, pp. 250–373. 13 See R. Romano, Guida alla Politica Estera Italiana: Da Badoglio a Berlusconi, Milan, Rizzoli, 2002, p. 94: “The entrance of the Italian troops in Trieste was an expression of the Italy of the Risorgimento. . . . Today, with the benefit of

6 Introduction hindsight, we also know that it was the last one. The Risorgimento was not reborn in Trieste on October 5, 1954; it held there its last celebration.” 14 Gentile, La Grande Italia, p. 319. 15 See R. Romeo, entry “Nazione,” in Enciclopedia del Novecento, Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 1979, vol. IV, pp. 525–38, especially p. 533. 16 E. Galli della Loggia, La morte della patria: La crisi dell’Idea di Nazione tra Resistenza, Antifascismo e Repubblica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996; E. Aga Rossi, Una Nazione allo Sbando: L’Armistizio Italiano del Settembre 1943, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004 [English translation: A Nation Collapses: The Italian Surrender of September 1943, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2000]; G.E. Rusconi, Se Cessiamo di Essere una Nazione, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993.

1 The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma

1  The Problem of Italians Living Across the Border The first two chapters of this book consider the problem of the eastern border of the Kingdom of Italy between 1866 and the outbreak of World War I as an expression of the broader issue of irredentism, which raised the claims to both Venezia Giulia and the Trentino as the final step toward national unification. With the breakout of the Bosnian crisis in 1908, those claims assumed a partially new connotation, becoming both an object of nationalist programs, especially through the works of Ruggero Timeus,1 and topics of discussion within the context of Italian “power policy.” These two partially conflicting approaches shaped the Italian participation in the World War, which was simultaneously the “fourth war of the Risorgimento” and a conflict for power. At that time, we find people of Italian2 language and culture (in the broad sense of the term) in eastern Friuli, in the city of Trieste and in the Istrian peninsula; and especially in the Trentino, where they constituted a compact majority. In Istria [Istra] Italians, who prevailed in the coastal towns, were in the minority in the interior, mixed with Slavic populations that had begun their own process of nation building in the second half of the nineteenth century. And in Dalmatia, which had also been the object of confused and occasional claims of irredentists,3 the small Italian minority was only a segment of the urban élite in the coastal area.4 Nonetheless, Italian language and culture spread its influence far beyond the boundaries of Italian national identification, by providing essential features to a regional Dalmatian identity, in competition with Croatian or Serbian nationalization.5 After the transfer of Lombardy and the Venetia to Italy, in 1859 and 1866 respectively, the Italians, about seven hundred thousand people, became the smallest nationality of the Hapsburg monarchy. Even so, they exerted an influence far superior to their weight in numbers, for several reasons: the presence of a sizeable bourgeois group which could be traced in part to the ancient urban patriciate; the weight of a few noble families in the Trentino; and, more broadly, the recognition of Italians as a “cultural nation.”6

Figure 1.1  Austrian Littoral: internal administrative divisions

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  9 Before unification the Risorgimento movement also spread, to a certain degree, to the coastal lands once held by the Most Serene Republic of Venice, and to a part of the House of Hapsburg’s “hereditary domains” on the Adriatic coast. Patriots from Dalmatian towns, Istria, and Trieste had volunteered in the wars of independence and they had rushed to the defense of the Republic of Venice in great numbers. The provisional Venetian government chose a Dalmatian, Nicolò Tommaseo, as the Minister of Justice, and sent him to Paris in 1849 to negotiate French support for the Republic.7 Giacomo Venezian, from Trieste, was mortally wounded in 1849 during the siege of Villa Glori in Rome. In the end, however, despite their presence in Dalmatia, Istria, and Trieste, pro-Risorgimento leanings were not strong enough to result in any significant anti-Austrian revolts.8 As the historian Gioacchino Volpe insightfully remarked, regionalist and autonomist rather than nationalistic aspirations were taking shape in these regions during the upheavals of 1848: Precisely in those areas, at the confluence of empires and people of different and conflicting descent, it was hard to set a boundary that could be fair, meet the security concerns of the entire peninsula, and ensure freedom of movement and economic activity in what used to be the sea of Venice. One could see even then that the “border” problem, or rather tangle of problems, would be difficult to solve. In the beginning, especially around 1848–49, a time of tolerant and trusting liberalism, of still fervent regionalism, and of ideals of autonomy and federalism, people believed it would be possible to solve it by creating a federation of Republics, one for each nationality: for the people of the Venetia and of the Friuli and of Istria and of Dalmatia.9 Having shelved the federalist and regionalist views that had characterized democratic movements in 1848–49, the irredentist project acquired a clearer territorial dimension, setting a target for national unification which included,10 at its maximum, eastern Friuli, Trieste, and western Istria, besides, of course, the Italian Tyrol.11 Right after the Third War of Independence broke out in 1866, Giuseppe Mazzini himself, the most important theorist of the Italian Risorgimento, gave his authoritative sanction to those claims, by linking programmatically the territorial goals regarding the Trentino and the lands on the eastern Adriatic. In the August 25, 1866 issue of Unità Italiana [Italian Unity] Mazzini wrote a sorrowful article against a peace deemed dishonorable, and against the abandonment of Italian lands left to the “enemy’s revenge”: The Julian Alps are an extension of the Carnic Alps. The former are ours as much as the latter. The Istrian coast is the eastern part and the completion of the coast of the Venetia. The High Friuli is ours as well. Istria is ours for ethnographic, political, and commercial reasons, and it

10  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma is as necessary to Italy as are the ports of Dalmatia to the South Slavs. Trieste is ours, as is Postoina [Postojna] or Carsia [Karst], now under Lubiana’s [Ljubljana] administrative control. Geographers, historians, statesmen, and military leaders established for Italy the same boundaries set by Alighieri, and confirmed by tradition and language. They all agree: from Cluverius to Napoleon, from Paolo Diacono’s Utraeque pro una provincia habentur [So that Venice and Istria form one and the same province, T.N.] to Leonardo Alberti, according to whom, “two great mountains separate Italy from the barbarians: one called Mount Caldera [Perda], the other called Mount Maggiore [Učka].” But even if rights and duties mattered little to Italians, why would they forget their interest and their defensive needs? The armies that defeated us in Lombardy and that isolated Venice in 1848 descended from the passes of High Friuli. And Istria is the key to our eastern border, the gate to Italy on the side of the Adriatic Sea and the bridge between us, the Hungarians, and the Slavs. If we abandon it, those peoples remain our enemies; if it is in our hands, those same people are subtracted from the enemy’s army and become our allies.12 Mazzini thus built the argument that irredentism would use in the coming decades: a mixture of historical quotations, literary recollections,13 strategic assessments, and geographic considerations, which were supposed to provide the foundation for the Italian claim to the territories of the northeastern Adriatic Sea and of southern Tyrol. Looking back in time, an Austrian source remarked in 1916: Mazzini’s program opened a new phase in Italian irredentism. The idea of “redemption”, which until then had been restricted almost exclusively to South Tyrol, was extended, officially, to Austria’s Adriatic territories. Until a few years before 1866, because of their geographic position and the mixture of people of different nationalities, Italian irredentism had almost ignored them, in so far as we know.14 National ambitions, however, continued to give priority to the Trentino over the Giulia region for a long time. In 1863, three years before Mazzini’s statement, the linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who was from Gorizia [Gorica, Görz], coined the name Venezia Giulia, wishing to attribute a unitary Italian identity to territorial units that had been created by bringing together both Hapsburg and Venetian possessions. In an article published in the Alleanza [Alliance] of Milan on August 8, 1862, entitled “Le Tre Venezie” [“The Three Venetian Regions”], Ascoli declared that “the province of Venezia Giulia will encompass Gorizia, Trieste, and Istria, by including the land between the Venetia in the strict sense of the term, the Julian Alps, and the sea.” He based his proposal on linguistic grounds, arguing that “Trieste, Rovereto, Trento, Monfalcone, Pola [Pula], and Capodistria [Koper]

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  11 speak the language of Vicenza, Verona, and Treviso, while Gorizia, Gradisca, and Cormons speak the language of Udine and Palmanova.”15 Ascoli did not define the boundaries of the new province on linguistic grounds out of separatist ambitions. Rather, he wished to give more visibility to the Italian component present in the Hapsburg monarchy, by emphasizing its Roman and Venetian origins at a time when the presence of Italians in Austria was decreasing dramatically because of the transfer of Lombardy to Italy, and the likely future transfer of the Venetia.16 The name VeneziaGiulia did not catch on easily at all, and it appeared sporadically in subsequent writings on the subject. Only after the outbreak of World War I did its adoption spread among people who were articulating Italy’s territorial demands, and who even applied it with a somewhat vague connotation to a wider geographic area.17 With the Third War of Independence (1866), Italy did obtain the Venetia and western Friuli from Austria, thus extending its border as far as the Judrio [Idrija] River, and incorporating a first group of Slovenes who inhabited the valleys of the Natisone [Nadiža] River.18 On the other hand, Giuseppe Garibaldi’s attempt to occupy the Trentino militarily was unsuccessful. After Prussia and Austria agreed to a truce, Garibaldi’s military corps, the “Hunters of the Alps,” received the order to retreat from the territories of the Italian Tyrol they had entered.19 During the peace negotiations, Italy unsuccessfully tried to obtain the Trentino, but, interestingly enough, it did not do so for Istria, and even less so for Trieste,20 because among Italian public opinion Venezia Giulia remained a much less popular cause than the Trentino.21 Unless one resorted to strategic considerations, such as the safety and security of the border, the sole principle of nationality provided scant justification for the acquisition of territories clearly multiethnic in character, such as the ones along the Adriatic. We should also add that the disappointing performance of the Italian army and navy at Custoza and Lissa22 significantly weakened the hopes of the Italian government, led by the Right, for an imminent and substantial territorial expansion along the frontier. Italy’s main goal remained the acquisition of the Trentino as far as Salorno in the long-term; in the short term, at most, a modest adjustment of the eastern border from the Judrio to the Isonzo [Soča] Rivers, so as to improve Italy’s defensive positions—an adjustment Italy was planning to attain only through patient negotiations with Austria.23 In 1870, thanks to France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Italy was finally able to occupy Rome, surely a priority in comparison to possible modifications along the eastern and northern borders. Italy then entered an inward-looking phase, as the new state engaged in consolidating its own internal structure, showing little inclination to embark on an adventurous foreign policy.24 Given this situation, vociferous but uninfluential groups were the only ones still demanding the completion of national unification: Mazzini’s followers,25 former participants in Garibaldi’s campaigns, and the small colony

12  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma of exiles from the Austrian provinces, who were the movement’s backbone. Most of those exiles were either defectors from the Austrian army who had fled to Italy at the time of the Risorgimento wars or, in smaller numbers, bourgeois intellectuals who attained positions of great prestige and influence in Italy:26 the Dalmatian Federico Seismit-Doda became Finance Minister in the Crispi government; Salvatore Barzilai, a leading figure within Italian Freemasonry, was elected deputy for the Left in the Italian Parliament. No fewer than twenty-four professors of Italian universities came from the territories across the border.27 In the years right after 1866, backing for irredentism seemed to come from the movements of national unification then growing in Europe, first of all in German lands. Even leading political figures, such as Garibaldi’s former friend and supporter, Francesco Crispi, at first mistakenly believed that the creation of the German Empire would lead to the separation of the German populations from Austria, followed by the formation of independent nations in Bohemia and Poland.28 Others, more realistically, took special notice of Austria’s increasing “drive to the east” (Drang nach Osten) which followed the country’s expulsion from the German Confederation in 1866. Cesare Balbo, a conservative politician from Piedmont, had already recommended such a plan in the 1840s, by proposing that Austria should withdraw from Italian territories and obtain Ottoman possessions in southeastern Europe as compensation.29 It was clear, in any case, that the founding of the German Empire had drastically altered the traditional balance of power in Europe based on the relative hegemony of France on the continent. Italian Premier Minister Bettino Ricasoli commented on the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War with the following words: I don’t enjoy speaking of the catastrophe that is inevitably unfolding under our eyes. It is so horrific that we cannot even speak about it; the soul is astounded, even bewildered by it. I see into what abyss the arrogant and aggressive irresponsibility of a few ministers can plunge a great country, deemed until yesterday the greatest in the world, and a monarch who was always counted among the wisest.30 Starting in the 1850s, Russia had also resumed with determination its expansionist policy into the Ottoman possessions of the Balkan Peninsula, justifying it with the need to protect Christian populations subject to the Sublime Porte. As a unified state, Italy itself now had to pursue a foreign policy that took into account the changed international context and its own interests within it, a foreign policy that could not be guided exclusively by the assertion of abstract principles. From this point of view, many factors recommended a rapprochement with Austria, two in particular: Austria would prevent the transformation of Germany into a European superpower, and it would keep in check Russian expansionism towards the

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  13 Adriatic Sea.31 Therefore, any attempt to ensure further territorial acquisitions became subordinate not only to stabilizing Austria, but, even more important, to attaining political and diplomatic rapprochement with the former enemy. Events thus pushed Italy to adopt a foreign policy based on the recommendations made years before by the Piedmontese conservative Cesare Balbo. Over time, such a significant break with the anti-­Austrian tradition of the Risorgimento32 would end by opening a significant chasm between the foreign policy of the Italian government and the goals of irredentism. After General Alfonso La Marmora proclaimed in Parliament that Italian unification could be considered complete, in 1874 Austria issued an important declaration about its relations with Italy. On May 24 Count Felix Friedrich Wimpffen, the Austrian Ambassador in Rome, delivered a note to the Italian Foreign Minister in which the Imperial and Royal Foreign Minister Gyula Andrassy, after expressing satisfaction with the good relations between the two countries, went on to say that the respect for the territorial status quo by both Austria and Italy was essential to maintaining good relations. Austria had no intention of calling into question the territorial transfers of 1859 and 1866. Those had occurred in a situation, very different from the present one, which has seen the Austrian monarchy isolated at the international level, a condition by and large overcome at this time. Therefore, the Foreign Minister expected Italy to take a similar stance: a joint fight against irredentism was the condicio sine qua non for preserving good relations between the two countries. Andrassy’s note is remarkable first of all because of its firm tone, which appears to rule out any future transfer of territory to Italy even through peaceful means; and, secondly, because of the reasons Andrassy puts forward to explain why he had adopted this policy. Territorial concessions to Italy would trigger a dangerous chain reaction in the Austrian monarchy, threatening the very grounds of its existence: Even this way [through pacific means]—do I need to say it?—we cannot consent to the modification of the order of things sanctioned by the treaties. First of all, we would be prevented from doing so by the very principle that we would open up for discussion. The day we conceded such a rearrangement on the basis of ethnographic boundaries, similar demands would be made by others, which it would be impossible to reject. We could not transfer to Italy populations similar to it linguistically, without artificially setting in motion a centrifugal movement of all nationalities close to the empire’s borders toward sister nationalities in neighboring states. We would therefore face an alternative: either to resign ourselves to the loss of these provinces; or, following the logic of the system of nationalities, to incorporate neighboring territories into the Monarchy. To accept such a principle would thus lead us either to sacrifice the integrity of the Monarchy, or to deviate from the policy of

14  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma the preservation of the peace and the status quo. This is a policy we follow both in our interest and in the interest of Europe in general. With a lucid analysis, Andrassy then describes the consequences arising for Europe from an indiscriminate application of “ethnography to politics”: Can we even imagine where the idea of ethnographic frontiers would lead us, even granting that it could be applied to Europe in its entirety? [ . . . ] For sure, the modern trends from which the great national aggregations were born have had their raison d’être. However, if these national entities, after having been just formed, insist on beginning their work all over again and on pursuing to the last detail the application of ethnography to politics, they will imprudently call into question the European order, born through so much pain. They will conjure up chaos.33 No doubt the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister argued with his own country’s interest in mind. At the same time, he pointed with great realism to the consequences of applying the principle of nationality to all the European territories that until then had been organized politically through the state form we call “supranational empire.” Without resorting to abstract or idealistic notions, but rather by basing his argument on criteria such as Realpolitik and European balance of power, which were largely shared,34 Gyula Andrassy championed a principle different from the principle of nationality. The state of chaos Andrassy prophetically evoked did come about at the end of World War I, ushering in one of the most tragic periods in European history, called by many historians the new Thirty Years War. Both Italian Foreign Minister, Emilio Visconti Venosta, and the King himself, Vittorio Emanuele II, signaled on many occasions their determination to oppose radical fringes. In answer to Andrassy’s note, Visconti Venosta declared that the government intended to fight against the movement in favor of annexation. Once again, the Italian Minister clearly privileged Italy’s interests in the Trentino rather than in Venezia Giulia. It is reported that Visconti Venosta declared: “The unrest originating from Trieste does not deserve any serious attention; Trieste will never belong to Italy.”35Andrassy’s note would become the basis for Austrian policy toward Italian irredentism until the breakout of World War I, even during the negotiations undertaken in the attempt to keep Italy neutral in the conflict.

2 Irredentism Starting in 1866, right after the Third War of Independence, and after Austria and Italy signed the Treaty of Vienna that normalized relations between the two countries,36 several committees of Italian exiles from Austria staged demonstrations in Milan, Verona, and Bassano, protesting because Italy had

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  15 given up Trieste and the Trentino. Deputations from the territories under Austrian sovereignty, carrying their flags often draped in black, participated in important national events: the entry of the King in Rome, the wedding of the hereditary prince, Umberto, or anniversaries of high symbolic value, such as the commemoration of the Battle of Legnano, fought in 1176 by the free municipalities of Lombardy against the German emperor.37 Across the border, in those years irredentism was active especially in the Trentino, where the Austrian government, reassured by the favorable response of the Italian Foreign Minister to Andrassy’s note, used a heavy hand, by dissolving several associations suspected of radicalism and republicanism, and even mutual aid societies that had shown to be in favor of irredentism. Among the associations victims of these repressive policies were the Società ginnastica di Rovereto and Mezzolombardo [Rovereto and Mezzolombardo’s Gymnastic Society], the Società di mutuo soccorso degli artieri di Riva del Garda [Mutual Aid Society of Riva del Garda’s Craftsmen], and the Società degli studenti e dei candidati trentini presso l’Università di Innsbruck [Society of Trentino’s Students and Candidates at the University of Innsbruck], the last one accused of paying homage to Umberto and Margherita, heirs to the throne of Italy, during their journey through the Tyrol.38 The Russo-Turkish War, which broke out almost at the same time as the Left rose to power with the Depretis government, in March 1876, rekindled irredentist hopes. As already mentioned, both the press and public opinion had started to believe that if Austria could expand in the Balkans, Italy would gain territorial concessions. Austria itself appeared to share this assessment and look with favor to Italy’s occupation of Tunis.39 Slavic insurrections in Bosnia and Herzegovina also rekindled Italian irredentism, which read them in Mazzinian terms as the manifestation and spread of the principle of nationality.40 Even though street demonstrations reaffirmed the goals of the Risorgimento’s Left, the political climate and the outlook for the future had changed deeply, in comparison not only to 1848–49, but even to 1859 or 1866. In an interview with a Hungarian newspaper, Prime Minister Agostino Depretis reasserted that Italy had no ambition to acquire Austrian lands, and that to attribute to Italy the aim of getting Trento and Trieste was pure fantasy.41 Despite these declarations, the Left showed at first an ambiguous tolerance toward irredentism, a behavior which could only irritate Austria.42 The Italian Ambassador to Vienna, Carlo Felice Nicolis Count Di Robilant, sent a concerned report to the Foreign Minister Luigi Amedeo Melegari, who had shown warm support for irredentism. Di Robilant warned that if Italy did not clearly renounce “any ambition of annexing territories inhabited by Italians,” a war with Austria would be inevitable “at any moment that would appear most favorable to Austria itself.” He went on to say: His Majesty’s Government should consider whether the possession of a strip of Italian land would be worth a war whose outcome would depend

16  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma essentially on the alliances we could muster. If we were to engage in it by ourselves, I have no doubt that the Austrian Army, which is stronger than ours and much better organized, would crush us. It pains me to put it in these terms, but I am fully persuaded of it!43 In 1879, the Second German Empire and Austria entered into the Dual Alliance [Zweibund], which meant increased German support for Austria. In fact, when the Hapsburg Monarchy obtained the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy received no compensation. At the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, the Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi Corti, kept a low profile, without demanding anything from Vienna. In any case, such a demand would have fallen on deaf ears.44 During the month of July 1878, as the outcome of the Congress of Berlin was becoming clear, several irredentist demonstrations, violent at times, broke out one after another in Italy. In January of that same year, Vittorio Emanuele II’s death had led to widely participated manifestations of grief for the deceased monarch, which had taken on irredentist tones.45 On June 28, activists attacked the Austrian Consulate in Venice, even throwing the Consulate’s sign into a canal. In demonstrations held in July in Livorno, Rome, Naples, Ravenna, Macerata, Lucca, Padua, and Genoa, the slogan “Hurrah, Trento and Trieste!” summed up irredentist demands. That slogan became, a few decades later, the rallying cry of Italy’s participation in the World War.46 For a long time, irredentism had been a movement organized through a loose network of committees of exiles and sympathizers who had succeeded, however, in ensuring the livelihood of Italians from the “unredeemed” provinces. Now its structures started to become more stable. In 1877, under the auspices of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Avezzana, a general in Garibaldi’s army, and the Neapolitan Matteo Renato Imbriani,47 whose goal was to establish links among the irredentist committees scattered throughout Italy, founded the Associazione in pro dell’Italia irredenta [from now on, Association for Unredeemed Italy] in Naples.48 Many republican clubs also joined it. It is to Matteo Renato Imbriani that we owe the term “irredentism,” which he used in the eulogy49 at his father’s funeral in the same year 1877. While addressing some delegates from Trieste and swearing allegiance to their cause, Imbriani spoke about “unredeemed lands.”50 The irredentist exiles developed their own counterculture in the academic milieus of Rome and Florence, a culture which welded together late Romantic impulses and early manifestations of irrationalism. And it is in that irredentist environment that Guglielmo Oberdan conceived his “exemplary gesture” of killing the Austrian Emperor, and Ruggero Timeus (a.k.a. Fauro) developed his “imperialist nationalism” about twenty years later.51 In its 1879 statute, the Association for Unredeemed Italy reaffirmed the link, established by none other than Giuseppe Mazzini,52 between the Italian claims to the Trentino and those to the Giulia region. Article 1 proclaimed

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  17 that the Association’s goal was to free all Italian lands subject to foreign occupation so as to complete the fatherland’s unification. De facto, that article referred almost exclusively to lands under Austrian domination. Article 2 specified that . . . for the time being we will devote our energy above all to those lands that we have to bring back to our common Mother to defend and secure our nation, and that the fullness of time promises to, and will indeed return to the Fatherland. We are speaking here of the lands still occupied by Austria. Two sacred names, Trieste and Trento, symbolize those lands for us. But we do well to define them precisely: the regions enclosed by the Raetian and Julian Alps. These extreme northern and eastern strips of land of the Alpine chain are the true and eternal frontier of Italy.53 The Association gave itself both a public and a clandestine structure. Every committee had as its counterpart a secret one, charged with keeping in touch with the committees in the unredeemed provinces.54 It is believed that Italy’s and Trieste’s Masonic Lodges, whose main representatives in Trieste were Teodoro Mayer and Felice Venezian, carried out this coordinating activity.55 The publication of periodicals, gift-books, and pamphlets, most of them doomed to a short life,56 increased suddenly. From the small island of Caprera, Giuseppe Garibaldi urged armed mobilization, hoping to link the uprising in the unredeemed territories to the uprising of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian populations.57 Even Guglielmo Oberdan’s flight to Italy after he evaded military conscription in Bosnia was encouraged by the clandestine Comitato Alpi Giulie [Julian Alps Committee], which issued a proclamation inspired, it seems, by Giuseppe Garibaldi himself, inciting Italian draftees to defect. The response among young people from Trieste, Pola, Capodistria, Parenzo [Poreč], and Rovigno [Rovinj] was enthusiastic.58 The irredentists who advocated war against Austria saw it not only as a means to complete national unity, but also as a path leading to the regeneration of the civic and political life of the nation, which to their minds had fallen way short of the Risorgimento’s ideals. In a public epistolary exchange with Garibaldi’s follower Alberto Mario, for example, Matteo Renato Imbriani argued: A war with Austria would be a blessing for us, because it would enable Italy to take its proper place in the world among the nations worthy of respect. If we don’t redeem ourselves from the defeats of Custoza and Lissa, Italy will never again be able to occupy that place. In the dangerous condition of political corruption and moral squalor in which we find ourselves, a war would pull us back from the abyss. It would be Italy’s salvation. It would arouse all the generous sentiments and noble aspirations, and start a race bearing magnanimous sacrifices. It would

18  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma reawaken dormant virtues. It would invigorate the temper of today’s young generation, by affording them the dignity accruing to those who risk their lives for the fatherland, and by making them aware of their own valor and strength.59 In the hope that the hostilities with Austria would break out soon, and expecting a substantial participation by volunteers, the Association for Unredeemed Italy organized target practice. Enrollees were supposed to participate diligently every Sunday morning; those who did not show up for a month were expelled from the association.60 The resurgence of irredentist unrest on a large scale, and rumors that volunteers had invaded the Trentino, had negative repercussions on Austrian-Italian relations. Austria had the impression that the Left, then in power, ultimately sympathized with the irredentists.61 As a matter of fact, like Agostino Depretis before him, at the beginning of his mandate as Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli had also shown ambivalence towards the irredentists’ cause. In a concerned message to Cairoli, the Ambassador to Vienna, Di Robilant, stressed that the Austrian Foreign Minister, Heinrich Karl von Haymerle, deemed wholly inadequate the steps taken by Italy against irredentism, and Austria62 considered the situation intolerable. To wit, Austria deployed military reinforcements in the Trentino. The crisis ended when Cairoli declared that repression of irredentism was his personal responsibility.63 After this latest crisis, several factors led the Italian government to distance itself from irredentism. The French occupation of Tunis, in particular, prompted Italy to join the Triple Alliance with the Central European Empires in 1882. Its renewals in subsequent years established more favorable terms for Italy. For example, in 1887, through separate agreements with the German and the Austrian Empire, Italy was promised territorial compensations in case Austria were to acquire lands in the Balkan Peninsula.64 With the renewal of the Triple Alliance in 1912, those clauses became an integral part of the treaty. Even throughout this phase, marked by changes in attitude and policy, some fringes of the movement remained active in Italy: conspiratorial groups, former Garibaldi volunteers, and political exiles engaged in hatching plots, planning invasions, and arms trafficking—all diligently recorded by the Austrian police in collaboration with its Italian counterpart.65 Among them was Guglielmo Oberdan (correct spelling, Oberdank), a contradictory and tragic figure, and the illegitimate son of a Slovenian housemaid.66 He had come in touch with Mazzinian circles in Trieste and continued to frequent groups of irredentists in Rome, where he had taken refuge after his defection from the Austrian army. Arrested in Ronchi on his way to Trieste where he intended to make an attempt on Franz Joseph, who was in the city to celebrate the fifth centennial of the city’s “dedication” to Austria, Oberdan was sentenced to death for the crimes of high treason and

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  19 desertion. He was not found guilty, however, of launching a bomb against a parade of veterans on August 2, 1882, because the evidence against him was considered insufficient, even though the police had found in his possession bombs similar to the one launched in the attack which killed two people and injured several others.67 The sentence to death by hanging was carried out on December 20, 1882.68 Even though Oberdan’s primary aim was to protest against the signing of the Triple Alliance, his action ended up by giving irredentism a martyr who could sanctify its cause and enrich its liturgy. In a note, the Trieste police seemed to be aware of this development, cynically remarking that “Saint Oberdan has become the object of veneration of people devoted to irredentism.”69 Among the prominent personalities of Italian culture who became fervent advocates of irredentist demands70 there was the poet Giosuè Carducci, who published several, heartfelt articles in memory of Oberdan71 in Don Chischiotte [Don Quixote]. At the time of the execution, Carducci launched violent invectives against Franz Joseph, reviving the stereotype of the monarch as “the hangman”: “Blood rejuvenated him, blood is the companion of his old age, in blood we hope he will drown; may that blood be his,” Carducci swore. The poet also headed the committee in charge of the last honors to the martyr of irredentism, “who sacrificed himself for our sins, and for us.”72 Understandably, Austrian public opinion responded with irritation to Giosuè Carducci’s verbal excesses. Poor Ambassador Di Robilant desperately asked the Italian Foreign Minister: “Isn’t there any provision in our laws that allows us to strike against Professor Carducci?”73 Like Matteo Renato Imbriani, Giosuè Carducci was deeply disappointed by the condition of unified Italy. In a speech given in 1866 to the Società operaia di Bologna [Bologna Workers’ Society] on the occasion of the unveiling of a plaque to Oberdan’s memory, he deplored the moral decay of the country after the Left’s rise to power, the mediocrity of the new parliament elected with a broadened suffrage, and the people’s indifference to political participation: “In Italy, we talk too much, we write too much, we enjoy ourselves too much, and we have too much fun,” the poet said, dejectedly.74 For Carducci, as for so many of his generation who felt disenchanted with the grandiose ambitions projected onto unified Italy at the time of the Risorgimento wars,75 irredentism provided a link between the completion of national unity and the nation’s moral regeneration. As Scipio Slataper, an intellectual from Trieste and an Italian loyalist, intuited correctly, in the history of unified Italy irredentism thus represented a mood rather than a concrete, effective political factor. Slataper believed that irredentism embodied a heroic longing, the people’s aspiration to attain full awareness of themselves as “one people” and to better themselves through concrete deeds—something akin to the myth of the hero among primitive races: the hero who is destined to be reborn “when the times are worthy of him again.”76

20  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma The outpouring of sympathy for Oberdan and the weakness shown by the Italian judicial system in prosecuting his accomplices (in the bomb attack against the veterans in Trieste, two people died, one an eighteenyear-old boy) aroused great indignation in Austria. Prime Minister Agostino Depretis, who feared negative repercussions for his party in the forthcoming election, hesitated in distancing himself decisively from irredentism, thus making the situation even worse. Finally, the government changed course on March 13, 1883, when the Foreign Minister, the renowned jurist Stanislao Mancini, issued a stark condemnation of both irredentism and the idea that all Italians must live in the same state. He accused the irredentists of stirring up trouble instrumentally, in the hope that the question of the unredeemed lands would result in the fall of the Savoy monarchy and the establishment of a republic. The majority of the members of parliament received Mancini’s speech with favor, even though it gave rise to discontent among the Left and in some right-leaning publications. The Minister’s speech finally put an end, at least temporarily, to the ambiguities that had characterized the relationship between the Italian government and the various groups that populated the irredentist milieu.77 Another break with the first phase of the irredentist movement came in 1882, with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s death, as remarked the historian Giovanni Sabbatucci: “With Garibaldi also dies ‘authentic Garibaldinism,’ and the kind of irredentism that was tied without any break to the struggle of the Risorgimento.”78 Once he became Prime Minister in 1887,79 Francesco Crispi repressed Italian irredentism with greater determination than his predecessors. Even though public commemorations of Guglielmo Oberdan had been banned in the Kingdom since 1886,80 in 1887 there were still forty-seven Circoli Oberdan [Oberdan Clubs] whose outlook was republican and irredentist.81 In some cases, demonstrations and proclamations that were generically subversive rather than nationalistic in the strict sense of the term, accompanied commemorations of the bomber’s death on December 20.82 The clubs’ views were clearly republican and democratic, at times with socialist or anarchic overtones.83 In 1889, the government disbanded the Comitato per Trento e Trieste [from now on, Committee for Trento and Trieste];84 in 1890, the Dalmatian Finance Minister Seismit-Doda was forced to resign for having participated in a banquet in Udine where guests drank a toast against the Austrian monarchy.85 But the Committee for Trento and Trieste regrouped underground, carrying on its conspiratorial activities,86 while the Mazzinian republican associations, formed at the end of the 1870s by Matteo Renato Imbriani, Giuseppe Avezzana, and Felice Cavallotti, continued their work. At the seventeenth congress of all the Mazzinian Associations (including sympathizing associations), held in Naples from June 20 to 24, 1889, fifteen Oberdan Clubs and five Circoli Barsanti [Barsanti Clubs], named after the republican rebel Pietro Barsanti, executed in Italy in 1870, participated in the proceedings. The following year, Crispi disbanded

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  21 them.87 The variegated opposition to the Triple Alliance which, in the name of Guglielmo Oberdan, characterized irredentist activity in those years, even reached Parliament, where the deputies Giovanni Bovio, Ettore Ferrari, Enrico Ferri, Napoleone Colajanni, Matteo Renato Imbriani, Luigi Lodi, and Felice Albani formed a committee, which, as its first act, issued a proclamation stating that Italy’s membership in the Triple Alliance clearly meant giving up Trento and Trieste.88 If we consider irredentism from the point of view of political participation, we can say that the movement reached only a small number of people. Its political weight was never great, and the movement, at least in its original form, could never influence governmental policy to any significant degree.89 Until the 1880s, we find irredentism on the extreme republican and pro-Mazzinian left of the political spectrum, with some connections with Italian anarchists and revolutionary socialists. This remained true until the founding of the Partito Socialista Italiano [from now on, Italian Socialist Party] in 1892, an event that created a sharp cleavage between even the most radical democratic left and Socialism.90 However, as the anti-fascist intellectual Gaetano Salvemini correctly remarked, the Italian governments could not completely disavow irredentism, which based its claims on that very principle of nationality that was itself the foundation of Italy as an independent state. For reasons of expediency, the Kingdom’s foreign policy could ignore its implications, at least for a time, but it could not deny them completely.91 Diplomatic correspondence clearly shows that for all Italian politicians, even those who advised caution and fought against the overt expressions of irredentism, the case of the unredeemed lands was not closed, but only postponed. On October 6, 1878, the Secretary General for Foreign Affairs, Carlo Alberto Maffei, for example, wrote to Ambassador Di Robilant: “Nothing can shake my strong belief that the government has the power to hold people’s spirits in check, and to keep the nation ready for the day when events in Europe will allow us to resolve the great problem of the Italian borders, either peacefully or through the use of force.” We can consider Mattei’s stance as typical of the more prudent and conservative positions in Italian foreign policy.92 Gaetano Salvemini thus commented: Those vital needs that, in a plurinational empire such as the Hapsburg Empire, made it impossible to accept the principle of nationality as the foundation of territorial reorganization—those same vital needs made it impossible for the Italian government to abandon that very principle. The new Italy was born out of the belief that nationality is a right. Only in that right could it find its ethical ground. The Italian government could deplore and even repress the most tumultuous expressions of the national sentiment as inappropriate and dangerous. But it could not repudiate that sentiment, right when it was obliged to invoke it every day against the expropriated sovereigns and against the pope. Even less could it explicitly give up any and every national claim forever.93

22  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma

Notes 1 Besides other nationalist theorists such as Mario Alberti and Attilio Tamaro, from Trieste, and the sociologist Scipio Sighele, from Trento. 2 Whether a homogeneous Italian culture existed or not in the unredeemed lands— and to what extent—is a complex issue, which historiographical research has not yet studied in depth. In intellectual circles, cultural unification was fostered by the Universities of Pavia and Padua, attended by students from the Trentino, the Venetia, and the Julian and Dalmatian regions. Participation in scientific conferences, in national journals, and in superregional cultural associations also played a similar function. Nonetheless, communicative networks continued to be less developed than among bourgeois-intellectual groups in other parts of Italy. This issue was already clear to Scipio Slataper who, in a famous essay on the unredeemed provinces, published in La Voce [The Voice] in 1910, wrote: “Cut off from Italian life—in broad terms—those regions did not participate in the rich cultural exchange that mixed together Italy’s various parts and created the ideal of a unified Italy. The notion of a national Risorgimento thus found them unprepared and uninterested.” In S. Slataper, Scritti Politici, G. Stuparich (ed.), Milan, Mondadori, 1953, p. 63. Instead, exchanges with the Hapsburg Empire became more intense, giving rise to interesting expressions of cultural syncretism. 3 G. Sabbatucci, “Il Problema dell’Irredentismo e le Origini del Movimento Nazionalista in Italia,” in Storia Contemporanea, 1, 1970/4, part I, pp. 467–502, especially p. 473. 4 On the condition of the Italians in Dalmatia and their relationship with the (Croatian and Serbian) Slavic component, see G. Volpe, L’Italia Moderna 1910– 1914, Florence, Sansoni, 1973, vol. III, pp. 118 ff. 5 On this fascinating theme, see L. Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia: Dal Risorgimento alla Grande Guerra 1914–1924, Florence, Le Lettere, 2004. See also the remarks by K. Clewing, Staatlichkeit und Nationale Identitätsbildung: Dalmatien im Vormärz und Revolution, Munich, Oldenbourg, 2001, pp. 330–66; M. Scaglioni, Identità Storica e Tradizioni di Autonomia in Dalmazia, Giuseppe de Vergottini (ed.), “La Storiografia sulla “Questione Giuliana,” in Atti del Seminario di Studi, Bologna, December 15, 1997, Bologna, Lo Scarabeo, 1998, pp. 101–12. 6 On this topic, see E. Apih’s precise remarks, “Tavola Rotonda,” in R. Pertici (ed.), Intellettuali di Frontiera: Triestini a Firenze (1900–1950), 2 vols., Florence, Olschki, 1985, vol. I, pp. 395–6. See also C. Schiffrer, La Cultura Triestina nell’Età del Risorgimento, Udine, Del Bianco, 1965, p. 41. On the Italians under the Hapsburg Monarchy, see U. Corsini, “Die Italiener,” in A. Wandruszka and P. Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. III: Die Völker des Reichs, Vienna, Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980, vol. II, pp. 839–79. 7 On the vicissitudes of the Republic of Venice, see P. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49, Cambridge-New York, Cambridge University Press, 1979. 8 For a political assessment of the 1848 revolutions in Trieste and Istria, see M. Cattaruzza, “Il Primato dell’Economia: L’Egemonia del Ceto Mercantile (1814–60),” in R. Finzi, C. Magris, and G. Miccoli (eds.), Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Turin, Einaudi, 2002, pp. 149–80, especially pp. 169–76. 9 G. Volpe, L’Italia Moderna 1815/1915, Milan, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1943, vol. I, pp. 48 f. The remarkable insights of Dominique Kirchner Reill on nation building on the Adriatic coasts under Hapsburg rule go in a similar direction, in Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  23 Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste and Venice, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2012. 10 See, for example, P. Fambri, La Venezia Giulia: Studii Politico-Militari con Prefazione di R. Bonghi, Venice, P. Naratovich, 1880. 11 G. Salvemini, Scritti di Politica Estera, in Opere, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1970, vol. IV, pp. 160 f. 12 Now in G. Mazzini, Scritti Politici Editi e Inediti, Imola, Galeati, 1940, vol. 86, pp. 15–22, especially pp. 18 f. As is well known, the hope that soon a future generation would unite Istria and the Tyrol (sic) to the Kingdom was attributed to Camillo Cavour himself. On his death bed, he seems to have expressed this wish to his niece Giuseppina Alfieri di Sostegno. The memoirs of Countess Alfieri were published in 1911. On “Cavour’s will” see also G. Stefani, Cavour e la Venezia Giulia: Contributo alla Storia del Problema Adriatico durante il Risorgimento, Florence, Le Monnier, 1955, pp. 377–8. 13 Among those we should mention Dante’s verses in Inferno, Canto IX: “. . . sì com’a Pola, presso del Carnaro ch’Italia chiude e suoi termini bagna.” [“. . . Or at Pola where the Quarnero sets a bound for Italy, bathing her borders, on every side . . .” Robert Pinsky translation, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1994, p. 75.] 14 M. Mayr, Der Italienischer Irredentismus: Sein Enstehen und Seine Entwicklung Vornehmlich in Tirol, Innsbruck, Tyrolia, 1916, p. 277. For Angelo Ara, Mazzini’s 1866 declarations represent irredentism’s birthday. See A. Ara, “L’Immagine dell’Austria in Italia,” in Id. Dalle Cinque Giornate alla Questione Alto-atesina, Udine, Del Bianco, 1987, pp. 155–214, especially pp. 164 f. 15 F. Salimbeni, “G.I. Ascoli e la Venezia Giulia,” in Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 1, 1980/1, pp. 51–68, especially p. 58. 16 Ibid., p. 60. 17 Ibid., pp. 63–4. 18 For more bibliographical information on the Slovenes in the Valleys of the Natisone, see also C. Ghisalberti, “Stato Nazionale e Minoranze. L’Esperienza Italiana,” in M. Cattaruzza (ed.), Trieste, Austria, Italia tra Settecento e Novecento: Studi in Onore di Elio Apih, Udine, Del Bianco, 1996, pp. 345–58. 19 In the context of the negotiations for establishing an alliance with Prussia against Austria, Italy had demanded the transfer of the Trentino besides the Venetia. Bismarck did not agree to that request, because the Trentino—like Trieste— had belonged to the German Confederation since 1815. Garibaldi’s attempt to occupy the Trentino ought to have improved Italy’s position during the peace negotiations, but Garibaldi’s victory at Bezzecca, on July 21, 1866, was the only Italian military success during that conflict. On the attempts by Italian diplomacy to gain some of the Trentino’s territory during the peace negotiations, see Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (from now on, DDI), first series (1861–1870), vol. 7 (June 10–November 7, 1866), Rome, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1983. 20 As the 1866 peace treaty was being drafted, inquiries were made with Austria about a peaceful transfer of the Trentino. On this issue, see A. Sandonà, L’Irredentismo nelle Lotte Politiche e nelle Contese Diplomatiche Italo-­ Austriache, vol. I: 1866–1882, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1932, pp. 5–8. On the issue of the Trentino during the Third War of Independence, see Ibid., pp. 3–35. The Italian plenipotentiary at the peace conference, Luigi Federico Menabrea, sent a report to the Italian Foreign Minister on October 2, 1866, a day before Austria and Italy concluded their negotiations. In his report, Menabrea contends that the Italian government and the Italian people appear to have much stronger feelings about the claims to the Trentino than to Trieste: “The issue of Trieste, pursued only by a few exiles, appears not to interest public opinion much. For the exiles,

24  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma it is also their only source of livelihood; they issue proclamations against the Austrian government and stress the misfortunes that befall the Istrian population as a consequence. . . . Given current thinking, the Italian government will try to fight against the intrigues of a few discontented people from Trieste.” Ibid., p. 7. 21 Reliable sources, such as the irredentist Paolo Fambri and Gioacchino Volpe himself confirmed this lack of interest. 22 Austria defeated the Italians forces despite their being numerically superior, both in the land battle and in the sea battle that followed. 23 G. Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana dal 1871 al 1915, A. Torre (ed.), Milan, Feltrinelli, 1974, p. 161. 24 F. Chabod, Storia della Politica Estera Italiana dal 1870 al 1896, vol. I: Le premesse, Bari, Laterza, 1951, pp. 529–32. 25 Gaetano Salvemini describes the political milieu of the republican left as follows: “The leaders of republican groups were usually austere characters, who were respectable and respected because of their blameless lives, even though they ritually repeated the ossified Mazzinian formulas. The followers comprised various groups: professionals and intellectuals outraged by the meanness of daily parliamentary politics; university students, who preserved the patriotic Romanticism of the Risorgimento; and artisans and workers, who were taking their first steps in forming their economic and political organizations. In their propaganda you could hear the echo of the theories, more or less well digested and understood, professed by Mazzini for forty years: Italy is the cradle of civilization; Italy bestows justice and champions a new human religion for all peoples; Italy is ‘the Rome of the people,’ which has succeeded ‘the Rome of the Caesars.’ Italy thus embodies the political power of imperial Rome and the moral power of Catholic Rome, the wealth of the medieval republics and all the glories of the past, destined to be reborn in the ‘third Italy.’ ” Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 150. 26 Ibid., p. 160. In 1868 the Italian state granted citizenship to all the exiles from Austrian territories. See Mayr, Der Italienische Irredentismus, cit., p. 284. 27 Volpe, L’Italia Moderna, cit., vol. III, p. 162. 28 Ibid., pp. 53–6. These assessments were published by Crispi’s newspaper, “La Riforma.” In 1877, in the middle of the Russo-Turkish War, Francesco Crispi toured the major European capitals to explore whether any of the great powers might support Italian claims to the Trentino and Trieste, with modest results. The most important outcome was that Italy and Germany established closer ties, following Crispi’s meeting with Chancellor Bismarck. On Crispi’s foreign policy, see C. Duggan, Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901: From Nation to Nationalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, especially on the diplomatic mission of 1877, pp. 363–75. 29 On these issues see Ara’s excellent and exhaustive essay, L’Immagine dell’Austria in Italia (1848–1918), cit., pp. 155 f. On Balbo’s theses see C. Balbo himself, Delle Speranze d’Italia, Capolago (Canton Ticino), Tipografia Elvetica, 1845 (1834), especially pp. 136–45. 30 M. Tabarrini and A. Gotti (eds.), Lettere e Documenti del Barone Bettino Ricasoli, Florence, Le Monnier, 1985, vol. X, pp. 123–5. Letter to Luigi Torelli, Venice. Ricasoli went on to say: “In those days I was seized by a feverish indignation, as I could foresee the imminent catastrophe. My indignation was not aroused so much by the unjust claim of France over Germany, as by seeing that they wanted to destroy the Empire’s greatest jewel, peace, and replace it with European discord and with a dreadful war.” 31 Chabod, Storia della Politica Estera Italiana, cit. See also R. Bonghi, in Fambri, La Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. xxviii-xxxiii.

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  25 32 Chabod, Storia della Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 472, 474 f., 663, 675. 33 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, pp. 108 f., author’s italics. This document was reprinted in DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 5 (July 11, 1873–December 31, 1874), Rome, 1979, n. 413, Il Ministro Visconti Venosta al Ministro a Vienna Di Robilant, Rome, 18 giugno 1874, pp. 432–4. 34 In his pamphlet, Der Italianische Irredentismus, cit., p. 258, Michael Mayr pointed out that in the era of nationalism the Austro-Hungarian Empire was threatened in its very existence: “Since the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy is based exclusively on history as its principle of legitimacy, which alone grants it the right to exist, as the new principle of nationality prevailed, the Monarchy was subjected to attacks from all quarters. De facto, France and Prussia have produced Italian national unity at the expense of Austria.” 35 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, p. 112. 36 G. Candeloro, Storia dell’Italia Moderna, vol. V: La Costituzione dello Stato Unitario 1860–1871, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 292. 37 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, pp. 41–3, 58, 94, 124. 38 Ibid., pp. 127 f. 39 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 207–11. 40 See for example Ara, L’Immagine dell’Austria in Italia, cit., p. 174; Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 201. 41 The interview was published in Pester Lloyd on February 25, 1878. See Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, p. 190. A letter of the Ambassador to London, Luigi Menabrea, also reiterated to the Foreign Minister, Luigi Corti, that demanding Trieste was not realistic, in part because Trieste was Germany’s port in the Adriatic. See DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 10 (March 24–October 16, 1878), Rome, 1976, no. 129. L’Ambasciatore a Londra, Menabrea, al Ministro degli Esteri, Corti, Londra, 15 maggio 1878, pp. 124–5. 42 See for example, Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia, cit., pp. 106–23. The Prime Minister Agostino Depretis and the Foreign Minister Luigi Amedeo Melegari practiced an anti-Austrian foreign policy. But Benedetto Cairoli and the Foreign Minister Luigi Corti started a policy of rapprochement with the historical enemy. In a memorandum, Luigi Corti said that he had accepted the office of Foreign Minister to change a foreign policy “embarked on a path that I believed to be disastrous, even fatal, to Italian interests.” See DDI, second series (1870– 1896), vol. 10 (March 24–October 16, 1878), Rome, 1976, no. 300, Appunti del Ministro degli Esteri Corti, pp. 332–42, especially p. 335. 43 DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 7 (March 25–December 31, 1876), Rome, 1984, no. 494, L’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, al Ministro degli Esteri Melegari, Vienna, 17 ottobre 1876, pp. 601–4, especially p. 604. 44 On this point, see Sergio Romano’s balanced judgment, in L’Irredentismo nella Politica Estera Italiana, in A. Ara and E. Kolb (eds.), Regioni di Frontiera nell’Epoca dei Nazionalismi: Alsazia e Lorena/Trento e Trieste, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995, pp. 13–26, especially pp. 18–21. See also Duggan, Francesco Crispi, cit., p. 391. 45 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. II, pp. 4 ff. In Trieste, the expressions of mourning, promoted also by the liberal Società del progresso [Society for Progress], took on pro-unification connotations. No similar demonstrations were held along the coast. Many telegrams and words of condolence sent by self-proclaimed Trieste committees were actually manufactured in the Kingdom of Italy. 46 Ibid., p. 231. For a heartfelt reconstruction of the demonstrations, see G. Vicini, Una Pagina Storica dell’Italia Irredenta: Ricordi e Appunti dell’Epoca, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1904. See also H. Afflerbach, Der Dreibund: Europäische Großmacht- und Allianzpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, Vienna, Böhlau, 2002,

26  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma p. 109. In a letter to the Foreign Minister, Ambassador Di Robilant deplored the indulgent attitude shown by the Italian government toward the demonstrators. See DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 10 (March 24–October 16, 1878), Rome, 1976, n. 388, L’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, al Ministro degli Esteri, Corti, Vienna, 4 Agosto 1878, pp. 428–9. 47 Called by the Foreign Minister, Luigi Corti, “an irrelevant maniac.” See DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 10, cit., no. 119, Il Ministro degli Esteri, Corti, Vienna, all’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, Rome, 7 Maggio 1878, pp. 112–4, especially p. 112. 48 Naples was for a long time the most important center of irredentist associationism. We can count Roberto Mirabelli, Federico Salomone, Federico Capone, Agostino Casini, Gaetani di Laurenzana, and Pietro Pansini among the Neapolitan democrats who converged around the periodical L’Italia degli Italiani [The Italy of the Italians], founded by Imbriani. See Sabbatucci, “Il Problema dell’Irredentismo e le Origini del Movimento Nazionalista in Italia,” cit., part I, p. 471. 49 M. Garbari, “L’Irredentismo nella Storiografia Italiana,” in A. Ara and E. Kolb (eds.), Regioni di Frontiera nell’Epoca dei Nazionalismi, cit., pp. 27–60, especially p. 41. 50 A. Tamaro, entry “Irredentismo,” in Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome, 1929, vol. 19 a, pp. 567–9. 51 We can find references to the frenzied climate that reigned among the Kingdom’s irredentists in F. Salata, Guglielmo Oberdan Secondo gli Atti Segreti del Processo, Carteggi Diplomatici e Altri Documenti Inediti, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1924, pp. 18 ff. and 503 ff. (declarations and recollections about Guglielmo Oberdan). 52 On Giuseppe Mazzini’s stance regarding extending Italy’s territorial claims in the Adriatic, see also N. Colajanni, Il Pensiero di Giuseppe Mazzini sulla Politica Balcanica e sull’Avvenire degli Slavi, Rome-Naples, Libreria Politica Moderna, 1915. 53 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, pp. 264 f.; author’s emphasis. 54 Lapegna, L’Italia degli Italiani, cit., p. 121. 55 See, for example, Coceani, Milano Centrale Segreta dell’Irredentismo, cit., p. 206. On the links between Freemasonry and irredentism, see also Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., pp. 98–9. We can find information about the clandestine structure of irredentism, the ties between Milan and Trieste, and the underground contacts between the liberal national party in Trieste and conspiratorial irredentism, in A. Apollonio, Autunno Istriano: La “Rivolta” di Pirano del 1948 e i Dilemmi dell’“Irredentismo,” Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 1994, pp. 32–4. 56 See, for example, the gift-book, La Stella dell’Esule [The Star of the Exile], a collaboration of several first-rate representatives of Italian culture and of the republican left (Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, p. 254), L’Italia degli Italiani. Bollettino in pro dell’Italia Irredenta, 1880 (Ibid., p. 264), Pro Patria (Ibid., vol. II, p. 15), L’Eco dell’Alpe Giulia, (Ibid., p. 27), l’Eco degli Irredenti, founded in 1892, publication of the chapters of the Regno del Circolo Garibaldi di Trieste (Ibid., p. 67), the Bollettino del Circolo Garibaldi (Ibid., p. 73), L’Irredenta, single issue printed in Venice (Ibid., p. 73). 57 Lapegna, L’Italia degli Italiani, cit., pp. 276–9. The author also quotes instructions given by Giuseppe Garibaldi and sent to Avezzana to start a guerrilla war in the unredeemed lands, trusting that local people would join in the enterprise. Garibaldi himself acknowledged shortly afterwards that he had overestimated the insurrectional potential of “the people of Trieste and Trento.” Ibid., p. 279.

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  27 58 Salata, Guglielmo Oberdan, cit., pp. 11–18. According to Scipio Slataper, there were about twenty defectors from Trieste alone. See Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., p. 80. See also L. Veronese, Ricordi d’Irredentismo, Trieste, Stabilimento Tipografico S. Spazzal Editore, 1929, pp. 73–6. 59 In Matteo Renato Imbriani ad Alberto Mario: Alcune Schiette Parole, Naples, Stabilimento Tipografico Lanciano e C., 1880, p. 15. 60 The practice of target shooting took hold in subsequent years among university students and was institutionalized to a certain degree. In 1910, in an article for La Voce, Scipio Slataper said somewhat ironically: “I remember how much importance Florence university youths attached to each of them having his beloved musket!” In Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., p. 106. 61 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, pp. 262 ff. See also L. Salvatorelli, La Triplice Alleanza: Storia Diplomatica 1877–1912, Milan-Varese, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1939, p. 52. 62 DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 12, Rome, 1987, no. 714. L’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, al Presidente del Consiglio e Ministro degli Esteri Cairoli, Vienna, 8 marzo 1880, pp. 575–6. 63 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. I, pp. 262–71. 64 On the Triple Alliance, see Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 3–103; Salvatorelli, La Triplice Alleanza, cit.; Afflerbach, Der Dreibund, cit. 65 There are several references to this collaboration in Augusto Sandonà’s three volumes on irredentism. On the collaboration between the two police forces in fighting irredentism, democratic radicalism, and anarchism, see E. Maserati, “Guglielmo Oberdan tra Mito e Realtà,” in Quaderni Giuliani di Storia,” 3, 1982, pp. 23–32, especially pp. 24–6. This cooperation began after the rapprochement between the two countries after the crisis of the 1880s. 66 In his extensive and well-documented work on Guglielmo Oberdan, Francesco Salata contends, with arguments that are not very persuasive, that Oberdan’s mother, Gioseffa Maria Oberdank, had been “Italian for many generations.” Therefore, Salata concludes: “In the martyr’s veins there ran no mixed blood, but purely Italian blood, both from his mother’s and his father’s side: the latter, born on the Piave River, was himself Italian for many generations; the former, born in Gorizia, was Italian for many generations as well, even though from ancestors who were of German or Slovenian descent—we are not sure which one.” (Salata, Guglielmo Oberdan, cit., p. 1.) 67 In a note given to Francesco Salata in 1923, Salomone Morpurgo declared that Guglielmo Oberdan was the one who launched the bomb against the veterans’ parade. Ibid., pp. 507–12. The same version is offered by another source above suspicion, the nationalist Attilio Tamaro. See A. Tamaro, Storia di Trieste (1924), 2 vols., Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1976, vol. II, p. 419. 68 Salata, Guglielmo Oberdan, cit., is to this day the most complete study of the Oberdan case. The documentary and bibliographical parts are especially valuable (pp. 341–596). 69 Ibid., p. 335. 70 On Carducci’s commitment to irredentism, see A. Brambilla, “Carducci, Carduccianesimo e Irredentismo a Trieste: Note per un Percorso Bibliografico,” in F. Salimbeni (ed.), La Monarchia Austro-Ungarica tra Irredentismi e Nazionalismi: L’Azione della Lega Nazionale ai Confini Italici, Atti del Corso di Aggiornamento, Trieste, December 15, 1991–April 8, 1992, in Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 15, 1994/1, pp. 101–21. On the correspondence between Carducci and some irredentist literates from Istria and Trieste, see also L. Gasperini, “Corrispondenti Triestini e Istriani del Carducci,” in La Porta Orientale, 6–8, 1936, pp. 304–19. From the documents mentioned in this essay it comes out that the

28  The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma poet was personally engaged (even though sporadically) in favor of irredentist exiles. 71 Carducci’s writings on Guglielmo Oberdan are collected in G. Carducci, Opere, XII, Confessioni e Battaglie, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1902, pp. 235–59. 72 Ibid., pp. 243–4. Because of his aggressively anti-Austrian stance, Giosuè Carducci was subjected to several criminal lawsuits and disciplinary measures. See Ibid., pp. 531–41. 73 DDI, second series (1870–1896), vols. 15–16 (May 21, 1882—December 31, 1883), Rome, 1993, no. 454, L’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, al Ministro degli Esteri, Mancini, Vienna, 5 gennaio 1883, pp. 404–5. Di Robilant repeatedly asked Mancini for stricter measures against the irredentists, even with the passage of new laws, see Ibid., no. 450 (Di Robilant a Mancini, 30 dicembre 1882), no. 457 (Mancini a Di Robilant, 6 gennaio 1883), no. 467 (Di Robilant a Mancini, 14 gennaio 1883), no.525 (Di Robilant a Mancini, 2 marzo 1883). 74 G. Carducci, Per Guglielmo Oberdan e Alberto Mario, Como-Florence-Naples, Casa Editrice Italiana, 1909, p. 20. 75 See G. Spadolini, “Carducci nella Storia d’Italia,” in M. Valgimigli, G. Dozza et al., Carducci nel Cinquantenario della Morte, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1959, pp. 321–75, especially pp. 326–32. Giovanni Pascoli correctly called Carducci the “poet of the second Risorgimento.” Ibid., p. 326. 76 Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., p. 61. 77 On the repercussion of the Oberdan case on Austrian-Italian relations, see Afflerbach, Der Dreibund, cit., pp. 113–22. According to Afflerbach, irredentism had already begun to weaken by 1883. 78 Sabbatucci, “Il Problema dell’Irredentismo e le Origini del Movimento Nazionalista in Italia,” cit., part I, p. 476. 79 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. III, pp. 198–202. 80 Ibid., p. 82. 81 Ibid., pp. 9 f. 82 Ibid., pp. 82–4. On the fascination exercised by Oberdan’s deed on anarchist circles in Italy, see Maserati, “Guglielmo Oberdan tra Mito e Realtà,” cit., pp. 27–8. 83 The appropriation of Oberdan’s name by “subversive movements” was recorded and deplored by Salata himself, Guglielmo Oberdan, cit., p. 335. 84 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. III, p. 51. 85 Ibid., pp. 199–201. 86 Ibid., pp. 51–3. 87 Ibid., p. 199. 88 Ibid., p. 61; see also the pamphlet against the Triple Alliance, Aurelio Saffi e le Provincie Italiane Soggette all’Austria, n.p., 1891. 89 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 161: “In Italy irredentist demonstrations did not interest many people, except for the exiles and the most radical democratic groups. Government parties deplored them, because they could upset the good relations with the Vienna government, good relations that were not only useful, but almost necessary.” 90 On the mixture of different political traditions still present in the Italian workingclass movement until the 1880’s, see Z. Ciuffoletti, Storia del Psi, vol. I: Le Origini e l’Età Giolittiana, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992, pp. 3–82. 91 Fritz Fellner, author of seminal studies on the Triple Alliance, also considers the pact between the Central Empires and Italy “unnatural” and doomed to failure. However, Italian foreign policy remained highly autonomous with regard to the two allies. See F. Fellner, “Der Dreibund: Europäische Diplomatie vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” now in Fellner, Vom Dreibund zum Völkerbund: Studien zur

The Kingdom of Italy and the Irredentist Dilemma  29 Geschichte der Internationalen Beziehungen, 1882–1919, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1994, pp. 19–82. 92 DDI, second series (1870–1896), vol. 10, cit., no. 558. Il Segretario Generale agli Esteri, Maffei, all’Ambasciatore a Vienna, Di Robilant, Rome, 6 ottobre 1878, pp. 603–5 f. 3 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 164 f. 9

2 From Irredentism to Nationalism

1  Irredentism and Power Politics Just a few years after its rise, irredentism began to move away from its original roots in Mazzinian thought and to change the scope of its ambitions, adapting them to the foreign policy of the newly-born nation state. The revival of Cesare Balbo’s theses led people to focus their attention on the compensations that Italy could demand in exchange for an hypothetical Austrian expansion into the Balkan Peninsula, overestimated in its extent if not its likelihood.1 Federico Chabod accurately remarked that irredentism itself ended up by territorializing the national problem, thus abandoning any universalistic aspirations.2 This ideological and theoretical shift in how to accomplish national unification occurred as the political and cultural climate changed in Europe as a whole. After reaching their zenith in the democratic and national movements of the years 1848–89, Romantic ideals were replaced by a more prosaic Realpolitik, embodied by the German Chancellor Bismarck and his bold policy of alliances. As Chabod remarked: “Romanticism’s ideals and lifestyles waned; very different ones took hold instead, characterized no doubt by a lowering of the moral and cultural tone, as much as by a significant broadening of their reach.”3 As the nation became an end in itself, a conservative and stabilizing component within the renewed concert of European powers, the link between the concepts of nation and freedom, theorized by Mazzini, among others, came untied. Even though Mazzinianism was part of the extreme Left—a small minority with a handful of deputies in the Italian Parliament, and with ties to the (at times conspiratorial) network of republican associations—its original ideology began to morph to the point of contributing to the early expression of the goals of power politics and imperialist expansion. On this point, Gaetano Salvemini remarked: In the last twenty years, the mood that today [1924] we call “nationalist” or “imperialist” has progressively been incorporated into the social ideologies of conservative parties, whereas, sixty years ago, in Italy that same mood was in most cases the prerogative of democratic parties. Besides,

From Irredentism to Nationalism  31 today’s nationalists and imperialists claim to be “realists,” because they contend that force and national selfishness are the only real forces that move history. They laugh at democratic ideologies (justice, liberty, right to nationality, international solidarity, and so forth), which they consider illusions destined to be exploited by realistic and pragmatic politicians. On the contrary, sixty years ago, in Italy the nationalist mood was associated with Mazzini’s moralism rather than Bismarck’s realism. That mood was an ingenuous and chaotic mixture of turgid patriotic exasperation and internationalist and humanitarian messianism.4 Italian moderates believed that the unification of Italy and Germany would make it possible to resume a balance-of-power policy, such as Bismarck had practiced throughout his chancellorship. The traditional rules of foreign policy would hold sway once again and absorb the formation of the two great nation states at the center of Europe.5 In other words, people cultivated the illusion that it was possible to stop the application of the nationality principle at the eastern borders of the German Empire and of the Kingdom of Italy. The hope that Austria would direct its ambitions eastward—a policy for which the Ottoman Empire should pay the price— and that inter-European competition would turn to the acquisition of colonial lands outside Europe, were distinctive elements of that vision; in Italy, Francesco Crispi was its emblematic representative. For sure, when compared to the Left, the moderates continued to place less emphasis on power politics; nonetheless, both fronts partook of the new political and cultural climate spreading in Europe.6 The interests of the (nation) states prevailed decisively over the principles of the Risorgimento. It is not by chance that both Italy and Germany preferred a moderate policy of colonial acquisitions rather than an active irredentist policy. Both countries fully recognized that Austria played a very useful function, even though it still ruled over Italian and above all German territories. Even the nationalists, who became an organized political force from 1910, stirred irredentist goals only when they saw the possibility of reconciling them with the power politics of the state. The German nationalist elements followed a similar political and ideal path, by favoring a policy of colonial acquisitions and world-wide influence (Weltpolitik) for a long time, rather than pursuing the completion of national unity, which seemed extremely hard to achieve.7 Only with the outbreak of World War I was this approach called radically into question. In the final analysis, the Triple Alliance gave diplomatic expression to Italy’s and Germany’s acknowledgment that, in both countries, the process of unification had reached, at least temporarily, its end point.

2  The National Struggle in the Giulia Region Until the articulation of its programmatic goals was completed, nationalism’s new contradictory and anti-universalistic character was more a frame

32  From Irredentism to Nationalism of mind than the conscious pursuit of a policy, as became apparent in the national struggles in the Giulia region. Here the liberal parties engaged in a superficial and opportunistic, although vociferous, opposition to Austria, often mixed with a Masonic-style anticlericalism,8 soon replaced by a profound Slavophobia. Austria became a secondary target, accused of supporting the Slavs and endangering Italian identity. In those same years the Italian liberal nationalist parties in the Trentino and in the lands along the coast abandoned their abstensionism and began to send their own representatives to the Parliament in Vienna, where they succeeded in implementing a policy that would protect Italian nationality and identity. Starting in the 1890s we can see the development of a movement for the defense of Italian “culture,” both in the Kingdom of Italy and in the Hapsburg lands inhabited by Italians, a movement tied to the spreading of the process of nationalization to social strata larger than the irredentist élites active from the very beginning.9 If we look at the facts, it appears unwarranted to apply the commonplace expression “divide and conquer” to the policy practiced by the Hapsburgs toward their ethnic minorities—as many did at the time. That fortunate formula might have provided a correct description of the situation, when Jelačić, the ban of Croatia, intervened against the revolution in Hungary and in Vienna in 1848. Now, however, it only masked the new national assertiveness of the Slavs of the Empire, which the Austrian government was trying to manage, with mixed success. Attributing the national mobilization of the Slavs under the Hapsburgs to Austrian government policy allowed the Italian national liberals to cherish the illusion that it was a mere side effect, destined to vanish together with the policy that had generated it. In a letter to Ernesto Nathan, dated December 19, 1903, Felice Venezian, the unquestioned leader of the liberal nationalist party in Trieste, optimistically remarked: “In our lands, the Slavs are part and parcel of Austrian domination. No one will even remember that they exist, once that domination is no longer a yoke around our necks.”10 Austria had granted the provincial diets relatively broad powers, which placed the Länder’s [Regions] national policies in the hands of ethnic parties, thus allowing vast areas of the Empire to elude the power of the state. “The state was no longer master in its own house,” a high-level Austrian functionary remarked dejectedly, referring especially to the situation in Bohemia.11 Besides, no central governmental body exerted control over the rights attributed to all national groups by the 1867 Constitution (paragraph 19).12 Legal complaints to the Empire’s judiciary dragged on for years, from one appeal to the next; they almost always came to nothing.13 The struggle against Slavism became the defining characteristic of the Italian national movement along the Austrian Littoral more or less in the 1880s, and, therefore, the distinctive feature of nationalism during its transition to a mass movement. In 1885, the founding of the Pro Patria [from now, Association for the Fatherland] aimed to promote schools and kindergartens with

From Irredentism to Nationalism  33 instruction in Italian, on the model of the German Schulverein which was active especially in border areas.14 The Association for the Fatherland was associated with the Società Dante Alighieri [from now on, Dante Alighieri Association],15 which had also been launched to spread the Italian language beyond the Kingdom’s frontiers. In both associations Freemasonry was present in force, as was the case in all irredentist committees.16 It was Francesco Crispi who started to use the Dante Alighieri as a tool for financing the Italian liberal parties and associations in the Hapsburg Monarchy. The Dante Alighieri Association also managed a spy network which provided the Italian government with political and military intelligence.17 Among loud protests in Italy, the Hapsburg government dissolved the Association for the Fatherland in 1890,18 which was reconstituted shortly afterwards as the Lega nazionale [from now on, National League]. The same year, the government also disbanded the Società per il progresso in Trieste [Association for Progress],19 which was the original core of the liberal national party and had played an essential function in mobilizing the electorate in the first municipal and diet-level elections. Similar associations had been formed in Gorizia and in Istria. The National League sponsored schools and kindergartens, gymnastic, mountain climbing, and target shooting associations, amateur theaters, and book-reading clubs. Even though the primary goal of this network was to give participants the opportunity to express their national sentiment by engaging in cultural, instructional, and recreational activities, de facto the Italian network set itself up as a counterbalance to similar Slovenian and Croatian networks, characterized, however, by a stronger clericalism. The League gave visibility to the Italian presence in the territory contested by the two groups, and expressed the ambition of leaving Italy’s exclusive mark on the region, both in terms of cultural symbols, and of anticipation of future territorial arrangements.20

3  The Irredentist “Discourse” In the years between the founding of the Kingdom of Italy and the signing of the Triple Alliance, the irredentist “discourse” emphasized first of all Italy’s right to the acquisition of the unredeemed lands. Alois Haymerle (a Colonel in the Austrian army, and the brother of Heinrich Karl von Haymerle, the Austrian Foreign Minister at the time) collected the arguments in favor of this thesis in a pamphlet that made quite a stir.21 These can be summarized as follows: a. the territories in question were Italian from a national point of view; b. those territories were located within the boundaries of “the natural border”;22 c. Italy was entitled to compensations for Austria’s expansion in the Balkans.

34  From Irredentism to Nationalism In the case of the Trentino, Giuseppe Garibaldi’s military victories of 1866 added weight to this argument. In this respect, the Mazzinian Aurelio Saffi’s welcoming address to the exiles from Trieste and Istria is exemplary: The Alps, which separate you from your oppressors, stand, unshakable, as the sign that you are our brothers. Here the spirit of Rome set Italy’s sacred frontiers, and gave your mountains their Roman name. The traces of the ancient claustrum [enclosure, gate, T.N.], the amphitheaters, and the temples show to this day that you are part of the tenth region. The judgment of the ancient geographers, reasserted by Dante, set the extreme limit of the Italic land at the Arsa [Raša] River and at the Gulf of Quarnero [Kvarner Gulf], following the lines established by nature. Beyond those limits, lands and seas belong to other peoples. We would violate their rights, the same rights that we claim for ourselves, if we were to impose our supremacy only because of the memory of historical events.23 He went on to say that the presence of foreign races within the “natural borders” should be seen as the consequence of “invasion or hospitality,” neither of which can yield rights.24 The memoranda drafted by a Comitato triestino istriano [Trieste and Istria Committee], formed at the beginning of the Third War of Independence (June 1866), presented similar arguments. In his plea to Vittorio Emanuele II, the irredentist Carlo Combi, from Capodistria, stated: They [the Italians of the Julian region] will be the guardians of the Julian Alps. These mountains, violated too many times by foreign people, are the necessary complement to our national territory and its security. The Julian people are the descendants of those brave Istrian sailors who fought and won for the glorious flag of St. Mark. They will deliver Pola to you, the same Pola, an Italian military port ever since Roman times, that Austria has transformed into a threat for our entire Adriatic coast. They will give you Trieste, that same Trieste that Austria would mislead you into believing that it belongs to Germany.25 In a subsequent Appeal by the Istrians to Italy Presented to the Baron Bettino Ricasoli, President of the Council of Ministers, Florence, 11 August 1866, Combi adduced strategic motivations, by reasserting, essentially, that the annexation of the Istrian peninsula answered Italy’s need to reach its natural frontier, but he also stressed ethnographic and nationalist considerations. Combi insisted on the Italians’ awareness of being the only “cultural nation” on Istrian soil. “Any village . . . that shows any sign of civic life is genuinely Italian. The Italian character manifests itself strongly in every way.” There is no recognition whatsoever of the national specificity of the Slavs residing there, seen as a jumbled mixture of peoples who settled in

From Irredentism to Nationalism  35 Istria in successive stages to repopulate lands hit by famines and epidemics. “Foreigners even to the point of being unable to understand one another, and foreign to the Slavs beyond the Alps, they are leaves fallen off the tree of their own nation; certainly, none of them will have the power to return to life on the branch from which they were separated. They lived and live without history, without memory, without institutions, not at all pleased with their origin, but yearning to be considered equal to us.”26 Such an optimistic scenario, according to which even Istria’s Slavs preferred annexation to Italy rather than subjection to Hapsburg sovereignty, may have corresponded to the status of interethnic relations in Istria in 1866. In subsequent decades, as nothing changed in the way the Italians in the liberal national movement perceived the Istrian Slavs, they offered a reading that deviated more and more from what was happening in reality among those populations, whose awareness of national identity was rising steadily. Starting in the 1880s, the Italian liberal parties on the Adriatic coast adopted a national policy finalized to maintaining the positions already acquired. They also tried to contain Slovenian and Croatian demands for recognition of their linguistic and cultural specificity. The historian Anna Millo remarks that the liberal national policy in Venezia Giulia ended up by denying Slovenes and Croats fundamental rights of citizenship, such as the right to vote at the municipal- and diet-levels, and the right to education in their own languages.27 In 1894, in the Istrian town of Pirano [Piran], the posting of an inscription in Italian and Croatian on the façade of the courthouse caused street riots which lasted several days, until the demonstrators’ demand to have the hated stemma [plaque, T.N.] removed was met. One month later the authorities posted the bilingual inscription again, while ringleaders were sentenced to several months in jail.28 The discursive context of a policy that denied, de facto, the existence of other national groups, centered on the assertion that Trieste and Istria had received the imprint of civilization solely from Rome, which had settled in those territories from the time of Augustus’s Decima Regio [Tenth Region, T.N.].29 The Slavs, whose specific national identity was denied, were considered barbarous and scattered peoples. Cultural redemption would be possible for them only as individuals assimilated into Italian civilization one by one.30 Even Ruggero Bonghi, clear-sighted representative of moderate and Catholic liberalism, in his introduction to Paolo Fambri’s booklet said that the assimilating capacity of Latin culture would solve the problem of the ethnic heterogeneity of Giulia’s inhabitants. “We no longer surpass the Austrians in economic initiative and not even in entertainment,” Bonghi said realistically, after acknowledging that in the region around Gorizia the majority were Slavs, and that in Istria the Croats constituted a substantial minority. Still, it is the warmth of our civilization and of our genius that never ceases to surpass all others. It does so thanks to a force inherent in our

36  From Irredentism to Nationalism nature, not at all helped by any effort on the part of our nation. This spontaneous, unstoppable action is always at work. It is the same drive that has enabled this Italian soil to conquer the various peoples who have occupied it over the centuries. This drive has erased the mark of the nations to which they belonged, and imprinted them with a new mark, its own mark, the mark of the Italian people.31 Bonghi expressed these wishes in 1880, when Slovenes and Croats of Venezia Giulia and above all of Trieste appeared to oppose no political resistance to the process of assimilation.32 Despite this optimistic forecast, population censuses continued to report that in Istria the Croats were in the majority; that the number of Slovenes dwarfed that of Italians in the region around Gorizia; and that, in 1910, even in Trieste about one quarter of the population declared themselves Slovenian.33 The political leaders of the Italian liberal national movement on the eastern coast of the Adriatic didn’t grasp what was happening before their very eyes: larger and larger strata of Slovenes and Croats were forging and expressing a specific national identity. Starting in the first years of the twentieth century at the latest, the identity of non-Italian groups in these territories included national belonging as a fairly stable feature, which was therefore becoming hard to change.34 In an essay on irredentism published in La Voce in 1910, Scipio Slataper, aware of a looming historical nemesis, lucidly remarked that the Slavic national reawakening was taking its revenge by threatening “the part of the nation that did not cooperate actively with the process of national unification.”35 We can sum up the trajectory of the national struggle in the Adriatic lands as follows. At the beginning, in Venezia Giulia, this struggle attracted and involved, above all, the intellectual strata and the liberal professions, who aspired to become part of the Italian nation state. Then, at the same time as it reached larger and larger groups thanks to an articulated and widespread associational network, the Italian national movement found itself in competition with other organized nationalities within the Empire, a competition marked by harsh contrasts and by a conception of the “national question” which took on overwhelmingly particularistic overtones. The historian Elio Apih remarked with great clarity: Irredentism was ambivalent: on the one hand, it was an expression of the Risorgimento, which aimed to create a unified nation state; on the other hand, it was an expression of the Hapsburg world: a harsh national conflict, often characterized by bullyism and the abuse of power. We find traces of its twofold character in the Slavic world as well. The idea of the nation had lost its universality; it had deteriorated, becoming a narrow territorial and municipal notion.”36 In the 1890s the Italian national movement in Austria found its unifying rallying cry in the demand for an Italian university in Trieste,37 opposed

From Irredentism to Nationalism  37 by successive Austrian governments fearful that it would become a center for the spread of irredentism and exacerbate the resentment of the Italian subjects, especially among educated strata. In a passage, Felice Venezian appears to confirm that the leadership of the liberal national movement saw the demand for a university in purely instrumental terms, as a tool of political mobilization.38 In 1904, the year when serious riots took place in Innsbruck, where Tyrolians had brutally attacked Italian students attending the new offerings of law courses in Italian, Venezian wrote to Nathan: “In the end, I am pleased if they give us nothing. Hatred will only grow.”39 In a more realistic and calmer piece, published in La Nuova Antologia [The New Anthology] in 1895, Graziadio Ascoli had wished, on the contrary, that Austria’s education policy would choose to preserve the Venetian character of the territories along the coast, in the interest of maintaining the multinational identity of the Empire: “Especially in the Levant,” he wrote, “Italy has left an imprint on commerce and mores that is still a substantial interest of Austria-Hungary; such an interest can grow again, more and more.” Austria would see it had nothing to fear from an “authentic Italian” culture in Trieste, once it realized that this “Italian identity” would not become “politically hostile.” Ascoli, himself from Gorizia, was sensitive to the Slavs’ right to cultural emancipation, but wished that “the government encouraged the Slavs to ‘move’ toward the Slavic world (without making them leave their settlements, of course), rather than back their aggressive tendencies, which are, in any case, contrary to any civilized principle and even to Austria’s legitimate interests.”40 As it broadened its support base and grew as a mass movement in the unredeemed provinces, nationalism assumed the connotations of a “civic religion,” thus partaking of one of the most important features of European modernity. Allegories, banners, fireworks in national colors, hymns, and uniforms that reminded people of the most popular corps of the Italian military, created a feeling of mystic union among participants, who were thus transformed into a liturgical mass performing the sacred rite of the fatherland’s religion.41 With biting sarcasm, Roberto Bazlen, an intellectual from Trieste, wrote the following remarks on the rituals and dogmas of the new secular religion as he witnessed them in Trieste, even though similar expressions could be observed in all urban Italian communities along the eastern Adriatic coast: . . . the better educated part of the bourgeoisie . . . is thus forced, in the twentieth century, to resort to a nineteenth-century Risorgimentostyle rhetoric, which keeps the flame burning, believes that Italian is the idioma gentil, sonante e puro [genteel, ringing, and pure language, T.N.], and Florence the city of flowers; that believes that in Rome they milk the she-wolf to feed the Italian race; that offers votive lamps and posts everywhere lions of St. Mark; that trembles, invokes, palpitates, strives, suffers, awaits, craves, yearns, pines, burns, immolates

38  From Irredentism to Nationalism itself, demands . . . And on the night when there was a performance of Nabucco at the Municipal Theater,42 the minds of all the traders, middlemen, managers of banks and insurance companies, doctors, lawyers, importers and exporters seated in the orchestra; and the minds of middle school teachers seated in the first balcony; and the minds of students and young seamstresses packed in the second balcony; the mind of all those people va sull’ali dorate [flies on golden wings, T.N.], and their enthusiasm is so great as to “bring down the house,” as they used to say in Trieste.43 Undoubtedly, people also performed similar rituals in Italy, as part of a more comprehensive religion of the fatherland.44 However, it is undeniable that the process of identity building and of mass politicization spread to much broader strata of the population in the urban centers of the unredeemed lands compared to the rest of Italy. This feature thus contributed to the decidedly middle class connotation of these urban centers if compared to similar centers in Italy at large, where the upper class and the aristocracy were still hegemonic.45 The intensity and urgency of the various processes of nation building taking place in the Hapsburg Empire were increased by the pressure that each national movement felt from their antagonists, which were going through the same process at the same time. The nationalist Attilio Tamaro offered the following definition of the Adriatic Italian identity: “The forceful civic construction of a community, led by masters of practice.”46 According to the historian Ennio Maserati, ceremonies celebrating the nation took on aspects of a political liturgy through which the masses sought to enact the representation of their collective identity.47 In 1898, the Austrian Parliament approved the so-called “Badeni ordinances,” which established that all the languages spoken in a specific region should enjoy equal public status. The debate over these ordinances had already generated such clamor in the Reichsrat that the Parliament had to be cleared by the police; the German deputies, in particular, unwilling to concede equal rights to the Czechs in Bohemia, opposed the measure vehemently.48 Numerous complaints reached Vienna from the Adriatic coast; they charged that the Austrian government tried to pervert the identity of a land which had always been Latin by taking advantage of unspecified “foreigners.” Representatives in the Italian Parliament did raise questions about the Badeni ordinances, but the Prime Minister, Francesco Crispi, kept his distance from the issue. The Austrian Ambassador explained in a note that the ordinances were not meant to trample upon the rights of the Italians in the Empire, but rather to grant equal rights to all the national groups in Cislehitania.49

4 Frontier Intellectuals In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Adriatic question, which by now was decoupled from the issue of the Trentino in Italian foreign policy,

From Irredentism to Nationalism  39 caught the attention of Italian public opinion once again in new terms, thanks to the contribution of a few outstanding literary figures connected with Italy’s most lively cultural currents. Il Regno [The Kingdom], one of the Florentine journals launched at the beginning of the century, immediately showed interest in the conditions of the Austro-Italians, by publishing several contributions on that issue.50 But the most fruitful discussion took place in La Voce, with the participation of some avant-garde intellectuals (Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini in particular) and a group of students from Trento and Trieste enrolled at the University of Florence. Between 1908 and 1910, La Voce published pieces by Giani Stuparich, Alberto Spaini, Angelo Vivante, and Scipio Slataper above all, devoted to the analysis of the Italians in the Giulia region. It was in this context that, through a fruitful debate with Prezzolini, Slataper articulated his proposal for “cultural irredentism,”51 which was supposed to reconstruct a link among all Italians, those living beyond the border and those living in Italy, without calling into question the territorial status quo. According to Slataper, Italian intellectuals on the Adriatic coast were called upon to spread, in the German and Slavic worlds, an Italian culture renewed by its ties with the most advanced trends of European thought, while introducing Slavic and German cultural production into Italy. With his study on The Czech Nation,52 Giani Stuparich, among others, did play such a mediating cultural function, as did Slataper himself with his critical essays on the German and Nordic literatures. In other words, Trieste, rather than being merely a crossroads of goods and “races,” as Pacifico Valussi had proposed years earlier, should also become a center for the transfer of ideas and culture in a free exchange with the Slavic world, through which Italy would demonstrate its cultural superiority over its antagonists and therefore affirm and legitimate its primacy. Scipio Slataper’s proposal had one serious limitation: it didn’t address the issue of what “organic historical forces” might have supported such a project, as the historian Elio Apih remarked years ago.53 On the other hand, it is also true, as Carlo Schiffrer has emphasized, that we should give credit to the vociani [The Voice’s group, T.N.] for placing the “Italian” perspective center stage. This enabled them to formulate a viable function for the Italian component in the Giulia region and to abandon the narrow confines of the municipal, and therefore inevitably Hapsburg, politics of the national liberals.54 Among La Voce’s collaborators was also the Socialist Angelo Vivante, who kept a regular correspondence with the editor, Giuseppe Prezzolini, but published most of his writings in the cultural journal of the Italian Socialist Party, Critica Sociale [Social Critique], or in Gaetano Salvemini’s L’Unità [from now on, Unity]. Thanks to Salvemini’s warm encouragement, Vivante wrote his major work, Irredentismo Adriatico [Adriatic Irredentism], published in 1912, which aimed to inform Italians about the condition of the Austro-Italians on the Adriatic coast.

40  From Irredentism to Nationalism Irredentismo Adriatico starts with a rethinking of Trieste’s history from the eighteenth century onward. It is a reconstruction of social and ethnic relations in the region, as well as of the development of Trieste’s port as the main outlet for Austria’s hinterland. Vivante recognized that the specific “political culture” of Trieste was local, autonomistic, anti-Slavic, and antiItalian, while emphasizing that Italian national consciousness had grown more slowly and haltingly in the Adriatic emporium than even in nearby Istria.55 Vivante’s work criticized the annexation of the Austrian Littoral to Italy on two grounds. He acknowledged that ethnic diversity in the region made it impossible to establish a clear-cut territorial separation among groups on national criteria and that Trieste’s economic future depended on its ties with Austria. Vivante contended that Trieste could play the function of a commercial link between central Europe and the Levant only because, as Austria’s main outlet to the sea, its development was an important piece in the economic policy of a landlocked country. As soon as Trieste became Italian, Austria would move its trade to another port on the eastern Adriatic; the Italian government would have neither the interest nor the capacity to exploit the port in the context of the Italian national economy. Vivante, himself a Socialist from Trieste, observed: “We cannot say that Trieste is an Italian port rather than an English, Egyptian, or Turkish one. On the contrary, commercial relations with Turkey, Egypt, British India, and so forth are more significant than those with Italy.” As we may expect, Vivante’s analysis prioritizes the economic components over the national factor. Trusting in the development of productive forces in the large integrated territory of the Hapsburg Empire, he believes that, once the process of class formation of the proletariat and of the bourgeoisie has been completed, the polarization of class interests will overtake nationalistic conflicts. Like Slataper, Vivante argued his position by taking the existing borders for granted. Unlike Slataper, Vivante gave a positive assessment of the fact that Trieste belonged to Austria, because its function in the overall economy of the Empire was becoming more and more important. Sadly, a few months after Italy’s entry into World War I, in July 1915, Angelo Vivante plunged from a window of the psychiatric clinic where he had been hospitalized because of a serious nervous crisis. He died a few days later from wounds suffered in the fall.56 Among the many intellectuals from Trieste who, in collaboration with Italian politicians and thinkers, were attempting to find new solutions to the issue of the relationships between Italy and the Adriatic territories beyond the border, the most influential was undoubtedly Ruggero Timeus, for his remarkable capacity to read the direction of contemporary historical trends. Looking back at his contribution, Giani Stuparich, a writer from Trieste, calls him “a sharp diagnostician of Europe’s political condition (we should rather say, ‘disease’).”57

From Irredentism to Nationalism  41 Ruggero Timeus began his militancy among Trieste’s republicans by contributing to the republican magazine L’Emancipazione [Emancipation]. He then moved to Rome where he established contacts with nationalist groups. Following the breakout of the war in Libya and the ensuing bloody Balkan wars, Timeus articulated the notion of “nationalist irredentism.” He presented his thesis in several pieces published in the nationalist publication L’Idea Nazionale [from now, The National Idea], and then, in more systematic form, in the pamphlet Trieste, which came out on the eve of Italy’s entry into the world conflict.58 With Timeus, the break with the democratic tradition of the Risorgimento is radical and complete. Italy must conquer Trieste not to complete the process of national unification, but rather in preparation for its own imperial expansion into the Balkan Peninsula. He thus resurrects, within an imperialistic context, the argument of the “gate to the east” which Carlo Combi had formulated years before. The relationship with the Slavs is set in terms of a conflict with the enemy who must be hated in the name of one’s own national interest. In 1911, in an anonymous piece published in L’Idea Nazionale, Timeus already described an apocalyptic picture of the national struggle in Istria, where hatred would spread among neighbors and acquaintances: “We know each one of the men who yesterday attacked the Italian school with scythes, and a week ago bombarded it with stones.” His conclusive scenario was ominous; the struggle was destined to end only when “one of the two races fighting one another has completely disappeared.”59 Besides showing all too well the degree of exacerbation reached by the national struggle in the Giulia region, the violence of Timeus’s language is also indicative of the new mood characterizing Italian nationalism, which, discarding liberal and democratic values, has moved to embrace the idea of naked power politics and the authoritarian state. Commenting on the split between the Risorgimento’s tradition and imperialistic nationalism, Emilio Gentile remarks: From a cultural point of view, imperialist nationalism detached itself decidedly from the nationalism of the nineteenth century. It assigned priority to the issue of the power and expansion of nations rather than to the problem of their independence and equality. Imperialist nationalists boasted that they had got over the old patriotism espoused by the Risorgimento, and had embraced a new and manlier idea of the nation, defined by the categories of so-called political realism: race purity and collective will-power, aimed only at conquering and dominating others under the leadership of a strong state.60 It is through this argument that the irredentist problem and the new— albeit illusory—prospects for Italy’s continental expansion were linked to one another, a turn that would be highly consequential for the events that followed.

42  From Irredentism to Nationalism

5 The Radicalization of the National Conflict on the Eve of World War I Italian public opinion took a renewed interest in the lands beyond the border at the same time as tensions resurfaced in its relations with Austria, following its annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the appointment of Conrad von Hötzendorf, an outspoken anti-Italian, as Chief of Staff of the Austrian armed forces in 1906.61 At this point, the Italian government and the Crown began to support, cautiously, the Italians beyond the border, and to favor some initiatives aiming at economic development.62 In 1908, following a series of meetings between the Austrian and Russian Foreign Ministers, Aerenthal and Iswolski, the Austrians incorporated Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been under Austrian administration since 1878, thus dashing the hopes raised by the Young Turks’ revolution that a renewed Ottoman Empire could take back the two provinces. The Austrian initiative aroused indignation among international public opinion; Iswolski himself denied that he had consented to the operation in the name of the Czarist power. In Italy, anti-Hapsburg sentiment was rekindled, as had happened in 1878. People started once again to talk about compensations. The question of Bosnia even triggered a polemic between Angelo Vivante and Gaetano Salvemini. The former contended that the annexation did not change the balance of power in the Balkans, whereas the latter condemned Austrian imperialism in no uncertain terms. The annexation of Bosnia appears to be the event that prompted Salvemini to retreat from his original antiirredentist stance and to develop the analysis that, a few years later, would lead him to formulate the idea of “democratic interventionism.” The outbreak of the war in Libya and of the Balkan conflict one right after the other set the international chessboard in motion again. Italy entered a more active phase of colonial policy, while the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent. The European governments feared that the power vacuum ensuing in the former Ottoman territories would result in a further increase of Austria’s power in the region. With these clouds gathering on the horizon, Milan’s Corriere della Sera [Evening Courier], which had embarked on a firmly nationalist course,63 sent Luigi Barzini, one of its most brilliant correspondents, to the “unredeemed lands.” In the several articles he wrote on the conditions of the Italians beyond the border, Barzini described a situation akin to a state of siege, in which the Slavs, supported by a Hapsburg government seemingly intent on harassing Austrian-Italians and immigrants from Italy at every turn, threatened the national identity of the Italian population. We can certainly accuse the account of the brilliant journalist of partiality. According to Mario Alberti’s64 reliable testimony, evidence of so-called national oppression came the way of Italian correspondents directly from irredentist journalists of Il Piccolo [The Small (format) Newspaper] and

From Irredentism to Nationalism  43 L’Indipendente [The Independent], the publication of Trieste’s republicans. In any case, Barzini’s articles contributed to the reawakening of interest in the Italians beyond the borders among Italy’s public opinion.65 The nationalist journalist Virginio Gayda too published a series of reports on the eastern “unredeemed lands” in Turin’s newspaper La Stampa [The Press],66 in which he described the Italians,67 surrounded by the Slavic tide, or threatened, as in the Trentino, by the attacks of pan-Germanic associations, as living in the Hapsburg Monarchy in a “state of siege.” Gayda detailed the progress made by the Slavs in the Giulia region at the educational, associational, and economic levels. The threat to Trieste’s national identity was spreading from the suburbs to the city: It is no longer possible to ignore the influx of Slavs. It has not yet corrupted the city’s Italian purity, but it is by now a phenomenon on which we must reflect seriously. In the neighborhoods farthest from the center, around the arsenals and the workshops, you can find compact colonies comprised exclusively of Slavic workers. Small stores, taverns, and meeting-places are no longer purely Italian. In the street, children no longer speak Italian. There is something new, something foreign.68 Actually, Trieste had been a multilingual city for a long time. On the eve of World War I, however, ethnic diversity showed for the first time the traits of a full-fledged national conflict.69 In 1913, Trieste’s Imperial Lieutenant, Prince Konrad Hohenlohe, issued particularly controversial decrees that prohibited citizens of Italy to hold positions in the city’s public administration. Even though these decrees were in accordance with Austrian legislation, and in the end were implemented with many exceptions, they contributed to further inflaming Italian public opinion, by reinforcing the belief in the existence of an Austrian plot to weaken Italian identity in the territories of the eastern Adriatic. In an article published in 1911 in La Voce Trentina [Trento’s Voice], Scipio Slataper contended that the Italian identity of the Giulia region was threatened with extinction. Without a university, the seven hundred thousand Austrian-Italians living there could not be a nation: “Only when we can pursue our studies in our own language, will we be able to become a nation. We will become conscious of who we are. Today we are not. Today we shout and trade.”70 In 1912 Slataper designed a possible future scenario: the coast’s Latin civilization would survive only as heritage, preserved in what the Slavs “will be forced to learn from us.”71 Virginio Gayda also expressed similar ideas, in an apocalyptic climate of “twilight of the gods.” The nationalist Ruggero Timeus went even further: “This is our tragedy: We are a people conscious of itself that cannot assert its own will in its own life, and that is, on the contrary, subject to the will of other nations.”72 It is true that in those years the Slavs made further progress in the Giulia region, galvanized by the plan of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian

44  From Irredentism to Nationalism throne, to rebuild the Empire according to a “trialistic” model, which included the attribution of broad autonomy to the Slavs. The historian Ernesto Sestan remarked the Italians responded to their undisputable progress by developing an almost pathological level of national identification. He wrote: All the region’s intellectual energies unconsciously feel channelled toward, and engaged in the only obsessive puctum dolens of national identity, as if they were compelled to perform an irrational, inevitable civic duty. There remains no room for calm, where broader human feelings might sooth the spirit. Everything—poetry, art, erudition, morality, recollections of the past, dreams for the future merge into that point. Inevitably, even highly gifted minds become a little meaner. One example will suffice: Scipio Slataper, who is unable to free himself completely of the Italian-Slavic dilemma73 . . . This has nothing to do with what normally happens with frontier people, and the meeting of different cultures that adapt to one another, find some peace, and merge with one another. What happens, on the contrary, is that exasperated wills choose one path alone, one culture only, lionized and transformed into a myth. As the anguished Puritan asked himself: “Are you saved?” so the Julian pre-war man asked, humbly hoping for inner reassurance: “Are you Italian enough?”—the ultimate test of his morality and personality.74 The Weltuntergang [apocalyptic climate, T.N.] in which lived those Italians in Venezia Giulia who were aware of their national identity, was echoed by the radicalization of national liberalism, which began to express its irredentist leanings less ambiguously than in the past and intensified its relations with Mazzinian conspiratorial groups, whose representatives sometimes held official positions in the Italian parties in Trieste and Istria.75 Even working-class groups could not maintain peace among their ranks: on May 1, 1914, violet clashes between Slavic and Italian demonstrators took place in Trieste. Angelo Vivante remarked ruefully: “The two nationalisms are losing all restraint through mutual intransigence, which is beastly and absurd, and usually plays into the hands of the few against the many.”76 In the years immediately before World War I broke out, we can thus observe a growing radicalization both of Italians living on the eastern Adriatic and of the political climate in Italy, where the nationalist movement played a major role as the catalyst for all the forces favorable to a decidedly imperialistic foreign policy.77

Notes 1 On this point, see E. Apih’s lucid assessment in “La Dissoluzione dell’AustriaUngheria,” in M. Firpo and N. Tranfaglia (eds.), La Storia, vol. VIII: L’età Contemporanea, 3, Dalla Restaurazione alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, Turin, UTET, 1986, pp. 829–52, especially p. 833.

From Irredentism to Nationalism  45 2 See Chabod, La Politica Estera, cit., p. 147: “The nationality principle was being curbed, emptied of its universal revolutionary leavening. It remained a supreme ideal, even though people could not always give it practical realization. It did remain a principle of high moral value, whose political impact, however, varied greatly depending on time and place. It acquired a more specific meaning, becoming ‘irredentism,’ a very popular word after 1876, but one that replaced the notion of European revolution. It meant indeed that a specific and welldefined territorial problem took the place of the generalizable and territorially undefined appeal that had preceded it.” Gioacchino Volpe also notices the same change, even though he gives different weight to its various elements. 3 Ibid., p. 164. 4 Salvemini, La Politica Estera, cit., pp. 150 f. Richard Webster highlights the leftist roots of Italian imperialism, even though he places his analysis within the framework of a rigid economic determinism. R.A. Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 1908–1915, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1975, pp. 337–8. 5 On this topic, see A. Hillgruber, “Das Problem Nation und Europa seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” in Id., Die Zerstörung Europas: Beiträge zur Weltkriegsepoche 1914 bis 1945, Frankfurt a.M.-Berlin, Propyläen, 1988, pp. 51–66. 6 Chabod, La Politica Estera, cit., pp. 450 f. 7 On this important and yet not fully appreciated aspect of Germany’s foreign policy at the time of Emperor Wilhelm, see T. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918, vol. II: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie, Munich, Beck, 1992, pp. 629–99. 8 Slataper, Scritti politici, cit., pp. 54–5. 9 Ibid., p. 89. See also Almerigo Apollonio’s following observations: “When we come to the late years of the nineteenth century, we should study the irrendentist activity of the Austrian-Italians from an entirely new point of view. We need to look at their skills in organizing and unifying Italian-speaking social strata; in coordinating the élites, the middle classes, and the lower-classes; in giving prompt and flexible psychological responses and moral guidance; even in using refined propagandistic tools in conditioning ‘national opinion.’ ” Autunno Istriano: La “Rivolta” di Pirano del 1984 e i Dilemmi dell’“Irredentismo,” Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 1992, p. 32. 10 A. Levi, Ricordi della Vita e dei Tempi di Ernesto Nathan, Florence, Le Monnier, 1945, p. 191. 11 In M. Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento: Le Trasformazioni di una Società Civile, Udine, Del Bianco, 1995, p. 124. 12 Paradoxically, by guaranteeing the right to one’s own culture to all nationalities of the Empire (Volksstämme), the Austrian Constitution fostered the process of national identity building and national polarization in the areas with mixed settlements. For Dalmatia, see Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia, cit., pp. 144–5. For the Littoral of the Habsburg Empire, see M. Cattaruzza, “I Conflitti Nazionali a Trieste e nell’Ambito della Questione Nazionale dell’Impero Asburgico: 1850– 1914,” in Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 10, 1989/1, pp. 131–48, especially p. 139. 13 On this point, see G. Stourzh’s well-documented work, Die Gleichberechtigung der Nationalitäten in der Verfassung und Verwaltung Österreichs 1848–1918, Vienna, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985. On the role played by the Empire’s judicial and administrative courts in protecting the rights of national minorities, see Ibid., pp. 58–73. 14 On the problem of national associations in Venezia Giulia and in the Trentino, see Salimbeni, La Monarchia Austro-ungarica tra Irredentismi e Nazionalismi, cit.; D. Zaffi, “Le Associazioni di Difesa Nazionale Tedesche in Tirolo e nel

46  From Irredentism to Nationalism Litorale,” in Ara and Kolb (eds.), Regioni di Frontiera, cit., pp. 157–94; and Volpe, L’Italia Moderna, cit., vol. III, pp. 157–59. 15 See G.D. Guerrazzi, Ricordi di Irredentismo: I Primordi della “Dante Alighieri,” Bologna, Zanichelli, 1922; Volpe, L’Italia Moderna, cit., vol. I, pp. 311 f. On ties between the Dante Alighieri Association and Freemasonry, see also Levi, Ricordi della Vita e dei Tempi di Ernesto Nathan, cit., pp. 141 ff. 16 See for example Volpe, L’Italia Moderna, cit., vol. III, pp. 167 ff. See also Sabbatucci, Irredentismo e Movimento Nazionalista in Italia, cit., part I, pp. 479, 494–6. 17 Monzali, Italiani di Dalmazia, cit., pp. 166–7. 18 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol. II, pp. 146, 148 ff., 212. 19 Ibid., vol. III, p. 55. 20 Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 143–65. 21 A. von Haymerle, Italicae Res, Vienna, Seidel u. Sohn, 1879. 22 Regarding the concept of natural or geographic border, see Gaetano Salvemini’s critical remarks, developed on the basis of a strictly voluntaristic conception of the nation. In C. Maranelli and G. Salvemini, La Questione dell’Adriatico, Rome, Libreria della Voce, 1919 (second edition, enlarged and revised), pp. 12–20, Salvemini asserted: “There do not exist, therefore, political borders that are natural and others that are not. All political borders are artificial, that is, they are created by man’s conscious and voluntary decisions . . . National unity is something different from geographic unity. The former is comprised not of mountains, rivers, and seas, but by human beings in so far as they are aware of sharing a common historical tradition and a permanent feeling of solidarity, and who have decided freely to share a future in common. Strengthened by consciousness and will, they overcome mountains, seas, and rivers; or, by establishing political borders, they break apart regions that would be geographically indivisible. Human beings give a soul to lifeless lands and waters, and clothe them with a specific historical tradition, thus building a fatherland for themselves.” (p. 15) [italics in the original] 23 Aurelio Saffi e le Province Italiane Soggette all’Austria: Scritti Editi ed Inediti con Prefazione di Giovanni Bovio, Trieste, Editore il Circolo Garibaldi di Trieste, 1891, pp. 8 f. In the following part of his argument, Saffi resorts to Alboin, Charlemagne, and the sovereignty of the Venetian Republic. 24 Ibid., p. 9. 25 In Gl’Istriani a Vittorio Emanuele II nel 1866, Rava & C., Milan, 1915, p. 5. A great many irrendentist pamphlets were reprinted in favor of the irredentist campaign in 1915, or as war propaganda after Italy’s entry into the conflict. Seventy-people from “Istria, Trieste, Trento, Venice, and Rome,” signed the petition to Vittorio Emanuele II, redacted in Venice on June 18, 1866. The inaccuracy of that list seems to confirm that the positions expressed in the petition did not really represent the sentiment of the people in the unredeemed territories. Francesco Salata, on his part, collected an anthology of as many as five hundred documents which supposedly documented the rights of Italy to the region. These documents, not all of them relevant to the issue in question, covered the period between the French occupation of Venezia Giulia in 1797 and the execution of Guglielmo Oberdan in 1882. See F. Salata (ed.), Il Diritto d’Italia su Trieste e l’Istria: Documenti, Turin, Fratelli Bocca Editori, 1915. 26 Gl’Istriani a Vittorio Emanuele II nel 1866, cit., p. 19. 27 A. Millo, Storia di una Borghesia: La Famiglia Vivante a Trieste dall’Emporio alla Guerra Mondiale, Gorizia, LEG, 1988, pp. 150–5. 28 Almerigo Apollonio provides a lively reconstruction of the “inscription war” in Pirano. He also documents the characteristics of the national conflict in the

From Irredentism to Nationalism  47 Giulia region, which was fought mainly through petty provocations. Apollonio shows that the Pirano movement began spontaneously and received the support of Trieste’s irrendentist committee, headquartered in Milan. In other words, the rebellion had broken out in situ because of tensions within the town. See Apollonio, Autunno Istriano, cit. 29 On the instrumental use of archaeology and epigraphy by the irredentist movement, see G. Bandelli, “Per una Storia del Mito di Roma al Confine Orientale. Istri e Romani nell’Età dell’Irredentismo,” in Salimbeni, La Monarchia Austroungarica tra Irredentismi e Nazionalismi, cit., pp. 163–75. The mirror image of this argument was the Croatian argument, which postulated a common Illyrian origin for the pre-Roman inhabitants of Istria and Dalmatia. The right of first occupancy was at the time a fundamental component of any discourse about territorial and national claims. Bandelli also quotes an interesting report by Theodor Mommsen, who, while in Istria on an epigraphic expedition, found out that the Slovenian priest of the Parish of Pinguente [Buzet] had thrown as many Roman inscriptions as he could into the foundations of St. Andrew’s Church. See Ibid., p. 170. For Dalmatia, see G. Bandelli about a similar use of the disciplines of classical antiquity, “Il Richiamo all’Antichità nelle Rivendicazioni Italiane dell’ ‘Altra ponda,’ ” in Atti e Memorie della Società Dalmata di Storia Patria, vol. XXI, X, 1999, pp. 53–75. 30 On the inadequacy of the irredentist analysis on the presence of other ethnicnational groups in the unredeemed lands, see also Sabbatucci, Irredentismo e Movimento Nazionalista in Italia, cit., part I, pp. 473–5. 31 R. Bonghi, I diritti dell’Italia sulle Terre Irredente: I Fini della Società Dante Alighieri. Sentenze per le Figliuole di Anagni, Di Stefano, Santamaria C.V., 1917, p. 22. 32 On the progress of the assimilation process in Trieste, mostly unproblematic until 1900, see Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 130–57. 33 For a reconstruction of the highly contentious 1910 census, see E. Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation und Assimilation, ViennaCologne-Graz, Herman Böhlaus Nachf, 1982, pp. 182–223; Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 128–37. 34 On the obstacles to a radical change of national identity because of tradition and culture, see A.D. Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001, pp. 17–20, but especially A.D. Smith, National Identity, London, Penguin, 1991, pp. 1–42. 35 Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., p. 62. 36 A. Apih, Trieste, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1988, p. 89. 37 On the issue of the Italian university, see A. Ara, “La Questione dell’Università Italiana in Austria,” in Id., Ricerche sugli Austro-Italiani e l’Ultima Austria, Rome, Editrice Elia, 1974, pp. 9–140. 38 See Volpe, L’Italia Moderna, cit., vol. III, p. 166; Ara, “La Questione dell’Università Italiana in Austria,” cit. 39 Levi, Ricordi della Vita e dei Tempi di Ernesto Natan, cit., p. 183. 40 See G. Ascoli, “Gli Irredenti,” in La Nuova Antologia, vol. 58 (third series), 1 July 1895, pp. 34–74, especially p. 74. 41 On this important issue, see the innovative contribution by E. Maserati, “Simbolismo e Rituale dell’Irredentsimo Adriatico,” in F. Salimbeni (ed.), Miscellanea di Studi Giuliani in Onore di Giulio Cervani per il suo LXX Compleanno, Udine, Del Bianco, 1990, pp. 125–50. 42 On the nearly religious cult for Verdi among the philo-Italian bourgeoisie in Trieste, see G. Stefani, Verdi e Trieste, Trieste, Editore il Comune, 1951, pp. 139–55. 43 R. Bazlen, Scritti, Milan, Adelphi, 1984, pp. 246 f.

48  From Irredentism to Nationalism 44 See for example M. Baioni, La “Religione della Patria.” Musei e Istituti del Culto Risorgimentale (1884–1918), Treviso, Pagus Edizioni, 1994; on the Risorgimento’s collective imagination, A.M. Banti, La Nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, Santità e Onore dell’Italia Unita, Turin, Einaudi, 2000. See also I. Porciani, La Festa della Nazione: Rappresentazioni dello Stato e Spazi Sociali nell’Italia Unita, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997. 45 See M. Cattaruzza, “L’Ottocento, un Secolo Borghese,” in F. Salimbeni (ed.), Per la Storia di Trieste: Atti del Corso d’Aggiornamento della Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Venezia Giulia e dell’IRRSAE Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Venezia Giulia, Trieste, 1998, pp. 151–63. 46 Maserati, “Simbolismo e Rituale,” cit., p. 149. 47 Ibid., p. 150. 48 For further bibliography on the Badeni ordinances, later withdrawn, see also M. Cattaruzza, I Conflitti Nazionali a Trieste, cit., especially pp. 131–4. 49 Sandonà, L’Irredentismo, cit., vol., III, pp. 71–5. 50 On the perception of the irredentist problem within the Florentine cultural milieu, and on the cultural osmosis between Trieste and Florence, see the welldocumented and precise contribution by R. Pertici, “Irredentismo e Questione Adriatica a Firenze,” Id. (ed.), Intellettuali di Frontiera, cit., vol. II, pp. 635–59. On “The Kingdom,” see Ibid., pp. 635–6. 51 Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., pp. 61–132, especially pp. 103–4. 52 G. Stuparich, La Nazione Ceca, Catania, Battiato, 1915. 53 E. Apih, Il Ritorno di Giani Stuparich, Florence, Vallecchi, 1988, p. 16. 54 See, M. Cattaruzza, “Il Carlo Schiffrer di Elio Apih,” Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 14, 1993/1–2, pp. 235–41, especially p. 238. 55 M. Cattaruzza, Socialismo Adriatico: La Socialdemocrazia di Lingua Itali ana nei Territori Costieri della Monarchia Asburgica: 1880–1915, Manduria, Lacaita, 1998, pp. 164–5. The most complete critical conceptualization of “Adriatic irredentism” is provided by E. Apih, “La genesi di ‘Irredentismo adriatico,’ ” in A. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico, Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 1984, pp. 263–332. 56 See Cattaruzza, Socialismo Adriatico, cit., pp. 163–77. 57 G. Stuparich, Trieste nei miei Ricordi, Turin, Garzanti, 1948, p. 60. 58 On Ruggero Timeus’s political and existential journey, see D. Redivo, Ruggero Timeus: La Via Imperialista dell’Irredentismo Triestino, Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 1995. 59 La Lotta Nazionale in Istria, Trieste, Circolo stud., December 20, 1912, pp. 6, 15. 60 See Gentile, La Grande Italia, cit., pp. 114 f. 61 Salvatorelli, La Triplice Alleanza, cit., pp. 316–7. 62 Slataper, Scritti Politici, cit., p. 100. See also Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, cit. According to Webster, after 1904 and the rapprochement with France, Italy systematically conducted a policy of penetration into the Balkans that would inevitably lead to a conflict with Austria. The concrete evidence in support of this thesis is, nonetheless, modest. The more realistic interpretation is that Austria wanted to fight separatist tendencies in the area of Trieste and the coast, which were crucial territories for the Monarchy. See M. Cattaruzza, “Alle Frontiere dell’Impero: Il Litorale Asburgico,” in Ead., L’Adriatico Mare di Scambi tra Oriente e Occidente, Pordenone, Concordia Sette, 2003, pp. 91–100. 63 It seems that Attilio Tamaro and Andrea Torre fostered Corriere della Sera’s new interest in the unredeemed provinces, as we can see in the following note of the Italian Consul Carlo Galli, on January 18, 1913: “On the 11, 12, and 13, Andrea Torre was here. He is the deputy and correspondent of Corriere della

From Irredentism to Nationalism  49 Sera from Rome. Tamaro did a good job of preparing receptions, welcoming meetings, and visits. From the beginning, his intention was to change radically the point of view of Corriere della Sera. He promised he would tell the truth about the situation to Giolitti and San Giuliano, the truth as he saw it. He also intended to invite Barzini soon.” C. Galli, Diarii e Lettere: Tripoli 1911–Trieste 1918, Florence, Sansoni, 1951, p. 151. On the version of the events as narrated by the Corriere’s editor, see L. Albertini, 1909–1914, in Vent’Anni di Vita Politica, part I: L’Esperienza Democratica Italiana dal 1898 al 1914, vol. II, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1951, pp. 444–9. 64 See M. Alberti, L’Irredentismo senza Romanticismi, Como, Cavalleri, 1936, p. 244. 65 Published again in L. Barzini, Gl’Italiani della Venezia Giulia, Milan, Ravà & C., 1915. 66 The pieces were collected in a book. See V. Gayda, L’Italia d’oltre Confine, Turin, Bocca, 1914. 67 Gayda correctly identifies the rise of a fledgling bourgeoisie as the decisive factor for Slovenian national awakening. See Ibid., p. 14: “Last year they organized a grand ball for cooks, maids, and soldiers, in order to bring together the Slovenian colony in Trieste. The community’s few bourgeois ladies, almost all with ties to the bureaucracy, comprise the organizing Committee.” 68 Ibid., p. 335. 69 See Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 157–65. 70 Slataper, Scritti politici, cit., p. 121. 71 See Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., p. 165. 72 R. Fauro, Trieste, cit., p. 20. The account of the nationalist activist from Trieste seems to evoke the analysis by F. Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat: Studien zur Genesis des Deutschen Nationalstaates, Berlin, Oldenbourg, 1908. See, for example, the following passage: “Nationality is not a material thing, but rather a spiritual fact: it exists because it is conscious of existing . . . when national consciousness exists in a people, that consciousness wants to assume a concrete, visible, and material force: the State.” 73 In italics in the original. 74 E. Sestan, Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una Storia Etnica e Culturale, edited, and with a postscript by G. Cervani, Udine, Del Bianco, 1997, pp. 102–3. 75 Alberti, L’irredentismo senza Romanticismi, cit., pp. 191–2. 76 Cattaruzza, Socialismo Adriatico, cit., p. 179. 77 On the complex and at times contradictory relationship between irredentism and nationalism, see the thorough analysis by G. Sabbatucci, “Il Problema dell’Irredentismo e le Origini del Movimento Nazionalista in Italia,” Storia Contemporanea, 2, 1971/1, part II, pp. 53–106.

3 World War I

A little more than a month passed between the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the frantic exchange of war declarations which followed one another between July 31 and the first days of August 1914.1 Only on a few issues does historiography agree as much as it does in assessing the outbreak of World War I. The first global war marks the central break in the periodization of the twentieth century,2 as the event that signaled the bursting of modernity’s “dark side”3 onto the stage of European history.4 In pages of great evocative power, Stefan Zweig described the atmosphere that spread in Vienna, as happened in most large urban centers in Europe, during the period of general mobilization in the unforgettable summer of 1914: As never before, thousands and hundreds of thousands felt what they should have felt in peacetime, that they belonged together. A city of two million, a country of nearly fifty million, in that hour felt that they were participating in world history, in a moment which would never recur, and that each one was called upon to cast its infinitesimal self into the glowing, there to be purified of all selfishness. All differences of class, rank, and language were flooded over at that moment by the rushing feeling of fraternity. Strangers spoke to one another in the streets, people who had avoided each other for years shook hands, everywhere you could see excited spirits. Every individual experienced an exaltation of his ego, he was no longer the isolated person of former times, he was part of the people, and his person, his hitherto unnoticed person, had been given meaning. . . . [They all acknowledged] the unknown power which had lifted them out of their everyday existence . . . But it is possible that a deeper, more secret power was at work in this frenzy. So deeply, so quickly did the tide break over humanity that, foaming over the surface, it churned up the depths, the subconscious primitive instincts of the human animal—that which Freud so meaningfully calls “the revulsion from culture,” the desire to break out of the conventional bourgeois world of codes and statutes, and to permit the primitive instincts of the blood to rage at will. It is also possible that these

World War I  51 powers of darkness had their share in the wild frenzy into which everything was thrown—self-sacrifice and alcohol, the spirit of adventure and the spirit of pure faith, the old magic of flags and patriotic slogans, that mysterious frenzy of the millions which can hardly be described in words, but which, for the moment, gave a wild and almost rapturous impetus to the greatest crime of our time.5

1 The Mobilization of the Interventionist Front At first, Italy remained detached from the conflict by asserting the defensive nature of the Triple Alliance,6 which established that Italy was under an obligation to enter the war on the side of Germany and Austria only if these countries were attacked by other European powers. In all other cases, the signatories were required to maintain “a benevolent neutrality.”7 For several sectors of the Italian cultural and political environment, the outbreak of the European war worked as a powerful catalyst, accelerating and radicalizing trends and developments that had already begun to manifest themselves in the pre-war years.8 Italy’s neutral status did not shield it from the profound revolution in ideals and Weltanschauung that was shaking the European continent at that time, reaching its zenith in people’s enthusiastic, almost inebriated support for the war as a “great adventure.”9 The war seemed able to reveal a Nietzschean “best configuration of life,” a way-out from a daily life often perceived as mediocre and disappointing. The conflict became the vehicle for the expression and the discharge of palingenetic expectations harbored by Sorel’s followers, nationalists, syndicalists, various intellectuals gravitating around the journals of “reactionary modernism,”10 and futurists. These groups formed a small, even though vociferous minority, but in the particular situation created by the war, they could interpret the sentiment of larger groups and claim to be, despite the fact that no one had invested them with such a role, the representatives of the Italian nation in its entirety. According to Gaetano Salvemini, . . . among Democrats, republicans, schismatic Socialists, and revolutionary syndicalists who gave life to leftist interventionism, very few were in the habit of thinking clearly and consistently. Most of them were undisciplined and confused souls who wanted the war because they craved dangerous gestures for their own sake, not because they chose the gesture in order to achieve a specific end.11 Perhaps as in no other European country, support for the war in Italy was, at least initially, support for war in itself, for war as war,12 perceived as an antidote to, and a miracle cure for the dreaded decline of a society seemingly on the verge of embracing a peaceful and emasculated reformism.13 The belief that a war would lead to the regeneration of the nation, a belief

52  World War I which had begun to spread through vague formulations toward the end of the nineteenth century,14 now resurfaced with unparalleled urgency. The war was expected to bring about the craved regeneration of the national community and to merge together all components of the nation, overcoming all differences of class and rank.15 For the European powers entering the war in the very first days of August 1914, the generic urge to participate in a conflict that promised a broad regeneration was grafted onto very concrete and specific goals of national defense, of preservation of great power status, or even, as was the case for Serbia and the Hapsburg monarchy, of their survival as states.16 For Germany the siege syndrome, which was not completely unjustified, and the threat represented by the partial mobilization of the Czarist Empire played a central role. For Russia, a lot was at stake: its own expansion in the Balkans, control over the Straits, and competition with Austria over the same sphere of influence. France was invaded by the German troops because of the fatal automatism of the Schlieffen plan;17 while Great Britain intervened in the conflict to safeguard the golden rule of the continental balance of power. (Strangely enough, during the July crisis Anglo-German naval rivalry did not play a major role at all.) If compared with the web of fatal “necessities” which ensnared all the great powers to a greater or lesser degree, at the onset of the conflict Italy’s situation looked different. No threat of aggression was dangling over it, nor did the conflict threaten to weaken its status as a great power. The Central European Empires saw Italian neutrality as the lesser evil. They did not expect Italy’s active participation on their side; on the contrary, they immediately concentrated their efforts on keeping their ally out of the conflict.18 This meant that Italy’s decision to enter the war, as well as the identification of the aims related to its participation, became defined over time, through a labored and at times contradictory process. At first the nationalists, as the political force that advocated entry into the war more resolutely, manifested unequivocal sympathies for the Triple Alliance or, more correctly, for Germany. They admired Germany: its state model, its conception of power, and its institutional centralization in favor of the executive and the Crown. But the majority of Italy’s public opinion expressed a marked aversion to a war against the forces of the Triple Entente.19 Austria had been Italy’s historical enemy throughout the Risorgimento; Italy had become a nation-state by driving Austria out as the direct or indirect sovereign power in the peninsula; and Austria represented the negation of the essence of the Italian state: the principle of nationality, the parliamentary system, and the separation between Church and State. Besides, war propaganda recreated and spread the traditional image of Austria as the “prison of peoples” (Völkerkerker); it resurrected the memory of Guglielmo Oberdan’s “martyrdom” and even of the 1848 revolutions with their subsequent repression. In addition, during the Bosnian crisis of 1908 Italian public opinion, including the Socialists, had sided decidedly

World War I  53 with Serbia. People still remembered vividly the Hohenlohe decrees of 1913, which had imposed the dismissal of Italian citizens from state and municipal posts in Trieste, as they remembered the campaign promoted by Corriere della Sera about the alleged national oppression of Italians living beyond the border. In one of the lectures given during his indefatigable interventionist campaign, Cesare Battisti, a Socialist from Trento and a deputy in the Reichsrat in Vienna, reasserted the rhetorical commonplaces of the anti-Austrian campaign in which he had already engaged a year before: “What prevails in the unredeemed Italian lands is not justice but rather the police, not civility but militarism alone, that is, military dictatorship. There is no room for any expression of a cultivated mind and of Italian identity. A politician cannot voice any opinion, unless he is a servant of the government. Magistrates and civil authorities have no independence at all; they must blindly obey military authority.”20 One could detect an anti-Austrian and anti-German tone, together with some sympathy for England and, above all, France, even in the fierce neutralism of the Socialists. In July and August, small groups of pro-republican volunteers and latter-day followers of Garibaldi went to fight for France and Serbia.21 All things considered, it became apparent that intervention in support of the Triple Alliance would be hard to push through. Thus, the interventionists themselves gave second thought to their pro-Triple Alliance leanings, and began to advocate that Italy intervene on the side of the Entente. But they did not cease to admire Germany,22 as they did not give up their conviction that Austria would continue to play its traditional role as a bulwark against Russia even after the war. As already remarked, Ruggero Timeus had a leading role in the reorientation of the interventionist camp. In the spring of 1914, on the eve of the world conflict, he published his pamphlet Trieste. Basing his argument on an imperial logic, Timeus welded together the aim of national defense with the imperial goal of Italian expansion in the Balkans. He started by analyzing the various manifestations of the Slavic advance in Trieste: the penetration of the economy through daring and unscrupulous financial institutions; the taking over of vital parts of the public administration; and the expansion of the Slovenian educational structure. Then, for the first time, he presented his hypothesis about the role that Trieste could play for Italy: “Italy can acquire all she needs someplace else except for the key to its expansion in the Balkans and the Levant: that key is Trieste.”23 And he concluded: “We throw our dream of empire in people’s faces. We want to conquer; what do we care about national justice or moral or international conventions?”24 The territorial goals of irredentism were thus placed in the service of future power politics; economic penetration was one of its essential prerequisites. On this point Timeus agreed with the nationalist economist Mario Alberti, who saw the port of Trieste as having a major role in promoting

54  World War I the export of Italian goods to central and eastern Europe, and in the Levant. Alberti disregarded the considerable interventions Austria had made, especially with its tariffs policy, in order to ensure to the Italian port a fairly constant flow of goods even from those territories of the Dual Monarchy (Bohemia first of all) that preferred the port of Hamburg. Alberti contended that Trieste’s good fortune was due first of all to “a blessed geographic position” and to “the trading skills of its people,”25 as did the nationalist Attilio Tamaro, a very active interventionist writer and later a fascist diplomat.26 In 1924, in his monumental and biased Storia di Trieste [History of Trieste], Tamaro reiterated his assessment that the port of Trieste owed its fortunes to endogenous features.27 Trieste’s nationalists were the first to think of the eastern frontier not as the completion of national unification, but rather as a “gateway to the East,” a platform for an imperialistic expansion in the age of power politics and new empires. Even with more limited goals than these, interventionists at the national level appropriated this view as well (probably thanks to the campaign of persuasion conducted by people from Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia). In a letter to the editor and owner of Corriere della Sera, Luigi Albertini, dated October 30, 1914, Andrea Torre summed up Italian objectives in the Adriatic in the following terms: The Trentino is important for us from a military and, to a degree, even from a political point of view. But today the great question is not the Trentino, as you know, but the Adriatic: control over that sea, the ethnic predominance of Italian or Slavic identity in that sea, and, last but not least, the commercial domination of that sea in relation to the Balkans and to Asia. Because of these three reasons, we cannot abandon the Adriatic in either Austrian or South Slavic hands.28 In any case, as Brunello Vigezzi has emphasized correctly, the choice to intervene in the war was not sponsored by a (nonexistent) imperialist economic bloc.29 At the time, Italy was mainly an agricultural country. The economic weight of its exports to the Balkans was irrelevant. And Andrea Torre’s considerations, in the end, belong rather in a discourse centered on classical power politics. On the eve of the war, about forty thousand refugees from the Trentino, the coastline, and Dalmatia lived in Italy. They were organized, as we have seen, through a tightly-knit associational network, with their own welfare institutions and their own publications. Many of those refugees joined the Associazione nazionalista italiana [from now on, Italian Nationalist Association], where they contributed to redirecting irredentist claims away from France and toward Austria, whereas the refugees from Venezia Giulia, ready more than other groups to leave behind the democratic restraints of the old radical and republican irredentism, took much more radical positions. The breakout of the war transformed the refugee movement into a mass phenomenon. During the July crisis the major Austro-Italian politicians

World War I  55 moved to Italy, even though not all of them intended to participate actively in the conflict on the side of the motherland.30 The volunteers from Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia appear to have been approximately two thousand. They paid a high price for joining the war: three hundred and two lost their lives; eleven were awarded gold medals, whereas one hundred and eightythree received silver medals. Scipio Slataper, Ruggero Timeus, Spiro Xidias, and Carlo Stuparich (Giani’s brother) died, among others. Nazario Sauro was taken prisoner by the Austrians and executed for high treason. In the patriotic list of Istrian martyrs, Sauro thus came to take a place similar to that of Oberdan for Trieste and Cesare Battisti for the Trentino.31 In his accurate analysis, the historian Renato Monteleone calculated that in the course of the war the total number of refugees rose to eighty-six thousand. Nationalists, exiles from the “unredeemed lands,” radicals, republicans, and syndicalists comprised the colorful and heterogeneous original group of interventionists, a very small minority which, nonetheless, could mobilize the street through loud and inspiring street demonstrations. The “unredeemed” irredentists occupied center stage in these demonstrations, as if they were the personification of the goals that justified entry into the war. On the occasion of the interventionist demonstration in Rome of September 16, 1914, Salvatore Barzilai, Albino Zenatti, Ruggero Timeus, Antonio Cippico, and Ettore Tolomei, among others, formed a standing committee which, spurred in part by the presence among its ranks of several Dalmatians and representatives of the most radical nationalist wing, championed the most extensive territorial demands.32 The Trento e Trieste Association coordinated the irredentists, who tirelessly visited the major Italian cities, pleading their cause in countless lectures. Compared with most Italian public opinion, they represented an impatient, intransigent element which radicalized politics and endowed it with a strong emotional charge. Among the various projects they promoted in the attempt to put the government before a fait accompli, there was, for example, the plan to engage in an armed border violation, which could provide the desired incident for the opening of hostilities. When the Russians launched a proposal that would lead to the same result, that is, the delivery of all Austrian prisoners of Italian nationality to Italy, the irredentists reacted with irrepressible enthusiasm.33 The end of 1914 saw the rise of interventionist associations with maximalist demands regarding Dalmatia and Fiume [Rijeka]: the Pro Dalmazia Italiana [Pro Italian Dalmatia], and the Pro Fiume e il Quarnero [Pro Fiume and the Quarnero]. In the same period, Ettore Tolomei, a geographer who held extremist views on the matter, founded the Associazione Alto Adige [Alto Adige Association]. The nationalist press and the periodicals of the network of irredentist associations publicized extreme territorial demands. The Dalmatians and people from Venezia Giulia in particular tried to leverage all the means at their disposal, including their contacts with some parliamentary deputies: Salvatore Barzilai, Piero Foscari, Andrea Torre, Luigi Federzoni, and Giovanni Giuriati, among others. Attempts were even made

56  World War I at the governmental level. Right when the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio di San Giuliano was holding a meeting with his Austrian counterpart, Leopold von Berchthold, in Abbazia [Opatija], the nationalist Attilio Tamaro met with Prime Minister Antonio Salandra, who, afterwards, also saw Camillo Ara, an important member of the Freemasons and leader of the liberal-national party in Trieste, Giorgio Pitacco, a deputy in the Austrian Parliament, and Carlo Esterle, a senator from the Trentino; the latter delivered to Salandra an Appeal to the King signed by Cesare Battisti, Guido Larcher, and Giovanni Pedrotti.34 Besides irredentist forces, the democratic interventionists took side in favor of the war, most notably Gaetano Salvemini35 and Leonida Bissolati, who championed national self-determination for all the peoples living in the Hapsburg monarchy, and brotherhood between the Italians and the South Slavs, thus resurrecting the Mazzinian ideal of a “Europe of the Nations.” Their rallying cry was that the European war then taking place ought to be “the last war” which must be fought in order to free Europe of militarism and imperialism once and for all. One of the most active supporters of this approach was the already mentioned Socialist from Trento Cesare Battisti, who had taken refuge in Italy just before the war broke out, and who was an indefatigable leading force of the interventionist campaign.36 Only a minority of the exiles from Venezia Giulia shared Salvemini’s and Battisti’s positions. The anti-Slavic views that they had developed during the national struggle in Venezia Giulia pushed most of them to express irredentist positions diverging significantly from those held by Italian republicans and democrats. For the exiles the target wasn’t Austria, but the national movement of the South Slavs. They believed that their willingness to accept the survival of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, which they saw as a bulwark against the Slavs, could mitigate their exorbitant territorial demands (basically the entire Dalmatian coast). They thus proposed once again the old theses of Cesare Balbo, by now outmoded. The liberal conservative Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino essentially maintained these positions as his point of reference well into 1918.37 The issue of Dalmatia was the real dividing line between nationalists, irredentists, and liberals on one side, and democrats, Socialists, and syndicalists on the other.38 Whereas the former claimed a good part of the Adriatic’s eastern coast for Italy, following the logic of power politics, the latter favored an ethnic boundary stretching as far as to include a sizeable chunk of Istria, but without the Croatian district of Volosca [Volosko] in the south. Dalmatia would go to the new Yugoslav state, except for a few maritime fortresses on the islands. We can find the clearest presentation of these positions in Maranelli and Salvemini’s pamphlet, La Questione dell’Adriatico [The Adriatic Question], written in 1916, but published only in 1918 because of problems with the military censorship bureau. The two authors consider possible a fruitful coexistence of Slavs and Italians along the Adriatic coast, probably overestimating the pro-Serbian inclinations of

World War I  57 the Croats and Slovenes.39 In the period before the final negotiations of the Treaty of London, the overriding concern became the security of Italy’s borders. A memorandum entitled I Confini Naturali dell’Italia [Italy’s Natural Borders], written by the editor of Il Piccolo in Trieste, Tullio Mayer, revised extensively by Francesco Salata,40 and delivered to Sidney Sonnino in March 1915,41 demanded a border line going from the Mount Nevoso to Mount Maggiore in Istria, based mainly on the argument that Italy needed to defend itself from foreign aggression. This memorandum also recommended the annexation of Fiume and the islands in the Gulf of Quarnero. On the other hand, it demanded the annexation of part of the Dalmatian coast only if, by the end of the conflict, Austria still retained control over the eastern Adriatic. In Adriatic Question, Salvemini sets the destruction of Austria as his first objective, mainly arguing that the “dismantling” of the Catholic power is in the interest of the Czechs, the Romanians, and the South Slavs: “The dismantling of Austria-Hungary, a great benefit to a schismatic Romania and a schismatic Serbia, and to a liberal Italy and a liberal Bohemia, would be the greatest disaster for political Catholicism since the creation of a unified Italy, and since the separation between Church and State in France.”42 According to Salvemini, this radical change would open up avenues for fruitful economic exchange between Italy and Yugoslavia, while the influence of Italian culture in Dalmatia would prompt the Yugoslav state to gravitate toward Italy. In the meantime, a Yugoslav Committee had been founded in London on April 30, 1915, with the aim of unifying the South Slavs under the leadership of Serbia. Its creation took place while rumors circulated that the Entente was close to making concessions to Italy. In a clandestine meeting held in Trieste between the end of March and the beginning of April 1915,43 Croatian and Slovenian political representatives authorized Ante Trumbić44 to set up a committee for the independence of the Yugoslav lands, and against any concession of parts of those territories to Italy. The Committee was thus constituted in the first place as a response to Italian claims to the “unredeemed lands.”45 Croatian exiles with ties to Slovenian and Croatian representatives in the Hapsburg monarchy claimed a territory that extended to the entire Austrian coastline, including Gorizia, Gradisca, Trieste, and Istria, exerting such pressure on negotiators of the Treaty of London as to call its stipulation into question. Through the Russian Ambassador to London, Aleksander Iswolski,46 the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Dmitrievich Sazonov became the spokesman for the Yugoslav demands. The relationship between Serbia and the Committee was not always idyllic, partly because Croats and Slovenes held strong federalist views, and partly because Serbia attributed more importance to the Macedonian question and to the Banat, rather than to its demands regarding western territories.47 In a telegram sent to his own Ambassador in Petrograd, Miroslav Spalaikovitch, on September 28, 1914, the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić claimed Dalmatia, and

58  World War I declared once again that Italy would be happy to get just Trieste, Trento, Pola, and Istria.48 In February and March Italy was flooded with interventionist rags aiming to counteract the massive campaign organized by the Yugoslav lobby above all in Great Britain, with the strong support of major representatives of British historiography and journalism, such as Robert Seton-Watson49 and Wickham Steed.50 In the same month of September the Foreign Minister, San Giuliano, worried by these developments, had asked Ambassador Guglielmo Imperiali in London to “contact Italian correspondents and urge them to launch an effective counterpropaganda.”51 In April, sponsored by the Dante Alighieri Association, the exiles founded the Commissione centrale di patronato [Central Aid Commission] in Rome, which became the point of reference for exiles from Trento and the Adriatic. Its President was Salvatore Segré, administrative advisor to L’Idea Nazionale. After Italy joined the war, the government, which had already recognized the Commission as a non-profit organization in December 1915, began to finance it. The Commission quickly formed local committees in all major Italian cities. The neutralist majority, on the other hand, was much less effective in publicizing its positions, exhibiting a fatal “modernity deficit” in comparison with its nationalist political rivals. Disagreements between Giolitti’s supporters and the Socialists, and the latter’s well-known indecision about how to fight intervention, weighed negatively on the neutralists’ effectiveness.52 And a strong push for the interventionist cause came from the two major Italian newspapers, Corriere della Sera53 and La Stampa, which took a stance in favor of joining the conflict.

2 The Parliament and the Government When European war broke out, the Italian Parliament, in which Giolitti’s supporters held a stable left-liberal majority, strongly favored a neutralist policy, as did unequivocally the Italian Socialist Party, which had about forty deputies. Giovanni Giolitti had resigned in March 1914 because of the difficult economic (and fiscal) situation in the country, a consequence of the extraordinary expenditures which the government had incurred to conduct the war in Libya. Antonio Salandra54 became Prime Minister. For a few months, the government remained staunchly entrenched in its declaration of neutrality. From the very beginning, however, that declaration hid a complex and painful internal debate about whether it would be advantageous to join the war or not, an assessment which varied as often as the progress of war operations. Austria’s fleeting military successes against Serbia (such as the short-lived occupation of Belgrade on December 3, 1914) induced the Italian government to appeal to Paragraph 7 of the Triple Alliance, which stated that Austria’s acquisition of territories in the Balkans was supposed to result in compensation for its Italian ally. Between September and November 1914,

World War I  59 the government had outlined its major goals. At first, these were set independently of whether Italy would choose to side with one or the other of the two alliances. As we evince from a draft which San Giuliano prepared on September 25 for Ambassador Imperiali in London, initially the government declared that its minimum requirement for remaining neutral was to extend the ethnic border as far as “the Quarnero, in such a manner as to include Trieste and Istria.” The government also demanded guarantees for the protection of the Italians in Fiume, Zara [Zadar], and other Dalmatian cities. These positions were similar to those held at the time by an authoritative representative of the Yugoslav movement, the Dalmatian Franjo Supilo.55 Little by little, the plan to ensure Italian hegemony in the Adriatic was acquiring clear contours, through the acquisition of Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia, with some residual reservations regarding the latter because of its Slavic character: “From the issue of Valona [Vlorë] to a possible conflict between Italy and Turkey; to the hypothesis, not yet wholly abandoned, of negotiations with Austria-Hungary; to the dream of hegemony in the Adriatic . . . : the logic of naked power now begins to show its limits and its contradictions, and to yield its dangerous fruits.” This was how Brunello Vigezzi commented on the phase during which Italy articulated its participation in the conflict.56 Laborious and inconclusive negotiations between Austria and Italy followed on how to reach an agreement on compensations. Germany, aware of the danger presented by Italian participation in the war on the side of the Entente, supported the Italian demands. Following tradition, these at first regarded the Trentino as far north as Salorno, whereas, for the eastern border, demands were in line with requests made ever since 1866: the extension of the border to the Isonzo River, on the basis of military and strategic considerations; and a high degree of autonomy for Trieste and Fiume. Italy also claimed that Albania belonged in its sphere of influence; with a preemptive move, it had already occupied the port of Valona in January 1915.57 The German historian Friz Fischer sharply remarked: Those in favor of negotiations with Austria-Hungary focus on the Trentino, on the Isonzo border, and on Trieste as a free city. On the other hand, those who favor the war often don’t stop with the Trento-Trieste pair, but go much further: to Fiume, Dalmatia, hegemony in the Adriatic, and Albania. This is as true of the law and order parties as, in many cases, of the popular parties.58 Austria, starting with its Emperor, was unyielding at first in its opposition to any territorial concessions. If anything, the motivations that Andrassy had put forward in 1874 against accepting Italian demands regarding the Trentino had become even stronger:59 the fulfilment of Italian national aspirations would trigger such a powerful chain reaction in the Monarchy as to

60  World War I lead to its dissolution. This scenario was so far from being only a hypothesis that it described what actually happened after Austria lost the war. In the meantime, the Italian government took into consideration the possibility of participating in the war on the side of the Entente. Starting at the beginning of August, the Russian and British Foreign Ministers, Sazonov and Edward Grey, took the initiative of opening highly secret negotiations by sounding out the Italian ambassadors in Saint Petersburg and London. On August 11, San Giuliano instructed Ambassador Imperiali in London to cautiously suggest the possibility of Italy’s participation in the war on the side of the Entente. Compensation for Italy included the Trentino, Trieste, and recognition of Italy’s possession of Valona.60 On August 23, in an interview with Corriere della Sera given three days before resuming the post of French Foreign Minister, Théophile Delcassé offered precisely the Trentino, Trieste, and Valona to Italy.61 Subsequent Russian successes in Galicia played a role in this initiative, leading people to believe that Austria could be persuaded to sign a separate peace with the Entente. Obviously, the Entente could promise much more substantial territorial concessions than Austria, which faced the prospect of having to relinquish part of its territory. In London, compensation for Italy ended up including the South Tyrol as far north as the Brenner Pass, Trieste, the provinces of Gorizia and Gradisca, Istria as far as the Quarnero, and a large part of Dalmatia. Fiume was excluded from the package because it was supposed to become the seaport of a Croatian state. When it came to Dalmatia, Sazonov made his objections known. He was not inclined to hand over to Italy a territory inhabited exclusively by Slavs and claimed by Serbia. In December, the Croatian politician Supilo asked the Russian Ambassador in Paris, Iswolski, to deliver a memorandum to Sazonov, in which he pleaded the cause of a future Yugoslav state with Gorizia, Gradisca, Trieste, and Istria, as well as, obviously, all of Dalmatia. On May 15, 1915, the Croatian Ante Trumbić expressed similar positions in a memorandum which he presented on behalf of the Yugoslav Committee to the ministers for foreign affairs of the member countries of the Entente, and in which he reiterated the Committee’s most extensive demands: the entire Adriatic coast from Trieste to Cattaro [Kotor].62 In March 1916, in another memorandum, this time to the French government, Trumbić declared that if the rights of a nation must extend as far as its “linguistic domain,” we should conclude that the Italian borders on the Adriatic side should not go beyond Treviso (!).63 In May 1916, the Yugoslav demands gave rise to a polite but explicit polemic in The Times among Andrea Torre, Wickham Steed, and Lujo Vojnović.64 Both British Foreign Minister Grey and French President Raymond Poincaré, on the other hand, urged the acceptance of the Italian demands. They counted on the fact that if Italy joined the conflict with the Entente, Romania would soon follow, which would lead, in turn, to the military encirclement of Austria. We should also remember that, by now, it had become fully apparent that the war was a tragic and bloody war of position. The

World War I  61 participation of new forces in the conflict was seen as a means to tilt the balance toward one’s own front, thus ending the stalemate of the trench war.65 Because of Russia’s objections, negotiations dragged on until April 1915, when finally, on the sixteenth, Sazonov telegraphed to London that Russia had accepted the following agreement regarding Dalmatia: 1 The territory between Zara and Cape Planka [Planca] (not neutralized) will be awarded to Italy. 2 The territory between Cape Planka and Cattaro, including Sabbioncello [Peljasac] and the Brazza [Brač] Islands, will have to be neutralized (except for the strip of coast mentioned at point 4), and will be awarded to Serbia. 3 The Curzola [Korčula] Archipelago, such as Lissa and so forth (not neutralized), will be awarded to Italy. 4 The coast between Sabbioncello and Castelnuovo [Podgrad] will not be neutralized.66 On April 21, Czar Nicholas Romanov telegraphed to Poincaré that he was in favor of the agreement, while emphasizing that the concessions made to Italy were “extremely significant, and in contradiction with the aspirations of the Slavic peoples on many points.”67 The precise contents of the Treaty of London were kept secret. But after its signing, on April 26, Pašić and the Yugoslav Committee mobilized energetically in an attempt to hold on to the maximum Yugoslav demands. The recipient of these pressures was, first of all, Russia. Just a day after the signing took place, on April 27, Pašić instructed his Ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Spalaikovitch, to convey Serbia’s vigorous protests against the territorial concessions to Italy. The Russian Foreign Minister, in turn, declared that the exclusion of Pašić from the negotiations strengthened the position of the Serbian leader, who could never have agreed to the concessions made to Italy.68 During their meeting with the Serbian delegation, the Russian functionaries of the second section of the Foreign Ministry said: “Even if it were to happen that not all the territories now under the Austrian yoke might be liberated, the Serbs should not be too concerned about the future. On the contrary, they must rest assured that, once the war has delivered the results it is supposed to, they will easily get the better of the Italians.”69 Italy’s demands regarding Dalmatia aimed to undermine Austria’s position in the Adriatic and to restore the maritime hegemony once enjoyed by the Most Serene Republic of Venice.70 It escaped Sonnino completely that such extensive demands regarding Austrian territories had the end result of threatening the very existence of the Hapsburg state, and created the conditions for an explosive conflict between Italy and a new Yugoslav state. While reflecting on the “Adriatic question,” Elio Apih said many years ago with words that are still valid today: “The clash between the two parties thus became utterly unavoidable, fueled by like-minded Italian and Serb

62  World War I refugees and nationalists who planned political and territorial expansion regarding issues that had been festering for decades. Therefore, it was more or less impossible to find a solution that could please everyone.”71 At the same time, negotiations also continued with the Central European Empires,72 leading, eventually, to concessions that Giolitti summarized in the well-known formula: “They gave us quite a lot.” Toward the middle of April 1915, Sidney Sonnino formulated the following Italian demands: the South Tyrol including Bolzano [Bozen], Gradisca, and Gorizia, Trieste as an independent state, the Curzola Archipelago, and Valona. On April 16, the Austro-Hungarian government responded by granting Italy the Trentino as far as Salorno, and by moving the Italian border to the Isonzo River once the war was over. Leo Valiani commented: “Sonnino could infer, and in fact did so quickly, that signing the Treaty of London meant turning the negotiations with Vienna into a useless exercise.”73 However, even after the Treaty of London was signed, on April 26, and Italy repudiated the Triple Alliance, on May 4, informal negotiations went on between the Austrian Ambassador in Rome, Karl von Macchio, the former German Chancellor and now Ambassador Bernhard von Bülow, and Giovanni Giolitti. The two ambassadors presented a list of concessions, first to Giolitti, and subsequently, on May 6, also to Salandra and Sonnino. These concessions included the transfer of the Trentino and the right bank of the Isonzo River; the transformation of Trieste into a free city with an Italian university; Valona; the cessation of any Austrian claim to the remaining part of Albania; and a “benevolent analysis” of the Italian demands regarding Gorizia and the Curzola Archipelago. Germany would vouch for the precise execution of the agreement. The Holy See itself intervened in support of Italian neutrality. On May 11, Austria offered even greater concessions on some points. But this latter phase in the negotiations failed, first because Giolitti had refused to resume the post of Prime Minister, but, more importantly, because Italy had created a fait accompli by signing the Treaty of London, which bound the country to enter into the war against Austria within a month.74 Giolitti was certainly not wrong in telling the king that the latest concessions from Austria-Hungary made it absurd for Italy to join the conflict against its former allies, but the commitments that Italy had made to the Entente triggered automatic processes that would have been very difficult to defuse. On this point, we cannot but agree with Leo Valiani’s comment: Austria had arrived, again, an hour too late.75 On May 13, Antonio Salandra resigned as Prime Minister, in recognition that a decisive majority in Parliament was in favor of neutrality. His gesture was followed by a wave of pro-intervention demonstrations in the country, held over a few days that went down in history as the “radiant days of May.”76 The positions voiced by the crowd made it definitely easier for the king to ask Salandra again to form a new government. Nationalists and syndicalists dominated the demonstrations in which tens of thousands

Figure 3.1  Treaty of London 1915

64  World War I of people participated. The poet Gabriele D’Annunzio77 played a major role in exciting the crowd in Rome. In Milan, Benito Mussolini and the syndicalist Filippo Corridoni did the same. In contrast with the imposing mass mobilization in favor of intervention, the supporters of Giolitti’s policy, who were not a small number at all, only sent him telegrams and calling cards expressing their consensus!78 Brunello Vigezzi is not wrong in seeing in these dynamics the beginning of the dissolution of the state and of liberal culture in Italy.79 As late as May 18, before the parliamentary debate on the intervention, Macchio presented further Austrian concessions to Sonnino. On May 20 and 21, a great majority of the Lower House voted the law granting full powers to the government in case of war. Forty-six deputies voted against: some Socialists, some of Giolitti’s loyalists, and some Catholics. The Senate approved the law almost unanimously (262 in favor, 2 opposed). Inside the Socialist Party, meanwhile, Mussolini, who had progressively moved closer to interventionism by adopting the formula, “from absolute neutrality to active and operational neutrality,” carried out his sensational about-face. Right after a meeting held in Bologna on October 19, in which the Socialist Party reasserted its neutrality as a matter of principle, Mussolini handed in his resignation as the editor of L’Avanti! [Forward!]. Thanks to the financial support of Filippo Naldi, then editor of Il Carlino [Bologna’s newspaper], and of a group of industrialists favorable to intervention, on November 15 Mussolini launched his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia [The People of Italy]. Later on, the newspaper received financial support from France as well. On November 29, the Socialist Party expelled Mussolini,80 causing the defection of several thousand members, especially representatives of the Fasci rivoluzionari interventisti [Revolutionary Interventionist Fasci] which swelled the varied ranks of the extremist Left in favor of intervention. Most of the socialist base supported the leadership’s reassertion of the neutralist line, even though their neutralism was tinged with sympathy for the forces of the Entente. In this phase, Mussolini’s territorial demands coincided to a large extent with those made by the democratic interventionists: on the eastern front, Il Popolo d’Italia demanded Gorizia and Gradisca, Trieste, and Istria as far as Mount Maggiore, while excluding the acquisition of Fiume and Dalmatia. For the latter, foreseeing its inclusion into Serbia, they only asked that the national identity of the Italian component be protected. Mussolini too, therefore, believed that the Hapsburg Monarchy would not survive the global conflict.81

3 The Treaty of London On April 26, 1915, Italy, represented by Marquis Imperiali, Ambassador to London, signed the so-called Treaty of London with Great Britain, France, and Russia and pledged “to use its entire resources for the purpose of waging war jointly with France, Great Britain and Russia against all their enemies.”82

World War I  65 The Treaty set the border along the watershed between Italy and the Empire, starting from the Stelvio Pass [Stilfser Joch] and going east along the crest of the Rethian Alps; it then bent toward the south, joining the present border on the Carnic Alps. The Italian territory would thus include the entire Alto Adige [Südtirol], eastern Carnia, Venezia Giulia, and the entire Austrian Littoral, including Gorizia, Trieste, Istria, and the Islands of Quarnero, as well as some other minor islands. In Dalmatia, Italy was supposed to get an area that extended from Lisarica and Tribania [Tribanji] in the north as far as Cape Planka in the south, including all the valleys and waterways that descended toward Sebenico [Šibenik], such as the Čikola, Kerka, and Butišnica Rivers and their tributaries. The part of Dalmatia between Capo Planca and Sabbioncello, and the areas beyond several towns, including Ragusa Vecchia [Cavtat], and Durazzo [Durrës], would be neutralized, whereas the coast of Montenegro would not be, because that country had already been recognized by France, Great Britain, Italy, and Russia in 1909. The allies would transfer the territories along the Adriatic coast that were not awarded to Italy, to Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, including, in the upper Adriatic, the then Hungarian coast and the coast of Croatia with the Port of Fiume, and some other small ports and some islands, including Veglia [Krk], and Arbe [Rab]. The Port of Durazzo would be awarded to an independent Albanian state, whereas Italy would see its full sovereignty recognized over Valona and a stretch of the surrounding territory broad enough to ensure its defense. Under these conditions, and except for the formation of a small, independent, and neutralized Albanian state comprising the center of the country, Italy would not oppose the transfer of the northern and southern parts of Albania to Montenegro and to Greece, if the powers of the Alliance so desired. Italy would also take over the representation of Albania in foreign affairs. The treaty also recognized Italian sovereignty over the Dodecanese Islands, occupied after the war with Libya. Recognizing that Italy had an interest in the balance of power in the Mediterranean, the signatories of the Treaty agreed that, in case of the partial or total partition of the Turkish Empire, Italy would be granted other territories in the province of Adalia [Antalya], to be identified at a later time. In case the Ottoman Empire survived, its division into spheres of influence among the states of the Entente would take Italy’s interests into consideration. And even if the other allies were to occupy some parts of the Ottoman Empire during the course of the war, the province of Adalia would be reserved to Italy. In Libya, Italy would succeed the Sultan to all his rights and privileges, and would receive its portion of the reparations, in proportion to its own war effort. Italy joined the Entente’s declaration that Arabia and the Muslim holy sites would remain under the control of an independent Arab state.

66  World War I In case Great Britain and France should partition the German colonial possessions between themselves, Italy would be entitled to equitable compensation. Specifically, Italy might extend its borders in Eritrea, Somalia, and Libya, through the transfer of territories from nearby French and British colonies. Finally, to help the Italian war effort, Great Britain made immediately available a loan of fifty million lire. Furthermore, Italy agreed to the Entente’s declaration of September 5, 1914, according to which no member of the alliance would sign a separate peace with the enemy. The Bolshevik government published this document for the first time in 1917,83 causing, as was to be expected, the wrath of Serbia and the Yugoslav Committee. The Treaty showed with great clarity that Italy’s motive for participating in the conflict was twofold. The claims against Austria partially represented aspirations dating back to the Risorgimento, especially with regard to the Italian part of the South Tyrol. But when it came to claims regarding the eastern border, the project of completing national unification did not disregard military and defensive requirements, which even prevailed decidedly in the demands regarding the Dalmatian coast, supposed to ensure Italy’s predominance on the Adriatic. The Navy supported the most extensive goals in Dalmatia, whereas the Army considered the acquisition of a great part of the Dalmatian coast to be excessive, since land forces would encounter serious difficulties in defending it.84 There were serious reasons why interventionists on the one hand, and the variegated array of nationalists, irredentists, and conservative liberals on the other, split over the issue of Dalmatia. It was Gaetano Salvemini who expressed that division in the clearest form. Consistently with his beliefs, he asserted that giving up Dalmatia was the precondition for a fruitful cooperation with the Slavs who lived along the Adriatic. Otherwise, if Italy adhered firmly to the goals of the Treaty of London, it would be forced “to engage, after the war, in a constant policy of repression and oppression of most of the Dalmatian population.” The conquest of Dalmatia “would make us suffer serious damage internationally, by making us hated by the entire world, as Austria has been; it would push the South Slavs to join forces with Germany against us, no matter whether they succeed or not in achieving national unity.”85 Pašić and the spokesmen for Czarist diplomacy said much the same.86 In 1917, a secret mission to Switzerland on behalf of the Foreign Ministry showed that the representatives of the Yugoslav movement were willing, realistically, to accept Italy’s goals if they were similar to those outlined by Salvemini: 1 2 3 4

the territory around Gorizia and Istria as far as Mount Maggiore the protectorate of Albania the establishment of, and guarantees for Fiume and Zara as free cities military pacts and economic treaties

World War I  67 5 various concessions in the islands, going from a bare minimum, that is, the utilization of some naval bases, to a maximum, which included sovereignty over a few smaller islands and perhaps even over some larger ones.87 The intransigent wing of the exile movement, which saw Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino as its spokesman, created the Comitato centrale di propaganda per l’Adriatico italiano [Central Propaganda Committee for the Italian Adriatic] in Rome in 1916. Giovanni Colonna di Cesarò was the President; among the founders were Armando Hodnig, Roberto Ghiglianovich, Attilio Tamaro, Giorgio Pitacco, and Alessandro Dudan. The Committee’s main task was to produce and disseminate propaganda in foreign languages, above all to counteract the opposing and extremely active Yugoslav propaganda in London. In Paris, the exiles organized through the association Italia irredenta [Unredeemed Italy], which counted about a hundred members. Except for the Dalmatian Alessandro Dudan, all the other members of the board of directors were from Trieste. The Second Congress of the Comitati della commissione di patronato [Committees of the Commission for Mutual Aid], held in Florence on July 16 and 17, 1916, voted for an agenda expressing the wish that “the unconquered Roman eagle, supreme avenger, might take its seat on the natural borders of our Italy,” and that “it be solemnly recognized that, for geographic, historical, and political reasons, the border of Italy is at the Brenner Pass, at the Julian Mountains, at the Diarchies.”88 Despite the rivalries and conflicts that characterized the variegated lobby of the exile community, the movement managed to establish a relatively stable and effective relationship with the government. On July 16, 1915, Salvatore Barzilai was appointed Minister without Portfolio for the liberated territories. (He was replaced by Ubaldo Comandini in the Boselli cabinet.) Between November and December 1916, exiles from the Adriatic coast set up five commissions, charged with advising the government on crucial themes such as education, the policy toward ethnic groups, the demands to be presented at the future Peace Conference, and a comparative analysis of Austrian and Italian legislation. By structuring these commissions along the lines just described, on the one hand the Adriatic exiles presented themselves to the Italian government as a “new ruling class” ready to manage the unredeemed territories along the Adriatic.89 On the other hand, they also showed the provincialism of their vision. Far from demonstrating any understanding of the complexity of the conflict,90 they were not even able to coordinate their activities with those of the exiles from Trento.91 After the defeat at Caporetto [Kobarid], the hard-liners formed the Fascio parlamentare di difesa nazionale [Parliamentary Fascio for National Defense] and closed ranks around Sonnino. On March 24, 1918, there was the creation of the Associazione politica fra gli italiani irredenti [Political

68  World War I Association among Unredeemed Italians], which aimed to link all the irredentist associations from both Trento and the Adriatic,92 including the Adriatic lobby. The latter expressed absolutely intransigent positions regarding the concession of national rights to the Slavs who, after the war, would find themselves within the boundaries of the Italian state. Giorgio Pitacco, for example, declared himself resolutely opposed to the protection of minorities and their right to self-determination.93 In the meantime, Democrazia sociale italiana [Italian Social Democracy] and other democratic organizations and movements present in Trento’s irredentist movement, joined the Unione socialista italiana [Italian Socialist Union], reasserting their anti-imperialist principles and respect for other nationalities. The majority of Adriatic irredentists moved toward more and more intransigent positions, showing a fatal misunderstanding of the international power relations that were taking shape at the end of the conflict. The old Trento and Trieste Irredentist Association played a major role in this context, with implications also for domestic policy.94 On March 25, 26, and 27, 1917, the Association held an extraordinary congress in Rome. The King, the Chief of Staff of the armed forces, General Cadorna, several members of the government, and a substantial number of deputies and senators declared their support. Besides the various sections of the Trento and Trieste Association, the other participants were the committees of the Dante Alighieri Association and the sections of the Lega navale [Naval League]. The range of political positions represented at the Congress went from liberals to republicans, democrats, and reformist Socialists. Freemasons gave a relevant contribution,95 as did important figures such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Leonida Bissolati, and Salvatore Barzilai.96 This initiative was meant first of all to show national unity in a moment of great danger. Secondly, the Argentina Theater provided a stage for reasserting the nationalists’ maximum demands, which besides the Trentino, Trieste, the region around Gorizia, and Istria, included the entire South Tyrol as far as Bolzano, as well as Dalmatia. Leaving aside these maximalist claims, which went farther than what had been agreed to through the Treaty of London, the Congress took decisions that showed to be relevant for the mobilization of forces on the domestic front. Several speakers insisted on the importance of organizing committees against defeatist attitudes, Giolitti’s moderation, and neutralist tendencies. According to the nationalist (and later Fascist) Giovanni Giuriati, the committees were in charge of channeling “the energies of all the groups that have striven for the war and today want victory at any cost.”97 Tano Condorelli said more specifically that the government should give prefects and chiefs of police clear instructions regarding the committees, so as to ensure the best possible cooperation.98 The main function of the committees, defined as “a new organ for internal defense,” was supposed to be the denunciation of defeatism in all its forms and the mobilization of public opinion. In the agenda presented by Giuriati, approved by the assembly, it was agreed that

World War I  69 we should set to work as soon as possible to organize, throughout the entire country, a federation of resistance committees headquartered in Rome. This federation will coordinate the resources and the efforts of all the patriotic associations and all the political movements that wanted the war. We must strengthen the conviction of the Italian people that any hardship must be borne to ensure the triumph of the Fatherland in arms. We must denounce and repress any action, any behavior, any words that are discordant with our unshakable will to win. We must be ready to make it impossible for a few debauched and cowardly men to question our capacity to attain victory, or to belittle its importance or outcome.99 We can consider this document as the founding charter of the collaboration between the Italian forces occupying Venezia Giulia and the Trento and Trieste Association, which provided two services: intelligence and outright political provocation, thus giving an example of the ambiguous relationship that would arise after the war between the civil commission in Venezia Giulia and the Fasci italiani di combattimento [from now on, Italian Fasci of Combat].100 The polarization between friend and enemy101 within the national community anticipated the poisonous political climate that would take over in the war’s aftermath. It is out of that climate that, after the war, a new politics would emerge: new in its modes of political intervention, and new in its very conception of politics, understood and expressed in salvific and palingenetic terms.102 Indeed, Italy’s participation in World War I was characterized by a mixture of national aspirations (the completion of national unity) together with the goals of power politics, including, at the margin, imperialist fantasies, especially with regard to the Near East. At that time, such a mixture belonged to the natural order of things.103 In those years, even mid-sized powers such as Greece and a reborn Poland, for example, articulated and translated into political practice imperial aspirations that went well beyond those expressed in Italy.

4 Relations with the South Slavs The conflict of interest with the South Slavs persisted and was destined to resurface in full force at the peace negotiations. As the historian Leo Valiani highlighted years ago, Sidney Sonnino did not realize that claiming the South Tyrol and Dalmatia at one and the same time meant setting in motion the process that would result in the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. The Treaty of London could be honored only at the expense of Austria’s very existence, and yet Sonnino wanted to impose compliance with the Treaty while using Austria as a bulwark against the Yugoslav movement.104 The Balbo-line and the Mazzini-line continued to be followed, often simultaneously. On the other hand, among the representatives of the Yugoslav National Committee

70  World War I in London, radical declarations prevailed, to the point of claiming territories as far west as the Tagliamento River and at times the city of Udine itself. Whereas at the beginning of the conflict the political unification of the South Slavs was not at all on the agenda,105 during the course of the war that issue began to make inroads, a consequence of Austria’s increasing dependence on the German Reich. It became apparent that Germany would become a superpower not just in case of a victory by the Central Empires, but even in the event of a compromise peace. Besides, as a reaction against Italian demands regarding the Adriatic coast and Dalmatia, the representatives of the Croatians and the Bosnian Serbs had become very active in supporting the Yugoslav side. Already in the fall of 1916, the Foreign Office had begun a revision of the British approach by publishing a memorandum addressed to the government which recommended that “Great Britain encourage and promote in any way possible the unification of Serbia, Montenegro, and the South Slavs in a strong federation of states, as a barrier against any German attempt to expand in the east.”106 As we have seen, in Italy democratic interventionists, first among them Leonida Bissolati and Gaetano Salvemini, had already made this approach their own at the beginning of the conflict. In July 1917, the Congress of Corfu took a decisive step toward the unification of the South Slavs. Convened by the Serbian Prime Minister Pašić, with the participation of representatives of the Yugoslav Committee in London,107 the Congress concluded with the Declaration of Corfu of July 20 which called for unification of all South Slavs in one state ruled by the Karadjordjevič dynasty: the “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” The new state would guarantee freedom of religion and adopt both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.108 For the Yugoslav Committee it was crucial that Serbia had committed itself to fight for the goal of an independent Yugoslavia. On the other hand, the text of the Declaration offered insufficient guarantees against the Serbians’ tendency toward centralization.109 Pašić, on the contrary, was worried at the prospect of a Yugoslav confederation which might end up by diminishing the position of Serbia. These two differing perspectives gave rise to continuous tensions between the Serbian government in Corfu and the Yugoslav National Committee. In any case, the Corfu Declaration did not mention Italy among the guarantors of the new Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian state.110 After Italy’s defeat at Caporetto in October 1917, Russia’s exit from the war, and a significant, even though temporary strengthening of the Central Empires, representatives of Italy and the Yugoslav Committee met several times. They tried to reach an agreement over how to divide the territories claimed by both parties, which would require a revision of the Treaty of London, which the Bolshevik government, in the meantime, had made public. Talks led nowhere. At the preparatory meeting for the Stockholm conference of the Second International in October 1917, Antonio Piscel (a Socialist from Rovereto)

World War I  71 handed in a memorandum in which he reasserted Italy’s right to its natural borders and declared his opposition to a plebiscite. In their turn, the Serbian representatives Dragiša Lapčević and T. Kazlerović shifted to intransigent positions, even though they had voted against the war credits requested by their government. On January 14, 1918, Democrazia Sociale Irredenta [from now on, Unredeemed Social Democracy] was created in Milan, bringing together those democratic exiles who did not share the intransigent anti-Slavic line asserted by the majority of exiles from Giulia and Dalmatia. Edoardo Schott-Dessico was the President; among the members were Angelo Scocchi, Dante Lipman, Antonio Sestan, and Giovanni Semich. Republican, socialist, and democratic views were all represented in the association. Essentially, Unredeemed Social Democracy was willing to give up Dalmatia, but claimed Fiume and Zara. Representatives of Unredeemed Social Democracy and the Yugoslav Socialists exchanged views at the Allied Socialist Conference held in London in February 1918.111 At the end of February 1918, Deputy Andrea Torre, president of a Parliamentary Committee for collaboration with the peoples subject to the Hapsburg Empire, went to London to meet the Yugoslavs, Czechs, and Poles and to organize a Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Rome, under the auspices of the Italian government.112 The Congress wished to attain three goals: to recognize and accept the most radical national ambitions of the Empire’s ethnicities; to step up propaganda among the Allies in favor of the dissolution of Austria; and to forge a closer connection between the Italians and the South Slavs. British supporters of the idea of a South Slavic state—Wickham Steed, Robert Seton-Watson, and Sir Arthur Evans— favored this initiative. But the Congress could not secure the participation of the Central Aid Commission, which had forbidden its members to participate in the proceedings.113 At the Congress, held from April 8 through 10, the Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando signed the so-called Pact of Rome, whereby the Italian government agreed that unification was a legitimate aspiration of the South Slavs, thus anticipating the Allies’ recognition of the goals of political independence pursued by the national committees. One of the closing resolutions approved the right of every people to become one nation and one state, as well as the right to attain political and economic independence. Furthermore, the Congress denounced the Hapsburg Monarchy as an instrument of German domination.114 Among the resolutions kept in confidence, one in particular urged the forces of the Entente to foster in every way possible the liberation of all nationalities still under Hapsburg domination. We can definitely say that the Congress of Rome signed the death warrant for the Hapsburg State. From that moment on, the American President Woodrow Wilson too became converted to the notion that the Empire had to be dismantled. After the Congress of Rome, Salvemini tried to arrive at

72  World War I a provisional definition of the borders with the Yugoslav representatives. Salvemini and Trumbić met in person between April 6 and 11, 1918, in a meeting attended also by Steed and Seton-Watson, Albert Thomas for France, and other representatives of Italy and Yugoslavia. Salvemini reasserted his position: Italy would relinquish its claim to Dalmatia, in exchange for the unambiguous recognition of Italian demands by the other party. But Trumbić, supported by Steed, did not feel entitled to forestall the aspirations of the Slovenes and Croats, fearing also that, if thwarted, these might turn toward Austria. As a consequence, even the democratic interventionists held firm to the provisions of the Treaty of London because there was no viable alternative. At the Inter-Allied Conference of Propaganda Agencies, held in London in August 1918, the journalist Antonio Borgese from Corriere della Sera refused to renounce the Treaty of London, as Steed suggested. These developments affected the Italian government in contradictory ways. Whereas Sonnino contemplated the end of the Monarchy with regret, because he believed, not incorrectly, that the new situation might call the Treaty of London into question, the new Prime Minister, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, tried to emphasize that the end of Austria-Hungary might be a positive development for the future cooperation between Italy and the South Slavs. Wilson too now openly expressed his sympathy for a Yugoslav state, proclaiming his support for the independence of “all the branches of the Slavic race”115 on June 24.116 Political themes that had been useful to destabilize the plurinational Empire while the war was in full swing became a powerful tool for legitimating Serbian interests in the Balkans, now that the conflict was in its last throes. By the spring of 1918 it had become clear that the dissolution of the Hapsburg monarchy was inevitable, and that the Yugoslavs’ claims were the main cause of this momentous development.

5 The War on the Eastern Front: History and Memory The Italian front, about six hundred kilometers long, stretched from the Stelvio Pass to the northern Adriatic. In the east, it followed the Isonzo River and ended in the sea, west of the mouth of the Timavo [Timav/Timava] River. This was the most important area of operations, where the Italians mounted their most massive war effort and mobilized as many men and resources as they could, in what became the theater of an extremely bloody trench warfare.117 In the north too, the front followed the border with Austria: from the Carnia and the Cadore region to the Trentino salient.118 During four years of war, which cost Italy more than six hundred thousand dead, the front moved very little. Austria had left in the hands of Italy a stretch of terrain in the plain of Friuli, with Gradisca, Grado, and Aquileia. These territories, therefore, came in contact with Italian soldiers from the very beginning of the conflict. Reserve and diffidence characterized relations between the local people and the army. The attitude of people who were

World War I  73 Italian speakers, but peasants to a large degree and loyal to the Hapsburg dynasty, didn’t correspond to the expectations of the “liberators.” Besides, we should remember that most of the national liberal and irredentist élite had either been interned or had taken refuge in Italy. Most Italian soldiers fought the war at the back of the eastern territories, and got to know the regions being claimed through the lunar landscape of the Karst Plateau, in the trenches of Mount San Michele, Mount Sabotino [Sabotin], and Mount Santo [Sveta Gora], and in the no man’s land119 of corpse-strewn screes. Behind the military lines, the soldiers encountered a reserved population, “silent, cold women, and stocky, taciturn men.”120 The Karst became “the” locus of national memory through war memoirs and diaries. The desert of stone seemed to provide the most appropriate scenario for the immense massacre that had taken place there. Tragic executions took place, in many cases apparently based on incorrect evidence of spying for Austria.121 Measures were taken, as often happens in wartime, to intern suspicious characters.122 But as the conflict dragged on, new forms of coexistence took shape on the Isonzo front between the military and the civilian population, based on the unequal exchange between people deprived of everything and an army which was relatively well provided for. As happened in other places, on the Karst the proximity of the front led to a revolution in sexual and gender roles. “In the villages behind the lines, I saw humble women—remembered Luigi Bartolini—who cohabited each with two, three, and even more soldiers. For example: a soldier would bring cornmeal to make polenta; another, lard and cheese; another, if he was from the Marche, brought our beautiful lynx, or fresh liver sausage which makes your mouth furry.”123 On August 8, 1916, after heavy losses, Gorizia was taken. This endeavor acquired an important symbolic meaning, even though it was not very significant from a military point of view. The front settled on the upper Isonzo River, with Plezzo [Pletz/Bovec] and Caporetto on the right bank and Monte Nero [Krn] on the left one. After the Austro-German troops had broken through the Italian lines at Caporetto, they spread as far as the Piave River, thus occupying large areas of Italian Friuli and Udine itself. These territories were subjected to a very harsh occupation, exacerbated by the dramatic famine that struck Austria at that time, cut off from the importation of food supplies by the naval blockade imposed by the Entente. In the last year of the war, therefore, Italian civilians were subjected to the same regime imposed on the Empire’s civilians. It was the battle of Vittorio Veneto that ended this state of affairs, partially because it took place when the Austrian army collapsed, feeling the repercussions from the centrifugal forces that were operating within the Hapsburg state.124 The late historian Antonio Sema highlighted an aspect of the war on the Karst that was very well known to contemporaries, but that military history has somewhat neglected until now:125 on this front, the Austrians deployed above all Bosnian, Slovenian, and Croatian units. This meant that on the

74  World War I great theater of the war, the Slavic component of the Empire also fought a war of “territorial defense” against Italy. This war within the war intertwined with the larger conflict between the two major fronts. Sema considers the determination with which these soldiers defended their own territory as a supplementary strategic resource. Indeed, on the Italian front Austria deployed the greatest part of its military resources, even though the conflict was decided on the French front, where, in July 1918, the Germans made their last attempt at a breakthrough by launching a pincer movement around Reims. After the end of the immense slaughter, the cemeteries that dotted the front lines became places of worship not just for the families of the fallen, but also for the entire nation. There, people celebrated the “religion of the Fatherland” by remembering the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of its sons. In Italy monuments to the dead arose everywhere, mostly in neoclassical style, objects of harsh criticism by Benedetto Croce and by the sculptor Carlo Carrà, who had been a Futurist up until the war.126 The largest cemetery was at Redipuglia, where about forty thousand identified dead were buried. At first the structure of the cemetery resembled Purgatory; several circles were meant to render the emotional experience of the soldiers who died in the trenches. Concentric terraces were dug in the side of the Saint Elia hill: on each ledge were placed the tombs of a certain number of fallen soldiers, named or unnamed. On the tombs were exhibited rusty wrecks of vehicles and weapons, humble objects that had belonged to the victims and, over it all, thousands of meters of barbed wire. In no time, Fascism appropriated the myth of the Great War and of the rituals that commemorated Italy’s intervention and victory. On ­November 3, 1923, a decree declared the major battlefields national monuments. November 4 was celebrated with great dignity. Mussolini and the members of the government climbed the steps of the Altar of the Fatherland in Rome and paid homage to the dead, kneeling for a minute before the tomb of the unknown soldier.127 Six months later, the ceremony remembering the anniversary of the entry into the war was, for the first time, as solemn as the celebration of the victory. Mussolini went in pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Redipuglia, surrounded by members of the government, high officers of the armed forces, and a parade of veterans. In the fascist religious imagination, the Great War was taking shape as the myth of the resurrection of Italy, consecrated by the blood of the fallen, representatives of the moral and spiritual aristocracy that would impose resurrection on the country; for all intents and purposes, the Fascists proclaimed themselves to be their heirs and successors.128 In 1931, the “radiant days of May” were transfigured into the first expression of that “revolutionary will” that would bring forth a “new Italian generation.”129 In 1938, in line with the wishes of the fascist regime, the cemetery of Redipuglia, transformed into a gigantic staircase, took on a more monumental aspect. The dead were subjected to even further depersonalization: by removing all remnants of weapons

World War I  75 and objects of daily life, that collective death assumed a purely heroic and abstract quality.130

Notes 1 Among the most authoritative new contributions to the outbreak of World War I, see C. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Allen Lane, Penguin, 2013; and S. McMeekin, Juli 1914. Countdown to War, Cambridge, Icon Books, 2013. 2 See, for example, George F. Kennan’s by now classical definition of World War I as the “great seminal catastrophe of this century,” in G.F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order: Franco-Russian Relations, 1875–1890, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 7. 3 In the decade between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, some pioneering studies have highlighted the consequences of the “liminal” (Eric Leed) experience of trench warfare and of the unprecedented massacres in the battles on the French front (Verdun, Ypres, and the Somme). These experiences generated in the men on the front lines a new perception of reality, incommunicable to those who had not shared them. See especially Eric Leed, No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979; M. Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1989; P. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982; M. Isnenghi, Il Mito della Grande Guerra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989. See also B. Ulrich and B. Ziemannn, Frontalltag im Ersten Weltkrieg. Wahn und Wirklichkeit, Frankfurt a.M., Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994. On the links among the experience of “anonymous mass death,” the rise of fascist regimes, and the genocidal practice of World War II, see E. Traverso, La Violenza Nazista: Una Genealogia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002, pp. 97–122. 4 We find an insightful contextualization of World War I within the long-term developments of European history in A. Hillgruber, “Der historische Ort des Ersten Weltkrieges,” in Id., Die Zerstörung Europas, cit., pp. 103–18. 5 S. Zweig, The World of Yesterday, Plunkett Lake Press, 2011, www.plunketlakepress. com, Plunkett Press, 2011, Kindle edition, loc.s 3488–5091 [original German edition: Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers, Stockholm, Bermann-Fischer Verlag AB, 1942]. 6 B. Vigezzi, L’Italia di fronte alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, vol. I: L’Italia Neutrale, Milan-Naples, Ricciardi, 1966, pp. 27 ff. 7 Article 4 of the Triple Alliance’s Treaty recited: “ ‘In case a Great Power nonsignatory to the present Treaty should threaten the security of the states of one of the High Contracting Parties, and the threatened Party should find itself forced on that account to make war against it, the two others bind themselves to observe towards their Ally a benevolent neutrality. Each of them reserves to itself, in this case, the right to take part in the war, if it should see fit, to make common cause with its Ally.’ Done at Vienna, the twentieth day of the month of May of the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two.” Ibid., p. 37. 8 On this point, see Z. Sternhell, Naissance de l’Idéologie Fasciste, Paris, Fayard, 1989. 9 Regarding the apocalyptic expectations created among European youth by the outbreak of the conflict, see E. Gentile, “Dall’Apocalisse della Modernità alla Modernità Totalitaria,” in M. Cattaruzza, M. Flores, S.L. Sullam, and A. Traverso (eds.), Storia della Shoah, Milan, Utet-Garzanti, 2005, vol. I, pp. 229–45. J. Verhey analyzes the diverse degrees of enthusiasm for the war in the social

76  World War I strata of German society in Der “Geist von 1914” und die Erfindung der “Volksgemeinschaft,” Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2000. 10 This term was coined by J. Herf, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. See also R. Wohl, The Generation of 1914, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1979; M.C.C. Adams, The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I, Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1990. 11 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 513. 12 See Vigezzi’s observations on the stance of journals such as L’Azione, Lacerba, La Voce, of intellectuals such as Giuseppe Prezzolini and Giovanni Papini, and even of the editor of Corriere della Sera, Luigi Albertini. Vigezzi, L’Italia di fronte alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 260–2, 442–56. 13 See Sternhell, Naissance de l’Idéologie Fasciste, cit. 14 See ch. I, pp. 17–19. 15 On this issue, see Gentile, Dall’Apocalisse della Modernità alla Modernità Totalitaria, cit. 16 See F.R. Bridge, The Habsburg Monarchy among the Great Powers 1815–1918, New York-Oxford-Munich, BERG, 1990, p. 341. Correctly, Bridge takes seriously the dangers that the Russian presence in the Balkans represented for Austria. With the war, Austria pursued the twofold objective of ridding itself of the direct threat represented by Serbia, and of the indirect threat represented by Russia. This objective could be realized by destroying Serbian independence and Russian prestige. 17 On the “Schlieffen plan” see the homonymous entry by Christoph Cornelissen, in G. Hirschfeld, G. Krumeich, and I. Renz (eds.), Enzyklopädie—Erster Weltkrieg, Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich, Schöning, 2003, pp. 819–20. 18 See Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 410–4. “Berlin and Vienna must have agreed around August 10 that they would be content, from now on, with Italian neutrality.” (p. 413). 19 On this point, see Vigezzi, L’Italia di Fronte alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 78–81. According to Vigezzi, however, we should not overestimate the leanings of Italian public opinion against the Triple Alliance to the point of considering it an absolute obstacle to an Italian intervention at the side of its allies. 20 C. Battisti, Scritti Politici e Sociali, R. Monteleone (ed.), Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1966, pp. 486–509, especially p. 495. 21 Vigezzi, L’Italia di Fronte alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 165 f., 236 f. These volunteers were only a few hundred people. Ibid., pp. 834 f. Italians resident in France enlisted in somewhat larger numbers. 22 Admiration for Germany is expressed even by Ruggero Timeus, a nationalist who favored intervention against the Central Empires. See, for example, R. Timeus, “Civiltà Francese e Civiltà Germanica,” in L’Idea Nazionale, 18 April 1915. Id., Scritti Politici, Trieste, Tipografia del Lloyd Triestino, 1929, pp. 512–15. 23 R. Fauro, Trieste, Rome, Gaetano Garzoni Provenzali, 1914, p. 209. 24 Ibid., pp. 210–11. 25 See Alberti, Irredentismo senza Romanticismi, cit., pp. 434, 444–5, 456–7. Alberti had put forward these theses since 1913. See M. Alberti, La Fortuna Economica di Trieste e i suoi Fattori, Trieste, Guida Commerciale Pozzetto e C., 1913. A critical review of this argument can be found in G. Sapelli, Trieste Italiana: Mito e Destino Economico, Milan, Angeli, 1990, pp. 17–23. 26 Giulio Cervani gives us a well-documented profile of Attilio Tamaro from an intellectual and political point of view. See “La Storia di Trieste di Attilio Tamaro. Genesi e Motivazioni di una Storia,” in A. Tamaro, Storia di Trieste (1924), 2 vols., Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1976, vol. I, pp. vii–xli.

World War I  77 27 See Tamaro, Storia di Trieste, cit., vol. II, pp. 385 ff. 28 O. Barié (ed.), Luigi Albertini Epistolario 1911–1926, vol. I: Dalla Guerra di Libia alla Grande Guerra, Milan, Mondadori, 1968, p. 295. 29 See Vigezzi’s lucid remarks on the historiography regarding Italian imperialism. B. Vigezzi, L’Italia Unita e le Sfide della Politica Estera: Dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica, Milan, Unicopli, 1997, pp. 55–81. 30 See R. Monteleone, La Politica dei Fuoriusciti Irredenti nella Guerra Mondiale, Udine, Del Bianco, 1972, pp. 18 f. 31 Historians have not devoted much attention to the issue of irredentist volunteers in World War I. Besides some apologetic publications, produced in nationalist and fascist milieus (for example, Federico Pagnacco’s collections), we can now find some observations in F. Todero, Morire per la Patria: I Volontari del ‘Litorale Austriaco’ nella Grande Guerra, Udine, Gaspari, 2005. 32 Monteleone, Politica dei Fuoriusciti Irredenti, cit., p. 31. The irredentists’ maximalist demands also worried Wickham Steed, a British journalist and a strong supporter of the Serbo-Croatian national demands. In a letter to Sidney Sonnino dated November 18, 1914, Steed wrote: “The campaign carried on by shortsighted maniacs like Cippico and others was, to my mind, in every way pernicious. I know the two sides of the question, and cannot conceive of anything more detrimental to the cause of Italy and to Italianità than the attitude of these super-Dalmatians, who have mostly axes of their own to grind. If the principle of the need for an understanding is recognized, the details of the understanding will be comparatively easy to settle, especially if Italy can at the right moment lend the Southern Slavs a hand.” S. Sonnino, Carteggio 1914–1916, P. Pastorelli (ed.), Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1974, p. 70. 33 Monteleone, Politica dei Fuoriusciti Irredenti, cit., pp. 35, 43. 34 Ibid., pp. 20, 26, 27, 31. 35 In order to make the anti-Austrian campaign more effective, Salvemini had established contacts with the pro-Yugoslav journalists and historians Wickham Steed and Robert Seton-Watson. Together they gave life to the Italian-Yugoslav committee. See F. Fejtö, Requiem für eine Monarchie: Die Zerschlagung Österreich-Ungarns, Vienna, ÖBV, 1991, p. 44. See also Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 511: “For the nationalists the war was a war for power; for Bissolati and his friends it was only a war of independence and of national unity: the last war for the independence and the unification of Italy. Loyal to the tradition of the Italian Risorgimento, they tried, like Mazzini, to reconcile national sentiment and international solidarity.” 36 With respect to Cesare Battisti’s interventionist mobilization, see E. BittantiBattisti, Con Cesare Battisti attraverso l’Italia: Agosto 1914-Maggio 1915, Milan, Treves, 1938. 37 On this issue, see M. Toscano’s interesting remarks, in Il Patto di Londra: Storia Diplomatica dell’Intervento Italiano (1914–1915), Bologna, Zanichelli, 1934, pp. 172 f. 38 On the nationalists’ arguments about Italy’s rights to Dalmatia, see. A. Tamaro, Italiani e Slavi nell’Adriatico, Rome, Athenaeum, 1915. 39 See, for example, Maranelli and Salvemini, La Questione dell’Adriatico, cit., pp. 97, 99. Tamaro countered Maranelli and Salvemini’s theses from a nationalist point of view in, “La Questione dell’Adriatico,” in La Rassegna Italiana, 1/1, May 15, 1918, pp. 44–5. In the second edition of their essay, Maranelli and Salvemini address Tamaro’s theses point by point, thus developing a pressing polemical exchange with the nationalist from Trieste. 40 Francesco Salata (1876–1944), journalist and jurist. From 1919 to 1922 he was Director of the Ufficio centrale per le nuove province [Central Office for the New Provinces] of the Italian Kingdom. In 1920 he was nominated state councilor.

78  World War I 41 The memorandum was an answer to the question Sonnino posed to Mayer: What did he think of the possibility of Trieste becoming a free city? Clearly this proposal must have come up during the Italian-Austrian negotiations. See Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, Udine, Del Bianco, 2001, pp. 133–6. 42 Maranelli and Salvemini, La Questione dell’Adriatico, cit., p. 7. 43 The following deputies to the Reichsrat participated in this meeting: Otokar Rybar, Gustav Gregorin (Slovenian separatists), Vjekoslav Spinčić, Matko Laginja (Croatian separatists), and the deputies of Croatia’s Diet Ivan Lorković (progressist), and Dragon Hrvoj and Ante Pavelić. See L. Valiani. La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, Milan, Il Saggiatore, 1966, pp. 198–9 [English translation, The End of Austria-Hungary, New York, A.A. Knopf, 1973.] 44 From 1918 to 1920, Ante Trumbić (1864–1938) was Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and a delegate to the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. 45 It is significant that the Slovenian and Croatian representatives in Austria Hungary declared that they preferred to remain under Austria rather than to end up under Italian sovereignty. Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, cit., p. 199. 46 A. Tamborra, L’Idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, Rome, Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, 1963, p. 252. 47 Ibid., pp. 177–291, especially pp. 251 f. On September 21, 1914, Pašić telegraphed the Serbia political goals to his own minister in Petrograd, so that he could communicate them to Sazonov. They included: Dalmatia, BosniaHerzegovina, the Bačka region, and the Banat, besides “Carnia (sic!) and Istria.” Pašić declared himself willing to share these two territories with Italy, if the latter joined the war on the side of the Entente. Subsequently, having heard of the negotiations between Italy and the Entente, Pašić said he was willing to leave Istria to Italy, and advised Sazonov not to promise Dalmatia. “Pašić alluded to Croatia (and with good reason even less to Slovenia) [emphasis in the original], only to warn that if the concessions to Italy were excessive, the Serbo-Croatians of Austria-Hungary would be induced to show their solidarity to the latter.” Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, cit., pp. 151–2. 48 P.H. Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique (1914–1918). Recueil de Documents, Paris, Alfred Costes, 1938, pp. 27–8. 49 On Seton-Watson’s engagement in favor of Yugoslavia, see L. Valiani, “R.W. Seton-Watson and Yugoslavia,” in Rivista Storica Italiana, 89, 1977/III-IV, pp. 590–5. 50 Tamborra, L’idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., p. 52. 51 Ibid., p. 247. 52 G. Candeloro, Storia dell’Italia Moderna, vol. VIII: La Prima Guerra Mondiale: Il Dopoguerra: L’Avvento del Fascismo, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1978, pp. 102–3. 53 For Corriere della Sera, see for example Albertini, La Crisi del Luglio 1914, la Neutralità e l’Intervento, in Venti Anni di Vita Politica, vol. II, L’Italia nella Guerra Mondiale, cit., p. 269–82. 54 On the liberal conservative politician Antonio Salandra (1853–1931) see F. Lucarini, La Carriera di un Gentiluomo: Antonio Salandra e la Ricerca di un Liberalismo Nazionale (1875–1922), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012. 55 Tamborra, L’idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., pp. 245 f. 56 Vigezzi, L’Italia di Fronte alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 128–40, here, p. 139. 57 See Albertini, La Crisi del Luglio 1914, la Neutralità e l’Intervento, cit., p. 333. 58 Atti del XLI Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, Trento, October 9–13, 1963, p. 333.

World War I  79 9 See Ch. I, pp. 13–14. 5 60 Candeloro, La Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 54–7; Toscano, Il Patto di Londra, cit., p. 51. 61 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, p. 414. 62 Tamborra, L’Idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., p. 252 f., 258; Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria, cit., pp. 201–2. Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique, cit., pp. 113–22. 63 Ibid., pp. 163–6. Treviso is a mid-sized town in Veneto, about thirty kilometers west of Venice. 64 Tamborra, L’Idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., p. 258. 65 This simplistic vision is apparent, for example, in the long telegram about the mood in France which the Russian Ambassador Iswolski in Paris sent to Saint Petersburg. See Toscano, Il Patto di Londra, cit., p. 126. 66 Ibid., pp. 123 f. On Russian opposition to the concession of Dalmatia to Italy, see Ibid., pp. 67, 89, 116. 67 Ibid., pp. 129 f. 68 See Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique, cit., pp. 96–8. 69 Ibid., Note de la 2e Section Politique du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères Russes, 20 Avril 1915, pp. 97–8. 70 See Monzali, Italiani in Dalmazia, cit., pp. 289–90. 71 See E. Apih, “L’Unità e il Problema Adriatico (1911–1920),” Annali Triestini, A cura dell’Università di Trieste, vol. XX, 1950, supplemento, p. 10. 72 Several Russian victories in Galicia, with the conquest of the Austrian fortress of Przemyśl on March 22, and the joint British and French landing in the Dardanelles induced Austria-Hungary to show greater malleability. A scenario was taking form in which the Turkish Empire would collapse, while Serbia, Romania (which entered the war on August 27, 1916), and Italy would encircle AustriaHungary. See Candeloro, La Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., p. 93. 73 See Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria, cit., p. 118. The same author provides a comprehensive reconstruction of diplomatic negotiations between Austria and Italy. Ibid., pp. 97–138. 74 Luigi Albertini too considered this single fact the main cause of Italy’s intervention, despite the Austrian concessions! See Albertini, La Crisi del Luglio 1914, la Neutralità e l’Intervento, cit., p. 541. 75 Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria, cit., pp. 123–6. See also Id., “Le Origini della Guerra del 1914 e dell’Intervento Italiano nelle Ricerche e nelle Pubblicazioni dell’Ultimo Ventennio,” in Rivista Storica Italiana, 78, 1966/III, pp. 584–613. 76 See the description given by Salandra himself, in A. Salandra, L’Intervento (1915). Ricordi e Pensieri, Milan, Mondadori, 1930, pp. 269–88. 77 On D’Annunzio’s involvement in the fate of the eastern Adriatic, dating back to 1882, and destined to reach its zenith in his adventurous occupation of Fiume, see C. Benussi Frandoli, “Il Volo dell’Aquila Latina,” in A. Andreoli (ed.), D’Annunzio e Trieste nel Centenario del Primo Volo Aereo, Rome, De Luca, 2003, pp. 57–90. 78 It is well known that, after Giolitti arrived in Rome, three hundred deputies and one hundred senators who tried to disengage Italy from the agreements with the Entente Alliance, sent him their calling cards to signal their trust in his policy. This well-known episode is reported by Candeloro, among others. La Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., p. 109. See also, Quarant’anni di Politica Italiana: Dalle Carte di Giovanni Giolitti, vol. III: Dai Prodromi della Grande Guerra al Fascismo, 1910–1929, C. Pavone (ed.), Milan, Feltrinelli, 1962, pp. 147 ff. 79 Vigezzi, L’Italia Unita e le Sfide della Politica Estera, cit., pp. 80–1.

80  World War I 80 On the entire affair, see R. De Felice, Mussolini il Rivoluzionario 1883–1920, Turin, Einaudi, 1965, pp. 221–312. 81 Salvemini, La Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 513. 82 For the summary of the Treaty and citations from it, see Agreement between France, Russia, Great Britain and Italy, Signed at London, April 26, 1915, Printed to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, London, Printed and Published at His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920, digitized by Internet Archive, Original from University of California, HathiTrust, Slavic.hathitrust.org. 83 One of the first decrees of the revolutionary government concerned the publishing of secret treaties. The Treaty of London was one of the documents made public. See S. Zala, Geschichte under der Schere Politischer Zensur: Amtliche Aktensammlungen im Internationalen Vergleich, Munich, Oldenburg, 2001, pp. 47–8. 84 Tamborra, L’Idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., pp. 248 f. 85 Maranelli and Salvemini, La Questione dell’Adriatico, cit., p. 260. 86 See Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique, cit., pp. 106–7, 100–11. 87 Tamborra, L’Idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., pp. 264–6. 88 Monteleone, Politica dei Fuoriusciti Irredenti, cit., pp. 91–3. On Antonio Piscel, F. Marin, Pacifisti e Socialpatrioti: La Socialdemocrazia Austriaca alla Conferenza per la Pace di Stoccolma—1917, Trento, Società di Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche, 1996, pp. 165–71. 89 See L. Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., pp. 141–59. 90 Ibid., pp. 141–2. For example, people of the Adriatic region were opposed to extending the conflict to Germany. Attilio Tamaro and Mario Alberti expressed a philo-German position even after the war, many years before the rapprochement between fascist Italy and the Third Reich. 91 Ibid., p. 149. 92 See Associazione politica fra gli italiani irredenti, Convegno Inaugurale. Roma, 7 April 1918, Rome, 1918. 93 S.F. Romano, “Liberal-nazionali e Democratici Sociali di Fronte al Problema della Nazionalità a Trieste nel 1918,” in G. Cervani (ed.), Il Movimento Nazionale a Trieste nella Prima Guerra Mondiale: Studi e Testimonianze, Udine, Del Bianco, 1968, pp. 232–6. 94 The association had been founded in1903, with the task to promote the irredentist cause in Italy. The first President had been Giovanni Giuriati, followed by Piero Foscari. See Alberti, Irredentismo senza Romanticismi, cit., pp. 187–9; Sabbatucci, Irredentismo e Movimento Nazionalista in Italia, cit., part I, pp. 500–1. 95 See Associazione Nazionale Trento e Trieste, Atti del Congresso Straordinario 1917, Roma 25–27 Marzo, Rome, Associazione Nazionale Trento e Trieste, 1918, pp. 6–12. 96 Ibid., pp. 13–14, author’s italics. 97 Ibid., p. 104. 98 Ibid., p. 108. 99 Ibid., p. 127. 100 On these issues, see Ch. IV. 101 On the categories “friend” and “enemy” as the ground for politics and sovereignty, the classic reference is C. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (1923), Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1987 [English translation, The Concept of the Political, Rutgers University Press, 1976, p. 25–37]. pp. 26–54. On the myth of the internal enemy in Italy in the aftermath of World War I, see E. Gentile, Le origini dell’Ideologia Fascista (1918–1925), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1996, pp. 116–23.

World War I  81 102 Gentile, Le origini dell’Ideologia Fascista, cit., pp. 111–51; Id., Dall’Apocalisse della Modernità alla Modernità Totalitaria, cit., pp. 241–4. 103 Tamborra, L’idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., especially pp. 182 f. He reviews, one by one, the national myths held by the nations of central-eastern and southeastern Europe, and highlights that fact that expansion beyond national boundaries is a constant feature. 104 On this important point, see A. Wandruszka, “La Crisi Finale dell’Impero Austro-asburgico,” in Atti del XLI Congresso di Storia del Risorgimento Italiano, cit., pp. 312–33. 105 I.J. Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference: A Study in FrontierMaking, New Haven, Conn.-London, Yale University Press, 1963. 106 Ibid., p. 32. 107 At first, the Yugoslav Committee was based in Paris, but it moved to London early on. 108 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 26. 109 Valiani, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, cit., p. 311. 110 Tamborra, L’idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., pp. 262 f. 111 Ibid., pp. 268–75. See also Romano, “Liberal-Nazionali e Democratici Sociali,” cit., pp. 193–292, especially pp. 195–200. 112 On this theme, see also the documents reproduced in G. D’Aniello, Andrea Torre: La Vita e le Opere, Casalvellno Scalo (SS), Galzerano, 1997, vol. I, pp. 110–63. 113 See Romano, “Liberal-nazionali e Democratici Sociali,” cit., pp. 270–1. 114 Tamborra, L’idea di Nazionalità e la Guerra 1914–1918, cit., p. 230. 115 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 27 f. 116 Ibid., p. 35. 117 Nicola Labanca, “The Italian Front,” in Winter, The Cambridge History of the First World War, cit., vol. I, pp. 2766–96. 118 M. Isnenghi and G. Rochat, La Grande Guerra 1914–1918, Florence-Milan, La Nuova Italia, 2000, pp. 147 ff. 119 Leed, No Man’s Land, cit., pp. 12–33. 120 M. Puccini, Come Ho Visto il Friuli, Firenze, Vallecchi, 1919. 121 See L. Fabi, La Grande Guerra sul Carso: Attraverso I Diari, le Memorie e le Testimonianze dei Protagonisti, in Id., “1914–1918. Uomini in Guerra. Soldati e Popolazioni in Friuli, sul Carso, a Trieste, e Oltre,” in Qualestoria, numero monografico, April 1986, pp. 35–63. 122 See M. Flores, “La Grande Guerra e il Friuli,” in Fabi, 1914–1918. Uomini in Guerra, cit., p. 17. See also G. Del Bianco, La Guerra in Friuli, 3 vols., Udine, Del Bianco, 1939; C. Medeot (ed.), Cronache Goriziane 1914–1918, Gorizia, Grafiche Campestrini, 1976. 123 Fabi, La Grande Guerra, cit., pp. 61 f. Similar scenes are described by G. Stuparich, Guerra del ’15 (1931), Turin, Einaudi, 1978, pp. 86–91. 124 On Vittorio Veneto, see P. Melograni, Storia Politica della Grande Guerra 1915–1918, Milan, Mondadori, 1998, pp. 504–7. We also find a balanced assessment of the battle in L. Albertini, Da Caporetto a Vittorio Veneto (Ottobre 1917—Novembre 1918), vol. III, in Venti Anni di Vita Politica, in L’Italia nella Guerra Mondiale, vol. II, cit., pp. 436–52. 125 Something that was, however, already very clear to Salvemini. On this point, there are several remarks in Salvemini, La Questione dell’Adriatico, cit. Nikola Pašić also picked up this theme instrumentally as an argument against the Treaty of London. See C. Sforza, Costruttori e Distruttori, Rome, Donatello de Luigi, 1945, pp. 308–9. 126 See I. Orfeo, “Celebrazione e Sepoltura: Monumenti ai Caduti e Cimiteri Militari,” in Fabi, 1914–1918. “Uomini in Guerra,” cit.

82  World War I 127 On these issues, see E. Gentile, Il Culto del Littorio: La Sacralizzazione della Politica nell’Italia Fascista, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1993, pp. 74–5 [English translation, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, Cambridge, Mass.-London, Harvard University Press, 1996.] 128 Ibid., pp. 76, 80. 129 Ibid., p. 80. 130 Other commemorative places are the ossuary of Oslavia and the Italian military memorial for Caporetto, now in Slovenian territory. Both were built in 1938. On the Italian politics of memory of the “Great War” see also John Foot, Italy’s Divided Memory, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 44–49.

4 From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo 1918–21

1 The Dissolution of Austria and the Italian Victory Between August and October 1918 the Central Empires and their allies were in their last throes, no longer able to articulate any strategic plan. Just a few months before, after the peace of Brest-Litovsk with Russia and the “bread peace” with Ukraine, and as Romania left the conflict, it had seemed that Germany and Austria-Hungary might still prevail. But after the German offensive against Paris failed in July 1918, it became apparent that the superior resources of the United States would be the determining factor in depriving the Central Empires of any chance of victory.1 We can date to that moment the unraveling of the middle-European bloc, which dragged along with it, disastrously, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire itself. On September 29, Bulgaria was forced to ask for an armistice, followed by the other powers six weeks later: Austria on November 3, Germany on November 11, and Hungary on November 13.2 A similar fate befell the Ottoman Empire, which lost all its Arab possessions, transformed into protectorates of the Western powers by the Treaty of Sèvres.3 In Austria, the last desperate moves of Charles I ushered in the postwar era even before the war was over. On October 16 the Emperor issued a proclamation guaranteeing all the peoples of the Monarchy the right to political autonomy, including, ultimately, national independence. Immediately afterward, the National Councils, formed one after another, declared their independence from Vienna, in a chain reaction that resulted in the end of the Hapsburgs. As a consequence, the European scenario at the end of the war was profoundly different from the international situation at the time when the Treaty of London was stipulated. Instead of Serbia, there was now the Kingdom of “the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes,” which had come into being through the unification of Serbia with Montenegro and with the southern Slavic territories previously part of the Hapsburg Empire, namely, Carniola [Kranjska] and Croatia, now including Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Bosnia. In this situation, Italy found itself claiming the territories promised by the Treaty of London not from a defeated and largely discredited enemy, but

84  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo from one of the victorious states, which in its turn was about to bring to completion its own process of “national” unification. As a matter of fact, the situation was less clear-cut than contemporary observers believed. In Croatia, and especially in Slovenia, pro-Hapsburg leanings had prevailed until the dissolution of the Monarchy. In the southern Slavic territories, a preference for annexation to Serbia had emerged only because this was seen as the lesser evil compared to annexation by the Kingdom of Italy,4 and because people expected to obtain a high degree of autonomy in a future federal state.5 In an interview with Reuters on October 28, 1918, right when the Hapsburg Monarchy was falling into pieces, the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić openly declared: Serbia considers it as her duty to liberate the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Once freed, they will enjoy the right of free disposition, that is to say, the right to declare themselves either in favor of uniting with Serbia on the basis of the Declaration of Corfu or, if they so wish, of constituting themselves into small states as in the distant past. Not only do we not wish to pursue an imperialistic policy, but we do not desire to limit in any fashion the right of the Croats and Slovenes to their selfdetermination; nor to insist upon the Declaration of Corfu, if that does not correspond to their own desires.6 These declarations undoubtedly had a tactical value, since the Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian National Councils of the Hapsburg Monarchy, which had just declared their separation from the imperial body and their determination to build independent states, had not yet articulated the possibility of unification with Serbia.7 The interview also shows clearly that Pašić was not at all willing to call into question the structure of the Serbian state, even if in exchange Serbia could absorb the South Slavs previously subjects of the now-defunct Danubian Empire. Between June 30 and September 3, France, Great Britain, and the United States recognized the Czech National Council as the legitimate government of Czechoslovakia. As is well known, this decision opened the final phase in the process of dismemberment of the Hapsburg state.8 Pressured by these events, Sidney Sonnino declared that the goal of Yugoslav independence was consistent with the principles that had guided and legitimated the entry of the Entente into the conflict. Nonetheless, in a subsequent declaration the Italian government emphasized that the stipulations of the Treaty of London remained in force.9 As already noted, on October 16 Emperor Charles I made one last attempt to offer the peoples of Austria a federal reorganization. But Wilson’s note of October 19 thwarted this effort. The American President rejected any proposal for an “autonomous development” of the peoples of the Monarchy, despite the fact that he had made such a proposal himself in January of the same year.10

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  85 On October 29, six days before Austria asked for an armistice, the Slovenian Antun Korošec, the Croatian Ante Pavelić (not to be confused with the Ustaša dictator by the same name) and the Serbian (and Hapsburg subject) Svetozar Pribičevič, all representatives of the National Council of Zagreb [Agram], proclaimed the independence of all the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes of Austria-Hungary. They went on to form a national government, charged with completing the unification of these peoples with Serbia and Montenegro. Emperor Charles recognized the National Council on October 31, and on that same day he issued a decree transferring to the Yugoslavs control over the Austro-Hungarian fleet stationed in the Adriatic. Not without effort, the Italian Admiral Umberto Cagni, the military governor of the maritime fort of Pola on behalf of the Entente, finally persuaded the Yugoslavs to hand over the fleet, which the Treaty of Rapallo then divided between Italy and Yugoslavia. After the National Council of Zagreb declared independence, the diets of Vojvodina and Bosnia-Herzegovina joined the union. On November 26, the Parliament of Montenegro proclaimed unification with the other southern Slavic territories formerly part of the Hapsburg Empire. Following this move, the representatives of the National Council of Zagreb went to Belgrade to discuss the union with Serbia in negotiations with both the government and the sovereign. The Serbian Prime Minister Stojan Protič succeeded in convincing the negotiators that the new state should be governed by the Karadjordjević dynasty and adopt a centralized administration. The proclamation issued on December 1 declared “the union between Serbia and the territories of the independent State of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, so as to form the united Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” The new state was thus born with a centralized structure, under the undisputed hegemony of Serbia. These developments took place as the armistice with Austria was being stipulated at Villa Giusti (near Padua), when the sense of jubilation clearly prevailed in Italy over concern about possible complications of international politics. A mixture of relief at the end of the conflict and of pride over victory in the war led to a rare display of unanimity among Italians, which would unfortunately prove short-lived. Throughout the entire day of November 4, Rome turned into a stage for demonstrations and patriotic parades. All industrial plants were closed for the day. Workers wearing tricolored rosettes marched toward the center of the city and then on to the Quirinal Palace, cheering the royal family. Shops displayed tricolored signs reading “Closed for national jubilation.” Corriere della Sera reported: “From the Chiesa di San Carlo al Corso and the Chiesa del Gesù the church bells chime, and tricolored flags wave on the façades of many Roman churches. Airplanes and dirigibles circle over the Via del Corso, dropping flowers and leaflets onto the crowds cheering the Italian victory.”11 In all Italian cities one could witness similar expressions of popular jubilation.12 In his speech

86  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo to Parliament on November 20, an emotional Vittorio Emanuele Orlando extolled the liberation of “Trento and Trieste, and all the dear Italian towns and villages that were our dream, our love, and the object of our devotion.” The assembly responded with repeated ovations and shouts of hurrah.13

2 The Peace Negotiations at the End of the Conflict At Versailles Italy encountered no objection to its request to move its northern border to the Brenner Pass, which meant the incorporation of a territory inhabited by two hundred thousand people who were solidly German in culture and language. The weakening of Austria seemed to be in the general interest.14 Besides, France looked favorably upon a situation that might turn into a source of conflict between Italy and the Austrian Republic and prevent a rapprochement between the two countries. Regarding the eastern front, on the contrary, the Italian claim to Dalmatia and the eastern part of Istria, where most people were Croatian, met with strong opposition, especially from Woodrow Wilson, who was not bound by the Treaty of London. The so-called Inquiry, a team of experts tasked to brief Woodrow Wilson about the positions that the United States should adopt in Paris, had already stated, in their report of December 1917, their opposition to any Italian expansion in the eastern Adriatic, at a time when the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary was not yet under consideration. In a report on January 21, 1919, the Inquiry declared to be in favor of a Yugoslav state strong enough to defend itself from the territorial claims of its neighbors. According to this report, Italy should be awarded “those parts of the Slavic interior in Istria and in the Isonzo River Valley that are essential to the economic life of the Italian urban centers. But Fiume, the eastern coast of Istria, the entire Dalmatian coast, and the archipelago claimed by Italy should all go to the Yugoslavs.” According to the assessment of these experts, this border line would lead to the annexation of 375,000 Yugoslavs by Italy, and would leave 75,000 Italians in Yugoslavia.15 At that point, the philo-Yugoslav English experts Wickham Steed and Robert Seton-Watson also came out in support of a border line that privileged the principle of ethnicity over economic and strategic considerations, even though support for nationalist demands was subordinated to maintaining the European balance of power and to keeping in check a possible revival of German expansionism.16 De facto, the positions of Wilson and of the Entente were fairly close to those of Gaetano Salvemini who, ever since the beginning of the conflict, had foreseen and advocated the breaking up of Austria. This way Salvemini, unlike those politicians who still adhered to the Treaty of London, was able to articulate the problem of relations with the new Yugoslav state in more realistic terms, and to envision a positive neighborly relationship between the two coasts of the Adriatic. The Yugoslav delegation, in its turn, presented a memorandum that demanded not just Dalmatia and Istria in their entirety, but even Trieste

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  87 and Gorizia.17 Maps that had circulated during the war representing the Yugoslav side, already showed that the future state of the South Slavs was supposed to extend as far as Udine, way beyond the borders of Italy established in 1866. The radicalism of the Yugoslav demands vis-à-vis Italy was due mostly to Slovenian and Croatian pressure,18 because for Pašić the eastern borders with Romania and Bulgaria, and the problem of Macedonia in particular, mattered much more than territorial gains in the west, that is, the regions of Carniola and southern Styria, toward which the old Serbian politician still felt a sense of estrangement. Nonetheless, he backed the Slovenian delegates, hoping to ensure their support when it came to the question of Macedonia and the Banat.19 In Paris, the problem of Fiume further complicated the issue of Dalmatia. From the moment hostilities ended, the former Hungarian port had requested annexation to Italy through its National Council.20 This choice was not due so much to a strong irredentist mindset, but rather to Fiume’s fear of falling into the hands of its historical enemy, Croatia. (This is the mirror image of the attitude of the Croats and the Slovenes toward Serbia, which they saw as the lesser of two evils when compared with Italy.) Sidney Sonnino and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando thus demanded not only compliance with the terms of the Treaty of London, but also the town of Fiume, on the basis of the principle of self-determination. By adding Fiume to its demands Italy weakened its negotiating position, which would have had better chances of success if Italy had only requested the implementation of the Treaty.21 Behind the scenes, toward the end of November, Pietro Badoglio, Vice Chief of Staff to Armando Diaz, began to prepare a plan for breaking Yugoslav unity by encouraging and supporting separatist forces in Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia. It is impossible to ascertain to what degree that plan was really set in motion at the time. But it obtained Sonnino’s approval and Prime Minister Orlando was likely to have been informed of it. France, on its part, mobilized its significant resources in the opposite direction by trying to strengthen “Yugoslavism,” a sentiment which actually had week roots among the people.22 In the years that followed, Italy continued to work on splitting the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes with greater or lesser determination, which reached its climax during World War II. Despite Badoglio’s more or less successful attempts at destabilizing the situation, time itself was working against Orlando and Sonnino, by turning the idea that the Yugoslavs formed one state into a fact. This was confirmed, on February 7, 1919, by America’s recognition of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, whose “final borders will be determined by the Peace Conference in accordance with the wishes of the peoples concerned.”23 In the meantime, the Italians circulated among the participants at the Conference a memorandum written to a large degree by Salvatore Barzilai, who was from Trieste, outlining demands that went beyond the acquisitions

88  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo agreed to in the Treaty of London, and included Fiume and Spalato [Split].24 But already in December 1918, in a letter to Francesco Salata, the Dalmatian leader Roberto Ghiglianovic had frankly acknowledged that “politically speaking we do not have, alas, any democratic argument with which to counter the arguments of the Yugoslavs.”25 The Italian nationalists, on their part, raised the stakes even further. They started a campaign all over the country with the slogan “the entire Dalmatia plus Fiume,”26 basing their argument on the power principle, Social Darwinist ideas, and the notion of the war between the races.27 On January 11, 1919, Leonida Bissolati, a leading representative of democratic interventionism, was booed at a rally he held at La Scala Theater in Milan, during which he argued in favor of the principle of nationality and demanded that Italy give up all claims based on the logic of power. Nationalists and Futurists drowned his speech with a volley of catcalls, grunts, and shouts. Salvemini rightly described that episode as “the first large and successful experiment of a method that employed systematic, ‘planned,’ material and moral violence, aimed at hindering the political activity of one’s adversaries, and ostracizing them from the nation.”28 On January 15, the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio published his Lettera ai Dalmati [Letter to the Dalmatians] in Corriere della Sera. He ranted and raved against the Allies and against the nascent Yugoslavia, contended that the acceptance of all Italian demands would lead to a pax romana, and proclaimed: “We have fought for a greater Italy. We do want a greater Italy. I declare that we have prepared the mystic space for its ideal apparition. We expect her to come eventually, in the shape that we foresaw.”29 D’Annunzio had already voiced these sentiments on October 25, 1918, in his Preghiera di Sernaglia [Prayer of Sernaglia], where he formulated his successful metaphor of the “mutilated victory.”30 Despite the excesses of the nationalist milieu, the Italian demand that the Allies comply with the Treaty of London was in itself not so far-fetched as a good deal of Italian and international historiography has considered it.31 In fact, the Entente had made similar promises to Romania, regarding the Banat, Transylvania, and Bessarabia, territories with substantial groups of Hungarians, Serbians, and Germans.32 Regarding this point, Elio Apih remarked years ago that “the nationalities won all at once rather than all together; they took advantage of various sources of support and of their own ability to exert pressure, while several age-old problems, especially regarding ethnically mixed areas, became the historical heritage of the new successor states.”33 Actually, Italy’s demands in Paris went unfulfilled not so much because they clashed with the principle of nationality, but rather because they were now addressed to a new, unforeseen, victorious state. In the cases of Germany and Hungary there had been no hesitation in assigning territories inhabited by millions of Germans and Hungarians to the successor states, going against the expressed wishes of those peoples. And in the case of Turkey, the Allies even floated the proposal of reducing it to the condition

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  89 of a dependent state, by resurrecting the infamous “capitulations” of the Ottoman Empire.34 Only the extremely bloody war that broke out between Greece and Turkey allowed the latter to establish itself as a sovereign nation-state. We should also keep in mind that the chaos reigning in fledgling Soviet Russia gave France the appealing opportunity to replace Russia as the traditional protector of the Balkan region. From this point of view, the Italian presence in Dalmatia would obviously have become a hindrance.35 A strong Italian position in central Europe, in the Balkans, and, looking to the future, in the Near East would have been at cross purposes with the French plans in the form in which they materialized later in the Little Entente. The French author Paul-Henri Michel has written a well-documented study on the Adriatic question. He sees the trends taking shape in French policies at the time as clearly anti-Italian, a consequence of the active Balkan policy pursued by France.36 Therefore, we should give greater consideration to this context when assessing the Italian demands in Paris, which would have had better chances of success if Italy had made a bigger effort to build alliances, and if it had not overestimated, as usual, its own influence in the international chessboard.37 In response to Wilson’s intransigence regarding the Italian demands, and to his proposal that the new border line follow as much as possible the ethnic boundary between Italians and Slavs (the so-called Wilson line, along the Arsa River and at the feet of Mount Maggiore), Orlando and Sonnino left the Paris Peace Conference in protest on April 24, 1919,38 a rhetorical gesture which did not yield the result for which they hoped. On May 7 the Italian delegation was already back at the negotiating table, after France and Great Britain threatened to consider the Treaty of London no longer valid. But the absence of the Italian representatives had lasted long enough to penalize Italy when it came to sharing the German colonies. Orlando’s and Sonnino’s decision to leave the Peace Conference met with a surge of approval in Italy.39 The country seemed to have rediscovered the harmony of the “radiant days of May.” Even democratic interventionists sided with the government. In an article in L’Unità, “La Camicia di Nesso” [“The Shirt of Nessus”], Gaetano Salvemini polemically asked Wilson why he wanted to impose absolute criteria of justice on Italy alone. It was clear that, in other cases, the logic of the victors prevailed over the defeated countries, as had happened with the division of the German colonies and of the Ottoman territories between France and Great Britain. In the abstract, Salvemini’s arguments were not unfounded, but the crux of the matter is that two victorious states found themselves facing one another in the eastern Adriatic. The representatives of the United States, Great Britain, and France made no concessions whatsoever in exchange for the return of the Italian representatives to Paris. For Italy, this event was a defeat and a humiliation, which evoked the image of a country defeated despite its victory, and robbed of that victory by its own allies. Angelo Tasca commented

90  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo insightfully: “That feeling of injustice and mutilation became the broad theme that Mussolini exploited coolly, pushing it to the level of delirium. It was one of the psychological premises, perhaps the most important one for the success of Fascism.”40 Exactly during those crucial April days, Fiume declared one more time that it wanted to belong to Italy. On the morning of April 26, the entire town was decked in the colors of the Italian tricolore. Under the Presidency of Antonio Grossich, the National Council passed a resolution that transferred governmental functions to the representative of the Italian government, who could thus assume power in the name of the King. Followed by a screaming crowd, the representatives of the National Council marched to the residence of General Francesco Saverio Grazioli to inform him of the decision.41 On June 7 Wilson made public a new memorandum on the ItalianYugoslav border, stating first of all that the Allies had agreed to the terms listed in it. Among other points, the memorandum mentioned the creation of a Free State with a Slavic (Slovenian and Croatian) majority which would include Fiume and would also incorporate the entire eastern part of the peninsula of Istria. This meant that Italy would lose its strategic border which, according to the Treaty of London, was supposed to go from Mount Nevoso to Fianona [Plomin], and also that Italy’s border would be moved to the so-called Wilson line, which tried to follow ethnic boundaries as much as possible. Five years after the creation of the Free State, a plebiscite would decide whether to assign it to Yugoslavia or to Italy, or to maintain the status quo. At the time, similar solutions were also applied to other areas in contention, such as the Saar region. And the model for how to give bordering states access to the Port of Fiume, for example, was Danzig. The islands shared between the two countries would be demilitarized. The draft did mention the principle of the reciprocal respect of minorities. Zara would become a free city, represented by Italy in foreign relations. Yugoslavia would get the important railroad hub of Assling [Jesenice], at the border with Austria and Italy. In the meantime, on June 19, the Orlando-Sonnino government resigned because of the prolonged crisis which had begun when the Italian delegation decided to leave the Paris Peace Conference, and then return there without any concrete guarantee that Italy’s interests would be safeguarded. Francesco Saverio Nitti succeeded Orlando in the role of Prime Minister, while Tommaso Tittoni replaced Sonnino, who had been perhaps the most important architect of the Treaty of London, as well as its most forceful advocate. Sonnino’s exit from the scene and the moderation and balance shown by the new Prime Minister had positive repercussions on the negotiations. On June 28, 1919, after signing the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, Wilson returned to the United States, to the dismay of the Yugoslav delegation. Several attempts made before the departure of the American president, aiming to outline an agreement establishing what Yugoslavia would obtain as

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  91 “the absolute minimum,” failed in a feverish but vain fight against time.42 When the negotiations started again, the context had changed profoundly. The strongest protector of the Yugoslav demands had left the stage, as had the Italian politician who had been the most determined advocate of the Treaty of London. Immediately after taking office as Foreign Minister, Tittoni left for Paris where, on June 30, he received the Balfour Memorandum. The conditions were very harsh for Italy, which was ordered to leave Asia Minor, while the validity of the Treaty of London was called into question because Italy had delayed its entry into the war against Germany by one year.43 The proposals presented in Paris and the course of the negotiations reflect the particular post-war political climate, in which diplomats and politicians placed great hopes in the capacity of the League of Nations to act as a mediator, and to take the lead in ensuring international peace. When it came to territories in contention between nations, negotiators resorted perhaps too frequently to the formula of the Free State to be placed under the protection of the League of Nations, in the belief that such a solution would relieve tensions. Actually those solutions soon proved to be breeding grounds for irredentism and revisionism, thus contributing to a significant degree to the destabilization of the European balance of power after the war.

3 The Period of Occupation On November 3, 1918, Italy and Austria signed the armistice of Villa Giusti. One day later, Italy occupied the entire territory mentioned in the Treaty of London, and participated in the occupation of Fiume together with troops of the Entente.44 The urban centers with an Italian majority such as Trieste, Pola, and the small towns along the coast of Istria greeted the Italians troops with irrepressible enthusiasm. Almost all people took to the streets, awaiting the liberators. Witnesses from within the ranks of the Italian army remembered with great emotion the warm embrace of the citizens of Trieste, remarking also that the crowd looked emaciated and miserable. After all, the Italian citizens living in Hapsburg lands had been subjected to the same deprivations as the Austrian subjects throughout the entire war.45 Right before the occupation of Fiume tensions arose with the Serbian army, which had occupied the town in the very first days after the armistice with Hungary (November 13). The same was true of Ljubljana, where the Italian troops who had occupied the Slovenian center were driven out and pushed back behind the armistice lines.46 People expressed hostility towards the Italians47 in Dalmatia and in the area around Gorizia. Here, following the invitation of Emperor Charles, the local population had created National Councils connected to the central committee of the National Yugoslav Council, which immediately expressed their intention to join the new Yugoslav state. A National Yugoslav Council was also formed in Trieste.48 In various villages of the upper- and mid-Isonzo (Caporetto,Tolmein [Tolmino], Brda

92  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo [Zona del Collio]), a great display of white-red-and blue rosettes and flags, and pro-Yugoslavia signs greeted the arrival of the Italian troops; in the area of Ajdovščina [Haidenschaft, Aidussina] and Postojna [Adelsberg, Postumia] pro-Yugoslav demonstrations took place as well.49 During the first days of occupation, the Italian Army disbanded the National Committees and the groups of armed Yugoslav guards whose creation had been instigated by the National Council of Ljubljana.50 On November 17 the Supreme Command issued a decree which forbad showing or wearing rosettes with the Yugoslav or Austrian colors, permitting only rosettes and flags with the colors of Italy and the Allies, and strictly prohibiting demonstrations and parades.51 There was nothing exceptional about these measures which, during an armistice, any force of occupation takes when its final aim is to annex the occupied territory. In Czechoslovakia, for example, in the same months, a demonstration in favor of the Austrian Republic was harshly repressed; fifty-four people were killed.52 Luigi Barzini, the correspondent of Corriere della Sera who was sent to the “liberated lands,” had to acknowledge with disappointment that the population was not entirely “Italian.” The brilliant journalist chose to explain it by saying that foreign agents had sneaked into the territories, taking advantage of the army’s inadequate surveillance. But Barzini could not completely hide from his reports his disquiet over the undeniable presence of people, opposed to the Italian solution, whose number and drive had been underestimated.53 The two parties engaged in reciprocal retaliation—fortunately without any shedding of blood—by damaging the transportation and commerce infrastructures. The Italians subjected the new Adriatic state to a naval blockade, whereas the Slovenes in particular prevented normal operations of the southern railroad line (Südbahn), through an array of harassing actions, including boycotting and blocking the transportation of goods.54 On February 12, near Ljubljana, Slovenian civilians and soldiers wearing Serbian uniforms attacked a train full of Italian refugees, beat them up, and set fire to the Italian flag.55 According to General Petitti di Roreto, the Serbian government “systematically and overtly obstructed” resumption of railroad traffic between Vienna and Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Trieste. The people of Trieste appear to have been stunned by the “arrogance of a small, weak, and disorganized state” which succeeded in preventing communications with the interior. In retaliation, the Italians stopped the trains bound for eastern Europe carrying supplies for the hungry people of those regions, thus incurring accusations of inhumane behavior. The Serbian government, in its turn, forced the withdrawal of the Italian Military Commission which had been stationed in Ljubljana with the task of regulating railroad traffic.56 As a matter of fact, the occupation did not only serve the purpose of establishing territorial claims on the ground, but also of restoring a modicum of order after the power vacuum caused by the withdrawal of the Austrian civil authorities. In Trieste, the seat of the Imperial lieutenancy for the Adriatic

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  93 coast, the last Imperial Lieutenant, Baron Fries-Skene, transferred all his powers to a Committee of Public Safety and left the city on October 31.57 Prisons were opened, there was no longer any control over the circulation of weapons, and the coast fell prey to armed bandits.58 On November 3, 1918, the Piedmontese General Carlo Petitti di Roreto, appointed by proxy by General Armando Diaz, assumed full power in the region.59 In the first months after the end of the war Venezia Giulia was under a military governorship which faced major tasks: the provision of supplies, the repatriation of troops, and the restitution of prisoners. The Segretariato per gli affari civili [from now on, Secretariat for Civil Affairs], an office already instituted in 1915 in preparation for administering, even if temporarily,60 territories soon to be liberated, helped the military authority carry out these tasks. The Office of the Military Governor and its various branches, supported by the Secretariat for Civil Affairs, replaced completely the National Councils created when the Empire had collapsed.61 With an ordinance dated November 19, 1918, General Diaz declared: Control over the management of civil affairs and over local administrations in the occupied territories beyond the border of the Kingdom, is exercised by the Supreme Command through the General Secretariat for Civil Affairs as the central body, and through governors appointed among the military officers, according to districts still to be established, which may be different from the districts under military jurisdiction. The governors assumed functions similar to those of the Austrian lieutenants. In other words, they represented the state but had broader prerogatives, given the exceptional situation in which they operated. Within the various branches of their office, they could therefore adopt “all the necessary measures, when the urgency of the situation requires it.”62 Petitti di Roreto’s management was relatively balanced.63 He tried to act as a peacemaker and a mediator who had to navigate the harsh political and national contrasts that characterized the occupied lands. Local irredentists and self-proclaimed vigilantes, for example, were demanding much more draconian sanctions against philo-Austrians and philo-Slavs than those that were actually inflicted.64 Petitti showed more severity toward Slovenian and Croatian clergymen strongly hostile to the transfer of the territories to Italy, and active in spreading anti-Italian propaganda among their “flock,” even though some acts, for example, the internment of Monsignor Anton Mahnič, the Croatian Bishop of Veglia, caused an outcry.65 Petitti also subjected priests—members of the Popular [Catholic] Party—to repressive measures, as in the case of Monsignor Luigi Faidutti, prevented from returning to Italy from Vienna. The Ufficio Informazioni dei Territori Occupati [from now on, Intelligence Office for the Occupied Territories] redacted several reports covering the period between January and July 1919,66 which describe the difficult relations between the Italian occupying troops and local people.

94  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo This was true both of areas inhabited almost exclusively by Slovenes and Croats, as of centers of the working-class in Pola and Monfalcone, and, at least to a degree, even of Trieste itself. The population and the functionaries of the Hapsburg regime greeted with hostility the suspension of religious instruction in the schools, as well as the introduction of Italian as the official language of communication among municipal bureaus. It turned out that in several Slovenian towns civilians were deserting the balls organized by the Italian army. An intelligence network tied to Yugoslavia remained active throughout this entire phase, while the population opposed to the Italian solution welcomed with great hopes Orlando’s and Sonnino’s withdrawal from the Peace Conference. Furthermore, the Ljubljana press, for example Domovina [Homeland], published “blacklists” of Slovenes willing to reach a compromise with the Italian authorities, and to allow their children to attend Italian schools.67 Nonetheless, the Italian government recognized to the new provinces the same degree of autonomy granted by the Hapsburg state before the war; it was even planning to incorporate those provisions into Italian legislation, even if they would apply only to the new provinces. In August 1919 the regime of military occupation ended, and the civil governorship took its place. At its head there was, at first, a supporter of Giolitti, Augusto Ciuffelli, and, shortly afterward, the nationalist Antonio Mosconi. Military occupation continued, however, in Dalmatia, under the command of Admiral Enrico Millo, a man inclined to surprise attacks and coups d’état, as became clear at the time of D’Annunzio’s adventure in Fiume. The transition of the new provinces from military to civil governance was enacted in coordination with the replacement of the General Secretariat for Civil Affairs with the Ufficio centrale per le nuove province [from now on, Central Office for the New Provinces], created on July 4, 1919, headed by the national liberal Francesco Salata (who was from Cherso), and placed under the direct supervision of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.68 In an appeal to the Italian government of December 1919, the Yugoslav Committee of Dalmatia complained about the policy of the Italian authorities for discriminating against Croatian pupils; suddenly downsizing Croatian schools, especially in Zara; and interning, deporting, and at times imprisoning several Croatian authorities. Tensions also rode high with the occupying French troops in Fiume and in Pola, because the problem of the fleet was still unresolved.69 The measures taken in Dalmatia went against Nitti’s recommendations to proceed with a soft and liberal policy. On July 25, 1919, Bissolati wrote Nitti a letter expressing his concern about the high number of Yugoslavs interned in Italia, “a seed of bad blood between Italians and Slavs in the future.”70 At a congress of the periodical L’Unità, organized by Salvemini in Florence at the beginning of 1919, Aldo Oberdorfer, a Socialist from Trieste, gave the following report about people, especially Slovenes, who were leaving the city:

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  95 Part of the proletariat working at the port and for the railroad has left, as has part of the intellectual bourgeoisie. They left full of hatred, which we must try to extinguish both in them and in those who remained, by adopting a policy inflexible in its demands, but fair to the utmost in its concessions.71 During the tenure of the civil Governorship, the Italian government took major steps to harmonize the legislations of Venezia Giulia and of Italy, even though a real normalization of the “liberated lands” occurred only after the Treaty of Rapallo came into force in 1921. Since the liberated territories were also excluded from political elections, we can certainly conclude that they passed almost without a break from governance by the civil commission to Fascism, which dismantled the Central Office for the New Provinces very early on, in November 1922.

4  Frontier Fascism: The Beginning Fascism, the new political movement born in March 1919 in Milan in Piazza San Sepolcro, spread like wildfire through the “liberated lands” despite the exceptional regime in force in Venezia Giulia. Irredentist volunteers, republicans, radicalized national liberals, and former combatants formed the first Fascio in Trieste as early as April 1919.72 Fascists, however, remained a minority73 within the varied groups of revolutionary and militant nationalists who were present all over Venezia Giulia in the years right after the war, and operated in collusion with the High Command of the Army and Navy, and with Military Intelligence.74 In July 1919 (almost on the eve of the transfer of power from the military authority to the civil commission) a strong reaction against Socialism arose in Trieste. When the police attacked the Sedi Riunite [the Socialist Party’s headquarters, T.N.], a mixed group comprising nationalists, members of the Arditi [élite storm troops] and republicans sided with them, and then launched a violent political initiative on their own. The excuse for this attack was a children’s excursion to the outskirts of the city organized by the Socialist Party—one of the many that took place frequently, not only as manifestations of socialist counterculture, but also as a way of showing the strength of the working-class movement.75 Kids slowly marched along the streets of the city center, singing “subversive” songs and obstructing traffic. On August 3, 1919, an altercation broke out between one of the overseers and a member of the Carabinieri military police corps. This led to a scuffle, which was followed by the counter-initiative of the variegated “national” bloc and the police, and by the arrest of a large part of the socialist leadership. The Party responded the next day by calling a general strike.76 This episode is important as a symptom of the new patterns of political practice that were taking hold in the acquired territories. The various squads siding with the nationalists had also assaulted, without doing great damage,

96  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo the headquarters of Slovenian and Slavic associations: cultural venues, the offices of Edinost [Unity], and the Balkan Hotel. One thing is worthy of note: Socialists and Slavs expressed no sympathy for each other’s plight, even though Nitti was especially shocked by the anti-Slavic violence. The Slovenian delegate in Paris, Otokar Rybar, harshly denounced the attacks that had occurred in Trieste. The exceptional—and unstable—situation that characterized the aftermath of the war had opened the door to the radicalization of the various strands making up the political landscape of Venezia Giulia. Former combatants, volunteers, and Arditi were creating a national bloc inclined to anti-socialist and anti-Slavic violent actions. Even the republicans were moving toward more radical positions, at times close to those of the fascist movement. It was the national liberals, on the other hand, traditionally hegemonic in the Italian cities of Venezia Giulia, who were going through a serious crisis. Their being at a loss in the post-war situation, so different from the pre-war scenario, was almost palpable. In Trieste, Rinnovamento [Renewal], an association formed by liberals cautiously open to social programs, was incapable of launching any initiative at all. In Petitti’s words, “we can consider such an association dead even before it is even born: it neither knows how, nor is able to perform any activity or develop any program; it has lived and lives in silence and apathy.”77 Even the experience of the social democratic group, which had played a significant role in uniting the democratic interventionists of Venezia Giulia, appeared to be over. On April 12 and 13, 1919, Social Democracy held its last congress, torn apart by the Republicans moving to the right, and the Socialists who now supported the Bolsheviks. Bissolati’s Unione socialista [Socialist Union] was almost on its last legs.78 It was also the weakness of the traditional Italian political forces in Venezia Giulia—liberal, democratic, and reformist—that fostered the tendency of the Army’s High Command and even of the civil authorities to rely upon the most virulent sectors of the nationalist movement, which appeared to be prevailing at that point in the Italian camp.79 Venezia Giulia thus saw the birth of a large and ill-defined mass of revolutionary ultra-nationalists who were also carriers of confused social ambitions. Nationalists organized in the squads of the Sursum Corda [Lift up Your Hearts] group,80 or of the Comitato Antibolscevico [Anti-Bolshevik Committee], supported, if not armed, by the Third Army and by the Governor himself. The Intelligence Office, in particular, gave a decisive contribution to these first squads by providing them with a structure, calculating that a national movement ready to act might be a useful tool at its disposal if tensions flared up.81 As early as January 1919 the irredentist Trento and Trieste Association had reached an off-the-record agreement with Colonel Finzi, head of the Intelligence Office, whereby the Governor’s press office first merged with, and then became employed by the Presidency of the Trento and Trieste Association.82

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  97 The Fasci formed in Trieste as early as April 1919, just a few weeks after the meeting in Piazza San Sepolcro in Milan. They showed the same vague traits as the rest of the movement: a mixture of revolutionary fervor, nationalism, and social programs. Among the first members there were men who later became prominent representatives of anti-Fascism: Pietro Jacchia, who died in the Spanish Civil War fighting with the Republicans; and Ercole Miani, Commandant of the partisan group Volontari della Libertà [Volunteers of Freedom] in Venezia Giulia, and leader of Trieste’s insurrection against the German occupiers. To Pietro Jacchia himself we owe the first programmatic manifesto of Trieste’s Fascio, published in the Nazione [Nation] on April 3, 1919. In it we can find echoes of productivism and even syndicalism, besides nationalist, imperialist, and anti-Bolshevik statements, whereas a section of the Associazione Nazionale Italiana [Italian National Association], founded at almost exactly the same time as the first Fascio, represented conservative nationalism.83 The local Socialist Party, almost to a man, had moved toward Bolshevik positions, which masked, at times, the irredentism of its Slovenian and Croatian components, rather than representing a radical program of social revolution. This did not change even after the Julian Party merged with the Italian Socialist Party, in which the majority held maximalist positions. The Intelligence Office reported on April 23, 1919, that at the latest socialist meeting the Bolshevik wing had won the vote by a landslide, four hundred votes to thirty.84 The Slovenian component, opposed to the transfer of the occupied territories to Italy, merged with the working-class movement, thus emphasizing the ambiguity of that movement in terms of national identity. Edmondo Puecher, an old-time Socialist who had strongly supported the transfer of the Littoral to Italy, was marginalized within the party after undergoing what amounted to a “trial.”85 Autonomist positions now prevailed; these favored the creation of a Free State, which the party’s secretary Valentino Pittoni had championed right after the war. The majority of the Slovenian Socialists were hard at work to ensure the awarding of the occupied territories to Yugoslavia, thus emphasizing what separated them from the Italian Socialists.86 According to the socialist reformer Aldo Oberdorfer, the predominance of Communists among Trieste’s Socialists was also a consequence of the Slovenian presence in the party. Just before the Communists organized their sensational occupation of the offices of the socialist newspaper Il Lavoratore [The Worker] on January 26, 1921, Oberdorfer commented: You know all too well that you [the Communists] won the majority thanks to the Slavic vote. Rather than winning thanks to the votes of your old and proven comrades who have lived and struggled with us, our real brothers, you won thanks to the votes of very recent members, newcomers to Communism. These people have no doubt burning

98  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo revolutionary spirits, but need a long training period before they can claim the same rights as the people who, like us, have given so many years of their lives, even their entire lives, to the cause of the proletariat.87 In a report of the Intelligence Office from the district of Pola of July 26, 1919, we can read: “Almost all Yugoslavs in the district have joined the official Socialist Party, which welcomes into its bosom all those who are dissatisfied with the new regime.” Or, on July 13: Yugoslav propaganda gets mixed up with Bolshevik propaganda spread by the Socialist Party. Slavs and Croats who cannot find a better arena to spread their ideas than the Socialist Party, join it; and the Socialist Party, which does not exclude anyone in so far as he nurtures anti-Italian feelings, welcomes individuals of every nationality into its bosom.88 Obviously the Slovenian Liberal Party, Edinost, and the network of nationalist Slavic associations, reconstructed after the war, showed similar tendencies with even less ambiguity. These associations, such as the Gymnastic association Sokol, also acted as vehicles of the pro-irredentist drive coming from headquarters in Ljubljana and Prague. Rumors circulated that Yugoslav forces beyond the border were trying to cross the border and to stage provocations. In such an unstable and uncertain situation, both Petitti and Mosconi made an instrumental use of the national squads, which they considered completely reliable. On April 15, 1919, Petitti di Roreto entered the following handwritten note in the margin of a report: “We need to spur the Trento and Trieste Association to form a Fascist Combat Youth Group as soon as possible. The individuals we need for such a task are here and ready.”89 Toward the end of his Military Governorship, Petitti seemed to take into serious consideration giving support to the creation, among volunteers, of “those Fascist Combat Groups which are such a source of worry for the Socialists in the Italian Kingdom.” Among the active members of the Fasci and of militant nationalism, one man stood out: Captain Bruno Coceancig (Coceani), who would become Prefect of Trieste during the German occupation in World War II.90 Mosconi, for his part, defined the local Fascio “as that core group of citizens which is the only one organized for the protection of social order and the defense of the Italian identity of Trieste.”91 From the very beginning, so-called “frontier Fascism” was thus partially (but only partially!) different from the kind of Fascism that was developing in northern Italy. The nationalist element provided the connecting tissue that brought together, or prompted the cooperation of republicans, democrats, nationalists, and former combatants who had converged on the eastern frontier in the search for adventure. The concern for social issues present in Fascism at its inception was not absent from the early Fascism in the Giulia region, and, as already remarked, we can find in it echoes of the ideas

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  99 of Georges Sorel and of socialist principles of self-management. And yet, nationalism did play a major role in frontier Fascism, even at the expense of features that we associate more readily with fascist ideology, such as the idea of the “new man,” the myth of the totalitarian state, or the primacy of politics.92 On the other end of the political spectrum, organizations of the workingclass and socialist sympathizers followed their political representatives in the process of radicalization. Pola became one of the Italian towns with the highest intensity of working-class conflict. In Trieste workers had formed the Arditi del Popolo [Storm Troops of the People, T.N.] to counter the attacks of the fascist squads. On May 1, 1920, the police killed four demonstrators in Pola, where the Command of the Navy was still headquartered. And Fascism was officially born in Pola in May 1920, after some officers of the military garrison got together with a small group of former combatants who had been volunteers in the war.93 We can certainly say that the “liberated lands” lived in a state of emergency, where isolated groups with military ambitions had ample room to launch arbitrary and uncontrollable operations, often joining forces with representatives of radical nationalism, and acting independently of civil authorities. Only in very rudimentary terms can we speak of the existence, in the conquered territories at that time, of a state founded on the rule of law and on constitutional guarantees.94 The most sensational action that we can attribute to early Fascism was the fire set to the Balkan building in Trieste on July 13, 1920, following clashes that took place in Spalato.95 Even though the Treaty of London did not include the Dalmatian town as compensation to which Italy was entitled, Admiral Millo, supported by the Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Thaon de Revel, had posted the battle cruiser Puglia in the port of Spalato, believing that this move would strengthen the Italian position in the Paris negotiations. The presence of the Puglia caused great anxiety among the Croatian majority in the town. A tense situation developed between the Italian crew and Croatian nationalists. Tension only increased when Millo and the high commands of the Italian Navy declared their public support for D’Annunzio’s expedition to Fiume, which was followed by the illegal occupation of Traù [Trogir], then under control of American troops. In this unusual context, on the evening of July 11, 1920, the eve of King Petar of Yugoslavia’s birthday, the Serbian Captain Lovrić gave a strongly anti-Italian speech at a political rally in Spalato. According to the report of the American Commander, Philip Andrews, clashes followed after two boys raised a Yugoslav flag close to the Puglia. Two Italian petty officers sequestered the flag and carried it aboard the Puglia, which triggered an attack by Slavs on the building habitually frequented by the local Italian bourgeoisie. Its sign was destroyed. Two officers of the Puglia were attacked and wounded by the crowd. Another officer, sent ashore to bring back his fellow soldiers, was drawn into a shooting confrontation. The Puglia then organized another expedition on land, in the attempt to rescue and

100  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo bring back on board the officers involved in the clashes. While Spalato’s Chief of Police and Captain Tommaso Gulli were engaged in negotiations, a bomb went off in the port near the headquarters of the Jadranska Bank. Violence spread. Captain Gulli was killed, two other members of the crew were wounded seriously, and one of them died shortly afterward.96 On the shore, the bomb had killed or wounded several people. This was just one of the many incidents never fully clarified nor explained, which occurred frequently in contended territories after the war, incidents in which the political provocation orchestrated by more or less official intelligence agencies likely played a far from marginal role. It is noteworthy that, by this time, the Italian government had lost all control over the Dalmatian situation. According to Commander Andrews, Admiral Resio, with whom the American officer had a meeting after the clashes, had instructions neither from the government nor from Admiral Millo, who was then clearly siding with the rebels in Fiume. Trieste heard the news of the incident in Spalato on July 13. Nationalist forces called a public assembly in Piazza Unità. About two thousand people participated. The fascist lawyer Francesco Giunta excited the crowd with a grand-guignol speech, inciting people to shed blood to avenge Gulli. During the rally, two young men were stabbed, in mysterious circumstances. One of them died instantly. The crowd then began to rail against the latest Slavic provocation, as the dead man was believed to be a Fascist. The most inflamed demonstrators marched toward the headquarters of the Serbian delegation, pulled the Yugoslav flag off the balcony, and trampled it. About fifty people moved on toward the Balkan. The Narodni Dom [National Hall] of the Slavs of Trieste, inaugurated in 1905, was an imposing Secession-style building designed by the architect Max Fabiani, built in a very central neighborhood as a symbol and a reminder of the Slavic presence in the heart of the city. The most important political and cultural associations, not just Slovenian, but also Czech, Croatian, and Serbian ones, had their headquarters in the building, which also housed the offices of Slavic professionals and private apartments. It took its name from the hotel Balkan which was located in it.97 A bomb was launched onto the crowd from one of balconies, wounding a lieutenant seriously.98 Witnesses declared that the explosion had been followed by intense gunfire on the demonstrators, who, in response, aided by the police and the Carabinieri as well as by soldiers, set fire to the building. Actually, witnesses gave scanty and contradictory evidence about what happened; and no one has been able to find incontrovertible proof either of gunfire or of the explosives supposedly in the building at that time.99 Because of this attack, a father and daughter who were guests in the hotel jumped out of a window to escape the flames. The father died, while the daughter survived, seriously disabled. Many points in the events of that day remain obscure, even though most historians lean toward the hypothesis that the incident was a premeditated

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  101 provocation. What is sure is that the devastation saw in action unprecedented cooperation between members of the armed forces and the Fascists, and marked a sudden change of pace in the upward trajectory of Fascism on the eastern frontier. Not only were the Fascists, now, the propelling factor in the violent anti-Slavic and anti-socialist reaction, but with members of the armed forces, the Carabinieri, and even the civil authorities in tow. They had also succeeded in acquiring a dominant position and a specific identity, separating themselves from the confused mass of nationalists with which they had begun their journey. July 13, 1920, saw even greater destruction of Slavic property, which took place in each and every case in the presence of the police who decided not to intervene in any way. According to the historian Almerigo Apollonio, the fire of the Balkan marked a “quantum leap” for the political role of Fascism.100 From then on, not only did violent attacks against Socialists and Slavs multiply, but the civil authorities themselves proved more and more subordinate to fascist initiatives. It was the Tuscan lawyer Francesco Giunta who played a central role in reorganizing the fascist groups in Trieste.101 The destruction of the Balkan took on a highly symbolic value for both nationalities: for the Italians it represented the destruction of a dangerous center of Slavic plots in the center of the city, whereas the Slavs dated to that moment the beginning of the martyrdom they would suffer during the fascist years. One day later, the Narodni Dom of Pola was also set on fire, following a similar provocation as in Trieste. In Pisino [Pazin], the offices of the Slovenian Catholic newspaper Pučki Prijatelj [Friends of the People] were set on fire as well. Here the civil authorities went so far as to promote the formation of anti-Croatian defense committees. After the fire at the Balkan, the Yugoslavs in Paris and the Edinost association in Rome filed protests and questions with the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. People held demonstrations in Zagreb, Ljubljana, and Belgrade. There was no reaction from the Slovenians and the Croats living in the occupied territories, who were probably frightened by the new climate of intimidation. Italian public opinion accepted the official version of the events. In subsequent months, threats carried out with the support of the military multiplied and grew in intensity. The Fascists went so far as to shoot at a priest in a church in the center of Trieste; he was guilty of saying a few prayers in Slovenian. The later Istrian communist partisan Antonio Benussi commented: “At that time Istria fell prey to the most horrible reactionary forces. All those who did not take off their hats as these squads marched by were beaten up. Don Fortunato, the priest who did not want to obey their orders, was slapped in the face in the middle of the Corso di Dignano.”102 Even Commissioner Antonio Mosconi, who was colluding deeply with Fascism, complained with the military command that army officers and soldiers in uniform were participating in the fascist attacks. On August 14 the offices of the historic socialist newspaper Il Lavoratore were destroyed. It was the second time that a socialist newspaper was torn down, after the

102  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo Arditi destroyed the Avanti! in 1919 in Milan. In February 1921, other devastating attacks struck socialist and Slovenian newspapers, and offices of the working-class movement or of the national Slavic movement. The violence of fascist attacks was so strong that in some cases the buildings were razed to the ground.103 According to Angelo Tasca, in the course of these attacks one hundred and thirty-four buildings were destroyed in Venezia Giulia: one hundred culture clubs104, two people’s houses, twenty-one work halls, and three cooperatives.105 Episodes of violence reached their peak during the political elections of May 1921, which were accompanied by serious threats against the Slovenian and Croatian electorate. In Istria in particular, illegality was spreading, manifesting itself in attacks on Slavic voters prevented from exercising their rights, in beatings, and in assaults against polling stations. In the latter case, the Fascists got support from officials and the police who, in many cases, rejected identity cards as invalid; they even took the voters into temporary custody.106 In Trieste, three representatives of the Listone [Large list], all Fascists, and one Communist, Nicola Bombacci, emerged as winners; in Istria, five candidates of the Italian block, and one Slavic candidate; and in the region of the Isonzo, where Fascism had not yet taken hold so forcefully, four Slovenes and the Communist Giuseppe Tuntar. The shapes of the new electoral districts had been drawn so as to weaken the Slavic electorate. Nonetheless, compared to the rest of Italy, Venezia Giulia (and Piedmont) recorded also the most successful election results for the Communists.107 We can also find cases of the systematic use of political violence among the most radical representatives of the Left, who did not hesitate when it came to murdering adversaries. The Left now included and expressed not only the already mentioned ambitions of Slovenian and Croatian nationalists, but also aspirations typical of peasant rebellions, especially in Istria. Besides laying several ambushes in which well-known members of the fascist squads lost their lives,108 the radical wing set fire to the shipyard of Saint Mark in Trieste, on March 1, 1921. The same month, the miners who worked in the coal mines in the Arsa region, in southern Istria, proclaimed the (Soviet) Republic of Albona [Labin]. In this episode too, soon repressed by the Army, pro-Soviet ideas mixed with the nationalist aims of the Croatian component. The following month about three hundred Croats “armed and trained according to the rules of war” took part in a revolt in Prostina led by the Croatian student Ante Ciliga. At first, they succeeded in pushing back the troops, who had one dead and five wounded. In retaliation, fascist squads set fire to some villages. In the same period, the Communist Trade Union in Pola reported twelve thousand members, almost the entire working class.109 In October 1921, when the shipyards of Monfalcone and Trieste declared a lockout because of a lack of job orders, Julian workers responded by proclaimed a general strike for one week, during which even the supply of gas was interrupted. In spring 1922, Fascists and Communists engaged in a creeping civil war, with people dying on both sides. It is significant that at

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  103 the Congress of Livorno, where the Communists decided to leave the Socialist Party, the communist motion won the greatest number of votes from the Trieste delegation, together with Turin and other towns in Piedmont.110

5 The Adventure in Fiume A short time after Francesco Saverio Nitti took over as Prime Minister, while a surge of working-class strikes and unrest was shaking Italy, serious incidents broke out in Fiume between Italian troops and French soldiers, the latter mostly colonial troops. The French troops seem to have been responsible for the provocations, even though it was they who, on July 6, 1919, left six dead on the ground. Civilians had also participated in the clashes; at least two of the French soldiers were killed after they had surrendered and had been disarmed.111 Following these clashes and their outcome, the Italian troops were invited to leave Fiume, a request which further weakened the Italian position in the negotiations. In the town, a crowd wearing white, red, and green, and indulging in wild manifestations of despair accompanied the withdrawal of the Italian Grenadiers of Sardinia. Women threw themselves on their knees before the soldiers departing from the town, begging them not to leave them in the hands of the Croats; children clung to their legs and grabbed their hands. Only General Anfossi’s sangfroid made it possible to carry out the withdrawal in accordance with the decision taken in Paris. Similar expressions of wild enthusiasm welcomed the new Italian troops who replaced the Grenadiers. According to the sharp observations of Michael Ledeen, author of a seminal study on D’Annunzio’s Fiume, the town, because of his lifestyle and its celebratory exuberance, was “D’Annunzian” long before the arrival of the poet-soldier.112 This was the situation in Fiume when the much acclaimed vate [poet] Gabriele D’Annunzio, who for months had been embracing a radically nationalistic stance, even claiming all of Dalmatia,113 decided to spearhead a movement formed by seditious officers and troops over the preceding months.114 For D’Annunzio, who experienced the end of the war with a deep sense of ennui, the adventure in Fiume was the occasion he had been waiting for to play the role of hero-Übermensch once again.115 Aestheticism, Decadentism, and unbounded narcissism thus became intertwined with an international dispute, leaving their specific imprint on it. The “little red house” where D’Annunzio lived in Venice had become, ever since the end of 1918, a pilgrimage site for people from Fiume and Dalmatia, and the planning center for surprise attacks and expeditions to the Adriatic.116 Former combatants who favored forcing a solution for the question of Fiume had already arrived in the town. Behind the scenes, the Trento e Trieste Association117 did its utmost to recruit battalions, taking advantage of the ambiguous support of the occupying authorities. The volunteer Army of Fiume was formed officially on June 12. At first, the National Council gave organizational responsibility to the writer Sam Benelli,118 who renounced his

104  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo post shortly afterwards, seemingly because a group of volunteers signaled their displeasure. The Council then reached an agreement with D’Annunzio, who accepted the command of the illegal armed forces convened in Fiume. At this critical juncture, Vittorio Filiberto Duke of Aosta, in charge of the Third Army, bore an especially heavy responsibility.119 The possibility that hostilities would resume on the eastern border played a major role in the subversive plans that characterized the political situation in summer 1919, which saw important personalities ranging from D’Annunzio to General Gaetano Giardino, Admiral Umberto Cagni, the nationalist deputy Luigi Federzoni, and Benito Mussolini, engage in various conspiratorial activities120 along the axis Rome-Venezia Giulia. The culminating event of this plot, which aimed to establish a military dictatorship,121 was a delirious nationalist rally in Rome, followed by an attempt, curbed by the police, to attack the residence of the President of the Council of Ministers.122 Ever since the armistice, among Italian public opinion, too, the “unredeemed” town had become a symbol of Italian claims regarding the Adriatic. The name “Fiume,” until then unknown to most people, became the rallying cry around which the entire interventionist camp, from left to right, coalesced. That name alone seemed to contain and convey all the motivations for Italy’s entry into the war. On September 12, 1919, officers, rebel troops, and volunteers converged on the small border village of Ronchi and marched on to Fiume, quickly getting the better of the staff stationed at Italian roadblocks. The forces of the Entente left the town in protest. The most important financial supporter of the adventure was Oscar Sinigaglia, a businessman from Trieste, who after June 1918 had been in charge of the Commissariato armi e munizioni [Commissariat for Weapons and Munitions]. He chaired the Comitato per le rivendicazioni nazionali [Committee for National Claims], which had morphed into the Lega Italiana per la protezione degli interessi nazionali [Italian League for the Protection of National Interests].123 Thus began the adventure of Fiume, one of the most extraordinary episodes of the aftermath of the war in Italy, relevant not only for foreign policy, but also for the creation of the rituals and myths typical of Fascism. Fiume was a sort of laboratory for a new political culture based on myths, on the mobilization of the masses, and on the liturgy of the nation and of action. Michael Ledeen defined D’Annunzio’s experiment as “sacred political representation.”124 Liturgical patterns undoubtedly informed the dialogues that the “Commander” held from the governor’s palace, with the crowd answering as one man from below. Throughout that year, the town experienced a unique moment in time, freed from the banality of daily life. Fortune seekers, eccentrics, people prone to violence, veterans unwilling to demobilize, all converged on Fiume. People lived in a mood of collective folly. The adventure in Fiume had a particularly strong impact on the nationalist component in Venezia Giulia. From Trieste alone, a few hundred young men joined the volunteers.125

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  105 The “Fiume Experiment” seemed to embody the slogan “neither left nor right.”126 Syndicalists such as Giuseppe Giulietti and Alceste De Ambris, nationalists such as Federzoni, members of the military, Futurists, and Fascists all joined in. In the last phase of his adventure D’Annunzio moved farther to the left, seeking support even from Bolshevik Russia. The legionnaires indulged in excesses of all kinds, including piracy. In Dalmatia, Governor Enrico Millo gave his blessings to the enterprise; technically, he was guilty of sedition, but he did not suffer any consequences, not even by way of discipline. The common denominator of the adventure in Fiume was to experience a Nietzschean “most beautiful configuration of life,” pursued in the name of the aestheticizing vision of the Übermensch, and of the fusion between the leader and the masses, tested for the first time in the microcosm of Fiume. The town seemed to fulfill the promise that the war would lead to the regeneration of the nation; the hopes that interventionism had invested in the participation in the military conflict now appeared to become reality in the “sacrificial town.”127 Politics took on a totalizing and collective dimension. Fiume lived in an atmosphere of endless Bacchanalia which the “Commander” endowed with the symbolic value of “hyper-reality,” i.e., reality at “a superior level.”128 In Fiume “politics becomes intertwined with the promise of a different life,” as the art historian Claudia Solaris accurately remarks in her excellent study on Fiume as a manifestation of the “culture of rebellion” typical of the twentieth-century.129 People put into practice the idea that all of life can be an inebriating feast, a continuous transgression of norms and the unleashing of instincts. Spontaneous dancing and music-making permeated every moment of existence, while women indulged in uninhibited promiscuity with Arditi and legionnaires.130 At first, the Nitti government responded to these events by trying to gain time and to avoid an armed intervention.131 On September 13, the Vice Chief of Staff, General Pietro Badoglio, was appointed Special Commissioner for Venezia Giulia, charged with going to Fiume and reestablishing order.132 Badoglio took several measures to prevent more defections from the army stationed in the “liberated lands,” and to strengthen discipline. Telephonic and telegraphic communication to and from Fiume were interrupted and roadblocks were set up. In Italy, associations of patriots, nationalists, and veterans reacted to the events in Fiume by organizing rallies and issuing pronouncements. Detachment and disinterest marked the response of trade unions and leftist parties, which even threatened a general strike of port and railroad workers against Fiume. The negotiations went nowhere; the government continued to steer a middle course, even sending supplies to the town. In the meantime, the rebels tried to broaden their rebellion beyond Fiume. On September 23, as already remarked, about a hundred legionnaires armed with machine guns launched a surprise attack in Traù, which was outside the Italian military jurisdiction. They killed two Serbs; in

106  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo response, the Americans occupied the town.133 The Italian army began to show signs of disquiet and of wavering discipline. In Italy, at the same time, public opinion had turned its attention to the worrisome surge of social unrest rising in the working class, which seemed to herald a quasirevolutionary situation.134 In the meeting of the Crown Council of September 25, a concerned Nitti presented a report on the lack of trustworthiness in the army and the navy in the occupied territories, and on the danger of a Serbian coup: [First of all,] several military attempts are reported in Dalmatia. Until now they have had a limited scope and we have been able to repress them without resorting to the use of force, but they are spreading rapidly. Second, in several places we can observe movements of Yugoslav troops, directed not only toward Fiume, but also toward Albania and Dalmatia . . . the domestic situation of the Serbo-Croatian state may be a cause of war, or at least an incitement to war.135 The Italian government continued to assert that Fiume was Italian, but expressed its readiness to accept the “Free State solution,” and worked on the moderates in Fiume’s National Council trying to steer them away from D’Annunzio.136 In Parliament, too, no one supported the proposal of declaring the annexation of Fiume, for fear of diplomatic repercussions.137 But when confronted with these responses, D’Annunzio became only more intransigent. His attack against Nitti, whom he nicknamed Cagoia [a fetid and excremental creature; a crapulous creature without a country, N.T.], became extremely violent. By this time the subversive designs of D’Annunzio and his followers had broadened to include the institutions of the state itself. Fiume became a cauldron of subversive plots of all kinds.138 According to Vivarelli’s articulated analysis, it was in those days, in Fiume, that the anti-state was born. The idea of the anti-state gave life to a rich “revolutionary” choreography, where nihilist symbols appeared with great frequency. Their indispensable features were dialogues with the crowd, the brandishing of daggers, the cheeky songs, the shouting of “To us,” “Alalà [Hurrah! To victory!],” “I couldn’t give a f . . . ,” and so forth. These staged performances perfected the technique of moral poisoning of the country (which later Fascism would exploit with great skill once in power), based on the continuous and systematic use of “political lies.”139 During those months, the most serious problem in Fiume was the collusion between the armed forces and the rebels, and the rumors of sedition which continued to spread. Badoglio frankly reported to the Prime Minister that he couldn’t guarantee discipline among the armed forces. On September 26, in a dispatch to Nitti, he even wrote: “I cannot totally ensure that as many troops as D’Annunzio wishes will not go over to his side.”140 Subsequent events would prove him absolutely right.141

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  107 In Fiume and Dalmatia the situation was degenerating rapidly. Between November 13 and 14, six hundred men of the garrison of Fiume, led by D’Annunzio, Luigi Rizzo, and Carlo Reina, landed at Zara, where the regular troops joined the insurrectional movement. Admiral Millo sided with them, spoke to the crowd, and welcomed the broadening of D’Annunzio’s movement to Dalmatia. Millo went so far as to telegraph Nitti that he had sworn he would remain in Dalmatia, concluding: “Troops and volunteers remain under my command. With this action of mine I reckon to have behaved as an Italian and a soldier.”142 The entire Italian press deplored Admiral Millo’s sedition, except for Il Popolo d’Italia and L’Idea Nazionale. Rumors spread that the operation in Zara was linked to attempts at a coup d’état. The situation appeared extremely worrisome especially in Venezia Giulia.143 In the meantime, the first political elections held according to the proportional system took place on November 16, 1919. The Socialists saw an enormous increase by winning one hundred and fifty-six seats, whereas the Popular [Catholic] Party received one hundred, even though it was participating in elections for the first time. The liberal bloc collapsed, going from three hundred and ten seats to one hundred and seventy-nine for Democrats and Liberals together; the radicals and republicans also suffered substantial losses. By giving a solid majority to the mass parties that had been in favor of neutrality, these results were a clear indication that the varied and picturesque milieu responsible for launching the adventure in Fiume was an isolated phenomenon.144 Nonetheless, Admiral Millo continued to hold his post, “an all too clear testimony to the government’s impotence.”145 Leaving aside the fact that the adventure in Fiume endangered all the Italian claims at the Peace Conference, D’Annunzio’s operation was a further step in the process that was draining the country’s institutions of all energy and power, a process that paradoxically had begun with the “radiant days of May.” On the one hand, the armed forces saw an extraordinary growth of their own discretionary power, and began to operate as a quasi-autonomous actor within the state. On the other hand, respect for the law was weakening among public opinion, because people had become aware that any arbitrary or violent deed would go unpunished.146 There was also ambiguity in the relations between the government, D’Annunzio, and the Command of the occupying forces, which went beyond tolerating a permanent state of insubordination, mutiny, and rebellion. Between November 1919 and October 1920, that is, on the eve of the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, major representatives of the D’Annunzio forces in Fiume (Giovanni Host-Venturi [a.k.a. Nino], Giovanni Giuriati), General Badoglio, and the Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza himself, held informal meetings where they discussed how to promote separatist risings in Croatia, Montenegro, and Kosovo, aimed at the destruction of the newly-born Yugoslav state. D’Annunzio’s followers also pursued direct relations with major representatives of the separatist movements. Together, they planned daring scenarios filled with independent republics, in which Dalmatia would

108  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo be subject to “military servitude” imposed by Italian troops through a “friendly occupation.”147 Nitti himself was kept informed of these plans, even though he never approved them explicitly. But the mere fact that the government did take into consideration the subversion of the Yugoslav state, an operation which would be mainly D’Annunzio’s creature, obviously weakened even further the position of the government vis-à-vis the legionnaires. In the meantime, Nitti carried on his talks with the moderate representatives in the National Council in the attempt to reach a compromise, based on Fiume as a Free State with ample autonomy for the town and territorial continuity between the Free State and Italy.148 On December 15, a large majority of Fiume’s National Council accepted this compromise. D’Annunzio himself was absent from that session, attended, however, by the men closest to him, such as Nino Host-Venturi and Antonio Grossich, who held intransigent nationalistic positions. On December 18, Nitti’s compromise was submitted to the vote of the citizens of Fiume. As it became clear that people were leaning in favor of the agreement, D’Annunzio had the vote count stopped and launched into a frenzied speech, in which he proclaimed that there was still a possibility that he might149 remain in Fiume with his legionnaires with the authorization of the government. The adventure in Fiume, which was thus entering its final phase, started to show signs of collapse. When at its zenith, the number of legionnaires had reached ten thousand; but now, more and more of them left Fiume every day. The majority favored concluding the entire affair by accepting the compromise solution proposed by the Italian government. D’Annunzio’s most distinguished companions, such as the lawyer Giovanni Giuriati, Major Reina, and Commander Rizzo, had started to take their distance. Badoglio’s assessment of D’Annunzio and of the meaning of the adventure in Fiume is quite interesting: D’Annunzio’s gesture was certainly motivated by a noble love for the fatherland; as noble as had been his deeds during the war. But he did not have the fiber of a Commander. He could only generate enormous energy, and excite the masses to a phenomenal degree. But any action in which he engaged had to be short term. If that was not the case, his will was soon weakened by physical fatigue. This exhaustion was caused by his disorderly life, which he carried on even in a situation as serious as the one in Fiume, and by his personal restlessness, due to his endless search for new events and new emotions. He was also extremely sensitive to the loud applause he received from the crowd, whose shouting impaired his capacity to be measured in his words, and balanced in his decisions.150 In February 1920, to help children escape hunger and the precarious situation in the town, the Italian authorities sent two hundred of them away

Figure 4.1  North Adriatic 1920–24

110  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo from Fiume to live with families in Milan. It was an excellent propaganda move which, however, did not meet with favor from Nitti, who vetoed other initiatives of the same kind.151 D’Annunzio’s emissaries then tried to persuade the Socialists of Trieste to join in the proclamation of a Bolshevik Republic in Fiume. This time as well, the Socialists refused to cooperate.152 In Fiume, only the diehards, determined to take their “revolution” to its extreme consequences, continued to support D’Annunzio. The temporary government moved decisively toward revolutionary and even philoBolshevik positions. The nationalist Giuriati submitted his resignation and was replaced by the syndicalist and interventionist Alceste De Ambris, who tried to connect Fiume to the large strikes of railroad workers taking place all over Italy at that time. The head of the Federazione dei lavoratori del mare [Federation of the Workers of the Sea], Giuseppe Giulietti, and the anarchist Errico Malatesta backed De Ambris, but the Socialists refused to participate in this enterprise, which they considered, not erroneously, too ambiguous. Interestingly enough, it was Mussolini who upset the plot against the Parliament and the other institutions of the state by publishing the details of the operation in Popolo d’Italia.153 By now Mussolini clearly saw D’Annunzio as a troublesome and dangerous rival. In the meantime, on September 8, 1920, Fiume adopted its own Constitution, the Carta del Quarnaro [from now on, Charter of Quarnero], redacted mainly by Alceste De Ambris. The Charter incorporated several features typical of the contemporaneous working-class councils’ movement, by setting at its center the principle of self-management and the valorization of productive labor. The Charter proclaimed the sovereignty of all citizens independently of gender, race, language, class, or religion. It also mandated the highest possible level of decentralization of most public functions. A “Court of Reason” was charged with monitoring relations between the various organs and powers of this complex constitutional edifice. Producers were supposed to form nine guilds, each with its own banner, symbol, ceremonies, and hymns. The Charter adopted very progressive social principles. All citizens of Fiume were entitled to public and physical education, to wages sufficient for a living in exchange for a modest working activity, to health care coverage, and to insurance for labor-related accidents, unemployment, and old age. Music was declared a religious and social institution. Every building, every restoration project, and every ornament should embody principles of beauty. D’Annunzio dreamed of building a circular temple for ten thousand people, a “liturgical mass” to be involved in new political rituals. Not by chance, one of the last great ceremonies held in Fiume was a concert by the star conductor Arturo Toscanini, whom D’Annunzio himself had invited. According to Ledeen, in the Charter of Quarnero, besides the features that evoke the councils and the self-management movement, already mentioned, one can recognize the strong influence of Georges Sorel and the young Marx, especially in the utopic prefiguration of a society in which alienation has been overcome.154

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  111 After the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, the situation in Fiume could no longer be tolerated. After even Mussolini distanced himself from D’Annunzio, Giovanni Giolitti, Prime Minister once again, intervened and ended the occupation. The operation was cleared out with a few gunshots. Nonetheless, in Fiume D’Annunzio had opened the Pandora’s box of manipulation of the masses through quasi-religious means. Fiume was the laboratory of the most important techniques for the manipulation of consensus that the fascist regime would use. From other points of view, too, D’Annunzio’s adventure belonged to the genre of “new politics” which was the point of convergence of all European Fascisms: a syncretic mixture of leftist and rightist political elements, the mobilization of the masses, a vitalistic conception of existence, and a utopia that blended life, art, and politics, where “style” prevailed over concrete programs and objectives. However, Fascism took only the external framework of the D’Annunzian movement. The central element of Italian Fascism, the cult of the totalitarian state, was completely extraneous to the vate’s conception of politics.155

6 The Treaty of Rapallo In the first days of January 1920, Francesco Saverio Nitti held talks with Georges Clemenceau in Paris and Lloyd Georges in London. The Italian Prime Minister declared that, while he was holding to the substance of the Treaty of London, he was willing to make some compromises. He accepted, for example, the Free State of Fiume, as Wilson had proposed, provided that the town would be a “separate body,” and in exchange for a strip of land linking Italy to Fiume; the islands of Lagosta [Lastovo] and Cherso to Italy, in addition to those that Wilson had promised; and the constitution of Zara as a free city.156 Formal negotiations thus started again with the presentation of Yugoslav counterproposals and French and English comments. In this round of consultations and talks, the real novelty was the first direct meeting between Nitti and Ante Trumbić, now the Yugoslav foreign minister, who could thus compare their respective positions. Trumbić had taken the initiative, but Nitti agreed with his Yugoslav counterpart that the moment had come for resolving the Adriatic question, which threatened European peace and caused complications for both domestic and foreign policy.157 Italy, France, and Great Britain continued to remain in contact with one another as well. These talks led to an agreement on January 13, establishing that there would be no more talk of a Free State. Fiume would pass under Italian sovereignty, whereas the port of Sussak [Sušak] would be awarded to Yugoslavia. There would be some minor changes to the Wilson line in Italy’s favor. Zara would become a Free State under the protection of the Society of Nations. Valona would remain Italian, and Italy would also become the mandatory power in Albania. Yugoslavia would get part of the Albanian territories along the northern border. This agreement would represent the official line shared by Italy and the two powers of the Entente, whereas

112  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo the American position remained much more favorable to the Yugoslavs.158 But the United States was moving toward isolationist positions; and in June 1919, Wilson had left the Conference. For once, time worked in favor of Italy.159 In November 1919 and March 1920, the American Senate voted against the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, and the Republicans won the presidential elections of November 2, 1920. In order to resolve the still pending issues of the post-war order, a conference was convened in Sanremo for April 19, 1920. During the proceedings, a message from Trumbić arrived unexpectedly, stating that direct negotiations between Italy and Yugoslavia were still open, requesting a new meeting, and asking the participating powers to delay any decision for the time being.160 The likely reason for this initiative was the declarations made by Wilson a month previously, insisting on a direct agreement between Italy and Yugoslavia.161 In the meantime, the crisis that would result in the fall of the Nitti government broke out in Italy. On the anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war, the police forcefully repressed a violent demonstration held in Rome by university students. Several people died on both sides. In the days that followed, after Admiral Millo notified the government that dangerous agents provocateurs had left Zara, all the citizens of Fiume and Dalmatia in Italy were placed under arrest. This measure was applied with draconian rigor, sparing neither women nor older people. The nationalist press started a harsh polemic against the government. Nitti tried to save the day by receiving a delegation from Fiume and transferring the Chief of Police responsible for the roundup to Sicily. But by now Nitti’s position was compromised. On June 9 the government lost a vote on a decree regarding an increase in the price of bread. On June 11, Giovanni Giolitti was given the task of forming a new government;162 Count Carlo Sforza became the Foreign Minister. A few months later, a temporary conclusion was reached for the Adriatic question. Through their respective embassies in Vienna, the Italians informed the Yugoslavs in October 1920 that Italy, wishing to close that issue, was willing to make further concessions by giving up Fiume and recognizing Albania’s sovereignty. In exchange, Italy wanted Yugoslavia to accept the border line on Mount Nevoso because of its strategic significance. The final conference was then held in Rapallo, a pleasant seaside town in Liguria, in the first days of November. The agreement established the border on Mount Nevoso, following the original route as described in the Treaty of London. Italy would obtain the islands of Cherso, Lussino, Pelagosa [Palagruža], and Lagosta and sovereignty over Zara, but it agreed to give up further demands in Dalmatia. The Italians living in Dalmatia could opt for Italian citizenship even while residing there. This clause meant that they would be guaranteed a much higher level of protection than what the other treaties accorded at the time to other European minorities. The plan to create a Free State of Fiume with a Croatian majority was buried.

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  113 Fiume became a free town, while Yugoslavia in addition obtained the small harbor of Porto Barros.163 About three hundred and fifty thousand Slovenes, and one hundred thousand Croatians were thus incorporated into the Italian state. The Slovenes in particular, who were about one and a half million total at the time, experienced the signing of the Treaty as an injustice, which took nearly a fourth of their population away from the life of the nation. Tensions in Slovenia also rose after the plebiscite in Carinthia, which was favorable to Austria, and because the regime in Belgrade was pushing for greater centralization and the diffusion of Serbian culture. Wilson’s weakened position after the Republican victory in the1920 elections, and the joint pressure of Great Britain and France undermined the Yugoslavs’ negotiating stance. And given the other many trouble spots in Europe, the Entente favored closing the Adriatic question, which remained an inexhaustible source of mobilization of public opinion both in Italy and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia ratified the Treaty on November 22. Italy did the same on February 2, 1921; the two Chambers of Parliament approved the Treaty with an overwhelming majority. Even several nationalists voted in favor.164 But a lot of good will by both parties was required to make the Treaty of Rapallo really work, turning it into an instrument that could lead to calm relations on the two sides of the border. Fascism’s rise to power in Italy killed this possibility. The Foreign Minister Carlo Sforza talked about the prospects that the Treaty opened for relations between Italians and South Slavs. His words soon lost all their meaning. In order to make true the verse of Dante who, with immortal words, sets the borders of Italy at the Gulf of Quarnero, and in order to secure the Julian border, which the blood of our soldiers has consecrated, we have had to welcome into our bosom hundreds of thousands of Slavs. It is to the advantage of these Slavs to remain in touch with their natural centers, Gorizia and Trieste, which are also so intensely Italian. To those Slavs we will guarantee the broadest freedom of expression in their own language and culture. This promise will be for us a commitment to be honored, and an act of political wisdom . . . But would Italy have acted prudently if it had changed more than it was strictly necessary, the magnificence of a people which is one by race and by language, like none other in the world? Would it have been wise to create a Wall of China in the very place where we want free and peaceful thoroughfares? (Cheering’s from other members of Parliament) And he concluded: The agreement of Rapallo will really be the beginning of a fruitful and joyous life if, as it was meant to be a peace based on harmony rather

114  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo than violence, it will also be the first step in a phase of healthy, serene Italian influence on the Adriatic, the Aegean, and the Black Sea, both for our own sake and for the benefit of those people, tired and tormented today, who, like us, crave an international life with less hatred and less violence.165 The Yugoslavs had signed the Treaty of Rapallo with great reservations.166 Their press reacted violently to the news of the signing. Subsequent attempts to perfect and broaden the treaty through agreements for economic cooperation were doomed to failure because of opposition in Parliament, especially by Croatian and Slovenian representatives.

Notes 1 See the short but rich synthesis by M. Howard, The First World War, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 114–43; M. Gilbert, First World War, London, Harper Collins, 1994, pp. 454–504. 2 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 41. 3 See Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (ed.), The Treaties of Peace 1919–1923, 2 vols., New York, 1924, vol. II, pp. 816–17 (regarding the mandates for Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine). 4 Valiani clearly supports this thesis, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria Ungheria, cit. 5 On this complex set of issues, see the assessment of the Croatian historian Lederer: “For over a decade, the underlying principle of Yugoslav nationalism (and, one may add, romanticism) had been the ethnic unity and identity of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, finding expression in the slogan ‘one people with three names.’ Yet though this premise was formalized by the act of unification in December 1918, and the first Constitution in 1921, it did not go unchallenged. From the Corfu Declaration (1917) on, the Serbs and the Croats engaged in a struggle for power that was to plague—and in 1941 to expedite the collapse—of the new state.” Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 247. 6 Ibid., pp. 41–2. 7 See Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique, cit., pp. 263–87. For example, on October 4 the representatives of the Yugoslav parties declared that they would decide freely whether to form their own independent state or an international union with an already existing state. Ibid., pp. 268–9. 8 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 40–1. 9 Ibid., p. 40. 10 Ibid. p. 60. 11 “Il Giubilo degli Italiani,” in Corriere della Sera, November 5, 1918. 12 In his publication on the armistice of Villa Giusti, Giuliano Lenci relates the testimonies of Amelia Rosselli in Rome and of Virginia Galante Garrone in Turin about the spontaneous eruption of joy and patriotic pride following news of the victory. See G. Lenci, Le Giornate di Villa Giusti, Storia di un Armistizio, Padua, Il poligrafo, 1998, pp. 118–9. 13 “Il Compimento dell’Unità d’Italia Celebrato in Parlamento,” in Corriere della Sera, November 21, 1918. 14 The Italian-Austrian border was set at that Brenner Pass as early as May 29, 1919. See P. Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica (1919–1920), Milan, Feltrinelli, 1959, p. 35. See also Candeloro, La Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., p. 249. 15 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 158–60.

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  115 16 Ibid., p. 22. Leonida Bissolati also expressed similar concerns about the danger represented by Germany. His assessment of the border with the new Yugoslav state was similar to Salvemini’s. 17 Candeloro, La Prima Guerra Mondiale, cit., p. 250. Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 103–4. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes made territorial claims against all neighboring states, except for Greece. Besides the territories disputed with Italy, it demanded the Banat, the regions of Bačka, Baranja, and Prekmurje, southern Styria, southern Carinthia, and Carniola. The entire state would have fourteen million inhabitants, one million of them non-Slavs. See Memorandum Presented to the Peace Conference in Paris, Concerning the Claims of the Kingdom of the Serbians and the Slovenes, Paris, 1919; The National Claims of the Serbians, Croatians, and Slovenes, Paris, 1919; J. Smodlaka, Jugoslav Territorial Claims, Paris, 1919. 18 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 266 ff. A promising compromise failed in February 1919 because of the opposition of the Slovenian delegates, unwilling to leave Gorizia and Trieste to Italy. 19 Ibid., pp. 92–3. 20 The Italian National Council of Fiume formulated that request on October 30, 1918, in the form of a proclamation in which the town was declared united with Italy “by dint of that right by which all peoples have attained national independence and freedom.” This resolution invoked “the protection of America, mother of liberty and universal democracy.” See R. Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo: L’Italia dalla Grande Guerra alla Marcia su Roma, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991, p. 196. 21 This is also the conclusion of H.J. Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory: Italy, the Great War, and the Paris Peace Conference, 1915–1919, Westport (Conn.), Greenwood Press, 1991, p. 278. 22 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 86–90. 23 Ibid., p. 148. 24 Ibid., p. 153; Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., p. 350. A. Giannini, Documenti per la Storia dei Rapporti tra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia, Rome, Istituto per l’Europa Orientale, 1934. 25 Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., p. 191. 26 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 200–1: “Demonstrations in favor of Fiume and Dalmatia, organized in all the main Italian cities, accompanied the demands of the nationalists for the entire month of December. They reached their climax with the proclamation of a ‘Dalmatian day,’ proclaimed in Rome on December 30 and celebrated in many other places.” 27 See F. Coppola, “Manifesto di Politica,” in Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., Appendix. 28 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 215 f. 29 See G. D’Annunzio, “Lettera ai Dalmati. Dalla Dominante, 15 Gennaio del 1919,” in Id., La Penultima Ventura: Scritti e Discorsi Fiumani, R. De Felice (ed.), Milan, Mondadori, 1974, pp. 5–19, especially p. 14. 30 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., p. 473. 31 In this regard we should at least remember the contributions of H. James Burgwyn and Richard J.B. Bosworth. Bosworth contends that the Italian demands were fundamentally illegitimate, by taking some contemptuous opinions which Clemenceau, Lloyd Georges, and Wilson expressed toward Italy in Paris and by extrapolating a broader meaning. See R.J.B. Bosworth, “Mito e Linguaggio della Politica Estera Italiana,” in S. Romano, La Politica Estera Italiana, 1860–1985, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991, pp. 35–67, especially pp. 50–1. See also a similar interpretation in Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory, cit.

116  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo 32 See Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 22: “With the secret Treaty of Bucharest, the allies promised Bukovina and Transylvania, and the Banat of Timisoara, which Serbia had hoped to annex for a long time, given its high percentage of Serbs. Like the Treaty of London, the Treaty of Bucharest was not shown to the Serbian government.” 33 Apih, La Dissoluzione dell’Austria-Ungheria, cit., p. 849. 34 We can find several examples of the condition of dependency proposed for the Ottoman Empire in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Treaties of Peace, cit., vol. II, pp. 799–805, 826–55, 879, 912–31. According to the Treaty of Sèvres, not only should the capitulations have remained in force, but they should also have been extended to all the victor states (!). See Ibid., p. 879. 35 Alatri argued in favor of this thesis, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 33. 36 Michel, La Question de l’Adriatique (1914–1918), cit.; Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit. 37 See Vivarelli’s critique of Italian foreign policy, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 342 f. According to several critics, the Italian delegation in Paris was short sighted, concerned only with pursuing its own interests and blind to any concern for the balance of power in Europe. But only Great Britain articulated its position according to that traditional set of concerns. 38 Salvatore Barzilai was strongly in favor of leaving the Conference. As early as April 5, he contended that it would be better to go home. “At least, we will have the advantage of reawakening patriotic feelings, and of using our refusal to endorse the abandonment of Italy’s rights so as to create a national bloc such as we had when we entered into the war.” Ibid., p. 373, where the link between domestic and foreign policy is apparent one more time. 39 Ibid., pp. 380 f. During those days, Orlando in particular resorted to demagogic rhetoric in order to inflame public opinion. On April 29, the most extreme Italian demands passed with an overwhelming majority in the Lower House. Ibid., pp. 488 f. 40 A. Tasca, Nascita e Avvento del Fascismo: L’Italia dal 1918 al 1922, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1949, p. 49. 41 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 507 f. 42 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 217. 43 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 55–6. 44 Francesco Saverio Grazioli was in command of the Italian army in Fiume. Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., pp. 58–9. 45 See, for example, “Le Trionfali Accoglienze di Fiume e di Zara alle Truppe Italiane,” in Corriere della Sera, 8 November, 1918; “L’Entrata delle Navi Italiane a Pola,” in Corriere della Sera, 9 November, 1918. 46 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 58. On tensions between the Italian army and the Slovenian National Council of Gorizia, see A. Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini: Venezia Giulia 1918–1922, Gorizia, Editrice Goriziana, 2002, p. 44. See also H. Tuma, Della mia Vita: Ricordi, Pensieri e Confessioni, Trieste, Devin, 1994. 47 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 59. 48 See A. Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste: L’Operato del Governo Militare Italiano nella Venezia Giulia, 1918–1919, Gorizia, LEG, 2000, p. 12. Regarding the positions taken by the Yugoslav National Council in Trieste, see S.F. Romano (ed.), Trieste: Ottobre-Novembre 1918. Raccolta di Documenti del Tempo, 3 vols., Milan, All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1968. The City of Trieste sponsored that publication on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Trieste with Italy.

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  117 49 Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., pp. 12 f. 50 Ibid., p. 14. 51 Ibid., p. 28. 52 See K. Braun, “Der 4 März 1919. Zur Herausbildung Sudetendeutscher Identität,” in Bohemia: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der Böhmischen Länder, 37, 1996/2, pp. 353–80. 53 See L. Barzini, “Tra le Popolazioni Redente. Problemi che Urgono,” in Corriere della Sera, November 14, 1918; Id., “La Sistemazione delle Terre Redente. Doveri Improrogabili,” ivi, November 19, 1918. 54 See Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 142: “There was no lack of expressions of hostility, manifestations of incivility, and egregious affronts against our delegations.” 55 Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory, cit., p. 271. 56 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 49 f. On the instructions coming from the General Staff of the Army regarding the areas under occupation, see the interesting document edited by D.R. Zivojinović, “General Pietro Badoglio’s ‘Political Instructions for the Occupied Territories,’ (November 29, 1918)”, in East European Quarterly, 2/2, 1968, pp. 197–203. See also Burgwyn, The Legend of the Mutilated Victory, cit., p. 271. 57 See Romano (ed.), Trieste: Ottobre-Novembre 1918, cit., vol. I, pp. 156–67. 58 Right at the moment when the Austrian power collapsed, the demonstrators, seized by excessive idealism, had opened the doors of the prisons, believing that only political prisoners were detained inside (!). See Romano, Gli Ultimi Giorni della Dominazione Austriaca, cit., pp. 136–40. 59 See Romano (ed.), Trieste: Ottobre-Novembre 1918, cit., vol. II, pp. 164–66. 60 See E. Capuzzo, Dal Nesso Asburgico alla Sovranità Italiana: Legislazione e Amministrazione a Trento e a Trieste (1918–1928), Milan, Giuffrè, 1992, p. 16. 61 See Romano (ed.), Trieste: Ottobre-Novembre 1918, cit., vol. II, p. 166. 62 Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., p. 45. 63 Capuzzo, Dal Nesso Asburgico alla Sovranità Italiana, cit., p. 55, with sources. See also Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., p. 32. 64 Ibid., pp. 29 ff. 65 See L. Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority (the Jugoslavs [sic!] in Italy) (1936), Ljubljana, Tiskarna Ljudske Pravice, 1945, p. 170. 66 D. Klen, “Talijanska Vojna Obavještajna Služba u Bivšoj Julijskoj Karjini 1919. Godine,” in Vjesnik: Historijskih Arhiva u Rijecy I Pazinu, 21, 1977, part I, pp. 125–80; 22, 1978, part II, pp. 59–118. 67 Ibid., part II, pp. 70–1. 68 Capuzzo, Dal Nesso Asburgico alla Sovranità Italiana, cit., p. 77. But see above all Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., pp. 207–30. 69 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., p. 511. 70 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 53 f. 71 A. Oberdorfer, Il Socialismo nel Dopoguerra a Trieste, Florence, Vallecchi, 1922, p. 20. 72 See C. Silvestri, Dalla Redenzione al Fascismo: Trieste 1918–1922, Udine, Del Bianco, 1959, pp. 36–7. 73 On the basis of Almerigo Apollonio’s archival findings, the Fasci barely managed to survive both in Trieste and in Istria until the first half of 1920, as is true, as a matter of fact, also at the national level. See Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 242. 74 At the end of April, members of the Trento and Trieste Association, of the Italian Nationalist Association, and of combat groups had given life to an antiBolshevik Comitato d’azione [Action Committee]. See Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., p. 80.

118  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo 75 On these events, see Oberdorfer’s balanced observations, in, Il Socialismo nel Dopoguerra a Trieste, cit., pp. 44–6. “As happens all too easily with any of our party’s demonstrations, that festive march with the endless column of children kept in line by the overseers, preceded by the band and the flags, and followed by camp stoves which replaced the military food supplies, had been assuming not only the aspect of a political demonstration, and of the fact that the proletariat ‘owned’ the city, but even a cheeky expression of contempt for everything else that breathes and happens in the city outside the proletarian movement.” 76 See Cattaruzza, Socialismo Adriatico, cit., pp. 181–2. 77 Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., p. 66. 78 Ibid., pp. 67 f. 79 Civil and military authorities wished to promote an all-pervading campaign of patriotic proselytism and mobilization in favor of Italy’s demands. They wanted to create an associational network which would address social issues (to counteract Socialism’s pull), or to pursue nationalist goals, following the example of the Trento e Trieste Association, Ibid., pp. 80–3. 80 The Sursum Corda started in Milan in 1910, with the aim of spreading patriotic values and teaching young men the rudiments of military discipline. 81 On the role of the Intelligence Office, see Ibid., pp. 86 f. 82 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., p. 514. 83 Silvestri, Dalla Redenzione al Fascismo, cit., p. 36. 84 Klen, “Talijanska Vojna Obavještajna Služba,” cit., part I, p. 161. 85 On the “trial” against Edmondo Puecher and its significance as a symptom of the profound transformation of Socialism in Trieste, see Oberdorfer, Il Socialismo nel Dopoguerra a Trieste, cit., pp. 85–90. 86 Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., pp. 101–8. 87 Oberdorfer, Il Socialismo nel Dopoguerra a Trieste, cit., p. 146. See also Silvestri, Dalla Redenzione al Fascismo, cit., pp. 31–2. 88 Klen, “Talijanska Vojna Obavještajna Služba,” cit., part II, pp. 92, 112. 89 Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., p. 101. 90 Ibid., p. 108. 91 A. Vinci, “Il Fascismo al Confine Orientale,” in Finzi, Magris, and Miccoli (eds.), Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., vol. I, pp. 377–513, especially pp. 428 f. 92 See Gentile, Le Origini dell’Ideologia Fascista, cit., pp. 491–502. 93 Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 251. 94 For example, former Austro-Hungarian combatants at times remained interned in camps for over a year before being able to go back home. See Visintin, L’Italia a Trieste, cit., pp. 19–20, 181–5. Slovenian and Croatians soldiers were treated especially harshly. See Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 169–70. 95 Historical research has ignored this important episode almost completely. The reconstruction reported here follows the one by C. Silvestri,“Documenti Americani sui ‘Fatti di Spalato’ del Luglio 1920,” in Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, 94, I, January-March, 1969, pp. 62–81. In this essay, Claudio Silvestri published some documents written by the Commander of the United States Navy in the eastern Mediterranean, Philip Andrews, in his own hand. Silvestri does not reveal the origin of the documents. 96 Carlo Schiffrer, who gives a different account of the incident from Claudio Silvestri’s version, contends that it was shots coming from the Italian soldiers’ boat that caused the casualties on the shore. Captain Gulli and the sailor were supposedly struck by the return fire of Yugoslav policemen. See C. Schiffrer, “Fascisti e Militari nell’Incendio del Balkan,” in Trieste, 10, May-June 1963, p. 5 (excerpt).

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  119   97 On the Narodni Dom, see M. Cattaruzza, “Italiani e Sloveni a Trieste: La Formazione dell’Identità Nazionale,” in Eadem, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., pp. 119–65, especially pp. 150–1.   98 The lieutenant died in unclear circumstances shortly after being taken from the civil to the military hospital, after surviving for a week and being seemingly declared out of danger. Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 300.   99 Just as unfounded is Carlo Schiffrer’s version. He contends that a fascist squad brought the bombs and the incendiary materials into the building that very morning, and that the Fascists were responsible for throwing the bomb that killed Lieutenant Casciana. This version is based on second-hand oral testimony, given in 1943 by some Fascists imprisoned because accused of the destruction of Jewish stores. See Schiffrer, “Fascisti e Militari nell’Incendio del Balkan,” cit., p. 9. 100 Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 292. 101 Iccording to Silvestri, the Central Committee of the Fasci of Milan sent Francesco Giunta to Trieste to “normalize” the heterogeneous and undisciplined original groups of Trieste’s Fascists. See Silvestri, Dalla Redenzione al Fascismo, cit., p. 48. 102 E. Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia (1918–1943), Bari, Laterza, 1966, p. 154. 103 As was the case with the Sedi Riunite in Trieste, destroyed on February 18, 1921. See Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 349. 104 About the socialist cultural clubs, legacy of the Austro-Marxist tradition and of the organizational principles of the Austro-German working-class movement, see Oberdorfer, Il Socialismo nel Dopoguerra a Trieste, cit., pp. 57–63. 105 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 154 f. 106 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 158 ff. 107 See P. Spriano, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, vol. I: Da Bordiga a Gramsci, Turin, Einaudi, 1967, p. 130. 108 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 155 f. The journalist Pietro Belli was killed in Trieste; Marshall Ferrara, in Pola. In the Istrian Village of Maresego, in 1921 a crowd of peasants massacred three Fascists. 109 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 155 f. According to Dennison Rusinow, in their anti-Slavic repression in Istria the Fasci could operate with privileges typical of the civil authorities. See D.I. Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage 1919–1964, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969, p. 116. The work of this American historian, an expert in the history of Yugoslav Communism, is one of the most intelligent and well-documented contributions to the issues characterizing the territories of Venezia Giulia under Italian sovereignty. It remains a mystery why almost all the historians who have worked on this theme have ignored his contribution. 110 Spriano, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, cit., vol. I, p. 119. 111 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 61–5. According to the report of the Inter-allied Inquiry Commission, “the crowd and the Italian sailors indulged in wild behavior, as reported by many witnesses.” Ibid., p. 65 112 M.A. Ledeen, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume, Baltimore-London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 59–60. 113 See for example D’Annunzio, Lettera ai Dalmati, cit. 114 It appears that in June 1919 a heterogeneous group of nationalists, industrialists, and high-ranking members of the armed forces had drawn concrete plans for a military coup, planning an insurrection that should have taken place on the occasion of the Congress of veterans in Rome. See Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio

120  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 78 f. According to Nitti, D’Annunzio himself “was also and above all a person who was trying to carry out a task in a situation which went escaped his control.” Ibid., p. 199. 115 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 474 f. On D’Annunzio’s activism from the interventionist campaign to the adventure in Fiume, see also C. Ghisalberti “D’Annunzio e la Lunga Via per Fiume,” in Id., Da Campoformio a Osimo: La Frontiera Orientale tra Storia e Storiografia, Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2001, pp. 169–84. 116 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 503–5. 117 Ibid., pp. 523 f. See also Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., pp. 47–8. 118 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 190. 119 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 513–4. 120 On May 22, 1919, Mussolini went to Fiume, where he gave a speech that was very well received. At the end, Host-Venturi called the first “adunata” (assembly) of a “Legion of Fiume.” Ibid., pp. 508 f. 121 Ibid., pp. 460 f., 472. 122 Ibid., pp. 462 f. 123 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 78 f. 124 Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., pp. 10 and 202. There are also hints of these features in D’Annunzio, La Penultima Ventura: Scritti e Discorsi Fiumani, cit. 125 Apollonio, Dagli Asburgo a Mussolini, cit., p. 241. Among the legionnaires, we find the first Fascists, such as Ercole Miani and Gabriele Foschiatti, even though both of them later joined the ranks of the anti-fascists. Foschiatti died in a German concentration camp. In June 1920, the legionnaires from Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia in Fiume numbered about four hundred out of four thousand eight hundred. Ibid., p. 286. The omnipresent Trento and Trieste Association was behind the enlistment of people from Trieste. See Silvestri, Dalla Redenzione al Fascismo, cit., pp. 45–7. See also B. Coceani, 1919. L’Opera della “Trento-Trieste” nelle Terre Adriatiche e la Spedizione di Fiume, Trieste, Stabilimento Tipografico Mutilati, 1933. 126 Sternhell, Naissance de l’Idéologie Fasciste, cit. See also Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 336: “There were indeed [ . . . ] extremists, Socialists, Bolsheviks, and anarchic sympathizers; but there were also, and in numbers! those whom Luigi Salvatorelli called right-wing subversives or reactionary subversives. These believed that a possible outcome of D’Annunzio’s adventure might be a ‘march on Rome’ that would subvert the Parliamentary state through an authoritarian and militaristic coup d’état.” 127 Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., p. 83. 128 Ibid., p. 84. 129 C. Salaris, Alla Festa della Rivoluzione: Artisti e Libertari con D’Annunzio a Fiume, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002. This volume reproduces a trove of autobiographical documents and memoirs of participants in the enterprise. They render the magical atmosphere of the Fiume adventure, which remained in the protagonists’ memory as a period of suspension from reality. 130 Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., pp. 102–3, 144, 148, 151; Salaris, Alla Festa della Rivoluzione, cit. 131 This is made apparent by the ambiguous orders that Nitti gave to the generals as he received the first news of the march on Fiume: “You know exactly what is your duty at this time.” Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 485. 132 Ibid., p. 208; Ibid., pp. 233 f. 133 Ibid., pp. 233 f.

From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo  121 134 See G. Maione, Il Biennio Rosso: Autonomia e Spontaneità Operaia nel 1919– 1920, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1975; P. Spriano, L’Occupazione delle Fabbriche: Settembre 1920, Turin, Einaudi, 1964. 135 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 239 f. 136 Ibid., p. 245. 137 Ibid., p. 280. Neither the representative of the Chamber of Fasci, Fabrizio Raimondo, nor the nationalist Piero Foscari had demanded annexation. 138 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., p. 539. 139 Ibid., p. 540. C. Sforza was the first to speak of Fiume as the beginning of the moral poisoning of the country, based on the incessant use of political lies, in L’Italia dal 1914 al 1944 Quale io la Vidi, Milan, Mondadori, 1944, p. 108. 140 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 541 f. 141 Ibid., p. 543: “Now, a government that can no longer use, in accordance with its own political will, one of the most essential organs of the state, such as the military apparatus; that must adapt itself to not issuing directives disliked by those who ought to execute them loyally, or must tolerate a situation in which its own orders will not be executed; such a government is no longer a free government, and, by remaining formally in power, is only engaging in a dangerous pretense.” 142 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 314. 143 Ibid., pp. 317 and 348: “On September 13, the people and the troops of Venezia Giulia were . . . in a high-strung and therefore very dangerous state of mind. In Italy, in part because people did not know exactly what was going on, a sense of restlessness had arisen especially among ex-combatants, which could have led to any excess.” 144 Ibid., pp. 319 f. 145 Vivarelli, Storia delle Origini del Fascismo, cit., pp. 551 f. 146 Here I follow Vivarelli’s assessment. Ibid., p. 552. 147 See M. Bucarelli, “ ‘Delenda Yugoslavia.’ D’Annunzio, Sforza e gli Intrighi Balcanici del ’19–20,” in Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 6, November–December 2002, pp. 19–34; and pp. 23 and 29–30 on plans for reorganizing the Adriatic region. 148 See the text of this proposal in Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 338 f. The text was the outcome of broad consultations between Sforza, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Oscar Sinigaglia, Giovanni Preziosi, Giovanni Giuriati, and Luigi Rizzo. 149 Ibid., pp. 344 f. 150 Ibid., pp. 348 f. 151 Ibid., pp. 428 f.; Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., p. 159. 152 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 439. 153 Ibid., pp. 422–4. 154 Ledeen, The First Duce, cit., pp. 162–70. 155 S.R. De Felice, D’Annunzio Politico 1918–1938, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1978; Gentile, Le Origini dell’Ideologia Fascista, cit., pp. 225–47. 156 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 372 f. 157 Ibid., pp. 376–9. 158 Ibid., pp. 384 ff. 159 See Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 217. 160 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 450–3. 161 See Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., 192. 162 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., pp. 472–6. See also F. Barbagallo, Francesco S. Nitti, Turin, Utet, 1984, pp. 388–98. 163 See Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 307. For the text of the treaty, see Giannini, Documenti per la Storia dei Rapporti tra l’Italia e la

122  From the End of the War to the Treaty of Rapallo Jugoslavia, cit., pp. 36–45. According to Bucarelli, the outcome of the Treaty of Rapallo was substantially favorable to Italy in part thanks to the pressure D’Annunzio exerted through the occupation of Fiume, and thanks to Italian support for the insurrectional plans of agitators from Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania. “Delenda Jugoslavia,” cit., pp. 33–4. 164 See “La Camera Approva con Voti 253 contro 14 il Trattato di Rapallo e Saluta con una Calda Dimostrazione la Pace Conclusa,” in Corriere della Sera, 28 November 1920. Forty socialist deputies abstained and fifteen nationalist ones voted against. In the Senate, there were twenty-three no votes. See, “L’Appello Nominale per il Trattato di Rapallo,” in Corriere della Sera, 21 December 1920; Marina Cattaruzza, L’Italia e la Questione Adriatica: Dibattiti Parlamentari e Panorama Internazionale (1918–1926), Bologna, Il Mulino 2014, pp. 103–29. 165 La Pace Adriatica: Discorsi Pronunciati dal Conte Carlo Sforza Ministro degli Affari Esteri dal 12 Ottobre al 17 Dicembre 1920, Rome, Tipografia del Ministero degli Esteri, 1921, pp. 10, 11, 13. 166 The interception of talks among the members of the Yugoslav delegation revealed that they intended to call the treaty into question once they had grown stronger politically and militarily. See Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., p. 267, and Bucarelli, “Delenda Yugoslavia,” cit., pp. 32–3.

5 Frontier Fascism

1 Fiume and Bolzano as “Training Grounds” for the Fascist Seizure of Power As early as March 3, 1922, a fascist putsch took place in the Free State of Fiume created by the Treaty of Rapallo. The elections for the Constituent Assembly mandated by the Treaty, held in April 1921, saw a decisive victory for the advocates of autonomy. At this point the Fascists, copying the tactic that D’Annunzio had employed during the referendum on the future of the town, had the documents of the electoral operations destroyed. After a few days of chaos, the Fascists temporarily seized power with the help of Francesco Giunta, their leading man in Trieste.1 Nonetheless, the election results were confirmed, and the leader of the autonomist party, Riccardo Zanella, was elected President of the Constituent Assembly. In response, on March 3, 1922, the Fascists gathered en masse in the town, while torpedo boats of the Italian Navy, still in the port, bombarded the government palace. The Carabinieri helped the putsch by shooting from the site of the Italian delegation. Instead of defending the government palace, the Twenty-sixth Infantry Battalion of the Italian Army made room for the Fascists. The supporters of autonomy assessed the number of Fascists participating in the attempt at one thousand five hundred, only two hundred of them from Fiume.2 Zanella was forced to yield power to a Committee of National Defense, soon to be replaced by a National Council. Without the acquiescence of the Italian tutelary authorities, which were still in charge of the port and the railroads, the putsch could not have happened. Riccardo Zanella who, as the most prestigious politician in Fiume, could marshal the maximum consensus, was forced into an exile that would last his entire life.3 In the putsch in Fiume the Fascists succeeded in taking over political power directly for the first time, supported and legitimated by the backing of civil and military authorities. While clashes continued in the town between various rival factions of Fascists and legionnaires,4 Italy and Yugoslavia signed an agreement on October 23, 1922, in which they confirmed the independence of Fiume. But after the march on Rome, Belgrade came under increased pressure from

124  Frontier Fascism Italy to consent to the Italian annexation of the town, acknowledged officially by Rome and Belgrade through the Treaty of Rome of January 27, 1924, which also awarded Sussak, the Croatian town contiguous to Fiume, to Yugoslavia.5 Very early on, Fascism showed its pro-putsch leanings on the northern frontier of Italy as well. On October 3, 1922, they carried out a march on Bolzano, almost like a dress rehearsal for the march on Rome. In the South Tyrolean territories annexed with the Treaty of Saint-Germain of September 10, 1918, power remained firmly in the hands of the Austro-German component, which elected German municipal councils, celebrated German festivities, and continued instruction in German. The Italian language had not even been introduced in official communications with the authorities.6 The Fascists decided to deal with this situation by sending an ultimatum to the Town Council of Merano [Meran]: eight hundred men from Verona would march on the town, unless the Council granted their demands. These demands were actually relatively moderate: the use of Italian in relations with the authorities, a church in Merano reserved for Italian believers, and the observance of Italian festivities. It is not even possible to compare the situation in South Tyrol with the terror the Fascists had unleashed against Slavs in Venezia Giulia. Nonetheless, this was the first time the Fascists threatened to resort to intimidating measures against public institutions in order to attain specific political aims.7 The Town Council agreed to their requests. Emboldened by their victory, the Fascists set in motion a similar operation in Bolzano. They sent a ten-point memorandum to the local government, demanding the resignation of Julius Perathoner, Bolzano’s mayor and a member of the Town Council; bilingualism in official acts; mandatory Italian courses for public administrators; a school for Italian pupils (notably, the “Empress Elizabeth” school); and a church reserved to Italian believers. The Town Council of Bolzano granted all demands, except for the conversion of the “Empress Elizabeth” into an Italian school. In response, Mussolini ordered Francesco Giunta, who had already distinguished himself in Fiume and Trieste as a ringleader of the fascist action squads, to organize “some kind of action” in Bolzano. On October 1, Giunta led his action squad in the occupation of the school, while other fascist squads converged on the town from all over the north of Italy. With a solemn ceremony, the school was renamed “Queen Elena.” The Blackshirts went on to occupy City Hall, took down the Austrian flag, and hung the portrait of the King of Italy on the walls. The government surrendered to the fait accompli, annulling by decree Perathoner’s election as mayor held just two months previously, while the Fascist Augusto Guerriero replaced him as royal Commissioner at City Hall. His first act was to legalize the seizure of the “Empress Elizabeth” school. The march on Bolzano thus proved a complete success. On October 5, the mobilization of fascist squads led to the resignation of the civil Commissioner for South Tyrol, Luigi Credaro.

Frontier Fascism  125 Fiume and Bolzano were thus dress rehearsals for a new, distinctive way of exercising pressure on political power which the march on Rome displayed in full.8 In both situations, the pattern is the same. The Fascists, always in the minority, start from a position of relative weakness which they then turn to their advantage. Not only are they capable of inflicting terror on their adversaries without even threatening them with any sanction, but they successfully pressure the official authorities governing the town and then replace them. In the interim phase after the war, both the fluid and prolonged process of transferring the new provinces to Italy and the anomalous situation of Fiume made it especially easier to conduct experiments on how to use the squads as tools of intimidation against legitimate representative and governing bodies. We may not be veering too far from the truth if we say that Fiume and Bolzano were training camps for Fascism’s rise to power. In conclusion, we can argue that even in the original phase of the fascist movement, its distinctive feature on the eastern frontier was complicity with the state apparatus and with the representatives of political and military power.9 From the very beginning, nationalism gave a stronger contribution to the growth of Fascism in the Giulia region and in South Tyrol than in Italy as a whole. By providing a political and ideological bond, nationalism helped “frontier Fascism”10 acquire greater unity of purpose, if compared with Fascism in the rest of the country, which remained eclectic and more unfocused. Fiume is the exception in this scenario. There, as we have seen, the most reckless political syncretism (and existential experimentalism) ruled, in an unprecedented mixture of art, life, and politics.

2 Fascism and Its Policy toward Minorities on the Eastern Frontier According to Dennison Rusinow, fascist methods and nationalist contents took hold together on the eastern frontier. Fascism, “the” new political phenomenon, was a centralizing, oppressive movement, dedicated to the forced Italianization of minorities. This began to happen months before Fascism destroyed Parliament and imposed its authoritarian regime on Italy, perhaps even before Mussolini articulated his aims.11 Undoubtedly, the influence of the local national liberal political class socialized under Hapsburg rule, emphasized the anti-Slavic positions of early frontier Fascism and fostered the development of the fascist movement in a nationalistic direction.12 Mindful of the harsh ethnic conflicts on the eve of World War I, National Liberals adhered inflexibly to a policy of complete linguistic assimilation, with views that varied only with regard to its pace and intensity. Starting from the war years, the goal of the Julian irredentists who played the role of advisors to the Italian government was to assimilate the Slovenes and Croats linguistically through (exclusively) Italian education.13 Rusinow comments correctly: “If the Free State of Fiume was the first Adriatic victim of passionate nationalism, liberal Italy was its second. The

126  Frontier Fascism carriers were the Julian adventurers, many of them veterans of the old [prewar] order, who brought something essentially Austrian into Italian Fascism.”14 If we reflect on the heritage left to the nationalists of the Giulia region by the dark Darwinian vision of Ruggero Timeus, a student of Leopold Gumplowiz in Graz, or on the idea of the clash among races in the Adriatic advocated by Attilio Tamaro,15 we can only agree with the American historian. Almerigo Apollonio has placed considerable emphasis on the moderate bourgeois mores of the (originally) liberal national milieu in the Giulia region during the fascist era. This may hold partially true if we compare their political style with fascist practices, but it is definitely not true with regard to their radicalism in pursuing the goal of complete Italianization of the annexed territories,16 as the Slovenian deputies themselves contended. Among them there was Deputy Josip Vilfan, who would later assume the office of President of the Congress of European Nationalities which represented minorities from 1925 to 1938.17 On November 17, 1922, in a speech in Parliament on administrative autonomy for the new provinces, demanded by so many representatives of Adriatic irredentism and nationalism, he stated: “I fear the people from my own towns and villages more than the central government in Rome. They will deal us a direct blow and strike at our heart, whereas sometimes the government, even with Mr. Mussolini as President, will understand that a sense of decorum must be maintained, and freedom and the law respected.”18 Josip Vilfan declared himself in favor of maintaining the autonomy of the territories, clearly believing that the Slovenian and Croatian components would be able to stand up to the Italian element in a conflict unfolding at the regional level. All the political representatives of the ethnic groups in Venezia Giulia were thus in favor of keeping the Hapsburg institutions intact as much as possible. At the time of the march on Rome, Fascism held an almost unassailable position in the Giulia region. During a visit to Trieste, King Vittorio Emanuele III himself declared: “Fascism holds sway over Venezia Giulia, whether you like it or not.”19 According to the historian Elio Apih, the march on Rome ended up by sanctioning a situation which, in Venezia Giulia, was already settled.20 In fact, the fascist squads had been one of the main instruments for harmonizing the new territories with the centralizing structure of the Italian state, as well as for suppressing working-class and communist rebellious tendencies, and the manifest or latent irredentism of significant sectors of Slovenian and Croatian society. By the end of 1922, the Giulia region could be considered “normalized.” In Elio Apih’s words, the new government “sped up the cultural and political decline of civil society. Fascism strengthened and expanded, becoming more and more one with the state, and, by leveraging the law and physical force, it also gained greater consensus both at the individual level and among political groups.”21 In the meantime, the institutional settings where Slovenian and Croatian could be used decreased further, through the drastic reduction in the number

Frontier Fascism  127 of Slovenian and Croatian schools and the elimination of some courses of study. These measures were part and parcel of a broader process of harmonization of the new provinces with the institutional reality of the Italian state. It is significant that, on October 17, 1922, a few days before Mussolini took over, a royal decree abolished the Central Office for the New Provinces. Aiming to strengthen the Italian-Adriatic ruling class, Francesco Salata had used that office in his attempt to preserve, as much as possible, the Hapsburg body of law which granted broad administrative autonomy to the provinces.22 In an important contribution in the 1927 monographic issue of the Fascist journal Gerarchia [Hierarchy], entirely devoted to Venezia Giulia, the jurist Alfredo Rocco, Minister of Justice at the time, underscored the importance of another measure taken by the government, based on a royal decree of January 1923. According to this measure, any law approved for the country as a whole also applied automatically to the new provinces, thus reversing a decree of August 1921, which established that “the application of the laws and the decrees passed in the Kingdom was suspended in the new provinces, pending the subsequent study of the changes to be adopted in view of a wider application.”23 We should look at the measures taken to denationalize the Slavs of the region after October 1922 in the context of the process of normalization which led to applying national legislation to the eastern territories. For example, in October 1923, measures promulgated in Rome in July of the same year were invoked to force Slavic-language newspapers published in Italy to print Italian translations of their articles as well. At first, Mussolini did not insist on enforcing this provision, because negotiations were then taking place with Yugoslavia. The educational reform of the Minister of Public Education, Giovanni Gentile, which came into force on October 1, 1923, established that Italian was the only officially recognized language of instruction. Foreign languages could be taken in extracurricular hours as electives, when a family requested it.24 However, the clergy was allowed to continue to teach in the students’ mother tongues.25 And it became clear that it was harder to exclude the Slavic languages from courthouses and from dealings between the authorities and the citizenry. At least until the end of 1925, we can find cases where Slovenian and Croatian are tolerated in legal and administrative settings. Even the Minister of Justice, Rocco, declared himself in favor of such exceptions, provided the situation required it.26 The Slovenian deputies in Parliament27 tried to defend the interests of their national group, by demanding respect of the principles governing the protection of minorities formulated at the Peace Conference (with which Italy was not obliged to conform). The Slovenian deputies also made a point of showing their indifference to political events affecting Italy as a whole, to the point of refusing to join the Aventine Secession of non-fascist Italian deputies after the assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti by fascist squads.28 Their primary aim was to oppose Fascism’s cultural and political policy of assimilation with all means at their disposal, and to keep

128  Frontier Fascism the Slovenian community isolated from the rest of society as much as possible, waiting for a more propitious time for reunification with the fatherland. Similarly to several national movements in central and eastern29 Europe, Slovenian politicians saw the national community as an entity superior to, and distinct from the state. In the parliamentary session on June 21, 1921, Josip Vilfan announced their program: “For us the supreme entity is not the state; for us, it is the people; it is the nation, I repeat, in the ethnic and historical sense of the term.”30 For his part, the Christian-social deputy Engelbert Besednjak concluded his forceful intervention of May 13, 1926, against the educational policy of Fascism: “The laws of the states are changeable, whereas the national community lives forever.”31 The 1926 decrees abolished autonomous municipalities all over Italy (royal decree of February 4, 1926; statute of June 26, 1926; royal decree of September 3, 1926). In the Slovenian and Croatian municipalities of Venezia Giulia, these measures meant a further step toward denationalization. Slovenian councils and mayors were replaced by podestà [chief executive of a municipality, T.N.] appointed by the government and reporting to the prefects. Almost all the podestà were Italian nationals.32 The political elections of 1923 were regulated by the Acerbo law, which awarded a majority premium to the electoral list that gained the highest plurality of votes. The Fascists obtained a substantial increase in their votes without even having to negotiate the presence of non-fascist candidates in their list. The Slovenian and Croatian lists suffered deep losses, while the Communists managed to maintain their position.33 Fascism could thus present itself as the political representative of Venezia Giulia’s entire society, apart from the opposition of the extreme Left. Starting in 1925, as Fascism embarked on building a totalitarian state, it enacted a policy aimed specifically at Slovenes and Croats.34 We can date this new course to the Council of Ministers held on November 1, 1925, in which Mussolini clarified his policy about the newly-acquired territories and shared it with all the members of his Cabinet through a circular letter. In assessing retrospectively the policy of liberal governments regarding the border, Mussolini noted that the aim of that policy had been to guarantee those territories as much autonomy as they had formerly enjoyed under Austria. (Here, presumably, Mussolini was thinking of the Office for the New Provinces managed by Francesco Salata.) If Italy continued to follow this approach, Mussolini reasoned, it would have to settle for having obedient subjects there, even if they remained, as it were, outside the “nation.” On the contrary, said Il Duce, the fascist national government based its own policy on a basic fact: the territories gained with World War I belonged to Italy geographically and historically. It was foreign domination that had denationalized those territories, which could finally be fully reintegrated into the “nation,”35 now that the state had the means to fulfill its goal. The government thus set out to enact a policy leading to complete legislative and administrative harmonization of those regions with the rest of the country,

Frontier Fascism  129 which would include measures regarding language teaching and education in primary schools. In the same circular letter, Mussolini complained about the array of policies followed by the various provincial authorities, which would end up by delaying “the Italianization of lands with different ethnic backgrounds.” The remedy was to ensure greater coordination between provincial offices and prefects, going beyond “fixed and general norms.”36 De facto, the policy of denationalization continued to be the outcome of heterogeneous and varied initiatives taken by both central and local offices. This meant that the Slovenian representatives were often able to negotiate modifications; an example was the case of the prohibition against tombstones with inscriptions in Slovenian, a provision which was withdrawn by Undersecretary Dino Grandi.37 In June 1927 Trieste hosted a conference of the fascist federali [provincial party officials, T.N.] of the six frontier provinces, during which the participants detailed the goals of the government with regard to populations of different ethnic origins. All the federali of the frontier provinces came from the regions that they now represented, further proof of the profound integration of Fascism with the Italian nationalist element at the periphery of the country. These were, specifically: Giuseppe Cobol (Cobolli) and Bruno Coceancig for Trieste; Giovanni Mrach for Pola; Nino Host-Venturi for Fiume; Arnerich for Zara; Caccese for Gorizia; and Cavalotti for Udine.38 On the occasion of the conference, Trieste’s fascist newspaper Il Popolo di Trieste [The People of Trieste] declared that Slavic teachers, priests, and cultural associations were anachronistic in a province annexed nine years previously, where a Slavic intellectual class was totally absent. The issue of the national and cultural identity of the lands along the eastern border was a problem that should not be handled by local administrations, but rather by the state.39 The conference’s final directive mandated that frontier populations be assimilated in all aspects, including the political one. On July 6 Mussolini himself participated in another meeting of federali in Rome; he then followed up on the proceedings by requesting from the prefects of frontier areas an assessment of the “national issue” at the local level.40 According to a top-secret letter which the Minister of the Interior sent to the prefects on July 19, 1927, no Slavic cultural association was supposed to exist after October 1 of the same year. We can already find the motivations for this policy in the monographic issue of Gerarchia devoted to Venezia Giulia, mentioned above, published with a significant subtitle, La Venezia Giulia. Quello che Sognammo e Quello che è [Venezia Giulia. What We Dreamed and What It Is]. In a short article entitled Il Fascismo e gli Allogeni [Fascism and People of Different Ethnic Origin], the nationalist Giuseppe Cobol said: “A nation such as ours can only approve laws common to all its citizens. It is not conceivable for part of the citizenry to feel that those laws are alien to them, either out of ignorance or because of a willful refusal to understand them. . . . Therefore, within our borders we cannot treat differently problems that are national by their very nature,

130  Frontier Fascism even if there are groups of citizens who speak other languages.”41 By government fiat, over five hundred associations were thus dissolved: reading halls, choirs, theaters, gymnastic groups, and so forth. This decision also affected the lively Slovenian youth counterculture; at the beginning of 1924 one could still count four hundred clubs which organized their own theatrical and musical events, completely different from those organized by adults.42 Nineteen twenty-eight saw the dissolution of the Edinost in Trieste, the most important association for the national defense of Slovenian, and the parent organization linking together various manifestations of Slovenian cultural life. By contrast, the Edinost association of Gorizia was spared because of its Christian-social outlook.43 By 1932, even the flourishing network of cooperatives and small lending institutions was greatly weakened.44 The government proceeded less radically against economic associations than it had done against cultural, sporting, and nationalist associations. A 1927 law consolidated the Banks for Agrarian Loans,45 which led to dissolving some Slovenian cooperatives with various motivations; to merging others with Italian consortia; to reshuffling the boards of directors in yet other cases; or to declaring other cooperatives insolvent and taking them over. However, even in 1937 some large Slovenian cooperatives still existed in Trieste itself.46 The justification offered for such radical measures was that the associations were actually . . . centers of political resistance and of irredentist propaganda in disguise, and breeding grounds of dissatisfaction, suspicion, and mistrust toward everything Italian. They have no other purpose than to keep the people away from us, and to isolate them from the rest of the region and the country. Therefore we can no longer tolerate them.47 The government didn’t want to adopt a policy which would result in disbanding all organizations at once, but it preferred to find specific motivations, case by case, which could justify the dissolution of each individual organization.48 In the case of the education policy, in 1925 it was prohibited to teach Slovenian and Croatian even in extracurricular hours, beginning the following year. Slovenian teachers who wished to keep their positions had to obtain certification for teaching in Italian.49 Starting with the school year 1928–29, in Venezia Giulia there were no longer any courses of Slovenian or Croatian.50 In 1930, in response to a series of attacks launched by members of the clandestine irredentist movement Tigr [Trst-Istra-Gorska-Rijeka] and followed by the execution of four of the attackers, the government closed the last Slovenian private school in Trieste, which had received financial support not only from the local Slovenian bourgeoisie, but also from Yugoslavia.51 At the same time, the Opera nazionale di assistenza all’Italia redenta [from

Frontier Fascism  131 now, National Aid Society for Redeemed Italy] continued the work begun by the National Italian League in Hapsburg times, by organizing courses of Italian for young people and adults in the most remote Slovenian villages. The Dante Alighieri Association established prizes for Slovenian and Croatian students who excelled in Italian. Kindergartens, too, which were managed by the National Aid Society, were expected to carry out the policy of Italianization.52 Starting with the 1923 law on the press, the application of sanctions made it all but impossible to publish Slovenian and Croatian newspapers. In 1928 the historic newspaper Edinost ceased publication; starting in 1930, the printing of periodicals in Slavic languages stopped, except for a few ecclesiastical newsletters and Catholic almanacs. The next step was to forbid tombstone inscriptions in Slovenian,53 and to confiscate ribbons of funeral wreaths in Slavic languages, thus applying with new severity measures that the Italian liberal national municipal authorities had already adopted under the Hapsburgs.54 Even monuments to Slovenian historical figures were either destroyed by the fascist squads or removed by the authorities:55 these included, among others, the monument to the composer Hrabroslav Volarič, built in his birthplace, Caporetto; the plaque in memory of the poet Simon Gregorčič in Rifembergo [Branik]; the monuments to the poet Miroslav Vilhar in Postumia and to the philosopher Franc Lampe in Monte Nero [Krn]; and the bust of the mathematician Jurij Vega, which had stood before the entrance of Idria’s [Idrija] high school.56 The change of toponyms and surnames from Slovenian to Italian also proceeded more systematically after the royal decree of April 7, 1927, extended to Venezia Giulia and the province of Zara the measures already applied to South Tyrol57 with the royal decree of January 10, 1926. The authorities took the initiative of changing last names deemed to be of Italian origin; in other cases, it was the parties concerned who requested that their names be modified. By January 1933, in Pola alone 56,000 people had changed their last names.58 A 1928 law (March 8, no. 383) forbade the use of “ridiculous” or “amoral” names, or of names that “could outrage public opinion.” This law was applied to the Giulia region to prevent parents from baptizing their own children with Slavic names.59 In 1929 the journalist Livio Ragusin Righi, who had been acting President of Trieste’s Federazione provinciale fascista [Provincial Fascist Federation], published the booklet Politica di confine [Frontier Politics], one of the few attempts to systematize and give an ideological basis to fascist policy toward people from different ethnic groups (literally, “of another descent”)60 on the eastern frontier. Ragusin Righi denied the possibility of recognizing a specific national identity to the Slavs living there. These were merely scattered populations lacking the features that could create a common identity, traditionally mere tools of Austria. “The groups of Slovenes in the frontier zone have never possessed either a specific national unity, or their own

132  Frontier Fascism civilization,” he declared. “Their history is the one that Austrian policy, of which they were instruments, gave them.” He went on to remark: If, however, Austria had not subjugated them completely, and if it had permitted their cultural development, perhaps the first signs of civilization and of their own way of thinking would have appeared among them as well. Even more so because of their coming in contact with Italian civilization which neighboring Italians have spread.61 Ragusin Righi was being unrealistic both about the low degree of national awareness of the Slovenes who had become Italian citizens, and about the level of development these peoples had reached. He declared that only Fascism could make available to them benefits which, in his opinion, they had lacked until that moment: “Good schools, public works, electricity, water, roads, and security of their property.”62 As a matter of fact, the Slovenes, though overwhelmingly rural, had a high level of literacy; they was organized through a flourishing network of cooperatives and banks; and they had a strong national identity, strengthened by intense participation in cultural events and by the use of lending libraries or publishing houses that promoted the national language and culture.63 Ignorant of these facts, Ragusin Righi could cultivate the illusion that the solution to the problem of ethnic minorities would be the full equalization of “these numerically insignificant groups” with the Italian citizenry. He declared optimistically: “Those people have the same rights and duties as all other Italians. They are assimilated into the Latin civilization, which does not tear them away from any other civilization and which, on the contrary, opens its arms to welcome them as if they were prodigal sons.”64 He presented Slovenian nationalism as the creation of schemers from beyond the border; of philo-Hapsburg Slovenes; or of fanatical students returning home from the Universities of Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Belgrade.65 Starting from this assumption, the journalist then went on to the programmatic part of his essay, which had as its final objective the Italian saturation of the frontier area. Ragusin Righi proposed three kinds of measures: the expulsion of national agents provocateurs; the transfer of Italian functionaries to the region; and, finally, a more ambitious policy of “ethnic saturation” which, in all centers with Slav populations, “consisted of the slow but progressive growth of Italian groups around a core of public functionaries and their families.”66 In 1931, even the Compagnia volontari giuliani e dalmati [Giulia and Dalmatia Volunteer Company] sent a memorandum to Mussolini asking for greater moderation and a slower pace in enforcing the policy of denationalization, by permitting, for example, the use of Slovenian in religious ceremonies.67 The local people felt particularly strong hatred for some kinds of behavior and some measures enforced by the Fascists: threats and physical attacks against passers-by merely guilty of chatting in their own language; the prohibition against using Slovenian in public establishments, introduced

Frontier Fascism  133 by hyper-zealous restaurant owners and innkeepers; and the expulsion from “all the schools in the Kingdom” of students caught singing in their own language on the street.68 The campaign in favor of Italianization went so far as to repress harmless traditions of Slovenian villages, such as singing serenades under the window of one’s beloved on Saturday night. In several cases, the culprits were tried and dealt heavy fines.69 The effects of the fascist policy of denationalization were contradictory and mostly counterproductive. First, Fascism greatly overestimated the possibility of Italianizing about 500,000 Slovenes and Croats, at a time when belonging to one’s own national group had become a constitutive feature of identity. Second, the policy of “cultural genocide” which the fascist regime had enacted, according to Elio Apih’s definition,70 jeopardized the possible integration of the Slavs into the mass associations of Fascism. There had been examples of Slavs joining, or at least getting closer to the fascist militia, workingmen’s clubs, and youth organizations. The Opera nazionale Balilla [from now on, National Balilla Organization, or Balilla], in particular, enjoyed great popularity among young Slovenes in the Karst region, whereas various Slovenian recreational associations had merged with the workingmen’s clubs,71 in the attempt to avoid being shut down. The destruction of the cultural and linguistic dimension of Slovenian and Croatian identity was not at all beneficial to these forms of political assimilation, which were in themselves quite promising.72 Besides, as Ragusin Righi himself acutely remarked, the Fasci and the units of the fascist militia comprised only of Slavs had been disbanded, whereas it would have been wise to keep them alive.73 In 1931, the government created the Ente di rinascita agraria delle Tre Venezie [from now on, Institution for the Agrarian Revival of the Tre Venezie], with the goal of modernizing the agricultural sector seriously weakened by the crisis of 1929, and of strengthening the Italian component of the rural population. Between 1934 and October 1938 one hundred four families were settled in Venezia Giulia and in the province of Fiume on one hundred seventy-eight farms whose former owners had been expropriated, for a total of about 5,367 hectares of arable land. The holdings, furnished with supplies and equipment, were let out to farmers who, at a later time, could redeem them with payments extended over twenty or thirty years.74 A report by the Prefect of Gorizia to the Minister of the Interior, dated March 16, 1939, stated that in that province ninety-four families who came from pre-war Italy had replaced three hundred Slavic families which had been expropriated. However, the Institution for Agrarian Revival let out part of the land they had bought to a hundred Slovenian families. And farms in the hands of Slavs employed about fifty Italian families. Italian farmers were introduced to ensure a more rapid and complete integration of Slavs into Italian national life. According to the prefect, the main goal was to draw closer to the nation the mass of small farmers who were foreignlanguage speakers and who, “scattered about, gravitate toward people and interests spiritually alien to the national community.”75 Even though these data are inconsistent and incomplete, they do seem to indicate that the aim

134  Frontier Fascism of this policy was not the expulsion of Slavic people and their replacement with Italian peasants,76 but rather the insertion of Italian families among the population to facilitate cultural integration between Italians on one side and Slovenes and Croats on the other. The policy of integration of Slavic people into the national fascist community clashed constantly with the paucity of means that the Italian state had made available. Even the promotion of aid societies and workingmen’s clubs, the most promising tools for integrating ethnic minorities into the fabric of the fascist regime, was pursued with insufficient resources, making those organizations partially ineffective in carrying out their task of creating consensus.77 It is significant that, in the province of Gorizia, the government was unable to recruit a sufficient number of “trustworthy” Italian podestà who could be installed as representatives of the regime. In Trieste, by contrast, support for the regime was a mass phenomenon. Out of three hundred thirty-eight thousand inhabitants, one hundred twenty-five thousand became members either of the fascist party, or of trade unions, or of support organizations, especially those devoted to children and young people. Workingmen’s clubs alone enrolled thirty-six thousand people, more than 50 per cent of the employed population. The regime enjoyed a much less satisfactory rapport with the locals in the region around Gorizia, in Pola, and in the Karst region, where people were mostly Slovenian, and where the penetration of the mass organizations of Fascism was somewhat difficult. In 1931, only 27.51 per cent of the population was members of the party’s organizations. Membership in women’s and youth associations in particular was meager. As already remarked, only the National Balilla Organization was successful, likely because the young Balilla benefited from significant aid.78 Besides, the sheer number of people declaring themselves Slavs remained a problem, since as many did so in 1939 as in 1921, which showed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the complete failure of the effort at assimilation.79 Nonetheless, by 1940, 40 per cent of the population of Venezia Giulia had joined the mass organizations of Fascism.80 For Fascism, the socialization of young people through a totalitarian policy of mobilization that relied on fascist mass organizations (National Aid Society, Balilla, Gruppi universitari fascisti [Fascist University Groups])81 saw their Italianization as one step in creating the “new man.” From this point of view, fascist policy toward the eastern frontier was substantially similar to the policy adopted toward all other Italians, contrary to the position almost all historians have taken until now. In reality, the Italianization of Slavic people was not limited to their linguistic and cultural assimilation, but rather aimed to turn them into component elements of the totalitarian fascist state, “the Romans of modernity,” molded into one body politic which would share “one faith and one morality” and would be “entirely devoted to the deified state.”82 Linguistic assimilation was merely one aspect of a much broader redefinition of the relationship between citizen and state. From this point of view, Slovenes and Croats were subjected to a

Frontier Fascism  135 transformation similar to the one required of all other Italians. The goal was to turn all citizens into a mass of believers in the fascist religion of the nation and the state, united in emotions, values, and modes of behavior molded by the institutions of the regime.83 The Slovenian mathematician Lavo Čermelj, a tireless defender of national rights and a sympathizer of the clandestine organization Tigr, contended that the young Slovenian Balilla were supposed to be transformed into a kind of “janissaries,” loyal to Fascism as the janissaries had once been loyal to Islam (recte: to the Ottoman Empire), devoted body and soul to the fascist regime, tools in the fascist struggle even against their own parents and relatives.84 In praising the fascist regime for offering Slavs the opportunity to enlist in the voluntary militia, Ragusin Righi contended, with good reason, that this was the best way to increase their pride in being Italians and Fascists.85 In 1929, the year of publication of Politica di confine, the government reinstated the all-Slavic 59th Legion as part of the reserves.86 The reasons given for dissolving the remaining Slovenian associations in 1927 support the thesis that they were seen as an obstacle to the implementation of the totalitarian fascist state. For example, Zveza športih društev [Federation of Sporting Youth] was dissolved because “reports by the Trieste police show that it operated outside the Comitato olimpico nazionale italiano [Italian Olympic National Committee], and with political goals in contrast with those of the national regime.” The Balkan University Club of Trieste was accused “of keeping young Slavic university students away from Italian people and culture, thus strengthening their national consciousness and leading to the rise of groups whose aim is political rebellion, and which become, more or less overtly, breeding grounds of irredentist propaganda.” The Čiltanica [Reading Hall] of San Giacomo was closed because “it had tried to bring the Slavic people together, thus separating them from the Italian spiritual movement.” The central Prosveta [Education] association of Trieste was accused of irredentist propaganda,87 and of having organized cultural events intended “to instill the spirit of national struggle in the listeners’ young souls, thus hindering their gradual, fraternal union with the Italian people.” Similar reasons were given to shut down a Catholic printing press in Gorizia, which, thanks to the 1929 Concordat, had been able to publish Slovenian religious literature until 1935. The apparently harmless activities of Katoliska tiskarna [Catholic Press] are maneuvers to ensure that the Slovenes will remain tightly linked to Slovenian elements who are inveterate enemies of our state, and who keep alive their notorious plan to have ethnic minorities be recognized the indisputable right to form one separate mass, meant to operate independently of, and even against the general interests of this province.88 An analysis of these motivations leads me to conclude that the destruction of the Slovenian associational network fulfilled a twofold aim: to fight

136  Frontier Fascism irredentist propaganda, fueled by activists from across the border; and to create “the new man,” part of the “Italian spiritual movement” which would absorb the Slovenian component within itself. The policy of denationalization was thus a feature of Fascism’s totalitarian program in a territory which, from the point of view of the local nationalities, presented some peculiar features. On October 24, 1939, Italo Sauro, special advisor to the national government for the Slavic question, submitted a detailed plan for resolving the Slavic problem on the eastern border. Its essential points were: to deprive the Slavs of their leaders, in particular the religious ones; to mix them with higher quotas of Italians with strategic functions (teachers, clergymen, and so forth); and to transfer a number of Slavs to the interior, thus making room for the complete Italianization of the region. This fairly radical if not original plan of “ethnic cleansing,” followed the usual principles of cultural assimilation of the Slavs, while ruling out explicitly massive population transfers like the ones that were agreed upon for Germans in the South Tyrol on June 23, 1939.89 It is worth mentioning a remark of Italo Sauro, according to whom at the time Belgrade did not speak up against the plan for Italianization only because the Serbs were concerned with much more serious issues. In the end, Italy’s entry into the war thwarted that plan, by placing the question of the Slavic populations in a different context.90 Contrary to what most historians have asserted,91 on the eastern frontier Fascism did not promote a “racist” policy, which usually erects a barrier between the superior race and the supposedly inferior race. All the policies adopted by the regime—the internal transfer of individuals considered unreliable; the prospect of national assimilation; and support for mixed marriages between Italian men and Slovenian women—negated the fundamental premises of racism grounded on biological diversity.92 This does not mean that radical assimilation—the goal of Fascism—did not end up by altering and shaking deeply each person’s identity.93 Fascism kept in place its policy toward Slavic minorities even after adopting the racial laws against the Jews. This last provision upset the social balance in the Giulia region, affecting one third of its ruling class and leaving an open wound in the social texture of its bourgeoisie.94 In the pamphlet already cited, Ragusin Righi attributed to the Slovenes qualities that made them worthy of becoming “true Italian citizens, equal to the rest of Italy’s rural population.” He saw them as “honest peasants, frugal in their needs, steady in their work.”95 The problem of what to do with minorities, as Elio Apih correctly remarks, was at that time on the agenda outside Italy as well, linked as it was to the issue of allegiance to the state on the part of different national groups.96 Regarding the policy of denationalization, the Trieste historian said: The ultimate rationale for this policy is not yet entirely clear. In any case, we should consider it not only as a consequence of totalitarian ideology and of the nationalistic and denationalizing tradition of Italian

Frontier Fascism  137 liberal groups in that region, but also as the local expression of the tendency to denationalize minorities, which was taking hold at that time throughout Europe.97 It would be helpful to develop a comparative study of the policy toward national minorities adopted by the successor states after the collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy, which would enable us to discern more precisely the features of “fascist” policy, and to distinguish them from the measures typical of a large number of European states at that time.98 We should not underestimate that contingent developments also played a role. For example, Italy’s expansion into Albania after the signing of the Tirana Pact in 1926 worsened relations with Yugoslavia, which in turn harshened the repressive policy the Fascists were carrying out against minorities.99 The fascist policy of assimilation represented a mortal danger for the leaders of the Croatian, and especially the Slovenian national movements because it could end up by eroding the essence of their nations understood as communities that shared origin, language, feelings, and traditions. It is appropriate to mention here Carl Schmitt’s conceptualization of the enemy, as a figure that emerges in those situations when “the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence.”100 The clash could not have been greater between an Italian totalitarian regime that turned the state into a god, and a national Slavic élite that founded its separate identity on a Romantic conception of the nation (Volk).

3 The Clergy The nationalist leanings of many members of the Slavic clergy had been a vexing problem for a long time. The Lateran Pacts of 1929 gave a boost to the fascist regime; Article 22 established that clergymen who were not Italian citizens could not receive any incumbency. Moreover, the incumbents of dioceses and parishes must speak Italian. On the other hand, the Concordat established that the language of religious instruction at primary-school level was to be in the child’s mother tongue. Despite the signing of the Pacts, their application gave rise to serious tensions between Fascism and the Holy See. More often than not, Fascism gave a broad, self-serving interpretation of the Concordat’s terms as an authorization to promote the use of the Italian language in the liturgy and in religious teaching. This problem was compounded by the initiatives of local Fascists who interfered with religious rites and choirs in Slovenian,101 and who pressured Slovenian believers to say the Mass in Italian. An outcry greeted the resignation of the Bishop of Trieste, Luigi Fogar, in 1936, triggered by insurmountable differences between him and local political authorities.102 Following Monsignor Andrej Karlin, Bishop of Trieste, and Franjo Borgia Sedej from the archdiocese of Gorizia, Fogar was the

138  Frontier Fascism third bishop in a row forced to resign, or to request a transfer to another see. Fogar was not an anti-Fascist nor was he inimical to Italian believers. He merely held firm to the principle that religious rites and catechism instruction should be carried out in the believers’ mother tongue. In 1931 he expressed his views in a memorandum sent to the public attorney’s office, but he was destined to suffer defeat in his wrestling match with Trieste’s fascist authorities and tendered his resignation in 1936.103 Ecclesiastical policy had implications for foreign policy as well, as in the case of the bishop of Zagreb, who in 1931 led public prayers asking for greater religious freedom in Venezia Giulia. The representatives of Dalmatian towns gathered in Spalato, held processions with their gonfalons draped in black.104 It is undeniable that most Slovenian and Croatian clergymen continued to engage in pro-national if not openly irredentist policies. In the countryside, they kept alive a clandestine network that helped young people expatriate to Yugoslavia.105 Fascism thus managed to be both radical and ineffective in its religious policy as in many other areas, fostering further estrangement from the Italian state among the great majority of Slovenes and Croats, despite their fervent Catholicism.

4 Slovenian and Croatian National Resistance It was only a matter of time before clandestine groups of Slovenian and Croatian irredentists began to operate in Venezia Giulia and to launch several terrorist attacks, first of all against collaborators in their own ranks. “Collaborationists” were considered those Slovenian and Croatian Italian citizens who were willing to join Fascism, to send their children to Italian schools, or to become servants of the Italian state.106 A section of the Serbian terrorist group Orjuna [from now on, Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists] had been founded in Ljubljana as early as 1921.107 The Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists soon carried out executions of Slovenes and Croats turned Fascists, while the press exposed the relatives of “renegades” who lived in Yugoslavia.108 According to a note by the Italian police, another philo-Yugoslav secret organization, Narodna obrana [The People’s Defense], engaged in espionage for the Yugoslav army in Venezia Giulia, and devoted itself to organizing terroristic attacks.109 In 1925, a member of the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists who had killed two Carabinieri in the interior of Istria was acquitted by the court in Ljubljana. Beginning in 1926, the number of robberies, assaults on trains, attacks against members of the Customs Police, the Carabinieri, and the barracks of the fascist militia, and murders of Slovenes considered traitors to the national cause, increased suddenly.110 By 1928 it became clear that these violent actions were the work of local Slovenes of Italian citizenship. They set fires to schools and kindergartens and meted summary justice to Slovenes considered “collaborators.”111 Between 1925 and 1935, the most important Slovenian and Croatian clandestine organization was Tigr, an acronym of the names of

Frontier Fascism  139 Slavic “unredeemed cities” and territories: Trst, Istra, Gorica, and Rijeka.112 In 1929 an especially serious and bloody attack took place, carried out by Vladimir Gortan and other members of the clandestine organizations who shot on about a hundred peasants heading to the polls for a referendum on government policy in Pisino. One peasant died. Vladimir Gortan thus became the first Croatian irredentist whom Fascism sentenced to death in Istria.113 In 1930, after bombs were set near the Victory Lighthouse, in Trieste, and after an attack against the fascist newspaper Il Popolo di Trieste, the Italian special tribunal for the defense of the state filed criminal charges against eighty-seven members of the groups Borba [from now on, Struggle] and Tigr. The trial ended with several long prison sentences114 and four death sentences carried out at once. According to the police report, Struggle and Tigr carried out as many as ninety-nine terrorist attacks between 1926 and 1929; among them eighteen fires set to schools and kindergartens, thirteen attacks against fascist squads and barracks, and thirteen against Slovenian police informers and policemen.115 Terrorist groups which were also connected to associations of refugees from the Giulia region, active beyond the border, received covert support from the Yugoslav government.116 The Union of Yugoslavs from Venezia Giulia was formed in Belgrade in 1932, and elected as their President Ivan Marija Cok, who was from Trieste.117 In the meanwhile the clandestine movement was growing stronger, becoming able to carry out sensational actions. It set fire to woods excluded from public use; it renewed its attacks against Italian schools and kindergartens; and it opened fire against the Fascists, killing many. The armed attacks came close to becoming a full-fledged rebellion. In its issue of April, 4, 1933, Corriere della Sera reported that the eastern frontier was living in a war climate, as the prefect of Istria confirmed in his report to the Minister of the Interior.118 According to the Milanese newspaper, more than a hundred political crimes had been perpetrated in Venezia Giulia over a period of four months: fifteen homicides and four cases of espionage.119 Corriere della Sera also added that units took German sheep-dogs with them when they went on patrol at the border, and that they opened their orders only after they had marched beyond a certain point. The article went on to say: Members of the Carabinieri and militiamen on patrol continue to find Yugoslav flags here and there. Almost daily, manifestos and proclamations inciting “our oppressed and harassed brothers” to armed resistance and insurrection fall into the hands of our authorities. The mailing of anonymous letters continues to be intense [italics in the original, T.N.]. The discovery of two new secret associations created in the region around Gorizia with the goal of “avenging our murdered brothers,” dates to last November.120 In 1933 the nationalist journalist Virginio Gayda published the pamphlet La Jugoslavia Contro l’Italia [Yugoslavia Against Italy], in which he

140  Frontier Fascism listed meticulously all the hostile acts and attacks perpetrated by clandestine Yugoslav organizations. Despite some exaggerations (in 1914, Gayda had been the author of the articles in La Stampa on the oppression of Italians living in Austria), the trends emerging from this pamphlet are now confirmed by all the scholarly literature. Starting in 1926, the Italian eastern frontier was the theater of an endless stream of robberies and homicides whose victims were mostly representatives of the state, including ethnic Slovenes and Croats. Slovenes became the target of pressure tactics (for example, anonymous circular letters) aiming to prevent them from fraternizing with the “occupier.” Gayda attributes these actions to the clandestine Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists, whereas Slovenian historians have been emphasizing that other organizations, such as Tigr and Struggle, were born and remained active in the territory of Slovenia and of the Giulia region.121 In any case, the number of people found guilty of political crimes, confined to internal exile, or put under special surveillance, were definitely overrepresented in Venezia Giulia, both as a percentage of the local population and compared to the national average.122 The first contacts between Italian Communists and representatives of Slovenian and Croatian clandestine groups took place in 1934, the year when the Comintern changed course.123 In April 1934, the Italian, Yugoslav, and Austrian Communist Parties reasserted the Slovenian people’s right to selfdetermination. The Slovenian Communist Ivan Regent insisted, however, that the Slovenes’ right to self-determination must not be applied rigidly in areas inhabited mainly by Italians.124 The Italian antifascist group Giustizia e Libertà [Justice and Liberty], had also had fairly regular contacts with Slovenian terrorist groups. But when the Union of Yugoslav Emigrants from Venezia Giulia declared at the Congress of Maribor, in September 1939, that its objective was to separate Venezia Giulia from Italy, Justice and Liberty broke off contact both with Edinost and Tigr. There were Italian exiles, however, people such as Gaetano Salvemini and the Socialists Carlo Treves and Filippo Turati, who were definitely willing to reopen the discussion about the Treaty of Rapallo.125

5 Relations between Italy and Yugoslavia after the Treaty of Rome (1924) In 1924, the Treaty of Rome between Italy and Yugoslavia led to the partition of the Free State of Fiume between the two countries, thus confirming one more time that extraterritorial enclaves were fragile indeed in the era of national disputes.126 The signing of the treaty signaled a lessening of the tension in Italian-Yugoslav relations, even leading people to believe that Italy might exert some influence in the region of the Danube, comparable to that exerted by France through the Little Entente. The Czech leader Eduard Beneš welcomed these developments, and Mussolini himself appeared to confirm these expectations when he gave his report on the negotiations to

Frontier Fascism  141 the Chamber of Deputies. Pointing out that the Danube region was the only one where Italy’s penetration could be peaceful, he spoke of the Treaty of Rome as a premise for such a policy and for the stabilization of the Yugoslav state.127 Fiume thus became the capital of the new province of Quarnero, which included the districts of Volosca and Abbazia, taken from Istria.128 The eastern border was now being set along the lines that it would maintain until the Italian attack against Yugoslavia in April 1941. The partition of the Free State of Fiume between Italy and Yugoslavia was supposed to be part of a broader treaty of friendship and cooperation which regulated all the issues still standing between the two countries: fishing, the free movement of people, and the regulation and promotion of traffic and trade. At the political level, the two signatories assured reciprocal neutrality in case of any conflict in which the two countries might become involved, mutual help in case of incursions or threats from other powers, and consultations in case of international complications. The treaty for “friendship and cordial cooperation” between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was meant to place relations between the two countries on a new footing, thus contributing to defusing provocations in the border area, undoubtedly a reason of anxiety and irritation on the Italian side.129 Once it was made public, the treaty gave rise to heated anti-Italian protests in Yugoslavia’s main cities. In Belgrade, the Skupština [Assembly] refused to ratify it. The agreement regarding Fiume thus did not result in the normalization of bilateral relations which the resolution of the age-old question of the città olocausta [sacrificial town, T.N.] should have made possible, at least in theory. There was a second attempt to reach an agreement in 1925. The Treaty of Nettuno included the agreement of friendship and cooperation already negotiated, regulated the issues still pending, and guaranteed protection of Yugoslav subjects resident in Fiume.130 Once again, the Yugoslav Parliament did not ratify the treaty. The Croatian Peasant Party in particular, in power at the time, promoted violent anti-Italian demonstrations in the country, while the press launched a spirited campaign against the Treaty, which was also victim of the difficult relationship among Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes within the Yugoslav state. Slovenes and Croats firmly opposed the Serbian policy of rapprochement with Italy.131 Even though the Treaty of Nettuno was finally approved in 1928, it was never ratified by the Yugoslav Parliament, partly because of the hostile reaction from the crowd, and partly because of the extremely serious crisis that affected the Yugoslav state after the assassination of Stefan Radič, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party.132 In April 1926, the General Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Salvatore Contarini, a long-time supporter of the Sforza line which favored good relations with Yugoslavia, tendered his resignation. From that moment on, Mussolini followed a wavering revisionist policy, leading to temporary attempts to move closer to Turkey and Greece, and to the Treaty of Tirana with

142  Frontier Fascism Albania (November 1926), which sanctioned the country’s status as an Italian protectorate.133 From 1928 onward Yugoslavia turned decisively toward France.134 In his wavering foreign policy, Mussolini refused to participate in a trilateral agreement with those two countries. According to Rusinow, the influence of nationalists from the Giulia region on the one side, and the problems Yugoslavia had internally with Slovenes and Croats on the other were decisive factors in dooming Fascism’s foreign policy to failure.135 Between 1931 and 1936, partially by initiative of the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Fulvio Suvich, originally from Trieste, Italy enacted a policy of rapprochement with Austria by becoming its guarantor against German ambitions, while supporting, at the same time, Hungary’s moderate revisionism.136 Relations with Yugoslavia, meanwhile, were getting worse. Both sides embarked onto a policy of petty provocations. In Yugoslavia, newspapers published inflammatory pieces, and the associations of the Yugoslav exiles from Venezia Giulia issued provocative irredentist statements.137 In its turn, from 1932 on Italy began to support Croatian separatism, allowing the Ustaša commander Ante Pavelič to reside in Italy together with units of armed volunteers who, at times, numbered more than four hundred men.138 In 1934 the Ustaše organized a bloody terrorist attack in Marseille which killed King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou.139 According to Rusinow, “the Italian interest in the Danube during the Suvich period was only the continuation of the policy which since 1927 had tended to oppose an Italian sphere of influence in Austria and Hungary to a French one in the Little Entente.”140 This policy led to the agreements of March 1934 among Italy, Austria, and Hungary, with the addition of two economic protocols141 which established tax-free zones and special tariffs for goods in transit toward the port of Trieste. However, in this region in particular the situation was so unstable—witness, that same year, the failed national socialist putsch in Austria in which Chancellor Dollfuss died142— that these agreements did not produce any positive result. Besides, between 1933 and 1935, Hitler began to violate the Treaty of Versailles and the Pact of Locarno systematically, thus voiding them de facto, leading Italy to move closer to the Western powers that were in favor of maintaining the status quo, and to join the Stresa Front. But Italian foreign policy remained contradictory and volatile; its only common thread seemed to be Italy’s attempts to exploit every possible opportunity for engaging in willful gestures.143 In any case, joining the Stresa Front meant that Italy had to give up launching a revisionist policy, at least in the short term. As Dennison Rusinow has accurately remarked, after Germany began its own radical revisionism in foreign relations, Italy’s rapprochement with Austria could only lead to weaken its own position in the Balkans more and more.144 German revisionism could certainly be more attractive for Hungary than the Italian approach, which was in favor either of the status quo or of a moderate revisionism. Italy’s wavering attitude toward Yugoslavia, France, and Hungary ended up by

Frontier Fascism  143 drastically reducing its own room for maneuver, and by pushing Italy, after its attack on Abyssinia, toward the alliance with Germany.145 We should add that the other signatories to the Stresa Front also kept their options open. In 1935, France stipulated a Treaty of Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union, while Great Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement for the naval rearmament of Germany.146 In 1936 the Suvich era ended, followed by a momentary rapprochement with Yugoslavia, as Italy gave up its hegemonic ambitions in the Balkan region, while Hungary entrusted itself to the much more effective German revisionism.147 At first it seemed, nonetheless, that Trieste might regain its traditional hinterland, a goal pursued with determination by the local entrepreneurial class which had become much more powerful after taking over the majority of the stock portfolios of the Austrian banks,148 and believed that diplomatic negotiations could restore the economic unity of the formerly Austrian territory now broken up among the successor states.149 At the Peace Conference, Italy, aware of these implications, had fought for control over the “Assling Triangle,” a strategic railroad hub, and had worked with the interested states on reorganizing the management of the Südbahn and on maintaining preferential Adriatic rates for the successor states. During the negotiations leading up to the Treaty of Rapallo, Giovanni Giolitti had considered essential to ensure the peaceful transit of goods through Yugoslavia so that they could reach the farthest corner of the hinterland of the port.150 Despite all these efforts, obstacles were already emerging to Trieste’s ability to perform its traditional economic function for Italy instead of Austria, thus undermining the optimistic assessments of Attilio Tamaro and Mario Alberti, made while they were campaigning for Italy’s entry into World War I.151 An economic policy along these lines proved to be an illusion for three reasons. First, the successor states were reluctant to cooperate; instead, they preferred to follow a line of economic nationalism, as was clearly revealed by the failure of the plan put forward by the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister André Tardieu for reaching an economic agreement with Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania in the Danube basin. Second, as a sphere of influence the area was “saturated,” as it were, by the prevailing German and French interests in the region. And third, the geographic position of the port of Trieste was not especially advantageous. Willing to pay the price of expensive, massive investments, Austria had built the necessary infrastructure because the Adriatic represented its only outlet to the sea, even though, in a situation of free competition, the ports of the North Sea, served by an efficient network of navigable canals, were much cheaper for eastern European countries, Czechoslovakia, for example, even for shipments to the Levant.152 Dennison Rusinow hit the mark when he said that Trieste’s prosperity was based on two monopolies: Austria’s maritime trade, and trade along the coast with Dalmatia. The dismemberment of the Austrian Empire ended the former monopoly; the fact that the Treaty of London was never implemented rendered the latter impossible.153

144  Frontier Fascism In the end, Trieste’s economic development lay in the shipbuilding industry, heavily subsidized after the Istituto per la ricostruzione industriale [from now on IRI, Institute for Industrial Reconstruction] took over operations. In the 1930s we can already see all the signs of the “subsidized economy”154 characteristic of productive activity in that region until today. In Trieste especially, Fascism was very active in promoting urban planning, the building industry, and the construction of monumental works: a statue to Guglielmo Oberdan; a complex of several buildings on the Hill of San Giusto, supposedly a symbol of the ideal continuity between the Roman era and the “redemption” of the city; the Victory Lighthouse; and imposing, architecturally impressive buildings such as the maritime docking station.155 The economy of Fiume and Istria, fully exposed to the repercussions of the gigantic process of dislocation that affected the Danubian economy, languished more and more; competition from the contiguous Yugoslav port of Sussak weighed negatively on Fiume. Italy did intervene in Istria through a program of public works that partly mitigated the crisis, by building, for example, a new, large aqueduct that solved the chronic problem of the scarcity of water in the Istrian peninsula.156 These interventions too aimed to stabilize a border constantly perceived as unstable. The request for further subsidies for the province of Pola in 1931 was justified, for example, with the argument that “the good results we’ll undoubtedly attain will ensure greater security on our border.”157 From 1936 onward158 Italy moved progressively closer to Germany. This policy called into question Italy’s control over Venezia Giulia, because the port of Trieste was an old goal of pan-Germanic groups. As Italy did not have the resources necessary to take it upon itself to replace the Hapsburgs in the area, the region could not avoid feeling the repercussions of Hitler’s Austrian policy,159 which carried the risk that only a chunk of economically stagnant territory in the Giulia region would remain in Italy’s hands, or, even worse, that the entire Venezia Giulia would seek economic salvation by entrusting itself to the old enemy who was master of the hinterland.160 In his most recent work, the historian James Burgwyn, author of several studies on the foreign policy of Fascism, has also argued that the rapprochement between Italy and Yugoslavia in the years 1936–37 was due in part to Italy’s fear the that Austrian Anschluss [Union] to Germany, by now considered inevitable, might call into question the Italian possession of Trieste, Fiume, and the eastern coast of the Adriatic.161 In a brilliant, though delirious piece written in 1946, the historian Fabio Cusin, from Trieste, remarked perceptively: . . . the instability and contradiction of Trieste’s situation became apparent when, on a day in September of that year [1938], Mussolini announced in the city’s main square that the current situation implied the decline of the state of the Czech and the Slovaks. This enormous political error, made by a crazy dictator in the service of an irresponsible

Frontier Fascism  145 oligarchy, became a source of ridicule on the shores of the Upper Adriatic, because for centuries, ever since the Middle Ages, this region had always felt the repercussions of whatever was happening in the basin of Prague.162 Nonetheless, the speech mentioned below shows that Mussolini was concerned with the fate of Trieste, and with Nazi Germany’s strategy of calling into question the balance of power in central Europe. After announcing discriminatory measures against the Jews, Il Duce declared: . . . in March 1938, as you well know, a fateful event took place [the Anschluss], which had been taking shape since 1878 [the Dual Alliance between Germany and the Hapsburg Empire, signed in 1879]. Millions of people wanted it; no one opposed it. Trieste faces a new situation, but Trieste is ready to confront it and to overcome it. Trieste knows that geography is not an opinion, and that geography gets its own sweet revenge on those who believe it to be such. Trieste counts on its own energies. Trieste cannot, does not, and will never turn away from its sea, ever.163 And he concludes, almost as if wishing to ward off threatening scenarios: “Do not believe that Rome, so far away, is absent. No, Rome is here. She is here on your hill and on your sea. She is here, in centuries past and future. Here, with her laws, her arms, and her king.”164 In the meantime, the Ciano-Stojadinović agreement of July 25, 1937, between the Italian and Yugoslav foreign ministers, clearly confirmed that Italy, with its new interest in Africa, was lessening its pressure on Yugoslavia, promising to respect its borders. As a concrete sign of this new course in the relations with the neighboring state, Mussolini had the Ustaše commanders Pavelić and Kvaternik interned on the Lipari Islands, and forced the members of the Ustaše in Italy to disband. Yugoslavia responded to the new situation on the ground by curtailing its own consent to, and support for terroristic activity on the frontier.165 In turn, as a sign of good will, Italy recalled some Slovenes and Croats from their places of confinement; it lightened the punishment of representatives of national clandestine groups; and it authorized the importation into Italy of Slovenian newspapers printed in Ljubljana. Networking activities of the Slovenian and Croatian minorities revived and cross-border traffic intensified.166 Rebellion broke out again among the Slovenes living in Italy when they were drafted for the war in Abyssinia. There were demonstrations protesting their deployment to Africa; as many as a thousand young men dodged the draft by seeking refuge in Yugoslavia.167 In the meantime, the alliance between nationalists and Communists gained strength, after the Comintern approved the right to self-determination even in the absence of revolutionary prospects.168 In February Stojadinović was forced to resign; the short honeymoon between Italy and Yugoslavia was over. Foreign Minister

146  Frontier Fascism Galeazzo Ciano went back to the classical dual-track policy, by encouraging Croatian separatist stirrings, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, trying to persuade Yugoslavia to sign a pact of non-aggression. However, given the gravity of the international situation, Yugoslavia did not want to deviate from a policy of absolute neutrality that seemed to ensure better protection from contemporary German pressure, which was extremely high.169 To conclude we can say that, from the point of view of fascist foreign policy, the eastern border played a minor role, at least until 1939. Ever since the Treaty of Rapallo, Mussolini had hoped that Italian foreign policy might be close to getting out of the quagmire represented by the Adriatic question. Italy’s main goal in the Adriatic was Albania, reduced to the condition of a satellite in 1926.170 Only after Italy moved closer and closer to Germany and, concretely, only from April 1941, did fascist Italy reopen the chapter of the arrangement on its eastern border, in the context of the partition of the Balkans with its much more powerful ally. The policy of denationalization was the outcome of two converging trends: the drive of the totalitarian state, and stimuli coming from local nationalist extremism. The combination of these two factors gave rise to “frontier Fascism” during the fascist era. This did not mean that Fascism articulated a clear policy toward linguistic minorities or Slavic groups, but only that these groups became the target of attacks and excesses on the part of local Italian nationalists who proclaimed an anti-Slavic extremism which was the fruit of the peculiar political culture of this “periphery.” According to the nationalist Slovenian mathematician Lavo Čermelj, pressure from Giulia nationalists even succeeded in preventing Mussolini from fulfilling the promises he had made to Stojadonivić in 1937.171 Contrary to what the nationalist Ruggero Timeus had hoped for, the imperialistic project in the Danubian region and in the Balkans soon proved illusory. Here Italy could never compete successfully with France and Germany. More realistically, in fact, from the early 1930s onward fascist expansionism turned toward Africa, in an attempt to revive the myth of the Roman Empire. Italy’s participation in World War II on the side of Germany changed things once again, by putting (temporarily) back on the agenda the option of territorial expansion in the Balkans. For a very short time it seemed as though Venezia Giulia was indeed destined to be the “eastern gate” opening toward the land of the South Slavs, Greece, and Albania.

Notes 1 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 159 f. 2 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 158 f. 3 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 173 f. 4 Alatri, Nitti, D’Annunzio e la Questione Adriatica, cit., p. 86. 5 Lederer, Yugoslavia at the Paris Peace Conference, cit., p. 306. For the text of the treaty and the agreements tied to it, see A. Giannini, Documenti per la Storia dei Rapporti fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia, cit., pp. 124–61.

Frontier Fascism  147 6 This situation was due in part to the fact that the Austro-German group was very tight-knit in the South Tyrol, and in part to the lack of interest showed by Francesco Salata toward the problems of the territories annexed to Italy on its northern border. While head of the Central Office for the New Provinces, the politician from Cherso had shown a very different degree of determination in handling the national issues of the Giulia region! See Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., p. 299. 7 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 76 f. 8 Ibid., pp. 77–83. 9 See Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 140. According to Angelo Tasca, in Venezia Giulia, the Fasci had an “almost official” mission. 10 About the notion of “frontier Fascism,” see Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 130; Id., Trieste, p. 114, and, more recently, A. Vinci, Sentinelle della Patria: Il Fascismo al Confine Orientale 1918–1941, Rome, Laterza, 2011. 11 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 163. 12 Ibid., p. 118. 13 On this point, see Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., pp. 159–61. 14 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 119. 15 See, for example, A. Tamaro, La Lotta delle Razze nell’Europa Danubiana, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1923. 16 See A. Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo: Una Società Post-asburgica negli Anni di Consolidamento della Dittatura Mussoliniana, 1922–1935, Gorizia, LEG, 2004, pp. 96–100. 17 On this important representative body of the European minorities, see S. Bamberger-Stemmann, Der Europäische Nationalitätenkongress 1925 bis 1938: Nationale Minderheiten zwischen Lobbyistentum und Grossmachtinteressen, Marburg-Lahn, Verlag Herder Institut, 2000. 18 E. Pelikan, Josip Vilfan v Parlamentu—Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Josip Vilfan, Trst-Trieste, Circolo per gli studi sociali Virgil Šček, 1997, p. 174. 19 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 185. 20 Ibid., pp. 185–7. 21 Ibid., p. 91. 22 On the Central Office for the New Provinces, see Riccardi, Francesco Salata tra Storia, Politica e Diplomazia, cit., pp. 207–30, 274–5, 288–302. Riccardi’s study confirms the image of an irredentist Adriatic lobby very attached to its local roots, whose main aim in embracing irredentism had been to fight the Slavic enemy from an advantageous position. The political culture of this élite was rooted in the Hapsburg world, which also explains its demand to keep the preceding legislation in force. Its members operated with the objective of maintaining their own position at the regional level as the region passed from Austria to Italy. 23 See A. Rocco, “L’unità delle Leggi, “in Gerarchia—Rivista Politica” (Nove Anni dopo l’Armistizio: La Venezia Giulia), V, September 1927, pp. 781–90, especially p. 783. 24 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 193–5. 25 Ibid., p. 195. 26 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp.179–80. 27 After the 1921 elections there were five Slovenian deputies. In 1924 only Vilfan and Besednjak were elected, and Jože Srebrnič for the Communists. 28 On the theme of Slovenian parliamentary representation, see M. Kacin, “Il Movimento Nazionale Sloveno-croato Durante l’Opposizione dell’Aventino,” in Ead.

148  Frontier Fascism Vivere al Confine: Sloveni e Italiani negli Anni 1918–1941, Gorizia, Goriška Nohorjeva Družba, 2004, pp. 125–68. 29 Hannah Arendt’s analysis is crucial for our understanding of the antagonistic relationship between the state and the people in the national movements of the Hapsburg Empire. See The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1951, pp. 222–65. On Slovak Nationalism see the case study by Sabine Witt, Nationalistische Intellektuelle in der Slowakei 1918–1945. Kulturelle Praxis zwischen Sakaralisierung und Säkularisierung, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter-Oldenbourg, 2015. 30 Pelikan, Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Josip Vilfan, cit., p. 106. 31 E. Pelikan, Engelbert Besednjak v. Parlamentu. cit. Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Engelbert Besednjak, p. 265. 32 L. Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, Trieste, Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 1974, pp. 37–9. 33 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 212 f. 34 Ibid., p. 276. See also M. Hametz, Making Trieste Italian, 1918–1954, Woodbridge Suffolk, The Royal Historical Society, The Boydell Press, 2005, pp. 124–28. 35 Even as late as 1922, Mussolini’s declarations on this issue had been very different. During a Parliamentary debate, in reply to a speech by Josip Vilfan, Mussolini said that he intended to respect the language and the rights of national aliens, and that the Italian border had been set on the Mount Nevoso and the Brenner Pass out of “sheer necessity” (clearly because of its defensive and strategic function). See Pelikan, Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Engelbert Besednjak, cit., pp. 180–2. 36 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 163 f. Most of Mussolini’s letter is quoted by Apollonio in Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., p. 184. 37 See Pelikan, Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Engelbert Besednjak, cit., p. 137. 38 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 199. 39 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., p. 65. 40 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 102 f. 41 G. Cobol, “Il Fascismo e gli Allogeni,” in Gerarchia—Rivista Politica (Nove Anni Dopo l’Armistizio: La Venezia Giulia), cit., pp., 803–6, especially p. 803. The authors of the essays of this monographic issue are in most cases the secretaries of the Fascio in Venezia Giulia. It is plausible, therefore, that Gerarchia reproduced the views expressed in the meetings already mentioned. 42 See R. Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955, Konstruktion und Artikulation des Nationalen im Italienisch-jugoslawischen Grenzraum, PaderbornMunich-Vienna, Schöningh, 2004, p. 266. 43 On the greater tolerance shown toward Christian-social associations and toward the Slovenian Catholic press, see M. Kacin Wohinz, “La Resistenza Clandestina dei Partiti Nazionali Sloveni della Venezia Giulia fra le due Guerre Mondiali,” in Ead., Vivere al Confine, cit., pp. 169–206. 44 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 276. 45 See Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955, cit., pp. 247–8. 46 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 160–4; L. Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, Trieste, Società Editrice Mutilati e Combattenti, 1929, pp. 88–9. Lorena Vanello finds that similar caution was shown in Istria in dissolving Slovenian and Croatian rural banks. She also remarks that, leaving aside sporadic outpourings of xenophobia, no organic plan existed for the expulsion of Slovenes and Croats, and for replacing them with Italian farmers. See L. Vanello, “Casse Rurali e Campagne Istriane (1927–1937),” in S. Bon, A. Millo et al., L’Istria tra le due Guerre: Contributi per una Storia Sociale, Rome, Ediesse, 1985, pp. 167–224, especially pp. 175, 218.

Frontier Fascism  149 47 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 104–6. 48 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 104–6. 49 According to a declaration made in Parliament by the Minister of Public Education Pietro Fedele on March 23, 1927, in the district of Gorizia alone one hundred eighteen teachers had already passed the test for teaching the Italian language. See Pelikan, Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Engelbert Besednjak, cit., p. 307. 50 M. Kacin Wojinz and J. Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia 1866–1998, Venezia, Marsilio, 1998, pp. 49 f. It is very likely that the complete Italianization of Slovenian and Croatian education was decided in the meeting in Rome between Mussolini and the secretaries of the fascist party of the eastern province. Slovenian was supposed to become a dialect, perhaps even, in time, an Italian dialect (!). See Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 65–6. 51 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., p. 197. 52 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 29–31. 53 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 277–9, especially pp. 194 f; Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 198–9. 54 Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento, cit., p. 158. 55 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., p. 80. 56 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., p. 51. 57 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., p. 143. 58 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 280–2; P. Parovel, L’identità Cancellata: L’Italianizzazione Forzata dei Cognomi, Nomi e Toponimi nella “Venezia Giulia” dal 1919 al 1945, Trieste, Eugenio Parovel Editore, 1985. 59 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., p. 152. 60 The Slovenian deputies in Parliament also used this word to define their own ethnic-national group. See, for example, Pelikan, Discorsi Parlamentari dell’On. Josip Vilfan, cit., pp. 169, 171. 61 Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 13. 62 Ibid., p. 45. 63 See Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., pp. 49–54. 64 Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 13. 65 Ibid., pp. 23–4. 66 Ibid., pp. 43–4. 67 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 283; Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 329–30. As a result of these critical comments, the Company was transformed into the Associazione nazionale volontari di guerra [National Association of War Volunteers], and “normalized,” by appointing Ragusin Righi as President. 68 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 203–4. 69 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., p. 69. 70 Apih, Trieste, cit., p. 129. 71 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 115–22. 72 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 141, 282; KacinWohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 57. In the first half of the 1920s, a Slovenian fascist movement had been created in Gorizia. It also published a periodical in Slovenian, Nova Doba [New time]. 73 Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 54. 74 See L. Vanello, “Colonizzazione e Snazionalizzazione nelle Campagne della Venezia Giulia tra le due Guerre,” in Massimo Pacetti (ed.), L’Imperialismo Italiano e la Jugoslavia: Atti del Convegno Italo-jugoslavo, Ancona 14–16 Ottobre 1977, Urbino, Argalìa, 1981, pp. 487–510, especially pp. 503–4.

150  Frontier Fascism 75 Ibid., pp. 508–9. 76 In support of this thesis, see Vinci, Il Fascismo al Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 484–5. 77 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp., 272–85; 350–2. 78 Vinci, Il Fascismo al Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 484–5. 79 Ibid., pp. 470–2, 489; Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 122–5. 80 KacinWohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 57. 81 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 55–69. See also Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 68. 82 Gentile, Il Culto del Littorio, cit., p. 185. See also Ibid., pp. 146–54, 180– 95. [English edition: The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, Cambridge, Mass.-London, Harvard University Press, 1996.] 83 See E. Gentile, Il Mito dello Stato Nuovo Dall’antigiolittismo al Fascismo, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1999, pp. 248–52. 84 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 37–8. 85 Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 81. 86 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp.189–90. 87 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 106 f. 88 Ibid., p. 132. 89 On the options of the South Tyrolean peoples, see R. Steininger’s synthetic and pointed analysis, Südtirol im 20. Jahrhundert, Innsbruck-Vienna, Studienverlag, 1997, pp. 153–74. 90 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., pp. 172–5. 91 See especially E. Collotti, “Sul Razzismo Antislavo,” in A. Burgio (ed.), Nel Nome della Razza: Il Razzismo nella Storia d’Italia 1870–1945, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999, pp. 33–62. Collotti labels as “racist” the widespread prejudices held both by the Fascists and by the Italians of the Giulia region regarding the cultural level of the Slavs. 92 See G. Sluga, “Identità Nazionale Italiana e Fascismo: Alieni, Allogeni e Assimilazione sul Confine Nordorientale Italiano,” in M. Cattaruzza (ed.), Nazionalismi di Frontiera: Incontri e Scontri di Identità sull’Adriatico Nordorientale 1850–1950, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2003, pp. 171–202. According to G. Sluga, even after the introduction of racial laws, “no biological explanation was given for the Slavs’ ‘otherness’.” Ibid., p. 195. 93 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 201. 94 See S. Bon Gherardi, La Persecuzione Antiebraica a Trieste (1938–1945), Udine, Del Bianco, 1972, pp. 73–92. See also Apollonio’s succinct remarks in Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., p. 399. 95 Ragusin Righi, Politica di Confine, cit., p. 52. 96 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 273; M. Cattaruzza, “  ‘Last Stop Expulsion,’ The Minority Question and Forced Migration in East-central Europe: 1918–49”, in, Nations and Nationalism 16 (2010/2001), pp. 108–26. 97 Ibid. 98 S.C.A. Mccartney, National States and National Minorities, London-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1934. 90 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 195 ff.; L. Monzali, Il sogno dell’Egemonia: L’Italia, la Questione Jugoslava e l’Europa Centrale, Florence, 2010, Le Lettere, pp. 41–5. 100 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, cit., p. 27. 101 Čermelj, Sloveni e Croati in Italia tra le due Guerre, cit., p. 220. 102 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 288–93, 355–7.

Frontier Fascism  151 103 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 361–71. 104 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 292. 105 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 201–2. 106 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 214 ff. 107 About the activity of the Organization of Yugoslav Nations, of Nardona obrana, and of other Yugoslav organizations active among Slovenian and Croatian refugees in Venezia Giulia, see Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955, cit., pp. 183–216. 108 Ibid., pp. 187–8. 109 Ibid., p. 265. 110 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., p. 188. See also V. Gayda’s propaganda pamphlet, La Jugoslavia contro l’Italia: Documenti e Rivelazioni, Rome, Stab. tipografico del Giornale d’Italia, 1933, pp. 65–9. 111 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., pp. 191–2. The publication Il Fascismo e il Martirio delle Minoranze, Giustizia e Libertà (ed.), Paris, Edizioni di Giustizia e Libertà, 1933, lists the following attacks for the months between the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1933: the killing of the Slavic militiaman Goffredo Blasina and of an editor of Il Popolo di Trieste, following a bomb explosion; the lethal stabbing in Rovigno of the Slavic militiaman Procraivez; and the assassination by gunfire of Della Valle, secretary of the Fascio of San Dorligo, and of his wife. There was also the attempted murder of the Slavic militiaman Giovanni Curet. This citation comes from the following publication: Comitato per le onoranze funebri degli eroi di Basovizza presso la Biblioteca nazionale slovena e degli studi di Trieste (ed.), Il Fascismo e il Martirio delle Minoranze, Trieste, Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 2004, p. 44. 112 See Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955, cit., p. 267. 113 See Gayda, La Jugoslavia contro l’Italia, cit., pp. 72–3. 114 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 308 ff.; Gayda, La Jugoslavia contro l’Italia, cit., pp. 73–7. On the origin of the Struggle organization, see Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 52. The Struggle organization developed in the youth clubs of the Slovenian associational network, which held more radical (irredentist) positions than traditional associations. 115 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., pp. 59 f. 116 We can find interesting quantitative data on Slovenes and Croats from Venezia Giulia refugees in Yugoslavia, in Wörsdörfer, Krisenherd Adria 1915–1955, cit., pp. 284–6. When the province of Lubiana was occupied by the Italian army, refugees from Venezia Giulia supposedly numbered 17,429. According to the refugees’ newspaper, Istra, in 1930 in all of Yugoslavia there were about thirty thousand refugees and emigrants. 117 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., pp. 63–5. 118 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 204. 119 Ibid. See also Il Fascismo e il Martirio delle Minoranze, cit., pp. 47–8. 120 Ibid., p. 48 (italics by the author). 121 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., pp. 58–63. 122 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., pp. 183–91. 123 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 345 ff. 124 Ibid. 125 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 61. 126 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 196–8. 127 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 185–91. See also R. Moscati, “Gli Esordi della Politica Estera Fascista. Il Periodo Contarini. Corfù,” in A. Torre (ed.), La Politica Estera Italiana dal 1914 al 1943, Turin, Eri, 1963, pp. 77–91, especially pp. 88–90.

152  Frontier Fascism 128 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 198. 129 On the truly broad implications of this treaty of friendship and cordial cooperation, an initiative thwarted because Belgrade’s Parliament never ratified it, see G. Giannini, Documenti per la Storia dei Rapporti fra l’Italia e la Jugoslavia, cit., pp. 124 ff. 130 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 272; Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 36; Cattaruzza, L’Italia e la Questione Adriatica, cit. pp. 173–79. 131 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 195–7. See also M. Dassovich, I Molti Problemi dell’Italia al Confine Orientale, vol. I: Dall’Armistizio di Commons alla Decadenza del Patto Mussolini-Pasic (1866–1929), 2 vols., Udine, Del Bianco, 1989, pp. 232–3. 132 Apollonio, Venezia Giulia e Fascismo, cit., p. 192. Yugoslav displeasure with the Tirana Pact weighed decisively against the negotiations. See Dassovich, I Molti Problemi dell’Italia al Confine Orientale, vol. I, cit., pp. 237–8. 133 See R. Moscati, “Locarno—Il Revisionismo Fascista—Il Periodo Grandi e la Nuova Fase della Politica Estera,” in A. Torre (ed.), La Politica Estera Italiana Dal 1914 al 1943, cit., pp. 100–13. 134 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 198. 135 Ibid., p. 199. See also H.J. Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period 1918–1940, Westport, Conn.-London, Praeger, 1997, pp. 35–48. 136 See R. Grispo, “Il Patto a Quattro—La Questione Austriaca—Il Fronte di Stresa,” in A. Torre (ed.), La Politica Estera Italiana Dal 1914 al 1943, cit., pp. 118–58, especially pp. 118–26; Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy, cit., pp. 71–3. 137 See F. Suvich, Memorie 1932–1936, G. Bianchi (ed.), Milan, Rizzoli, 1984, pp. 218–9. 138 See T. Sala, “Tra Marte e Mercurio—Gli Interessi Danubiano-balcanici dell’Italia,” in E. Collotti, N. Labanca e T. Sala, Fascismo e Politica di Potenza. Politica Estera 1922–1939, Milan, La Nuova Italia, 2000, pp. 205–46, especially pp. 233–5. 139 Ibid., p. 234. 140 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 222. 141 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 322; Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 224. 142 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 322 f. 143 Grispo, “Il Patto a Quattro—La Questione Austriaca—Il Fronte di Stresa,” cit., pp. 126, 137. 144 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 165. 145 Ibid., pp. 198–9. 146 Grispo, “Il Patto a Quattro—La Questione Austriaca—Il Fronte di Stresa,” cit., pp. 156–7. 147 Ibid., pp. 154–5. Burgwyn correctly remarks that Italy’s attempt to practice a policy that would bring it closer both to Austria and Hungary at the same time was unrealistic. Austria wanted to maintain the status quo above all, whereas Hungary followed a radically revisionist course. See Burgwyn, Italian Foreign Policy, cit., p. 89. 148 Sapelli, Trieste Italiana, cit., pp. 103–11. 149 Ibid. 150 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 113. 151 Ibid., p. 115. 152 Ibid. See also Vivante, Irredentismo Adriatico, cit. 153 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 112 f.

Frontier Fascism  153 154 See G. Mellinato, Crescita senza Sviluppo: L’Economia Marittima della Venezia Giulia tra Impero Asburgico ed Autarchia (1914–1936), Gorizia, LEG, 2001, pp. 284–5, 335–6; Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 327–9. 155 Apih, Trieste, cit., pp. 124–5. 156 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 331–3. 157 Vinci, Il Fascismo al Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 473 f. 158 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 213. 159 Ibid., pp. 226 f. 160 Ibid., p. 228. Burgwyn offers a similar assessment of what the Anschluss might mean for Italy’s possession of the South Tyrol and of Trieste, in Italian Foreign Policy, cit., p. 169. 161 See H.J. Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini’s Conquest of Yugoslavia 1941–1943, New York, Enigma Books, 2005, pp. 14, 16. 162 F. Cusin, “La Liberazione di Trieste,” now in G. Cervani (ed.), Gli Scritti Politici di Fabio Cusin nel “Corriere di Trieste.” Gli Anni dell’Opposizione Ragionata (1949–1951), with the addition of the reprint of “La Liberazione di Trieste” by the same author, Udine, Del Bianco, 1994, pp. 9–40, especially p. 30. 163 B. Mussolini, “Discorso di Trieste,” in E. Susmel and D. Susmel (eds.), Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, vol. 29: Dal Viaggio in Germania all’Intervento dell’Italia nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Florence, La Fenice, 1959, pp. 144–7, especially p. 145. It was Mussolini’s fourth visit to Trieste, but the first after the march on Rome. Mussolini had been in Trieste in 1918, 1920, and 1921. 164 Ibid., p. 147. 165 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 341 f.; Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 213, 234–5. 166 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 63. “After 1937, the youth of Trieste and Gorizia could thus develop very lively quasilegal activities. They organized cultural and recreational events, lectures, language courses, choirs, and literary publications. The Slovenes paid a high price for their public presence; when Italy entered the war, in the summer of 1940, hundreds of people were arrested. The most prominent figures ended up before the special tribunal for the defense of the state.” 167 Ibid., p. 66. 168 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 237. 169 Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., pp. 14–5. 170 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 199; Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 160. 171 Čermelj, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority, cit., p. 215.

6 The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia 1941–43

1 “By the Grace of the Führer”: The Italian Occupation in Yugoslavia On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, thus starting World War II. Immediately afterward, Great Britain and France issued their war declarations, even though no significant war operations followed (the so-called “phony war”). Poland was occupied and defeated in three weeks. The Soviet Union occupied the eastern part of the country as had been stipulated in the secret protocol of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact; in June 1940 it also annexed the Baltic countries, as well as Bessarabia and the northern part of Bucovina, both Romanian territories.1 Even though it had signed the “Pact of Steel” in April 1939, Italy declared that it would not participate in the war, until the German victories of the first half of 1940 over Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France convinced Mussolini that the conflict would end soon. He then declared Italy’s entry into the war on June 10.2 On October 28, 1940, Italy attacked Greece with disastrous results which forced the Reich to come to the aid of its ally.3 The illusion that Italy could wage a parallel war, pursuing independent aims in the Mediterranean and the Balkans, was shattered by the inadequacy of the weaponry and the overall weakness of the Italian army.4 Besides, it seems that the main objective of the high command with regard to the campaign in Yugoslavia was to keep the army intact as much as possible and to avoid casualties. “The destruction of Tito was secondary in this context.”5 Mussolini himself wondered whether Italy was not, by now, a mere “vassal nation” of Germany. There were only two alternatives in the “new European order,” he said: reduction to the condition of a satellite state or becoming a German colony.6 On October 13, 1941, he repeated this concept in greater detail: In Germany there exist certain phonograph records. Hitler presses them; the others play them. The first record was the one about Italy being the loyal ally, on an equal footing with Germany. . . . Then came

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  155 the second record, the one about victories, that Europe would be dominated by Germany. . . . The associated States will be confederate provinces of Germany. Among these the most important is Italy. . . . We have to accept these conditions because any attempt to rebel would result in our being reduced from the condition of a confederate province to the worse one of a colony. Even if they should ask for Trieste tomorrow, as part of German Lebensraum, we would have to bow our heads.7 To be fair, at least until the very end of 19428 most observers gave similar assessments of the situation and of the features of German hegemony in Europe. After Yugoslavia joined the Tripartite Pact, a group of Serbian officers leaning toward Great Britain staged a rebellion in the night between March 26 and 27, 1941. They deposed the prince regent Pavle and declared the heir to the throne, Petar Karadjordjević, to be of age.9 At this point, Italy’s plan to attack Yugoslavia took shape quickly. After German troops launched their attack on April 6, 1941 and occupied Belgrade just a week later, on April 13, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria annexed parts of the country. On April 17 the Yugoslav High Command was forced to sign its unconditional surrender. Italy was awarded southern Slovenia with its capital Ljubljana, almost the entire Dalmatian coast, Montenegro, and Kosovo. A Croatian Ustaša State was also founded, the Nezavisna Država Hrvaska [Independent Croatian State], which formally belonged to the Italian sphere of influence but was de facto, since its very inception, a fief of the German Reich. Italy established the Province di Lubiana, di Spalato e di Cattaro [from now on, the Province(s) of Lubiana, Spalato and Cattaro], and annexed them, while extending significantly the borders of Fiume and Zara by incorporating the districts of Kupa, Sussak, Buccari [Bakar], and Segna [Senj]. Italy installed a civil commissioner pro tempore in Montenegro, whereas a good part of Kosovo and Macedonia were added to Albania, which Italy had already occupied in April 1939. Italy appeared to have fulfilled and even gone beyond the maximum aspirations of nationalism’s most radical wing (Salvemini’s “Dalmatomaniacs”), formulated during World War I and in the immediate postwar years.10 The fulfillment of those aspirations did not occur in the most reassuring context, because the radical redefinition of the European balance of power was driven by Germany, which would clearly enjoy a hegemonic position in the “new European order” now taking shape.11 Italy thus decided to occupy Slovenia, which had never been an objective of even the most radical nationalists, mostly to prevent the German ally from establishing its heavy presence right along the Italian eastern borders.12 In other words, Slovenia was a Pufferzone [buffer zone, T.N.]13 on a border already weakened by the fact that the loyalty of the local population, mostly of Slavic origin, could certainly not be taken for granted.14 On July 31, 1942, in a conversation between Mussolini and the top representatives of the General Staff and with

Figure 6.1  North Adriatic 1941–43

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  157 the Chiefs of the Army Corps stationed in Slovenia and Croatia, the “Duce” gave a retrospective explanation of the reasons why fascist Italy had been pushed to occupy a part of Slovenia: “After the collapse of Yugoslavia we found ourselves with half a province falling in our lap; the poorer half, I should add. The Germans informed us that there was a new border. We could only acknowledge it. April 1941.”15 In reality, by abandoning the Western powers and the Stresa Front, and by waging war against Ethiopia, Mussolini himself had contributed to disrupting the post-war order and to opening the door to a dangerous revisionism on the European continent. On the eve of France’s defeat, Mussolini had already expressed his fears that Hitler would steal Trieste from him, in case Italy continued to remain neutral.16 Similar rumors had circulated ever since the signing of the Pact of Steel and throughout 1939, giving rise to Italy’s alarmed discontent.17 According to the historian Renzo De Felice’s persuasive reconstruction, Mussolini’s redefinition of his objectives toward Balkan Europe was thus due first of all to the radical revisionism practiced by the German ally, a move which pushed Italy, in turn, to mark its position on the chessboard of southeastern Europe. The merely reactive character of this Balkan policy is confirmed by the fascist regime’s inability to articulate a persuasive imperial policy which might go beyond an empty and rhetorical reassertion of the glories of Venice. In an essay written several years ago, Francesco Casella put forward the persuasive thesis that, even after Italy occupied vast areas of Yugoslavia and Albania, these territories remained at the periphery of the Italian Empire. This was an Empire that “had its hypothetical strong points in Suez and in eastern Africa, because the routes to the Far East went through the southeastern Mediterranean, while the central and northern Adriatic were by now cut off completely from those crucial waterways.”18 Despite the “Duce’s” bombastic proclamations, Italy thus remained a mid-level power unable to create the conditions necessary for its own, autonomous foreign policy, and was forced, therefore, merely to react to changeable power relations in the international arena. The entry into the war in June 1940 fits this pattern perfectly. From this point of view Italy— even though labeled “a great power”19—was not so different from the other partners of the Third Reich which, in the wake of the impression generated by German victories, had hurried up to join the Tripartite Pact: Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.20 All these states expected benefits, territorial acquisitions in particular, from the German conquests in central and eastern Europe.

2 The Policy of Occupation The conquest of Dalmatia answered the wishes and hopes of the powerful lobby of exiles. Alessandro Dudan and Antonio Tacconi, both from Spalato, and Francesco Salata, from Cherso, even advocated the annexation of the

158  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia region as far as the watershed of the Dinaric Alps.21 But the disagreements that had characterized the irredentist front at the end of World War I still vexed the Dalmatian question. While the Navy favored a “maximum” program, the Army, worried about its ability to defend the mainland, wanted to limit the annexation to a few, strategically important islands. The King, in his turn, opposed annexation, whereas Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano supported the more radical position. According to a note by the industrialist Giovanni Ansaldo, public opinion, which was much more concerned by the setbacks on the Greek front, reacted with indifference to the occupation of Dalmatia.22 The Treaties of Rome of May 18, 1941 between Italy and the Croatian State formally completed annexation, while also awarding to Italy the islands of Arbe, Veglia, Lissa, Curzola, and Mèleda [Mljet]; on the mainland, the territories as far east as Mount Vir, near Spalato, up to a maximum of forty kilometers from the coast and around the Bocche di Cattaro [Boka Kotorska].23 Managed for a short time by the federale of Zara, Athos Bertolucci, the province was then ruled as a governorship, with Giuseppe Bastianini as its governor.24 The meager Italian minority in Dalmatia, evacuated to Italy for fear of reprisals by the Yugoslav army during the brief war operations, returned after the occupation had taken place, publicly and through an organized effort. The writer Enzo Bettiza, who came from a liberal wealthy family from Spalato, and was for a short time a refugee in Ancona with his relatives, has left us a description of his return to his native town: They corralled us like sheep in a procession, aiming only to show the Slavic majority of Spalato that the Slavic era was over, and they forced us to march through the empty city, singing threatening irredentist anthems (“Let us swear on Dalmatia’s honor that not a single Croat will ever be among us again!”), walking behind tricolored banners and a military band of the Italian army. The local people did not show their faces, neither from the windows nor in the streets. In the pause between one anthem and the next all we could hear was the birds flapping their wings and the seagulls shrieking against the soundless sky. Our short march to Dalmatia as victors was celebrated in utmost silence.25 A number of refugees who had left the province right after the war went back as well, following the Italian army. Their supposedly long-term stay was destined to last less than two years.26 Bastianini proceeded with the forced Italianization of the new province. Italian became the mandatory language for functionaries and teachers, even though Croatian was tolerated for communication within the civil administration. The governor ordered the Italianization of names of geographic places, streets, squares, and so forth, as had previously been done in Venezia Giulia and in South Tyrol, and the disbanding of non-fascist political

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  159 associations. Cultural, recreational, and sporting associations seemed to be destined to follow the same fate. Dalmatian residents who wished to continue their studies in Italy could apply for newly-established grants. Fiftytwo Italian Dalmatians and even two hundred and eleven Croats and Serbs took advantage of this opportunity.27 The Bishopric of Zara was awarded jurisdiction over the clergy; the sacraments could only be administered in Italian; and religious ceremonies had to end with a blessing for the King of Italy.28 Economically, Dalmatia was plagued by serious structural weaknesses and suffered from the fact that Croatia boycotted the reactivation of maritime communications between the coastal towns.29 While letting the province languish economically, Bastianini proceeded heavy-handedly against Serbs and Croats, considered untrustworthy. Following the occupation, a good number of functionaries left the country spontaneously, but about four thousand people were expelled or imprisoned. Slavic professionals were forbidden to practice their trades, and about seven hundred “suspects” were interned in Italy.30 However, for the few hundred local Jews and for those Jews who had taken refuge there after leaving the Croatian state, the Italian annexation of Dalmatia was providential, especially when we compare the situations there with the one in Croatia, where deportations to the death camps went on incessantly, and bands of collaborationist Ustaše carried out massacre after massacre in the concentration camps built for Serbs and Jews. Even many Serbs sought refuge in the zone of Italian occupation, thus escaping what amounted to a genocide which the Ustaše perpetrated against them.31 The Italian army devised pretexts and created delays to avoid delivering the Dalmatian Jews to its German ally. About four thousand foreign Jews who had taken refuge in the zone of occupation were interned in the concentration camp of Arbe to protect them from deportation and death.32 After September 8, 1943, the German forces of occupation captured about three hundred Jews interned there, but most of them managed to escape and survive.33 The behavior of the Italian army toward Jewish civilians in Dalmatia, Greece, France, and North Africa is one of the few bright pages of Italian military history during World War II.34 James Burgwyn fittingly reminds us that Italy was the only satellite state of the Third Reich that refused to deliver to the Germans its Jewish citizens residents of other countries; besides, Italy was the only country that extended its protection to Jews who were not Italian citizens, but who found themselves in territories where the Italian tricolore flew.35 After the German attack on the Soviet Union, in Dalmatia as well as in Montenegro the Italian army found itself confronting two challenges: the increasing activism of the partisans of the national liberation army led by the Croatian communist Josip Broz (Tito),36 and a bloody national and civil war among the various political factions active in Yugoslavia. All these factions, allied on the same side as, or against the occupying forces, but often shifting

160  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia their allegiance on the basis of tactical considerations, engaged in a fight to the death with the goal of achieving a favorable position in the context for power that would surely follow the end of the conflict. Despite the introduction of stricter penal laws, in particular the death penalty for the crime of rebellion, Mussolini was forced to declare Dalmatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and the occupied Croatian and Bosnian territories “zones of operations.”37 The first consequence of these measures was to cause fierce competition in Dalmatia between the Governor, Giuseppe Bastianini, and General Quirino Armellini, Chief of the Eighteenth Army Corps.38 Their rivalry ended in Armellini’s removal and led to the confirmation of the prerogatives of Bastianini’s civil authority on a territory swept by a bloody civil war, which the occupying power had proved to be totally unable to control.39 But it was the occupation of Slovenia which had the most serious consequences for the Italian border territories. In the Province of Lubiana, Fascism at first pursued a policy of moderation toward civilians, allowing the use of the local language in schools, at newspapers, in cultural activities, and so forth. Slovenian remained the language of the civil administration; functionaries from the former Yugoslav administration remained in their posts, as did judges and staff in the courts, and even the security forces, including the Carabinieri, and the customs and border police.40 This policy was very different from the aggressive and violent process of Germanization enacted by the Germans in northern Slovenia, which caused about twenty-one thousand Slovenes to flee and seek refuge in the Italian zone of occupation.41 In the already mentioned conversation with the High Command of the Army in July 1942, Mussolini said in passing that initially he did not want to engage in the forced Italianization of the Province of Lubiana: “At the beginning things seemed to proceed in the best possible way. The local people consider the fact of being under the Italian flag as the lesser evil. We gave the province a constitution because we don’t consider the lands that lie beyond the ridge of the Alps part of our national territory, except for exceptional cases.”42 A High Commissioner, the former federale of Trieste and Fiume legionnaire Emilio Grazioli was put in charge of the Province of Lubiana, which was annexed officially on May 3, 1941.43 On May 26, Mussolini issued a decreed establishing a Slovenian Council charged with the task of assisting the High Commissioner. According to a note by Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of National Education at the time, in the meeting of the Council of Ministers of June 7, Mussolini said: “Tomorrow I’ll meet the Council of the new province. I’ll tell them that I have nothing else to ask the Slovenes but that they remain one hundred per cent Slovenian.”44 The head of the Council was the former Bane of Slovenia Marko Natlačen, who had manifested great sympathy for fascist Italy ever since the time when Kosta Stojadinović was Prime Minister. Among the fourteen Council members there was also the Rector of the University of Ljubljana, Matija Slavić, but the majority was comprised of employers and employees of the most important economic concerns, in line with the principles of fascist corporatism.45

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  161 In Slovenia, Fascism relied on a wide and varied collaborationist front, fostered mainly by the Bishop of Lubiana Gregorij Rožman. Slovenian collaborationism was rooted in the political culture that had developed in the country between the two world wars. The strongest political force, the Slovenska Ljudska Stranka [from now on, People’s Party of Slovenia], headed by a charismatic leader, Monsignor Antun Korošec, was a Catholic party with a large following among the conservative peasantry. It also subscribed to the corporatist views of the Austrian Christian Social party, and thus ended up by sympathizing with the fascist version of the same ideology. Korošec had been one of Yugoslavia’s most influential politicians between the two world wars, becoming Prime Minister in 1928. He had been among those who had advocated Yugoslavia’s entry into Tripartite Pact and also favored the protocols of Vienna, which fulfilled Hungary’s revisionist aspirations. He had introduced laws that strictly limited access to university for Jews in Slovenia; and had tried, as the Minister of Education, to have those laws adopted in Yugoslavia as a whole, including the military.46 The collaborationism of the People’s Party of Slovenia was motivated mainly by its anti-Communism. Its support for the Axis Powers was a tactical choice, aimed at preventing the strengthening of the Liberation Front’s partisan forces. The party had made a similar move right after World War I  when it became a supporter of Yugoslavia in response to the revolutionary fits that shook Austria and Hungary at the time. From the point of view of their national goals, the People’s Party favored a “greater Slovenia,” a region that would enjoy ample autonomy within a wider state (preferably a reconstituted Austro-Hungarian confederation). Besides the People’s Party, the varied collaborationist camp included members of several nationalist groups with secular orientation, as well as openly fascist organizations. Several members of the pro-Serbian terrorist Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists declared their personal support for the ideals of the Axis Powers, as did Straža v Viharju [Sentinel in the Tempest], a group founded by the theology professor and priest Lambert Ehrlich,47 who was already outspokenly pro-fascist in the Thirties. Through a circular letter of March 3, 1942, General Mario Roatta, Supreme Commander of the Slovenia-Dalmatia Armed Forces (formerly the Second Army), created an anti-communist voluntary militia [Mvac], completely under Italian command, which soon counted four thousand effectives in charge of auxiliary tasks such as defense of garrisons, reconnaissance of terrain, and so forth. By February 20, 1943, the militia, assigned to the Eleventh Army, counted five thousand one hundred fifty-three militiamen, equipped with seventeen machine guns, one hundred light machine guns, five thousand four hundred twenty-three shotguns, and sixty-one pistols.48 People joined the militia motivated by various reasons which went from sincere support for Fascism, to anti-partisan hatred, to a worldview shaped by strong religious beliefs (whose supporters were in the majority). Undoubtedly there was room for ambiguity within this movement, especially on the

162  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia part of the “Association of Slovenian Brotherhood” which, straddling the fence, continued to keep in touch with the Yugoslav government in exile in London. The Italian occupying forces also tried to spread Fascism’s mass organizations into the new province by setting up welfare centers, combat Fasci, women’s Fasci, sections of the Gioventù italiana del littorio [Italian Fascist Youth], units of peasant housewives, associations of industrial and domestic female workers, of children and young people divided into age brackets, and workingmen’s clubs. Even though the Slovenes did not join these organizations to a “totalitarian” degree, we cannot say that the operation failed completely. The men’s clubs had six thousand two hundred eighty-five members; female associations, two thousand twenty-four; youth organizations such the Balilla and the Piccole italiane [Young Italian girls], five thousand two hundred sixty-six; and the Italian Fascist Youth, five thousand twentysix. This phenomenon was by all means the expression of a minority, but not an insignificant one, especially if we take into account that the Slovenian National Liberation Front exerted considerable pressure against people who wished to join fascist associations, considered such an act tantamount to collaborationism, with all its implications. In 1943 membership in fascist organizations plunged in response to the course of the conflict, and because of Italy’s increasing loss of control over the territory.49 On the opposite front, on April 27, 1941, the Slovenian Communist Party took the initiative of creating the first nucleus of the soon to be Osvobodilna Fronta [from now Slovenian Liberation Front]. On May 1 the structure of the new organization was set; headed by the Communists, it also included National Liberals, Social Christians, and the surviving members of the Tigr clandestine group. That same year, Germany’s attack against the Soviet Union gave a great boost to the partisan movement, galvanizing resistance not only in defense of “the fatherland of Socialism,” but also in the name of pan-Slavic solidarity.50 Don Pietro Brignoli, detailed as military chaplain to the Second Regiment of Grenadiers of Sardinia, author of an important diary on military operations in Slovenia, recounts the change in attitude among the local population after the attack on the Soviet Union: After the beginning of the hostilities with Russia, in the city [Ljubljana] the situation worsened significantly. The Communists launched an intense propaganda campaign, with leaflets tossed into the streets and inside houses at night, with signs written on walls, and clandestine circular letters . . . At this point the command of the Army made, at least in my opinion, a colossal mistake. Instead of sending reinforcements to the garrisons in the interior, it took them away, thus giving people the impression that they were afraid, and leaving the towns of the province at the mercy of the rebels. These didn’t sit on their hands. First of all, they launched terrorist attacks, thus persuading the people that they were stronger than the

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  163 Italians. They then started to carry out such propaganda that those poor townspeople could only believe that we were done in. Every day, according to propaganda news, the rebels killed hundreds and hundreds of Italians who would gladly have gone back to Italy, if they could have; Stalin’s troops were about to arrive, as were six hundred airplanes. So much so that when our troops took action and started to comb the terrain in search of rebels, people were convinced that they were moving against Stalin’s troops.51 Despite having declared the pan-Slavic idea outdated, the Soviets, significantly, held a Slavic Congress in Moscow in April 1942; Ivan Regent, a Communist from Trieste, became the President of the Slovenian section.52 At first, Tito’s resistance movement, based in Bosnia, kept only sporadic contacts with the Slovenian Liberation Front, considered unreliable, at the time, from the point of view of communist ideology, because the Front’s program attributed great importance to national claims to the “unredeemed territories” under Italian sovereignty from the very beginning.53 Indeed, the Slovenian Liberation Front quickly embraced the maximum demands of “bourgeois” parties on both Italy and Austria. On December 14, 1942, Edvard Kardelj, the communist leader in Slovenia, wrote to Tito: If we had not made up our minds, it’s clear that we would have handed over a powerful instrument into the hands of Mihajlović’s followers, who would have demanded this and that through their clandestine press. We discussed this problem for a long time in the party’s directorate, and we reached the conclusion that the demands of the Slovenian people were correct from the point of view of the right of every people to self-determination. Both Trieste and Klagenfurt are completely surrounded by Slovenian suburbs, a factor which Lenin also considered decisive for deciding to what country a city should belong. Of course in a socialist society this issue will not matter at all and will not even arise. But at this moment in history we have only reached the phase of the war of national liberation. That’s why we have to consider this issue as it must be considered within a capitalist context. 54 As early as July 1941, General Mario Robotti, Chief of the Eleventh Italian Army Corps, found that the province’s civilians showed increasing hostility toward the occupying forces. On September 4, Robotti spoke of “an exceptional situation that has arisen in this province . . . unmatched in any other province in the Kingdom.” In his opinion, the situation was characterized by the presence of armed groups “who act with daring, savagery, and disregard for life; they carry out acts of sabotage against railroad, telephone, and telegraph lines; attack army and police members; spit in the faces of officers and sentries; and spread intense subversive propaganda.”55 The first to die were some Italian soldiers and officers who fell into an ambush while

164  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia on patrol.56 Already on September 8, 1941, Mario Robotti emphasized that the Italian army in Slovenia found itself in a war zone, instead of patrolling the new borders of a province at peace, as had been erroneously believed only a few months before. In his Directives Against Rebel Attacks Robotti concluded: Too much of our blood has been shed in this our area of occupation. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in open and honest combat, but in ambushes carried out by criminals who would not dare to assault us openly. Let’s therefore use the means of war all the time, by day or by night, to pause or to move forward, on every terrain, at every moment. Let’s keep our shotguns always loaded and ready, our bayonets always fixed, and our hand grenades always ready to be used against the assassin who may show up suddenly.57 Other officers also acknowledged the changed attitude of the people after the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, and the hatred now expressed toward the Italian occupying power and toward Fascism. In the meantime, news spread of atrocities committed against Italians fallen into partisan hands, while deadly attacks against collaborationists and informers also increased.58 At the end of November 1941, Robotti reported a long list of attacks, killings, assaults on trains, murders of Slovenes sympathetic toward Italy, interruptions of telegraphic lines, and so forth.59 In a memorandum of December 22, 1941, General Renzo Montagnana described a situation in which the partisans wielded ample powers typical of a “countergovernment,” in a territory over which Italian authorities held only partial control. The partisans were able to publicize their death sentences and carry them out; to have their wounded receive hospital care, attended to by physicians and medical students; to carry out recruitment through call-up notices; to collect arms and food supplies; to train new recruits before sending them into operations; and so forth.60 On January 19, 1942, Mussolini put the military authority in charge of public order in the Zara, Spalato, Cattaro, and Lubiana Provinces, and in the territories close to the Province of Fiume. If necessary, the army could act by going over the heads of civil authorities (the Governor and High Commissioner).61 The population’s first show of opposition to these measures was the “silent demonstrations” that took place in Ljubljana: at an agreed-on time, people would desert public venues and streets, leaving them empty;62 in an escalation of violence, the civilians were soon dragged into the hostilities. As early as January 1942, in a meeting of the military’s Highest Command it was mentioned, for example, that two villages had been set on fire.63 The army resorted to the shooting of hostages, whereas partisans who were caught but not immediately executed were systematically tortured in the course of harsh interrogations.64 At the same time, though, disconcerting episodes occurred. Italian soldiers allowed themselves to be disarmed by

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  165 unarmed partisans without offering any resistance. This gives us some indication, albeit partial, of the low level of morale among Italian troops in the recently annexed provinces.65 In Tone Ferenc’s excellent documentary collection, complaints appear frequently in the records of commanders’ meetings and in their correspondence, on the lack of discipline, passivity, and poor fighting spirit among the troops. In a memorandum, Robotti even says that the Italians seemed to be “dazzled by the false glitter of a superior civilization, supposedly a special characteristic of these people,” and that they cultivated the illusion of merging the Slovenes with the large Italian community “by the mere force of attraction of the two civilizations.”66 As late as May 1943 the Supreme Command received a memorandum from Slovenia, according to which several officers had begun sentimental relationships with local women, becoming so dependent on them that they began to reveal goals, routes, dates, and other sensitive information regarding roundup operations, thus turning their fellow soldiers into shooting targets for the partisan movement.67 Considered all together, the anti-partisan repressive measures taken by Italy, as ferocious as they undoubtedly were in individual cases, laid bare the inadequacy of both the military and civil administrations at controlling the phenomenon of armed resistance.68 On February 23, 1942, a blockade around Ljubljana was set up for the first time; through a close net of roadblocks a thorough control of the entire male population between twenty and thirty years of age was carried out.69 More than two hundred people were arrested. Other repressive measures led to the sequestration of radios, vehicles, and even skis and bicycles. On March 1, 1942, General Roatta issued the well-known (and infamous) circular 3C which, starting from the acknowledgement that the “Army is caught in a ceaseless war,” marked a further clampdown in the repression of the resistance. The circular planned mass internments, the arrest of suspects to be used as hostages in view of possible retaliation, and the destruction of villages that might become bases of operations for the Slovenian Liberation Front.70 In a report sent to Tito in the spring of 1942, however, the Slovenian communist leader Edvard Kardelj noted that Italian soldiers behaved in contradictory ways: they applied stern repressive measures on the one hand, while, on the other, they burned a village first and then handed out food to the local population and helped to rebuild the houses destroyed by the fire. The communist party leader commented, disconcerted: “What an ungodly mess!”71 Starting in March the Grenadiers of Sardinia carried out a staggering series of violent actions which reached their peak in the shooting of five civilians in a small village. The Grenadiers also committed common crimes such as robberies and lootings,72 a confirmation of slackening discipline and of the scant control exercised by the Command over the troops.73 In April, after partisans massacred a family of six, considering all collaborationists, the civil and military authorities issued a joint proclamation announcing that, if those responsible for the killing of soldiers or collaborationists could

166  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia not be found, hostages would be executed, chosen among people arrested on the charge of communist or terrorist activities.74 The Italian army also proved inefficient at defending anti-Communists. In his diary Don Brignoli reports an episode in which inhabitants of a village welcomed the Grenadiers with open arms, imploring them to leave a garrison in town as protection against the partisans. The request fell on deaf ears.75 One of the bloodiest incidents took place in May 1942. Twenty-seven Grenadiers died in a partisan ambush. In retaliation, forty political prisoners were executed.76 Executions of hostages by firing squads continued in June in response to partisan actions.77 Even so, Don Pietro Brignoli reports over and over that soldiers were opposed to shooting hostages. In a note of August 5 he says, for example: “I believe I’m not exaggerating if I say that we were as dejected as the people who were about to die. The soldiers no longer wanted to shoot. No one even breathed any more. In that silence we could hear even more loudly the heart-rending wailing of those sentenced to death.”78 In June 1942, the Command of the Eleventh Army Corps prepared a large offensive in an attempt to regain partial control over the territory of the Province of Lubiana, and to launch a decisive attack against the partisan movement. The operation was supposed to last two months. General Robotti asserted revealingly that the number of dead rebels would be the only way to assess results. And he added: “We must leave neither one meter of forest unexplored, nor one cottage unvisited. We cannot afford to have even one rebel escape extreme punishment. We’ll wipe out suspects as well.”79 At the same time, given that the overall course of the war was disastrous for Italy, Mussolini showed his impatience at the considerable mobilization of troops required in the Balkans. In the conversation in Gorizia of July 31, 1942 already mentioned, in the midst of the anti-partisan offensive, the “Duce” declared: The pace of operations must be quick. We cannot keep so many divisions in the Balkans. We must soon increase our forces on the western border and in Tripolitania [western Libya]. Right now the Balkans represent a significant strain for us. We need to decrease deployment on that front.80 In subsequent meetings, draconian measures were decided, including the execution by firing squads of all men found in combat zones, of all those who were not residents of a given area, and of peasants, workers, and able-bodied men found in areas abandoned by the partisans. At the same time, very harsh constraints were imposed on the civilians’ freedom of movement.81 Between July and August total casualties among the partisans amounted to 3,670, of whom 1,053 died in combat, 1,236 were shot on the spot, and 1,381 were taken captive.82 Nonetheless, partisan units were growing stronger, thus making Italian control over the province more and more precarious.

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  167 On October 13, 1942, the Head of the Council Marko Natlačen was killed in an attack in Ljubljana. On October 8, another major collaborationist was killed. Emilio Grazioli answered by massacring thirty-two hostages.83 In a letter to Grazioli of December 3, Robotti had to concede that the military situation had worsened significantly; the partisans had increased their ranks, had improved organizationally, and had been able to inflict heavy losses on the occupying forces. The “great offensive” had thus been a failure, without even counting its high cost in human lives.84 A maximum of five thousand partisans had succeeded in holding in check an occupying army at least ten times stronger. In the operational meeting of June 26, 1943, already mentioned, General Robotti said: “We had one armed man for every eight Slovenes. We will reach the number of 70,000 men, therefore an average of one man for every five Slovenes. This ought to give us certainty that these forces are sufficient. But we don’t have any certainty at all.”85 Despite the harsh repressive measures enforced against partisans, their families, and their supporters, there were no mass deportations of Slovenes with the goal of denationalizing the province, even though some historians, who base their interpretation on a few statements, believe that such a policy had reached an advanced planning stage.86 Speaking before General Cavallero, Mussolini himself at times said that he was in favor of using the transfer of populations as a repressive measure,87 but he also declared the opposite, as Raoul Pupo noted correctly.88 Therefore, the state of research today does not allow us to make unequivocal assertions about the intentions of the civil fascist authorities and the military ones about their plans for the Province of Lubiana. One of the many exculpatory memoirs of the General Staff of the Army, written in September 1945, declares: “The Italian authorities never planned to empty some areas completely, as the Germans had done, especially in Slovenia. At a certain point, that project was taken into consideration, but it was soon abandoned.”89 What did take place instead was numerous internments of Slovenes suspected of supporting the partisan movements and their families (including children), as well as collaborationists who feared for their lives, or civilians who wished to escape military recruitment (protective internment).90 Starting in March 1942 the Commander of the Eleventh Army Corps, Mario Robotti, ordered the rounding up en masse of suspects in the Province of Lubiana, and their internment in the camp of Gonars.91 In June, the Commanders of the Second Army decided to intern other people beside those suspected of partisan activity: unemployed workers, refugees, homeless people, former members of the army, beggars, university students, as well as all elementary school teachers, employees, professionals, and parish priests from Venezia Giulia who had moved to Yugoslavia after 1922; “former Italian soldiers from Venezia Giulia who had moved to Yugoslavia after their mandatory service in the army” were singled out. 92 Calculations put the number of Slovenian internees to 30,000,93 many of them held in extremely

168  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia unsafe conditions which led to a very high level of mortality, especially in the winter months of 1942. The worst internment camp was on the island of Arbe, in northern Dalmatia. Built in a great hurry during the large roundup operations of summer 1942, it housed most of the “repressive” (i.e., dangerous) people interned there in tents, without any winter clothes, and with totally insufficient nourishment.94 Deportation was carried out in a completely arbitrary manner especially with regard to males of military age, interned even if they had given no grounds for suspicion of sympathy toward the partisan movement.95 The Army interned elderly people, women, and children who belonged to families suspected of supporting the partisans, or simply lived in areas that had been cleared of their civilian population for military reasons. Tone Ferenc calculates that there were about 1,400 deaths at Arbe out of about 5,000 internees. The Vatican also contacted the General Staff of the SloveniaDalmatia Armed Forces (Supersloda) in an attempt to improve the living conditions of internees, to reduce their numbers, and to have most women and all children released.96 A report by a Medical Captain tasked with an inspection at Arbe, which he carried out between November 14 and 19, 1942, shows that, just in one month between September and October, two hundred nine people died, including sixty-two children under the age of eleven. Most deaths were caused by intestinal infections which turned lethal for people who were already in a highly debilitated condition.97 From January 1943 onward, mortality decreased thanks to the improvement in food rations and to the transfer of most internees into brick buildings.98 But even after July 25, 1943, the Bishop of Trieste and Capodistria, Antonio Santin, certainly not suspected of sympathy for the Slovenian partisans, asked the Prefect of Trieste to take steps to free the majority of internees “who are often kept in inhuman conditions.”99 There is no doubt that the Italian Army was guilty of war crimes in the occupied areas of Yugoslavia.100 That category includes the killing of hostages carried out in retaliation against partisan attacks, which in individual cases reached an order of magnitude of tens of people. The same holds true for setting fire to villages suspected of having helped the partisans, for the indiscriminate killing of prisoners and unarmed persons stopped by the police, and for torture during interrogations.101 These crimes were committed in the context of a war of aggression which triggered, in its turn, a violent partisan reaction. The latter took the form of attacks, ferocious killings, the disfigurement of enemy corpses, torture, and the display of mutilated corpses as a warning to the occupier. In Slovenia (as in Dalmatia and Montenegro), the opposing parties engaged in an escalation of brutality, giving rise to what Omer Bartov has defined the “barbarization of warfare,” in reference to the war waged by Germany on the eastern front.102 After the war the General Staff of the Italian Army produced several exculpatory memoirs to counter the Yugoslav request for the delivery of war criminals.

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  169 These writings skillfully emphasize the context of unrestrained violence in which the forces of occupation had committed their crimes. The Army also redacted a summary document in English which was sent, in August 1946, to the representatives of the United State, France, and Great Britain then in Paris for the signature of the Peace Treaty. Even though the report failed in its goal, which was to prevent Italy from being officially declared guilty ofcrimes against peace and against humanity, it did, according to Di Sante, “contribute to mitigating the Yugoslav charges.”103On the eve of the collapse of the Italian Army, on July 26, 1943, the Province of Lubiana was officially declared a “zone of operations,” an acknowledgement of the long-standing situation on the ground. The General Staff assumed all the powers of the civil authorities. The High Commissioner remained in office, but reported to the military command.104 On September 9, troops of the Seventy-first German Division occupied Ljubljana. They broke through without striking a single blow at Sussak as well. The occupation of Fiume followed immediately afterward. The generalized disbanding of Italian army units abandoned without orders—the phenomenon that characterized the experience of soldiers and officers on all fronts after the signing of the armistice—thus occurred also on the eastern border.105

3 The Situation on the Eastern Border The occupation of Slovenia profoundly destabilized the situation on the eastern border. The joint aggression by Italians, Germans, and Hungarians meant that for the Slovenes there was the impending danger of the extinction of their body politic, which made those sensitive to the national issue justifiably anxious about the possibility that their nation would not survive as a unified entity. Collaborationist initiatives rose out of the same fear, such as the request to the German occupier that the entire Slovenia be transformed into a satellite state of the Reich, with a status similar to that of Slovakia under Jozef Tiso.106 Inevitably, these fears also touched at least a number of Slovenes in Venezia Giulia, reinforcing their commitment to resistance. As early as August 16, 1940, the Undersecretary for Internal Affairs, Guido Buffarini Guidi, had all soldiers of Slavic descent or, in a looser sense, of “Austrian descent,” sent far away from the border. In February 1941 these measures were further intensified. In April, at the time of the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Italian military authorities incorporated five thousand Slovenes, including some not of military age, into newly-formed “special battalions,”107 and sent them away from Venezia Giulia. In November 1942, out of four thousand one hundred forty-eight Italian civil internees, the Minister of the Interior labeled two thousand one hundred sixty-five as “rebels” from Venezia Giulia. Among these there were several priests and entire families of peasant origin.108

170  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia The annexation of the Province of Lubiana to Italy generated the paradoxical effect of making the border more and more porous, allowing members of the resistance to flood the territory even beyond the line of demarcation. In their attempt to stem the German threat, the Italians thus exposed their eastern border to the “Slavic threat.”109 Starting from the end of 1941 small bands of Slovenian partisans were active on Italian territory; among their first actions was the derailing of a train on the strategically important railroad line linking Trieste and Fiume.110 On February 28, 1941, at Villa del Nevoso [Ilirska Bistrica], in the Province of Fiume, partisans blew up a train with three hundred German airmen, killing at least seventy.111 In 1942, at the same time as partisan activity grew stronger in the Provinces of Lubiana and Fiume, terroristic actions were carried out at Comeno, San Daniele del Carso, Sesana [Komen, Štanjel, Sežana], in the partisan center of Villa del Nevoso a second time, and so forth. The main targets were railroad lines and trains, as in the Province of Lubiana.112 For the first time, people died, on both sides. Yugoslav resistance increasingly took root in the Slovenian villages under Italian sovereignty. Young people volunteered for military service in the partisan units. In some villages the partisans were able to carry out their propaganda more or less in plain daylight.113 It has been calculated that by the end of October 1942 there were about two hundred sixty armed Slovenian partisans in the Provinces of Trieste and Gorizia.114 They formed clandestine structures devoted to intelligence and espionage, the Varnostna obveščevalna služba [Intelligence and Security Department],115 which played a major role in the killings, arrests, and deportations that accompanied the Yugoslav occupation of May 1945. In Venezia Giulia the Slovenian Liberation Front succeeded fairly easily in winning over non-communist peasants and intellectuals, first because it had no rivals, given the repressive policy enacted by Fascism, and second because it firmly embraced the irredentist aims of Venezia Giulia’s pre-existing Slovenian nationalism. At the same time, by presenting itself as an armed movement led by Communists, the Liberation Front rapidly gained credit and a following among Italian communist cadres which had been forced to go underground.116 In a short time, the Italian Communists found themselves completely subordinate to the armed Slovenian resistance movement. In Trieste, the Slovenian Liberation Front could already count on a solid and well-organized network of clandestine committees by the end of 1941. In December, it signed a pact of collaboration with the Italian Communist Party.117 When Italy entered into the war in 1940, the authorities rounded up three hundred Slovenes. They sent most of them to internment camps or to internal confinement, but a special tribunal tried seventy-two of them on the charge of irredentist clandestine activity.118 The trial took place in December 1941. Among the defendants there were also some Italians who had collaborated with the Slovenes. Twenty-three men were sentenced to thirty years in prison, nine (who belonged to Tigr and to the Communist Party) to death; four had their sentence commuted to

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  171 life in prison by the king’s pardon. The other five were shot at the firing ground of Opicina [Opčina] near Trieste on December 15, 1941. One of these was the young Slovenian communist leader Pinko Tomažič. During the trial, the Liberation Front distributed a leaflet in Trieste in which they declared: “We Slovenes never demanded an inch of Italian land. Likewise, we have no interest in oppressing any honest Italian who happens to live in Slovenian territory.”119 The territorial claim of the Slovenes on Trieste could not be more explicit. According to a journalist, in 1942 anyone living in Venezia Giulia could sense that the war was coming home. Even at this juncture, Fascists from the Giulia region stood out for their extremism: in the course of a lecture held on February 2, 1942, with Mussolini present, they demanded “a strong policy toward people of different ethnic origin.” Fascist attacks picked up again; so did fires set to houses. A series of crimes which claimed victims on both fronts left its macabre trail in Trieste and its surrounding area. AntiSemitism turned particularly violent. On June 30, 1942, the Centro per lo studio del problema ebraico [Center for the Study of the Jewish Problem] was founded; on July 18, Trieste’s synagogue was laid waste, while individual Jews were victims of thuggish attacks.120 Despite the formation of special police corps trained in anti-partisan repression in Trieste and Fiume, the resistance movement continued to grow within the borders of the Italian state to the point that the partisans were able to liberate and manage themselves some areas in the Woods of Trnovo, in the valley of Vipava on Mount Maggiore, and in the area around Gorizia, even if only for a few days.121 June 1942 saw the birth of the Ispettorato di pubblica sicurezza [Office for Public Safety]. Dedicated to anti-partisan warfare, it resorted to systematic torture during interrogations. The Vice-Commissioner Gaetano Collotti became notorious as a torturer. On the eastern frontier, a waning Fascism reacted with insane violence to dynamics and movements over which it could not reassert its control. During 1942, for all practical purposes Venezia Giulia became an area of operations for the Slovenian and Croatian partisan movements.122 A curfew was imposed in several villages on the Karst Plateau, and schools did not reopen.123 In the Province of Fiume, the Prefect Temistocle Testa had eighty peasants from the village of Podhum shot, eight hundred more deported, and six other villages set on fire.124 According to Dennison Rusinow, the events of the war show that fascist Italy had been unable to win the allegiance of the new provinces, which fell into a condition of profound instability when Yugoslavia was attacked. At the end of 1942, ten thousand soldiers were engaged in the struggle against partisans who were active within the old borders of the Italian state. As Italy’s weakness became more and more manifest, and as the course of the conflict turned against the Axis Powers, the issue of “succession” 125 in the lands that Italy had acquired at such a high cost in blood and human lives in the Great War turned into an open question.

172  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia

Notes 1 To this day A. Hillgruber’s book remains one of the best syntheses of the history of World War II: Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Kriegsziele und Strategien der Grossen Mächte, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1982, especially pp. 26–42. 2 R. De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato 1940–1945. L’Italia in Guerra 1940–1943, vol. I: Dalla Guerra “Breve” alla Guerra Lunga, Turin, Einaudi, 1990, pp. 111–8l; Id., Mussolini il Duce, vol. II: Lo Stato Totalitario 1936–1940, Turin, Einaudi, 1981, pp. 805 f.; E. Di Nolfo, “Mussolini e la Decisione Italiana di Entrare nella Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” in E. Di Nolfo, R.H. Rainero, and B. Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza in Europa (1938–40), Milan, Marzorati, 1985, pp. 19–38. 3 De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato, cit., vol. I, pp. 307–59. 4 As far as I know, when it comes to the psychological condition of the Italian army, we do not have anything comparable to Marc Bloch’s war diary, a merciless analysis of the French army’s unwillingness to fight. S. Marc Bloch, L’étrange Défaite: Témoignage Ecrit en 1940, Paris, Gallimard, 1990 (first edition 1946). 5 This is the thesis of the historian Srdjan Trifković, “Rivalry between Germany and Italy in Croatia, 1942–1943,” in Historical Journal, 36, 1993/4, pp. 879–904. D. Rodogno agrees with this assessment in, Il Nuovo Ordine Mediterraneo: Le Politiche di Occupazione dell’Italia Fascista in Europa (1940–1943), Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003, pp. 367–8. 6 G. Ciano, Diary, 1937–1943, New York, Enigma Books, 2002 [original Italian version, Diari, R. De Felice (ed.), Milan, Rizzoli, 1980], note recorded on July 20, 1941, p. 446. 7 Ibid., p. 454. 8 On the effect of German military victories on the credibility of the “new European order,” and on the impact of this prospect on the widespread collaboration with the German occupier, see the insightful remarks of J.T. Gross, “Themes for a Social History of War Experience and Collaboration,” in I. Deak, J.T. Gross, and T. Judt (eds.), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 15–36, especially pp. 26–9. 9 See S. Bianchini and F. Privitera, 6 Aprile 1941. L’Attacco Italiano alla Jugoslavia, Settimo Milanese, Marzorati, 1993, pp. 46–52. 10 Italian expansion into the Balkan Peninsula has led to a flourishing of publications on Italian domination over the Adriatic. However, no one has been able to outline clear imperialistic objectives. See S. Bianchini, “L’Idea Fascista dell’Impero nell’Area Danubiano-balcanica,” in Di Nolfo, Rainero, and Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza, cit., pp. 173–5. 11 See E. Collotti and T. Sala, Le Potenze dell’Asse e la Jugoslavia: Saggi e Documenti 1941–1943, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1974. 12 R. Pupo, “Slovenia e Dalmazia tra Italia e Terzo Reich 1940–1945,” in B. Mantelli (ed.), L’Italia Fascista Potenza Occupante: Lo Scacchiere Balcanico, Trieste, Qualestoria, 1, 2002, pp. 129–42, especially p. 130. 13 On this point see Dennison Rusinow’s lucid assessment: “For, by requiring German intervention to save the situation for the Italian military, it was the fascist fiasco in Greece that brought about increased Axis pressure on a Yugoslavia which flanked the German invasion route southward. Writhing under the pressure, the Yugoslavs provoked a Nazi invasion which shattered the Slavic kingdom, and the dreaded specter of imperialist Greater Germany assuming control over the Slavic Irredentists on the border of Venezia Giulia became a reality.” In Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 271. 14 Ibid., p. 266.

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  173 15 B. Mussolini, “Rapporto a Gorizia a un Gruppo di Alti Comandanti,” in E. Susmel and D. Susmel (eds.), Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, Florence, cit., Dal Discorso al Direttorio Nazionale del Pnf del 3 Gennaio 1942 alla Liberazione di Mussolini, pp. 95–7, especially p. 96. 16 De Felice, Mussolini il Duce, cit., p. 806. On Mussolini’s similar fears regarding the South Tyrol, see Id., Mussolini l’Alleato, cit., vol. I, p. 382. 17 There are several examples of this mood in Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 268 f. 18 See F. Casella, “L’Immagine Fascista dell’Impero: Quale Ruolo all’Adriatico?”, in Di Nolfo, Rainero and Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza, cit., pp. 187–203, especially p. 203. 19 When World War II broke out, both the Allies and Germany overestimated Italy’s military capability. 20 See Bianchini and Privitera, 6 Aprile 1941, cit., pp. 39 f., and now especially M. Cattaruzza, S. Dyroff, and D. Langewiesche (eds.), Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Practices, New York-Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2013. 21 The excessive demands of Dalmatian leading figures and senators caused even Galeazzo Ciano to show signs of impatience. See Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., p. 33. 22 Ibid. 23 De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato, cit., vol. I, p. 383. 24 Pupo, “Slovenia e Dalmazia tra Italia e Terzo Reich,” cit., p. 135. In February 1943 Francesco Giunta replaced Bastianini. 25 E. Bettiza, Esilio, Milan, Mondadori, 1996, p. 287. 26 On the Italian occupation of Dalmatia, see the documentary collection edited by O. Talpo, Dalmazia: Una Cronaca per la Storia (1943–1944), 3 vols., Rome, Stato maggiore dell’esercito—Ufficio Storico, 1990–1995. 27 Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., p. 116. 28 Ibid., p. 118. 29 Because of its orographic configuration and underdeveloped land infrastructures, Dalmatia depended entirely upon maritime traffic for its communications. 30 Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., p. 118. 31 In a report of April 15 on the condition of Italian defensive positions on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and on the shortcomings of the Second Army, the Head of the Croatian office, Ambassador Roberto Ducci acknowledged the loss of military supremacy in Dalmatia. The author remarked that after the massacre of Serbs by the Ustaše in summer 1941, the Italian army and civilians viewed the Croats with “aversion and contempt, and even hatred in some social environments.” Ducci suggested that Italy should adopt the same policy already implemented toward Yugoslavia, and that Badoglio had championed first: “Setting the various ethnic and political groups against one another rekindles reciprocal hatred and creates new opportunities for its development.” See Talpo, Dalmazia: Una Cronaca per la Storia, cit., pp. 492–99, especially p. 499. On the genocidal practice of the Ustaše toward Jews and Serbs, see A. Korb, Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien 1941–1945, Hamburg, Hamburger Edition, 2013. On the rescue of Jews in the Yugoslav areas occupied by the Italian Army, see A. Millo, “L’Italia e la Protezione degli Ebrei nelle Zone Occupate della Jugoslavia”, in F. Caccamo and L. Monzali (eds.), L’Occupazione Italiana della Jugoslavia (1941–1943), Florence, Le Lettere, 2008, pp. 355–78. 32 Davide Rodogno completely distorts the meaning of the internment of Jews at Arbe, in “La Repressione dei Territori Occupati dell’Italia Fascista tra il 1940 e il 1943,” in Mantelli (ed.), L’Italia Fascista Potenza Occupante, cit., pp. 45–84.

174  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia “It is important to distinguish between ‘protective’ and ‘repressive’ civilian deportees in the concentration camps. Some were detained in order to ‘protect’ them from partisan retaliation because they were relatives of collaborationists. Others had been captured as potential or real enemies. During the course of the conflict, however, it became harder and harder to make that distinction, as shown by the case of Jews who were always counted among the ‘protective.’ ” (pp. 56 f.) We can find important points on the different treatment reserved to Slovenes and Jews, often interned even in different camps, in M. Shelah, Un Debito di Gratitudine: Storia dei Rapporti tra l’Esercito Italiano e gli Ebrei in Dalmazia (1941–1943), Rome, Stato maggiore dell’esercito—Ufficio storico, 1991, pp. 151–8. 33 See H. Sundhaussen, “Jugoslawien,” in W. Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der Jüdische Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, Munich, Oldenbourg, 1991, pp. 311–30, especially pp. 321–30. 34 On these events see, for example, Shelah, Un Debito di Gratitudine, cit. Regarding this theme we do not share Davide Rodogno’s reductive assessment. He underlines the fact that in Dalmatia the Italian occupying forces did not take in all the Jewish refugees who crowded together at border crossings, fleeing the territories occupied by Germans and Croats. We should keep in mind that no country (even if it did not participate in the war and was not allied with Nazi Germany, as Italy was) welcomed all the Jewish refugees who tried to cross its borders. Similarly unconvincing is Rodogno’s assertion that the protection of Jews and the refusal to deliver them to the Germans was useful to the Italians because they wanted to signal their independence from their ally. Even if true, this utilitarian reasoning would be a sign that Italian anti-Semitism was weak, and clearly subordinate to other considerations. See D. Rodogno, Il Nuovo Ordine Mediterraneo, cit., pp. 432–84, especially pp. 450–3. In a work he edited, the Slovenian historian Tone Ferenc published unassailable documents which show the solidarity of the command of the Second Army toward Jews interned at Arbe, in Rab-Arbe-Arbissima: Konfinancije, Racije in Internacije v Ljublianski Pokrajini 1941–1943—Dokumenti, Ljubljana, Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino: Društvo piscev zgodovine Nob, 2000, pp. 414–7, 423. 35 Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., pp. 194–5. See also J. Bierman, “How Italy Protected the Jews in the Occupied South of France,” in I. Herzer (ed.), The Italian Refuge: Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1989, pp. 218–27. 36 The first move toward the unification of the communist partisan units took place on November 26 and 27, 1942, at Bihać, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, already liberated, where the Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifašističko Veće Narodnog Oslobedjenja Jugoslavije—Avnoj) was formed. See M. Pacor, Confine Orientale: Questione Nazionale e Resistenza nel FriuliVenezia Giulia, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1964, pp. 163 f. 37 Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., pp. 120–1, 251. 38 Ibid., pp. 121–8. 39 Ibid., p. 127. 40 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 271–5. This policy profoundly annoyed the Germans who occupied the northern part of Slovenia, and who carried out a comprehensive program of Germanization of the areas near the Austrian border through mass deportations of Slovenes. They also accused Italy of having aided the creation of the center of Slovenian irredentism in Ljubljana. See also T. Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana: Documenti 1941–1942, Udine, Istituto friulano per la storia del Movimento di liberazione, 1994, pp. 45, 58–64.

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  175 41 Ibid., pp. 36 f. The policy of purging public administrators and professionals was more drastic in Dalmatia, as already seen. There, attempts to Italianize the province were more marked. See also Rodogno, Il Nuovo Ordine Mediterraneo, cit., pp. 323–5. 42 Mussolini, “Rapporto a Gorizia a un Gruppo di Alti Comandanti,” cit., p. 96. 43 See “3 Maggio 1943: Regio Decreto sull’Annessione della Provincia di Lubiana all’Italia,” in Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 134–7. 44 G. Bottai, Diario 1935–1944, G.B. Guerri (ed.), Milan, Rizzoli, 1982, p. 271. In the same note Bottai reports an irritated comment by Mussolini on the exorbitant requests for annexation of the Dalmatian Italians: “What did they expect? That we invite 800,000 Croats into our homes? It took Rome two centuries to conquer Dalmatia; it took Venice eight.” 45 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 48. 46 M. Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia (1941–1943), Rome, Stato maggiore dell’esercito—Ufficio Storico, 1998, pp. 68 f. 47 Ibid., pp. 63–7. On May 26, 1942, Ehrlich was killed in a partisan attack in a Ljubljana street. See Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 408. On Slovenian collaborationism, see also P. Vodopivec, “Von den Anfängen des Nationalen Erwachens bis zum Beitritt in die Europäische Union“, in P. Štih, V. Simoniti and P. Vodopivec (eds.), Slowenische Geschichte: Gesellschaft— Politik—Kultur, Graz, Leykam, 2008, pp. 369–74; T. Griesser-Pečar, Das Zerrissene Volk Slowenien 1941–1946. Okkupation, Kollaboration, Bürgerkrieg, Revolution, Vienna-Cologne-Graz, Böhlau, 2003, pp. 83–94, 177–200, 257– 331; G.J. Kranjc, To Walk with the Devil: Slovene Collaboration and Axis Occupation, 1941–1945, Toronto-Buffalo-London, University of Toronto Press, 2013. 48 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., pp. 92–9. 49 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 68–81. 50 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., p. 135; Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo, cit., pp. 393 f. We can find mention of the fact that the Soviet Union’s entry into the war gave a jolt to Slovenian resistance in Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 141–2. 51 P. Brignoli, “Santa Messa per i Miei Fucilati,” in Pagine di Storia “Rimosse,” Varese, Edizioni Arterigere—EsseZeta, 2005, p. 113. Don Brignoli’s journal diary was published for the first time in 1973. 52 A. Tamborra, “Panslavismo e Solidarietà Slava,” in E. Rota (ed.), Questioni di Storia Contemporanea, Milan, Marzorati, 1952, vol. II, pp. 1777–873, especially pp. 1853–4. 53 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 277. 54 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 274. 55 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 168–71, especially pp. 169–70 (“4 Settembre 1941: Direttive del Comando dell’XI Corpo d’Armata per Stroncare le Azioni dei Ribelli”). 56 Ibid., p. 172. 57 Ibid., p. 174. 58 Ibid., pp. 184, 187, 192, 216–7, 222. 59 Ibid., p. 227. 60 Ibid., pp. 276–9. 61 Ibid., pp. 330–1. 62 See, for example, the minutes of the meeting that took place in the offices of the High Commissioner on December 12, 1941–XX. Ibid., pp. 254–62, especially p. 256; January 7, 1942: Rapporto del Comando della Seconda Armata sulla Situazione nella Provincia di Lubiana. Ibid., pp. 288–93. 63 Ibid., p. 309.

176  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia 4 Ibid., p. 60. 6 65 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., pp. 167 f. See also Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 117, and the remarks by Bianchini and Privitera, 6 Aprile 1941, cit., pp. 72, 80. These authors correctly interpret the menacing circular letters repeatedly sent by the High Command (Roatta, Robotti) as a sign of how hard it was to motivate the occupying troops to engage with determination in the anti-partisan war. 66 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 227–44 (Fine Novembre 1941: Promemoria del Comandante della Divisione Granatieri di Sardegna e dell’XI Corpo d’Armata). 67 Rodogno, Il Nuovo Ordine Mediterraneo, cit., p. 207. 68 See Ibid., pp. 314–5. 69 For the measures taken on this occasion see the report by Commander Taddeo Orlando on the “Disarmo della Popolazione Lubiana,” in Ferenc (ed.), RabArbe-Arbissima, cit., pp. 58–9. 70 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., pp. 172–7. On the Roatta circular, see also the important collection of documents gathered by Costantino Di Sante, especially the memorandum of April 1945 in defense of the Army’s General Staff. C. Di Sante, Italiani senza Onore: I crimini in Jugoslavia e i Processi Negati (1941–1951), Verona, Ombre Corte, 2005, pp. 120–3. 71 R. Pupo, “Le Annessioni Italiane in Slovenia e Dalmazia 1941–1943. Questioni Interpretative e Problemi di Ricerca,” in Italia Contemporanea, 243, June 2006, pp. 181–211, here p. 196. 72 The problem of theft of livestock, chickens, and produce seems to have been endemic among the Italian troops in Slovenia, a behavior which contributed to discredit the occupier in the eyes of the local population. On this issue see the numerous examples reported by the military chaplain Don Pietro Brignoli, in “Santa Messa per i Miei Fucilati,” cit. 73 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., pp. 184 f. 74 Ibid., p. 193. 75 Brignoli, in “Santa Messa per i Miei Fucilati,” cit., pp. 140–1. See also pp., 113, 123. 76 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., p. 199. 77 Ibid., p. 215. Tone Ferenc reports individual executions of more than sixty civilians, carried out in retaliation, which seems to have occurred in the Notranjsko and Dolenjsko areas. He does not provide precise coordinates. See Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 104. 78 Brignoli, in “Santa Messa per i Miei Fucilati,” cit., p. 122. See also p. 111. 79 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 452–64. 80 Mussolini, “Rapporto a Gorizia a un Gruppo di Alti Comandanti,” cit., p. 97. 81 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., pp. 464–70. 82 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., pp. 228 f.; A. Osti Guerrazzi, The Italian Army in Slovenia: Strategies of Antipartisan Repression, 1941–1943, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 89–113. 83 Ibid., p. 249. According to data Ferenc provides, during the Italian occupation one hundred forty-five hostages were shot, and fifty-one death sentences were carried out. Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 120. 84 Ibid., pp. 530–2. 85 Ibid., pp. 460–1. 86 The High Commissioner Grazioli did take into consideration the (partial or total) deportation of Slovenes and their replacement with Italians. See August 24, 1942: Relazione dell’AC. Grazioli sul Programma di Attività nella Provincia di Lubiana, Ibid., pp. 498–502.

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  177 87 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., p. 225; Burgwyn, Empire on the Adriatic, cit., p. 288; B. Mussolini, “Rapporto a Gorizia a un Gruppo di Alti Comandanti,” cit., p. 97. 88 Pupo, “Slovenia e Dalmazia tra Italia e Terzo Reich,” cit., pp. 136 f. 89 Di Sante, Italiani senza Onore, cit., p. 199. In 1946 Giuseppe Piemontese published a collection of documents clearly aimed at strengthening the diplomatic position of Yugoslavia during the peace negotiations. Among them he reports the minutes of the operational meeting of August 2, 1942, redacted by the Chief of the Army Corps Mario Roatta, who declared that he was not opposed to significant deportations of Slovenes who would then be replaced by families of Italian casualties. The first person singular in which the report was written appears to have later been changed to “the higher authorities are not opposed to.” Revealingly, Roatta is supposed to have concluded: “In other words, [I am not against] having racial borders coincide with political borders.” See G. Piemontese, Ventinove Mesi di Occupazione Italiana della Provincia di Lubiana: Considerazioni e Documenti, Lubiana, 1946, allegato XVI. However, given the propagandistic nature of this publication, we should consider the sources it provides with due caution. 90 On the location and size of internment camps “for Slavs” see C.S. Capogreco, I Campi del Duce: L’internamento Civile nell’Italia Fascista (1940–1943), Turin, Einaudi, 2004, pp. 135–52. 91 Ferenc, Rab-Arbe-Arbissima, cit., pp. 88–9. 92 Order issued by Taddeo Orlando, Commander of the Infantry Division of the Grenadiers of Sardinia. Ibid., p. 173. On the Slovenes serving in “Slavic companies” far from the front, see S. Perini, Battaglioni Speciali: Slav Company 1940–1945, Trieste, Slovensko kulturno društvo Tabor, 2007 (second edition), pp. 85–147. 93 However, in a note to the General Staff of December 16, 1942, General Mario Roatta mentions a total of 17,400 Slovenes, 6,577 of them at Arbe. See “Comando Superiore Ff. Aa. Slovenia-Dalmazia al Comando Supremo, III Reparto—Uff. Affari Generali,” Ibid., pp. 322–4. 94 See Medical Colonel G. Prepetti’s memorandum of November 30, 1942, about the provision of health care at Arbe. Ibid., pp. 291–4; and the report on the Arbe concentration camp for interned civilians sent by the Division General Giuseppe Gianni to the General Staff of the Armed Forces Slovenia-Dalmatia (Second Army) of December 3, 1942, which records food ratios for “repressive” internees of only 877 calories a day. Ibid., pp. 298–309. 95 See an excerpt from the minutes of a meeting among the Chief of Staff Mario Roatta, the Artillery, and Division Commanders (Kocevie, August 2). Ibid., pp. 225–6. 96 See the note to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of November 21, 1942. Ibid., pp. 278–80. 97 See the memorandum regarding the inspection at Arbe, November 14 through 19, 1942-XXI, redacted by the Medical Captain Carlo Albero Lang. Ibid., pp. 281–2. 98 See the memorandum of the Commissariat of the High Command of the Armed Forces Slovenia-Dalmatia of March 27, 1943 on food supplies for civil internees, regarding the inspection at Arbe, November 14 through 19, 1942-XXI, redacted by the Medical Captain Carlo Albero Lang. Ibid., pp. 381–3. 99 Capogreco, I Campi del Duce, cit., p. 113. 100 There is an extensive literature on the issue of Italian war crimes. See, for example, F. Focardi, “La Questione della Punizione dei Criminali di Guerra in Italia dopo la Fine del Secondo Conflitto Mondiale,” in Quellen und Forschungen

178  The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 30, 2000, 80, pp. 541–624. In February 1945, Yugoslavia requested the delivery of a few hundred war criminals, attaching a detailed report to its request. For political reasons, Italy decided not to comply with the Yugoslav demands. Instead it formed several commissions of inquiry, which recommended that about forty people, among whom were those most responsible for the behavior of the occupying forces, such as Generals Mario Roatta and Mario Robotti, and the major civil authorities, such as the Governors of the areas under occupations, the Commissioner of Ljubljana Emilio Grazioli, and so forth, be referred to the military tribunal. From the point of view of international relations this became a less burning issue after the break between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Legal proceedings in Italy were put off indefinitely and buried once and for all in 1951. On February 21, 1949, the military tribunal in Rome acquitted Mario Roatta of the charge of not defending Rome from the Germans after September 8, 1943, despite his heavy responsibility in those events. Regarding these embarrassing episodes, see Di Sante’s excellent analysis, Italiani Senza Onore, cit., especially pp. 11–51. It is, however, misleading to say, as a few scholars do, that the atrocities committed by the Italian army are on a par with those committed by the Wehrmacht and the Einsatzgruppen of the SS. For Yugoslavia, see J. Burgwyn’s balanced considerations in Empire on the Adriatic, cit., pp. 296–300. 101 See C. Greppi, I Crimini di Guerra e contro l’Umanità nel Diritto Internazionale, Turin, Utet, 2001; entry “Crimini di Guerra,” in Dizionario dell’Olocausto, Turin, Einaudi, 2004, pp. 177–88; F. Focardi, Il cattivo Tedesco e il Bravo Italiano: La Rimozione delle Colpe della Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2013, pp. 121–51. 102 O. Bartov, Eastern Front, 1941–1945: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1986. 103 Di Sante, Italiani senza Onore, cit., p. 170. 104 Cuzzi, L’Occupazione Italiana della Slovenia, cit., p. 266. 105 E. Aga Rossi, Una Nazione allo Sbando, cit. On the fate of Italian soldiers and officers who found themselves on the Yugoslav front on the day of the armistice, many of whom chose to fight in the ranks of the liberation army, especially in Bosnia and Montenegro, see Bianchini and Privitera, 6 Aprile 1941, cit., pp. 83–138; E. Aga Rossi, M.T. Giusti, Una guerra a Parte: I Militari Italiani nei Balcani 1940–1945, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011. 106 Ferenc, La Provincia “Italiana” di Lubiana, cit., p. 33. The Slovenian representative in the new Yugoslav government, Franc Kuloverc, already presented this proposal to Hitler on April 5, through the Slovak Embassy. See Bianchini and Privitera, 6 Aprile 1941, cit., p. 49. 107 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo, cit., pp. 390 f.; Perini, Battaglioni Speciali, cit. 108 Capogreco, I Campi del Duce, cit., pp. 100–1. 109 Rusinow provides the following concise but apt assessment in Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 276. See also Ibid., pp. 278–9: “Of vital and ironic importance to all of these developments was the Italian annexations of Lubiana Province and the Kupa Territories. These were the heartlands of the Slovene and Croat Partisan movements, and the disappearance of the border separating them from Venezia Giulia made it impossible to prevent the spread of the infection into the older Italian provinces. It was from Italian Lubiana that Julian émigrés freely returned to Italian Trieste to organize the Slovene Freedom Front in Venezia Giulia. It was from the Kupa district and the Gorski Kotar, as part of the Province of the Quarnero, that Croat Partisans expanded their activities westward, first to Villa del Nevoso and Clana in the old corpus separatum, then to

The Italian Occupation in Slovenia and Dalmatia  179 Monte Maggiore in Liburnia on the borders of Istria. As early as May 1942 attempts were being made to remedy this situation by virtually re-establishing the old borders through Carabinieri (and later army) patrols, but to no avail; the breach could no longer be resealed.” 110 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo, cit., pp. 411 f. 111 T. Sala, “La Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” in Finzi, Magris, and Miccoli (eds.), Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., vol. I, pp. 515–79, especially p. 554. 112 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo. cit., pp. 412 f. 113 Ibid., pp. 415–8. 114 Sala, “La Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” cit., p. 555. 115 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 167. On the development of the Slovenian and Croatian partisan movement within Italian borders, see Ibid., pp. 166 f.; Griesser-Pecar, Das Zerrissene Volk Slowenien, cit., pp. 126–30, 151–3. 116 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 167. 117 Ibid., p. 278. 118 Kacin Wohinz and Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia, cit., p. 66. 119 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 170 f. 120 Gherardi Bon, La Persecuzione Antiebraica a Trieste, cit., pp. 167–74. 121 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo, cit., pp. 421–36. 122 Ibid., pp. 436–45. 123 Sala, “La Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” cit., p. 556. 124 Ibid., p. 557. 125 Apih, Italia, Fascismo e Antifascismo, cit., p. 467.

7 The Eclipse of the Italian State From September 8, 1943 to the Eve of the Yugoslav Occupation of Venezia Giulia

1 The Vanishing of the Italian State on the Eastern Frontier After Italy secretly signed the armistice at Cassibile, the Italian military High Command fled to Brindisi together with the Italian royal family and left the armed forces without orders. This irresponsible act caused the disbanding of the army both in Italy and in the occupied territories of Greece, France, Albania, and Yugoslavia, and turned the Italian withdrawal from war operations into a large-scale collective tragedy, the sum-total of a great number of tragic experiences suffered by individual and groups, soldiers and officers, which historians have not yet reconstructed in its entire scope.1 Wherever officers tried to resist or refused to hand over their weapons, the German forces overwhelmed them, as on the Greek islands of Leros, Kefalonia, or Corfu.2 About six hundred fifty-thousand Italian soldiers who refused to fight on the side of the Third Reich were sent to concentration camps in Germany without being recognized as prisoners of war. Compelled therefore to forced labor, and detained under extremely harsh conditions, at least twenty-thousands of them died in the camps. To these we must add the twenty-five thousand who died as internees in the zone of operations (eastern front), those who died as captives when their ships were sunk, and the victims of summary executions sentenced for various reasons. We are not counting here those who died fighting after refusing to hand over their weapons.3 Once again, Italy seemed to have become a “geographic expression,” in Metternich’s famous phrase. However, it took only a short time before chunks of the state were reconstructed both in the south and the north of the peninsula, even though these governing entities were subject to the discretion of the respective occupying powers to a great degree. The Kingdom of the South was formed in the port city of Brindisi in Apulia, but its sovereignty was so limited that at first it seemed almost a government in exile within its own territory.4 The Repubblica sociale italiana [from now on, Italian Social Republic] was founded in the North,5 after a unit of German paratroopers carried out the adventurous liberation of Mussolini from the Gran Sasso fortress. The Italian Social Republic, which harked back to the extremist Fascism of the beginnings, de facto became the collaborationist

The Eclipse of the Italian State  181 expression of the German occupier. The Republic’s prerogatives were also officially curtailed by the powers exercised by civil and military German authorities reporting to Rudolph Rahn, the Reich’s plenipotentiary in Italy.6 Ernesto Galli della Loggia has labeled September 8, 1943, “the death of the fatherland,” the moment that laid bare the entire history of Italy as a nation, by calling into question “the very bond that ties together every national community and makes it one,” and showing “a frightful ethical and political weakness”7 of civil society as a whole. Nevertheless, there is no comparison between the situation in the rest of the country and the situation that took hold in the border areas. Here, any semblance of the Italian State simply vanished. In Venezia Giulia September 8 meant not only the disbanding of the army en masse, but the disappearance of any trace of the state, so that the break before and after the armistice was much more drastic than in the rest of Italy. According to Dennison Rusinow, “official Italy disappeared from the interior [of the Istrian peninsula] suddenly and with remarkable completeness.”8 The signing of the armistice caused the acceleration of processes that had been taking shape since 1942, when partisan activities on both sides of the old border had transformed the eastern part of Italy into a war zone. The numerous attacks on, and disarming of groups of soldiers on the part of partisan units, and the worried reaction of the High Command,9 were alarming indicators of the demoralization of the Italian troops and the consequences that might ensue. According to Giovanni Paladin, the representative of the Partito d’Azione [from now on, Action Party] in the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale [from now on, Committee of National Liberation, or CLN] of Trieste “Venezia Giulia looked more like a land waiting to be conquered than a part of the nation.”10 After the news of the armistice spread, several units let unarmed Croatian peasants overtake them. In Albona, one thousand two hundred soldiers surrendered to thirty Croats, many of them women; in Pisino about one thousand effectives disbanded after abandoning their weaponry, which included artillery pieces, machine guns, and mortars; two thousand soldiers surrendered in the village of Pinguente, in the Istrian interior. As in so many other cases, in the Lubiana province, in Trieste, Fiume, and Pola, the Wehrmacht overtook the Italian occupiers more or less without firing a single shot, despite its inferiority in men and equipment. About four or five thousand German soldiers of the Seventy-first Division marched from their area of occupation into Italian Slovenia and succeeded in getting the better of three army corps, each of them fifty thousand strong, deployed at different points along the eastern border. In Fiume, where as many as fifty thousand men were stationed, the Commander, Gastone Gambara, who later joined the Social Republic, surrendered to a German colonel flanked by two men on motor bicycles. In Pola, about forty thousand soldiers and sailors surrendered to a small German column, but not before the garrison commander, Admiral Gustavo Strazzeri, had ordered opening fire on an

182  The Eclipse of the Italian State anti-fascist demonstration, thus causing three dead and sixteen wounded, among them several anti-Fascists just released from jail.11 According to the testimony of Giovanni Paladin “an entire Italian motorized column going from Pola toward the Isonzo River allowed a group of drunken peasants to disarm them.”12 In Gorizia, on the contrary, there was an attempt to resist and to cooperate with the partisan units that surrounded the city. Here workers of the Monfalcone shipyards managed to lay their hands on some weapons and organized a Proletarian Division which fought with Slovenian partisans against the German advance into the city. In the battle of Gorizia, about a hundred members of that division died. There were also attempts to stop the German advance at Tarvisio and Val Canale [Kanaltal].13 The Germans sent most Italian soldiers who surrendered to internment camps, contrary to previous assurances from their own High Command.14 In Istria, things took a different path. Several rebellions took place in both Italian and Croatian centers followed by the creation of committees of public safety, joint anti-fascist bodies, and other grassroots organizations which were supposed to replace the now-crumbling structures of the Italian state. Soon afterward, Croatian partisan leaders coming from outside the province took over, gave life to an Operational Partisan Committee for Istria, and assumed the leadership of the movement.15 A substantial number of weapons were handed over to the rebels. Giovanni Paladin described the transfer of power in Istria as follows: Italian political parties did not exist, the old ruling class had long since disappeared, and the Italians of Istria, even though in the majority, no longer had any autonomous institution around which they could gather and resist. Moral and political dissolution split all the vital centers of Istria’s Italian community. . . . After September 8, Slavic partisan groups quickly filled the void left by Fascism first and then civil and military authorities. The partisans established the new order based on so-called “popular powers,” without meeting any resistance on the part of the Italians of Istria. Venezia Giulia became a no-man’s land16. . . . That day, Italian sovereignty over Istria ended and Balkan domination began, which turned the established social and political order upside down.17 Pisino was considered the center of Croatian Istria.18 On September 13, 1943, it hosted the general assembly of the newly-born Popular Committee for Liberation, which consisted of about thirty operatives, including Giuseppe Budicin (Pino) from Rovigno, one of the major representatives of Italian Communism in Istria.19 The Committee proclaimed the unification of Istria with the “Croatian motherland,” a decision ratified by a broader assembly in which a good number of Italians participated. On September 20 the Zemaljsko antifašističko vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Hrvatske [Provincial Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Croatia] issued a decree

The Eclipse of the Italian State  183 which declared invalid all treaties and agreements previously stipulated with Italy. Istria, Dalmatia, and the islands were annexed to Croatia ipso facto.20 For the Croats of Istria, the insurrection of September 1943 and the proclamation in Pisino marked the high point of their own heroic struggle for national liberation, following numerous local uprisings in which a first rudimentary structure of partisan counter-power, reinforced by communist operatives from Croatia, had disarmed the Italian garrisons and police force, installed new governing bodies, and reinforced the ranks of the partisans.21 For the non-communist Italians of Istria, on the contrary, the events of September 1943 were a highly traumatic experience. Newly-created popular tribunals, which reported to the Popular Committees for Liberation and were backed by the Intelligence Service of the partisan movement (the first structures of what would later become the extremely feared political police Ozna [Yugoslav Department of National Security]),22 handed down between five hundred and six hundred clandestine, summary death sentences, and carried them out against members of the fascist regime and the Italian state, political opponents, and notables of the Italian community.23 Most of the condemned were thrown, at times while still alive, into the holes (foibe) typical of that karstic region, hundreds of meters deep. In the 1970s and 1980s both Croatian and Italian historians interpreted this first wave of “liquidations” as the result of a “real peasant rebellion, sudden and violent as all peasant rebellions are,” without providing any evidence to back their thesis, advocated originally by Giovanni Miccoli in particular. On the contrary, Ljubo Drndić and, more recently, Luciano Giuricin emphasize, as already mentioned, that the rapid formation of a partisan counter-power in Istria took place, in the first instance, thanks to the presence of operatives arriving from across the border. These summary trials, in which the secret police of the Croatian liberation movement played a very important role,24 were held in a few towns in the Istrian interior where the unfortunate prisoners were taken. In the second session of a meeting held in Jajce between the end of November and the beginning of December 1943,25 the Antifašističko Vijeće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije [Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia, Tito’s liberation movement; from now on, AVNOJ] formalized its territorial demands toward Italy. The anti-fascist Croatian representatives and the Slovenian Liberation Front had already approved similar resolutions.26 The Croatian resolution, in turn, based its declaration on the proclamation issued by the Popular Committee for the Liberation of Istria, which stated: “Istria joins the motherland and proclaims its unification with our other Croatian brothers.”27 In reality, after the decisions taken by the AVNOJ in Jajce, the Croatian National Liberation Committee and the Slovenian Liberation Front (which declared the annexation of the Slovenian Littoral on September 16, 1943) considered themselves the only legitimate holders of power in Istria, despite its being still under Italian sovereignty. This is the context that helps us

184  The Eclipse of the Italian State

Figure 7.1  North Adriatic 1943–45

The Eclipse of the Italian State  185 understand why the Croatian Communist Party replaced the Italian Communist Party as the political structure to which the Croatian militants reported, and why the command over the Italian partisan units was transferred to the Yugoslav liberation army.28 The Yugoslav politburo took tactical withdrawals into consideration only when these were useful for achieving international acknowledgment of annexations which, as already remarked, were regarded as a fait accompli. The bloody German occupation, which continued until the end of April 1945, put a temporary halt to the “September insurrection” and to the forms of partisan counter-power that had sprung from it.29 Events followed the same pattern in Dalmatia. In Spalato, the execution of one hundred six people, Croatian Ustaše and Italians, accompanied a short-lived partisan occupation. Among the victims were several teachers and the principal of the Italian school.30 The partisans occupied Zara as early as October 31, 1944, after devastating bombings by the Allies. A few thousand people from Zara sought refuge in Italy both because of the bombings and because Tito’s army had occupied the city.31 This event marked the beginning of the Italian “exodus” from Istria,32 destined to become a mass phenomenon after the signing of the peace treaty and the London Memorandum of Understanding in 1954.

2 The “Adriatisches Küstenland” [Adriatic Littoral] In the first half of October 1943 the entire territory of Venezia Giulia and the “Province of Lubiana,” together with Friuli, Gorizia, Fiume, and the islands of the Gulf of Quarnero, passed under the control of the German occupier, one after another. On September 10, 1943, Hitler issued an order which established two zones of operations, in Venezia Giulia and in the province of Trentino-Alto Adige, thus taking them completely away from the control of the Republic of Salò.33 General Esposito, a member of the fascist national Republican Guard, could only send 5 per cent of his conscripts beyond the border, where they were placed at Mussolini’s disposal. The Supreme Commissioner for the Küstenland was the Carinthian Friedrich Rainer, Gauleiter [local leader of the Nazi Party, T.N.] in Klagenfurt, who enjoyed extremely broad prerogatives both in administrative and judicial matters. Rainer reported to the supreme commander in Italy for ordinary matters and, in special cases, to Hitler himself through the Chancellorships of the Nazi Party and of the German state.34 Units of the feared SS also operated in the Küstenland. Their Commander was Odilo Globocnik,35 originally from Trieste, who had been in charge of coordinating the “Reinhard Operation,” code name for the extermination of almost three million Polish Jews in the death camps. Most of the other functionaries of the Küstenland, also from Carinthia, had had links with Trieste ever since the time of the Hapsburg Empire.36 Germans did not need a passport for travel from the zones of operation to the territory

186  The Eclipse of the Italian State of the German Reich, whereas Italians residing in the Italian Social Republic needed special authorization.37 The areas of operation were strategically very important for the German army, because they connected Germany and Italy on the one hand, and Germany and the Balkans on the other. Besides, the retaking of South Tyrol fulfilled a never-forgotten aspiration of German nationalism, while the Littoral was supposed to play its traditional function of commercial penetration into the Levant, according to a plan for Central Europe which the Austrian Minister Ludwig von Bruck had already devised around the middle of the nineteenth century.38 Jubilant local residents welcomed the Germans as liberators in South Tyrol, without much difference in the attitude of those who had opted for the “Reich” and those who had merely “remained” there (Dableiber). In the Adriatisches Küstenland, the Supreme Commissioner tried to leverage the philo-Hapsburg nostalgic sentiment still present in ample sectors of the population who vividly remembered the flourishing economy enjoyed by Trieste right up to the crisis of summer 1914. In a document of September 9, 1943, speaking of the Littoral, Rainer said: This entire area strongly rejects Italian domination. The local population remembers vividly both the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and its thousand-year-old attachment to the Reich. The Italians have not succeeded in getting the better of the resistance movement which has developed in the last year through the creation of organized communist bands. There are no linguistic boundaries among Slovenes, Friulians, Italians, and Serbo-Croats. Relations among various groups differ from place to place. The area has therefore remained a turbulent territory ever since the fragmentation of the Empire, and it can be pacified, during and after the war, only if placed under German power. German domination would meet up with the Austrian tradition everywhere. There are former Austrian functionaries, teachers, and officers of all four nationalities who could be asked to collaborate with a German administration.39 In a publication written for the internal use of the SS deployed in the Küstenland, redacted between the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, these ideas are reasserted. In it we read: What seems clear is that all sectors of the population feel a profound need to return to a political arrangement that gives concrete form to the views of the years before the [First] World War. This might enable us to find a starting point for launching a propaganda campaign which everyone would understand, and which would have a positive impact on the active participation of the native troops fighting in our ranks.40 The entrepreneurial circles proved to be especially interested in the possibility of Trieste rejoining the economic space of the Third Reich, thus

The Eclipse of the Italian State  187 resurrecting the idea of a unified Central European region no longer under Hapsburg hegemony, but under German and Nazi domination. Afterward, in one of his exculpatory memoirs addressed to the investigating magistrate of the tribunal of the Fourth Yugoslav Army, Rainer himself declared that the entrepreneurs had played in Trieste the same collaborationist role that the clergy had played in the “Province of Lubiana.” Rainer also stated that he had decided very early on not to collaborate with the Fascist Party.41 The historian Enzo Collotti has also emphasized that Commissioner Rainer was operating in favor of a pan-Germanic future, thus playing the Hapsburg card only as a tool to foster the continental power politics of Nazism.42 The Germans tried to exploit the tensions among the various ethnic and national groups in the area in order to strengthen consensus for their rule. The analysis developed in the already mentioned booklet Bandenkampf tries to prove that the policy of denationalization carried out by Fascism had created great discontent among the native population: The Slovenian language, which has been the most specific attribute of the people for centuries, was prohibited; Slovenian schools, which numbered about six hundred before World War I, became greatly reduced in number; and Slovenian teachers were sent far away from the area. Conditions worsened sharply until the collapse of Italy in 1943. Italian penetration well beyond Ljubljana into the territory of Slovenia proper, threatened to put an end again to national development. The House of Savoy undoubtedly planned the complete Italianization of the land and of the people. We cannot list in detail all the repressive measures adopted by individual Italian generals and administrators, but each and every one of those measures shows the intent of destroying Slovenian nationality.43 A policy aiming to reestablish the national rights of Slovenes—who were in the majority in the region—would thus have contributed to easing tension. In Trieste, instead, German authorities saw the Italian group as their privileged interlocutor. The Bandenkampf analysis asserted optimistically that local people felt a weak attachment to Italy, and that Fascism had alienated most of them from the nation. Historians do not agree on the final political and governmental arrangements reserved to the areas of operations in the event of a German victory. The most plausible scenario is that Germany was planning the permanent annexation of the frontier areas with German majority (Lower Styria and South Tyrol), likely turning the remainder of the territory with Italian or Slavic majority, or with a mixed population, into a protectorate, as had happened in similar situations, for example, in Bohemia and Moravia. Several testimonies confirm that in no case would the areas of operation have been returned to the Italian satellite state.44 In the already-mentioned

188  The Eclipse of the Italian State document of September 9, 1943, the soon-to-be Supreme Commissioner of the Adriatisches Küstenland, Friedrich Rainer, mentioned the following arrangement: Regarding this territory, my proposal is to institute a German civil administration headed by the Gauleiter of Carinthia, with its headquarters in Klagenfurt. I would also propose to divide the territory governed by the head of the civil administration into three administrative subareas corresponding to their historical, geographic, and political conditions: Carniola [Kranjska], Gorizia, and Istria, each with its respective capital: Ljubljana, Gorizia, and Trieste. The civil administration would have the task of restoring order among the various nationalities and to pacify them, to organize the people’s self-defense against Bolshevism, and to mobilize all the economic resources of the administered area in support of the final German victory. I believe that this plan can be successful if the Führer grants full powers to the head of the civil administration. We can put off until after the end of the war the future configuration of this territory, the recovery of people of Germanic and German blood, and the final drawing of the border with northern Italy.45 According to Bundenkampf, the institutions of the German state had already been “creators of order” in the past, in a “frontier land with different races and peoples, languages, and cultures,” where German princes and feudal lords had promoted economic and administrative development.46 As mentioned, Hitler accepted all of Rainer’s suggestions. The German authorities decreed that in Slovenian areas the administration should be carried out once again in Slovenian; they appointed General Leon Rupnik Mayor of Ljubljana,47 and the Croatian Frank Spehar Vice-prefect of Fiume together with the Italian Spalatin, whereas Bogdan Mogorović became Vice-prefect in Pola. They also restarted delivery of the Slovenian press not only to Ljubljana but also to Gorizia, launched radio broadcasts in Slovenian, and reopened school classes with Slovenian as the language of instruction.48 The German policies enacted in the Adriatisches Küstenland induced some Italians, Slovenes, and Croats to choose a collaborationist path.49 In Ljubljana, Bishop Gregorij Rožman established a rapport with the Germans similar to what he had had with the Italian occupying forces, considering a foreign occupation preferable to a takeover by the communist-controlled Slovenian Liberation Front.50 In his already-mentioned deposition to the investigative magistrate of the tribunal of the Fourth Yugoslav Army, Friedrich Rainer, subsequently condemned and executed for war crimes, described his meeting with Bishop Rožman as follows: Rožman told me about the difficult situation of the clergy in Dolenjska [Lower Carniola] regarding massacres and persecutions of priests. To

The Eclipse of the Italian State  189 my great surprise, he started listing the clashes that occurred in Dolenjska between Belogardisti [“white” Slovenes belonging to the Catholic party, strongly anti-communist, T.N.] and partisans. He showed me the places where the clashes had taken place by pointing to a map hanging on the wall. Until that moment I never had such a clear explanation of those combats. I realized that this man was well informed indeed. I felt as if I were in the presence of a bishop from the Middle Ages, one of those who conducted the struggle of the Pope against the Emperor, or, at times, vice versa. There is a specific expression which comes to us from those times to describe such bishops: streitbar (bellicose). I had the distinct impression that this man was indeed a bellicose bishop. I told Rožman that I wanted to appoint General Rupnik to the highest office of the autonomous administration of Ljubljana, and asked him whether Rupnik could win the people’s trust. He replied that Rupnik would be highly respected. He described him as the best man for the job.51 In the same deposition, Rainer asserted that it was possible to win over Slovenian conservative circles and to persuade them to collaborate with the Reich in exchange for a few concessions regarding the region’s autonomy (the unification of Carniola with the southern part of Carinthia, which had a Slovenian minority). In Trieste, the Germans were able to install a Prefect and a Podestà of their choice, Bruno Coceani and Silvio Pagnini, respectively. Historians have not been able, and will probably never be able to shed full light on the reasons why these two men were willing to assume public office under a regime of occupation. As happened with most collaborationists, and especially in Pagnini’s case, it seems that the idea of being able to mitigate the consequences of the occupation had a decisive influence on their decision. It becomes significant, in this situation, that in 1944 Pagnini decided to edit and publish the writings of Domenico Rossetti, a patrician from Trieste who, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had advocated local autonomy under Hapsburg protection.52 In the case of Trieste, moreover, the Germans themselves supported the development of a particularistic identity characterized by a strong attachment to local autonomy, which harked back, in some ways, to the Hapsburg times. When we consider Coceani, on the other hand, his ties to the city’s economic groups explain why these designated him for the office of Prefect.53 Several cadet members of the major entrepreneurial families, such as Guido Cosulich and Gustavo Comici, also became personally engaged in the administration as Vice-podestà. In Fiume, for that same office, the Germans designated Riccardo Gigante, who had been a fascist Senator and had already been mayor of the town during D’Annunzio’s adventure.54 In keeping with this policy, on January 15, 1944, the Germans formed a civic guard in Trieste, a corps akin to a territorial militia charged with carrying out support functions in the anti-partisan struggle, such as guarding the

190  The Eclipse of the Italian State corpses of victims of reprisals, or escorting trains transporting deportees to the camps.55 Many young men of military age joined the civic guard, which they saw as the most acceptable option when compared with the other possibilities: military service in the Wehrmacht, joining the partisan movement, or forced labor under German command. Some members of the civic guard also collaborated with the CLN, and several of them participated in the anti-German insurrection of April 30, 1945.56 These cases thus belong in the gray area between collaborationism and resistance. Among the Slovenes, the Belogardisti collaborated fully with the Germans, motivated by the same anti-Bolshevism that had induced them previously to collaborate with the Italians. Passing moral judgment on the various facets of collaborationism in the Adriatisches Küstenland is extremely arduous. There is no denying that in a situation of foreign occupation and in a territory that formed the object of opposing national claims, the room for individual choices was highly constrained. Many young males who were liable to one form or another of conscription could only choose the lesser evil. Only a small minority, comprised first of all by people of German descent or culture, fully shared the objectives and the ideology of the National Socialist Reich.57 On the other hand, in the Küstenland as in other places, the German occupier could guarantee significant though ephemeral rewards to large strata of the population: protection from the communist movement, the possibility of economic development, and the safeguarding of civic culture and linguistic and cultural prerogatives, which is to say, of the “little fatherland,” which would contribute to the “new European order” together with other “little fatherlands.” Tony Judt’s assessment of occupied Europe is also valid for this region: life was bearable there, in so far as one was not a Jew, a Communist, a partisan, a Roma, or a Pole.58 In his turn, in a work written in 1946, the historian Fabio Cusin somewhat ironically defined German-occupied Trieste as “the quietest city . . . in Germany.”59 In the Adriatisches Küstenland, the persecution of Jews was particularly harsh, even compared to the rest of Italy, likely because of the special status of the zone of operations and the active presence of SS units, already responsible for the genocide of Polish Jews as well as for the so-called Euthanasia Operation against Germans who suffered from mental illness or heavy physical afflictions. A large number of death-trains loaded with people bound for Auschwitz left from the Adriatisches Küstenland: twenty-two from Trieste alone, out of a total of forty-three from Italy. Altogether, seven hundred eight people from Trieste’s Jewish community were deported to Auschwitz; only nineteen returned. From the entire Adriatisches Küstenland, one thousand four hundred twenty-two Jews were deported, of whom only eightythree survived.60 The rice-mill of San Sabba, the Polizeilager [Police Station] where Jews were amassed awaiting deportation, became the sinister symbol of the Jewish tragedy. The rice-mill also served as a jail and interrogation center for partisans and anti-Fascists. Many of them, we don’t exactly know

The Eclipse of the Italian State  191 how many, but apparently on the order of magnitude of a few thousand, were killed there. The deportation of Jews deprived the coastal cities (Trieste, Fiume, and Gorizia) of an important bourgeois and intellectual element which had shaped the unique culture of this area until then. Their persecution and annihilation was the most tragic and horrifying case of the various attempts at ethnic simplification to which those territories had been subjected ever since 1918,61 which would reach its final point with the exodus of Italians from Istria in the aftermath of the war. In April 1944, following partisan attacks, Trieste became the theater of reprisals against Italians and Slavs. When a bomb exploded in a cinema in Opicina frequented only by German soldiers, killing seven of them, seventy-two hostages were condemned and executed in retaliation.62 On the twenty-third of the same month, a bomb was detonated in the “house of the German soldier” (a recreation center with a refectory and other amenities), causing six deaths, among them a female cook. The Germans responded by killing fifty-one prisoners held in the Coroneo jail and hanging their corpses in an internal staircase of the Tartini Music Conservatory. Anyone walking by could see this macabre scene through the windows of the building.63 In Udine, between just February and April 1945, fifty-two partisans were killed by firing squads. In the municipality of Trieste alone, the fallen partisans amounted to one thousand one hundred thirty-eight people; six hundred eight of them belonged to the Italian Resistance, five hundred seventeen to the Yugoslav resistance, and thirteen to the Italian Corps of Liberation.64 In Istria, Germans established ambiguous forms of complicity with members of the Social Republic, aiming to keep Communism at bay, and to create an anti-Slavic bulwark, justified in terms of national defense, a position which supporters of the Republic of Salò did not share anywhere else in Italy. Despite an escalation of repressive actions and reprisals, the Germans did not succeed in stopping the resistance movement in Istria. In a document of February 24, 1944, General Ludwig Kübler, the military commander of the operation area Adriatisches Küstenland, declared that five hundred three German soldiers had fallen victim to partisan actions in a month and a half. In the same period the partisans had carried out one hundred twenty-five attacks against the railroad lines, twenty-two bomb attacks against bridges, twenty-five sabotage operations against telephone lines, and the destruction of sixty-eight vehicles. Kübler vigorously urged the army to strike the enemy with merciless, offensive strikes, without losing time with purely defensive tactics. He proposed shooting or hanging partisans immediately after their capture. He recommended the prompt execution of death sentences handed down at the end of summary trials even for people guilty merely of helping the partisan movement. In the fight against local partisans, the Germans could take inspiration from the instructions issued to fight the partisan movement in Eastern Europe.65 He added, however: “We must spare the innocent. It is important to win over the part of local population already

192  The Eclipse of the Italian State well disposed towards us, and to preserve their trust and willingness to collaborate. This can only be achieved by adopting fair and correct behavior.” Kübler recommended to engage in collective reprisals only in special cases, and only if he personally authorized them. The danger that reprisals would isolate the Germans from the local population must have been apparent.66

3 The “War of Succession” for Venezia Giulia On the opposite front, the Yugoslav partisan movement was gaining strength in the Adriatisches Küstenland as well. Despite the high tribute in blood—at least several thousand deaths—paid by the partisans and by the local people because of the German conquest of Istria, the movement survived, reorganized, gained new followers, and created liberated zones in Istria around Mount Nevoso and in the Woods of Trnovo, which straddled the border between Slovenia and Carnia. At the Tehran Conference, Tito’s movement gained recognition from the Allies, which ended up by favoring it over Mihailovic’s royalists in the distribution of arms and food.67 A significant number of Italians participated in the anti-German resistance in the area of operations along the Littoral. According to estimates by Luciano Giuricin, in summer 1944 there were about two thousand Italian partisans in Istria.68 Teodoro Sala mentions one thousand fighters in the Garibaldi Brigade in Trieste, formed at the beginning of April 1944 following an agreement between the Command of the Garibaldi Brigades and the Slovenian Ninth Corps.69 According to Giovanni Paladin, the GaribaldiNatisone assault division of eastern Friuli counted five thousand “very-well armed” effectives.70 Roberto Spazzali mentions that three thousand Italian partisans are supposed to have joined the mixed formations in summer 1944.71 Several hundred Italian partisans also fought in Istria, in battalions within Croatian divisions.72 Spazzali further asserts that the three Garibaldi Brigades, the Alma Vivoda and Pino Budicin battalions counted about six thousand effectives, before the Yugoslavs dispatched them beyond the old Italian border73 to fight in the Yugoslav interior. Italians had representatives within the popular committees and in the leading organs of the Croatian Communist Party. The Unione degli italiani dell’Istria e di Fiume [Union of the Italians of Istria and Fiume], formed in 1944, was placed under the control of the leadership of the Croatian Communist Party, which promoted an incessant campaign in favor of the annexation of Istria and Fiume to Yugoslavia.74 Most people remained on the fence, whereas workers and peasants showed a cautious, but more open attitude toward the new powers. In a document of the Croatian Communist Party we can read: “A good part of the Italian masses consider the annexation to Yugoslavia unavoidable; therefore they accept it, reluctantly, only because they cannot do otherwise.”75 On September 15, 1944, Istria’s Croatian Communist Party called a meeting with the Italian operatives with the goal of establishing the guidelines that would structure the relationship between the two national groups

The Eclipse of the Italian State  193 within the Party. Besides marking the moment when the Italian Communist Party handed complete control over the territory of Istria to the Croatian Communist Party,76 this meeting showed the asymmetry between Croats and Italians in extremely clear terms. Until just a few months earlier, eager to establish cooperation with the Italian Communist Party, the Yugoslav Communists had accepted the principle that any decision about the attribution of the territories with an Italian majority had to be put off until after the defeat of Nazism. Now the Croatian Communist Party rejected that principle in no uncertain terms. Its acceptance, they argued, would induce the Croatian masses, “pushed above all by their nationalist feelings,” to throw themselves into the Germans’ arms, whereas the task at hand was to leverage those national feelings as a powerful weapon in the hands of the Communists.77 The position of the Slovenian Liberation Front was not ambiguous at all: from the very beginning they expressed their intention to assert control over the Italian units. Italian volunteers of the Garibaldi Brigade, initially under joint command of operations,78 were rejected and sent beyond the Tagliamento River. The historian Galliano Fogar writes: “It is a fact that the Slovenians aimed to integrate the Italian units into their own army and into their own political context, thus expanding their influence westward as much as possible.”79 In a meeting of the Central Committee of the Slovenian Communist Party on August 28, 1944, Edvard Kardelj went so far as to suggest that Italian partisans should no longer be enlisted in Slovenian formations but sent instead to the work battalions. The Slovenian leader and number two man of the Yugoslav liberation movement revealingly concluded: “We have no interest at all in arming the Italians.”80 Diego De Castro, who played a leading role in Italian diplomacy, especially after the stipulation of the peace treaty, and performed major tasks in Zone A, remarked: No one could pretend not to know that Slovenia has wished to possess Trieste for almost a century; that in 1945 they had already declared it the Seventh Yugoslav Republic; that the port would be extremely important for Slovenia from an economic point of view; and that Trieste would become at that point the largest city in Slovenia and the third largest in Yugoslavia.81 The Slovenes and Croats’ overt plan of annexation created several problems for the Italian Communists of Venezia Giulia. Despite a progressive erosion of their room to maneuver and decision-making power, for a few months the Italians continued to refer to the 1934 agreements which stipulated the right to self-determination for territories unquestionably inhabited by people of homogeneous nationality.82 By holding firm to that principle the Italian Communists showed that they did not call into question the right of Slovenes and Croats to join their fatherland in the areas where their national presence was overwhelming, but they did argue that any decision regarding Istria’s coastline and Trieste should be postponed until the end of

194  The Eclipse of the Italian State the conflict. For the time being, the urgent task was to engage fully in the common effort to defeat the German occupier.83 The weakness of this position became quickly apparent, however. While the Italians insisted on it, the undeterred and unperturbed Slovenian and Croatian interlocutors continued to stir up propaganda and to carry out their policy of annexation.84 In the summer of 1944, the Slovenian Liberation Front made some modest tactical retreats, by agreeing, for example, not to discuss the national question “in the presence of the masses in ethnically mixed areas,”85 both in response to pressure from Moscow (conveyed by the former Secretary of the Comintern, George Dimitrov), and because the Yugoslavs were seeking to gain the full support of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Alta Italia [from now on, Committee of National Liberation for Northern Italy, or CLNAI].86 Thus, in July 1944 representatives of the Liberation Front and the CNLAI met in Milan where they redacted an appeal calling people to join the struggle against the Germans, and postponing any discussion of territorial issues until after victory had been achieved. In this proclamation, however, the Slovenian concession to postponing the discussion regarding the borders was counterbalanced by significant concessions on the part of the CLNAI. The “Italians of Venezia Giulia” were urged to create ItaloSlovenian and Italo-Croatian Anti-Fascist Committees, and to enlist in the Italian units under Marshal Tito’s command.87 No representatives of the Trieste CLN were present at this meeting. Upon being informed of the contents of the text, they expressed their perplexity and proposed amendments.88 In a second meeting, in July, the Slovenian representative Anton Vratuša raised the stakes even further. He proposed that the CNLAI declare that the areas of Venezia Giulia with a substantial number of Slovenes should be immediately transferred under the command of the Slovenian liberation army. After these meetings, the two resistance movements took various initiatives to show tangible signals of détente: an agreement reestablishing Unità Operaia [Workers’ Unity, an organization supporting the resistance]; Slovenian recognition of the Corpo Volontari della Libertà [Corps of Volunteers of Liberty]; a loan of three million lire from the CLNAI to the Slovenian resistance movement; and recognition of the April agreement between the Garibaldi Brigades and the Slovenian Liberation Front in Friuli which had established the areas of competence of each resistance movement.89 However, the following comment, which Vratuša sent the Liberation Front about the outcome of the July meetings, is revealing: “Everything depends on our comrades on the ground and on the skills of our organization: the door is now open.”90 Leaving the position of the Italian Communist Party aside for the moment, the outcome of the June and July meetings with the Yugoslav representatives indicate that even the political parties in the CLNAI did not show any particular concern about possible territorial retreats on the eastern border. Its President, Alfredo Pizzoni, believed that Italy could not hold on to Venezia Giulia, and that, at the most, Italy could obtain the recognition of Trieste as a free city; even the leader of the Italian armed

The Eclipse of the Italian State  195 resistance, Ferruccio Parri, proved skeptical.91 The CLNAI knew the situation on the ground in Venezia Giulia fairly well. Pizzoni had met several times with representatives of the Friulian and Julian CLN, which had also created an institute devoted to studying the post-war prospects for the territories in question.92 After the fall of Mussolini, two prominent anti-fascist exiles, Gaetano Salvemini and Count Carlo Sforza, had already launched into action. The former revived the positions he had presented during World War I, by claiming Trieste, Gorizia, and the Istrian coast for Italy. Sforza preferred the creation of a free state which should include Fiume and Sussak, to be placed under the protection of the new United Nations.93 The Italian government, on its part, strongly preferred that the British and Americans occupy Venezia Giulia when Germany collapsed, a request that had been officially communicated to Admiral Ellery Stone, Chief Commissioner of the Allied Commission for Italy, through Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Visconti Venosta. The latter also pointed out the need to protect the Italians there, expressing concern that a possible Yugoslav occupation might be accompanied by indiscriminate massacres.94 Stone agreed, but gave no assurance about the definitive attribution of those territories.95 After all, the terms of the armistice permitted the Allies to take decisions about Italy’s territory without consulting the Italian government.96 Until April 1945, several political figures and Italian diplomats such as Ivanoe Bonomi, the Prime Minister, and Alcide De Gasperi once he was named Foreign Minister, reiterated those requests.97 The Italian Ambassador to Washington, Alberto Tarchiani, warned the Americans that their defensive border now extended also to Trieste and to the Adriatic, and he unrealistically exhorted them to open fire on the Yugoslavs if they opposed the allied occupation of Venezia Giulia.98 The anti-Fascists Gaetano Salvemini, Carlo Sforza, Benedetto Croce, and Luigi Sturzo added their voices to the discussion. This controversy never engaged the Yugoslavs directly, but de facto its principal interlocutor was the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the provisional government, Josip Smodlaka who, from London, continued to push for Yugoslavia’s maximum objectives.99 On October 21, the philosopher Benedetto Croce gave a powerful speech at the Eliseo Theater in Rome, reminding people that the border of Italy had been set because hundreds of thousands of Italians had shed their blood in World War I, a war they had waged on the side of the Allies. It was imperative, therefore, to show respect for the feelings of the people living in those frontier lands. He also correctly reminded the Allies that British propaganda pushing for the overthrow of the fascist regime had always assured the Italians that their borders would not be changed.100 A Comitato giuliano [Julian Committee], formed on July 25, 1944, right after the second agreement between the CLNAI and the Slovenian Liberation Front, represented the interests of Venezia Giulia in Rome.101 The Western leader with the clearest ideas about the future use of the territories of Venezia Giulia seemed to be Winston Churchill. For the

196  The Eclipse of the Italian State British Prime Minister, Trieste and Istria represented strategic areas through which Western armies could reach Vienna. Holding on to them would also strengthen the Western Allies’ position in the Balkans in their negotiations with the Soviets. At the Teheran Conference, throughout 1944, and as late as January 1945, Churchill indefatigably advocated a landing in Istria.102 This plan failed, de facto because Churchill and Roosevelt disagreed over the strategy to follow regarding the post-war international order. Whereas the British leader favored a partition line between the Western and Soviet spheres of influence on the European continent, Roosevelt aimed instead at an all-comprehensive agreement with the Soviet Union on a global scale.103 Roosevelt’s line ultimately prevailed, leading to the creation of the United Nations, weakening the British position on the European continent, and accelerating Great Britain’s decline as a world power. It is significant that, at the second Quebec Conference in 1944, Roosevelt told Churchill that he could not put at his disposal the three divisions required for a landing in the Adriatic, convinced, he said, of the need to send reinforcements to the French front.104 It is striking that the historians who have worked on the question of Trieste have not taken the different views of Churchill and Roosevelt sufficiently into account. This is a crucial factor for our understanding of the international context which provides the framework for the issue of Trieste after the war. Tito’s negotiating position grew even stronger after he reached an agreement with the representative of the Yugoslav government in exile, Ivan Šubašić, which seemed to herald the formation of a coalition government between the Communists and bourgeois forces.105 In August 1944, three important meetings took place: two between Churchill and Tito in Naples, and one between Tito and Marshal Harold Alexander on the Lake of Bolsena. Tito wanted to remind Churchill, in particular, that the Yugoslav liberation army already held administrative structures in Venezia Giulia, a situation that supposedly showed the consensus of the local people to annexation to Yugoslavia.106 Similar arguments were later used with Stalin as well, who, in an important meeting with the Yugoslav leaders in January 1945 in Moscow, insisted that his support for Yugoslav claims to the Italian territories depended on popular consensus.107 The Soviet dictator remarked: “The request of annexation to Yugoslavia must come directly from those territories.” And Stalin warned the Yugoslavs that they should prepare the plan for annexation “with incontrovertible arguments” that he could present at the upcoming peace conference. It is apparent that, on the one hand, Stalin leaned toward providing some support to the Yugoslav demands, but on the other hand, he was willing to do so only within precise political and diplomatic limits. This meant presenting arguments that the Western Allies could accept, such as the consensus of the interested populations and respect for the principle of nationality.108 The Croat communist leader Andrija Hebrang made no objection to Stalin’s remarks when the discussion concerned Hungary, Austria, and

The Eclipse of the Italian State  197 Romania, which were also objects of Tito’s ambitions. But when it came to the territories under Italian sovereignty, he was able to report, much to his satisfaction, that the populations in question had already demanded annexation to Yugoslavia in the previous year; that the representative Assemblies of Slovenia and Croatia had sanctioned the annexation; and that the Yugoslavia’s anti-fascist popular Assembly had confirmed it. Hebrang added that Yugoslav partisans had launched significant actions in the area, while General Arso Jovanović, the supreme commander of the Yugoslav army, also present at that meeting, clarified that two formations of the Yugoslav army, two divisions, and a few partisan units were active in the territory being claimed. The General concluded: “These regions are fully in Yugoslav hands.”109 The minutes quoted here are important because they document that the extent of Soviet support for the Yugoslav demands, which depended on many variables, was affected significantly by the Yugoslavs’ capacity to create a credible level of consensus among the people. Alexander, in turn, informed Tito that the Allies were planning to impose a military government on the area, thus suspending Italian sovereignty. Following contacts with the British, Tito became convinced that it was time to speed things up and to intensify preparations for Yugoslavia’s seizure of power in Trieste and Istria.110 August 1944 is thus the crucial month, the moment when Tito’s movement decides to take all the actions necessary for presenting the Allies with a fait accompli: the occupation of Venezia Giulia as the premise for its annexation. Several indicators now suggested to the Yugoslav leaders that a quick, victorious conclusion to the conflict was imminent: the landing in Normandy and in Provence, the liberation of Rome and of Paris, the victorious advance of the Red Army beyond the Danube, and the defection of Romania and Bulgaria from the German alliance. On September 12 the Red Army crossed the Yugoslav border. In a meeting on August 28, 1944, the Slovenian Communist Party, spurred by Edvard Kardelj, prepared a plan for assuming power in the areas of Venezia Giulia and Southern Carinthia claimed by the Slovenes.111 It was imperative, Kardelj warned, to assume power immediately in Trieste, to set up political institutions, and to reinforce the political police, Ozna. But it was also important to carry out only targeted executions, so as to avoid a situation in which people would go on “a reciprocal killing rampage.” The mobilization of the masses was the first priority, so that they could immediately organize demonstrations in favor of the annexation of Trieste and of the Littoral to Yugoslavia.112 In September 1944, Anton Vratuša met again with the CLN in Milan, presenting such exorbitant demands as to make it clear that his real goal was to stop any contact between the Liberation Front and the CLNAI. In the meantime, in Trieste, the representative of the Italian Communists asked the CLN to support Trieste’s inclusion in socialist Yugoslavia and the entry of the Slovenian representatives into the CLN as full members. After they received a negative response, the Communists left the CLN. Later, the

198  The Eclipse of the Italian State Communists of Trieste would fall completely into line with the Yugoslavs, whereas the other parties rejected any further collaboration with the communist movement. In the same months, disagreement about the future status of Venezia Giulia after the collapse of the Germans caused a split between Marshal Alexander and the Foreign Office. Alexander preferred the occupation of the entire territory, while the Foreign Office favored managing the region jointly with Yugoslavia, with a demarcation line still to be defined, but with the British exercising some control over the entire area, which meant secure communications with Austria. In the context of its projections for the postwar order, the Study Center of the Foreign Office prepared a documented recommendation sketching the “optimal” line of demarcation. Presented in December 1944, this document gave first consideration to ethnic issues, while also addressing economic problems and the national leanings of the various populations. For example, the ethnic Slavs of the Natisone valleys seemed inclined toward remaining in Italy. This document, which took on greater significance because of the Greek crisis raging at that time, showed that the British government preferred to reach a power-sharing arrangement with the Yugoslav troops in Venezia Giulia, in order to avoid armed clashes. According to the Foreign Office, the temporary line of demarcation was also supposed to represent the basis for the definitive setting of the border.113 In any case, the British had been disposed to making territorial concessions to Yugoslavia ever since 1941, both because this arrangement would enable them to continue their traditional policy of exercising influence in the Balkans, and because they wished to avoid the disastrous destabilizing effects that the policy of fascist Italy had generated.114 By August 1944 the Yugoslav liberation movement operated with the logic of the fait accompli as its leverage at a future peace conference, which at that time was deemed to be closer than it actually was.115 Raoul Pupo has rightly remarked that the Yugoslav Communists did not change their policy all of a sudden. Instead, as the strategic context seemed to become more favorable to them, they articulated explicitly aims that they had envisaged for a long time.116 The fear that the Allies might carry out their much talked-about landing on the coast of Istria further increased their sense of urgency, because such an operation would inevitably reduce the room for maneuver of the Yugoslav occupiers in the contested territory. In a speech broadcast on the radio, Tito now openly claimed Istria, the Slovenian Littoral, and Southern Carinthia. Following this declaration, a meeting took place in Bari between Palmiro Togliatti and the Yugoslav representatives, Kardelj, Gilas, and Hebrang.117 Immediately afterward, on October 19, Togliatti sent instructions conveying his full acceptance of the Yugoslav demands to his liaison officer with the Yugoslavs, Vincenzo Bianco. Speaking also in the name of the Party’s Directorate, Togliatti said that the Communists should facilitate the occupation of the Julian region by Marshal Tito’s troops. He went on to say:

The Eclipse of the Italian State  199 This means that, in this region, there will be neither a British occupation, nor the restoration of the reactionary Italian administration. We’ll have thus created a very different situation from the one existing in the liberated part of Italy; a democratic situation, which will enable us to destroy Fascism completely, and to organize the people so that they will be able to continue the struggle against the Germans and to resolve all their vital problems. Further instructions reaffirmed that it was of vital importance to participate in the Italian-Yugoslav organs of popular power soon to be created on the ground. Partisan units were to become an organic component of Tito’s army, whereas the Communists ought to intensify their propaganda in favor of Yugoslavia throughout northern Italy. They should also agree to postpone any decision regarding the attribution of Trieste to one state or the other, because “today this discussion can only create conflict between the Italian and Slavic peoples.” But the most important passage in the document was the following: “The Communists must declare openly that they side against all those Italians who are working actively on the ground in favor of Italian imperialism and nationalism, as well as against all those who contribute in any way toward sowing discord between the two peoples.”118 The Central Committee of the party sent a similar letter to the Julian Communists on September 24. On October 13, 1944, the Italian Communist Party launched a famous appeal to the Communists of Venezia Giulia “and of those regions that will become part of the military theater of operations of Tito’s army”: In a liberated Italy, we must welcome Tito’s soldiers not just because they deserve the title of liberators, as much as the British and American soldiers do, but also because they are our older brothers who have shown us the path to rebellion and victory against Nazi oppression and fascist traitors, and who bring us freedom through their heroism and sacrifice. . . . [We must welcome them] as new carriers of fraternity and cohabitation not only among the Yugoslav peoples, but rather among all peoples, and as the creators of a new democracy forged in the fire of the war of national liberation. . . . They come to us as brothers, because not only the Slavic territories that they have liberated, but also the Italian territories will not be subject to the armistice regime, but will rather be considered free territories, with their own self-government represented by the organs of the liberation movement, in which the national rights and aspirations of every people and every national group will find immediate and certain democratic expression in a spirit of brotherly solidarity . . .  In this case too, however, the significant part of the appeal concerned the appropriate treatment for those who might oppose Tito’s military occupation:

200  The Eclipse of the Italian State The Italian Communist Party . . . commits all Communists and invites all anti-Fascists to consider the worst enemies of the national liberation of our country and, therefore, allies of the Germans and the Fascists, all those who, by using the usual fascist pretexts of the “Slavic danger” and “communist danger,” try to sabotage the military and political efforts of our Slavic brothers, who aim at their own liberation and at the liberation of our country; and all those who, by using those pretexts, endeavor to set not just Communists against Communists, but also Slavs against Italians; that is, those people, who, by using all kinds of maneuvering, slander, and lies, do not give up their ambitions of imperialism and fascist oppression.119 On December 13, 1944, the Italian delegate to communist headquarters in Ljubljana, Umberto Massola, reported to the Italian Communist Party’s in Rome that in September Kardelj had supposedly announced the Slovenes’ intention to annex Trieste, Monfalcone, and so forth, “after disarming Italian partisans and throwing them out of the area.”120 In a letter of February 7, 1945, to the President of the Council of Ministers Bonomi, Togliatti reasserted the positions mentioned above. Rumors circulated that Italian partisan units might attempt to occupy Venezia Giulia so as to prevent the entry of the Yugoslav liberation army into the area: “Regarding the internal situation, that directive is tantamount to declaring civil war, because it is absurd to think that our party will agree to engage in a struggle against Tito’s anti-fascist and democratic forces.”121 We thus cannot find any substantial difference of opinion between the philo-Yugoslav Communists of Trieste (after their Italian leadership had been decapitated in October 1944),122 and the leaders of the Communist Party in Italy, supposedly focused on the defense of national interests. Togliatti’s specious distinction between “occupation” and “final destination” of the territories was the only differentiating feature, an irrelevant distinction, given that the Yugoslav strategy was to ensure the annexation of those territories precisely through military occupation.123 In any case, at least from October 1944 onward the repeated declarations made by Togliatti and the upper ranks of the Italian Communist Party are meant to achieve three goals: to support the Yugoslav occupation of Venezia Giulia; to ensure that the Yugoslav liberation army will have full control over partisan units (witness the explicit appeal to becoming part of “Tito’s army”); and to delegitimize those components of the Italian resistance movement that were favorable to maintaining the territorial integrity of the state, and more inclined toward a British and American occupation of the territory in question—a move that could have better safeguarded the region while awaiting its definitive attribution. The directives of the leadership of the Italian Communist party, Togliatti’s official positions, and the appeals published in the communist underground periodical La nostra lotta [Our struggle] were meant to guarantee that the military forces and the political institutions of the Yugoslav

The Eclipse of the Italian State  201 liberation movement could exercise full control over the partisan units and over the CLNs of Venezia Giulia, which were supposed to become completely subordinate to the Yugoslavs. This was what was really at stake during those months. The Yugoslav Ninth Corps intended to occupy Venezia Giulia without striking a blow, that is, without having to confront alternative partisan forces, or even any force that was independent from those controlled by Tito’s movement. The support of the Italian Communist Party undoubtedly had an impact on the course of events because, de facto, it guaranteed the best possible conditions for the occupation of the region by the Yugoslav army. In this context, Togliatti’s distinction between “occupation” and “final destination” of those territories appears to be of marginal significance. Leonid Gibiansky, a major expert on the Soviet archives regarding the relations among the Soviet, Yugoslav, and Italian Communists, correctly stresses that Togliatti, Kardelj, Gilas, and Hebrang reached an agreement on managing the delicate issue of Trieste in the Bari meeting. Afterwards, no significant changes were made, at least until February.124 On that occasion, Kardelj himself showed his understanding for Togliatti’s caution regarding an explicit propaganda campaign in favor of annexation. The service that Togliatti rendered to the Yugoslav comrades by officially disavowing the non-communist Italian resistance movement in Venezia Giulia was invaluable for the Yugoslav partisan units. In this situation Togliatti could have weighed in by fully leveraging his authority as a communist leader of international renown. On the contrary, when he spoke about the issue of Trieste as Foreign Minister of the Italian government, his interventions in favor of acknowledging that the city was, and should remain “Italian” were much less impressive and substantively ineffectual. In that same period, Churchill, who had had some perplexing experiences with Tito, found himself reconsidering his assessment of the Yugoslav partisan commander. Even though a full-fledged landing in Istria had proved unrealistic, the British command put a few units ashore in Dalmatia with the task of intercepting the German retreat from Greece. In November, the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, Henry M. Wilson, decided to reinforce these divisions, which included an armored one, and to set up a base equipped for facilitating the landing of troops in the area around Zara. Not only did the Yugoslavs refuse any form of cooperation, but Tito demanded that any further dispatching of British troops to the eastern Adriatic could take place only after he himself and Churchill had reached an agreement. Such demands represented a sharp break from the practice followed until then by the Anglo-Americans, who had always operated freely against the Germans in all the Allied countries. Wilson escaped the embarrassment of this new situation because he was called back to Washington as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission, after he had told Churchill that a landing in Dalmatia was of vital importance because it would enable the Allies to isolate and destroy a great number of retreating

202  The Eclipse of the Italian State German effectives. Churchill commented that he had already lost all his trust in Tito after the latter’s mysterious trip to Moscow. To make things clear, the British Prime Minister sent a letter to Tito informing him that he reserved full freedom of movement for British forces engaged in Yugoslav territories in the war against the Third Reich. Fitzroy Maclean (the British representative with Tito’s army) delivered the letter to Belgrade only on December 6, 1944. In this letter Churchill expressed his suspicions that Yugoslav hostility to the British might stem from their aim of occupying the Italian territories in the northern Adriatic. He also argued that territorial requests would be decided in the context of the peace treaties and that, in any case, Yugoslav demands must not hinder military operations. Tito cleverly answered that he had full confidence in British intentions regarding the territories in question, and agreed on the necessity of deciding the new borders at a future peace conference. But the delays that had marred communications between the British and Yugoslav military and political leaderships de facto created a situation whereby no one spoke any more about a landing in the Adriatic.125 Alexander, on his part, going against the objections of the British General Command, decided to grant Tito’s request that any landing of allied troops in the Adriatic should be authorized by Belgrade. These agreements also concerned Zara, formally still an Italian city, where the British wanted to create an air base. Although these agreements did not mean much for the progress of operations, they nonetheless established an important principle. In particular, they implicitly acknowledged Yugoslav demands on a formally Italian territory before the peace conference started.126 This unpleasant episode also had a role in Winston Churchill’s attitude when the crisis of Trieste eventually broke out. In the disputed territories, Italian partisan units quickly became subordinate to the initiative and the objectives of the Slovenian and Croatian national liberation movements. The Italian fighting units were forced to move into the interior of the country, suffering heavy losses during the long marches they had to undergo to reach their combat zones. The journalist and author Mario Pacor thus comments: The Mazzini battalion was the first to pass the Isonzo River to join the Slovenian Thirtieth Division. Their transfer took place on November 28. They went back to the Natisone Valley in February, after fighting bloody battles which reduced their numbers from 105 to only 22. The remainder of the division began its transfer on December 24. They had to endure a long, exhausting march which went on for days in snow and ice, and forced them to go through enemy lines. Ambushed by the Nazis, the 156th Picelli Brigade lost forty-five men in combat. Then came the fording of the icy Isonzo River, then more marching. Finally, at the beginning of January they enjoyed a few days when they could settle down and rest in the free area of Cerkljansko. The Italian tricolore finally waved on a

The Eclipse of the Italian State  203 high staff in Zakriž, headquarters of the divisional command. Thanks to those combatants, our flag was no longer hated but respected by the local population.127 The passage of the Natisone Division under the command of the Yugoslav Ninth Corps inevitably led to splitting the command of the unit, previously joint between the Natisone and the Osoppo Brigade, which comprised Catholic partisans and members of the Action Party.128 From a memoir of the Osoppo Brigade it emerges that on November 22, 1944, the political Commissioner of the First Garibaldi Division, Vanni Padoan, had a meeting with two leaders of the Brigade, warning them to stop further recruitment and to abstain from any anti-Slovenian propaganda. Padoan referred to the proclamation of the Italian Communist Party published in La nostra lotta, and reasserted that all partisan formations were supposed to pass under the command of the Yugoslav Ninth Corps. He said: “The existence of partisan formations that are not under Slovenian command is no longer acceptable in this area.”129 Italian communist cadres who felt their national allegiance more strongly, such as Luigi Frausin and Vincenzo Gigante,130 fell victim to German ambushes in circumstances that are unclear to say the least. Already in September the Yugoslav Ninth Corps had established its own command in Trieste, reasserting that the city was also an area within competence of the Yugoslav liberation movement.131 Trieste’s CLN had also been decapitated over and over, and its members sent to concentration camps in Germany. After a roundup in December 1943, for example, such a fate befell five members of the CLN who were sent to Dachau. Gabriele Foschiatti, a member of the Action Party, and the Communist Zeffirino Pisoni met their death there.132 On the eve of the Trieste insurrection of 30 April, it was the fourth incarnation of the CLN that led the Italian resistance! In the meantime, the Yugoslav Ninth Corps even got rid of the unified command of the Garibaldi and Osoppo Brigades operating east of the Tagliamento River, a structure favored especially by the British Major Vincent, who was seconded by the Allied Forces to the resistance movement in eastern Friuli. As a consequence, the Garibaldi-Natisone division had become operatively subordinate to the IX Corps, reported “only to Marshal Tito,” and was thus no longer under the control of the Volunteers for Freedom Corps of the Veneto, or under the jurisdiction of the Allies.133 Right before the liberation of Trieste, the Natisone division was sent into the Slovenian interior where, at the beginning of May, it participated in the liberation of Kočevje and Ljubljana with the Italian partisans of the Fontanot Brigade. The latter lost half its effectives. As liberation came, the Italian Budicin Battalion also fought in the Croatian interior of Istria and the mountainous area of Gorski Kotar. The Natisone division had one thousand fifteen casualties: five hundred ninety-six dead, two hundred eighteen wounded, and two hundred one missing in action; the Budicin Battalion,

204  The Eclipse of the Italian State over three hundred: more than one hundred dead, one hundred twenty wounded, and eighty missing.134 With commendable candor, the Liberation Front leader Branko Babić said: “We were well aware that we would be able to claim our rights only to the extent that we ourselves were present here, fighting and relying on our own weapons. That is why we decided to transfer the Italian units into the interior and to send them away from this territory during those days.”135 It is in this context that we must consider what happened at the shepherd’s hut of Porzûs, in the province of Udine, where, on February 7, 1944, twenty-one partisans of the Osoppo Brigades were attacked and “executed” by a much stronger and better-armed (Italian) communist brigade led by Mario Toffanin, a member of the Gruppi di azione patriottica [Patriot Action Groups].136 The charge that the Osoppo Brigade was guilty of treason and collaboration with the enemy, used to justify the massacre, proved to be unfounded. The mere fact that they were in a territory beyond the Isonzo River, an area supposedly within the exclusive competence of the Yugoslav Command, was sufficient to justify the execution. On December 9, 1944, the surviving parties of Trieste CLN, which included Socialists, Catholics, Liberals, and members of the Action Party, published a political platform calling for broad autonomy for the region, equal rights between Italians and Slovenes, and Trieste as a free port. This manifesto also insisted that the borders were untouchable, thus showing scarce political realism.137 The democratic government in Rome, in any case, did publicize this document in the press and on the radio.138 Inevitably, the break with the Communists weakened the CLN. According to the Slovenian anti-communist historian Bogdan Novak, the Yugoslavs wanted to weaken the Italian resistance movement, for “a well-organized CLN claiming at least the Italian coastal parts of the Julian region would be a danger to their pretensions.”139 As late as April 12, the Slovenes proposed to the Trieste CLN that they form a mixed committee in which three seats would go to the CLN, three to the Slavic Communists, and four to mass organizations such as Workers’ Unity. This arrangement ensured that the democratic component would be completely subordinate to the communist one. The negotiations went nowhere. The Slovenian anti-Fascists and the Italian Communists then went ahead and created the Comitato esecutivo anti-fascista italo-sloveno [Italo-Slovenian Anti-Fascist Executive Committee], leaving empty the three seats that had been offered to the CLN (!).140 This latter episode further confirms that the CLN could only come out of its political isolation on condition of renouncing either its coherent anti-Fascism or its patriotism. The men of the Italian resistance in Trieste remained loyal to both ideals, fully aware that by doing so they were condemning themselves to an uncomfortable position of minority. In Dennison Rusinow’s words, they remained “a small but gallant band of brave and dedicated men, true to their ideals and to their sound initial judgement of the only course open to them.”141

The Eclipse of the Italian State  205 From the point of view of the Croats and the Slovenes, on the contrary, the firm acceptance of nationalist goals by the communist liberation movement enabled it to gain the consensus of the majority over time: so much so that on the Littoral, most nationalist forces, survivors of the Tigr, of the Mlada Istra [Young Istria], and of similar organizations, merged with the Slovenian Liberation Front and the Croatian National Liberation Committee, even though they were all subjected to the inflexible control exercised by the Communists who, despite being a minority, represented the only organized force.142 On the eve of the end of the war the Italians in Venezia Giulia were thus in a position of clear inferiority with regard to Yugoslav claims.

Notes 1 The obligatory reference for the events of September 8 remains Aga Rossi’s Una Nazione allo Sbando: L’Armistizio Italiano del Settembre 1943 e le Sue Conseguenze, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003, third enlarged edition. In the last volume of his monumental biography of Mussolini, published posthumously, Renzo De Felice calls September 8, 1943, the most dramatic event of contemporary Italy: “So much so that, to this day [1996], no one has dared confront that event ex professo [with the competence of a professional]. ” De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato, cit., p. 92. We can find remarkable analytical insights on those tragic events in a few literary works. Se for example B. Fenoglio, Primavera di Bellezza, Turin, Einaudi, 1991; S. Satta, De Profundis (1948), Milan, Adelphi, 1980. See also the pioneering work of R. Zangrandi, L’Italia Tradita: Otto Settembre 1943, Milan, Mursia, 1971. 2 Aga Rossi, Una Nazione allo Sbando, cit., pp. 149–79. On the massacre of Kefalonia, see G.E. Rusconi, Cefalonia: Quando gli Italiani si Battono, Torino, Einaudi, 2004; Aga Rossi, Giusti, Una guerra a parte, cit. 3 The reference for this theme is G. Schreiber’s, I Militari Italiani Internati nei Campi di Concentramento del Terzo Reich 1943–1945, Rome, Stato maggiore dell’esercito—Ufficio storico, 1992 [original German edition: Die Italienischen Militärinternierten im Deutschen Machtbereich 1943 bis 1945: Verraten, Verachtet, Vergessen, Munich, R. Oldenbourg, 1990]. See also S. Cotta, “Quale Resistenza?” Aspetti e Problemi della Guerra di Liberazione in Italia, Milan, Rusconi, 1977, pp. 86–90. See also Alessandro Natta’s partially autobiographic reflections in A. Natta (ed.), L’Altra Resistenza: I Militari Italiani Internati in Germania, Turin, Einaudi, 1997, and those of C. Tagliasacchi, Prigionieri Dimenticati: Internati Militari Italiani nei Campi di Hitler, Venice, Marsilio, 1999. 4 See G. Chianese, “Il Regno del Sud,” in E. Collotti, R. Sandri, and F. Sessi (eds.), Dizionario della Resistenza, vol. I, Storia e Geografia della Liberazione, Turin, Einaudi, 2000, pp. 78–97, especially pp. 78–80. 5 Mussolini’s liberation took place through the coordination of land and sky forces (paratrooper units transported by gliders) on September 12, 1943. On September 15, Mussolini issued the first agenda of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. See De Felice, Mussolini l’Alleato, cit., pp. 37–43, 343–8. 6 On the structure of German administration in Italy, see L. Klinkhammer, L’Occupazione Tedesca in Italia, 1943–1945, Turin, Bollati Boringhieri, 1993. 7 Galli della Loggia, La Morte della Patria, cit, pp. 4–5. 8 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 293. 9 See ch. 6, pp. 167, 170f.

206  The Eclipse of the Italian State 10 G. Paladin, La Lotta Clandestina di Trieste nella Drammatiche Vicende del Cln della Venezia Giulia (1954), Udine, Del Bianco, 2004, p. 74. 11 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 189; L. Giuricin, “Il Settembre ’43 in Istria e a Fiume,” in Centro di Ricerche Storiche—Rovigno: Quaderni, 11, 1997, pp. 7–115, especially pp. 35–7. 12 Paladin, La Lotta Clandestina di Trieste, cit., p. 77 13 Sala, “La Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” cit., p. 565. 14 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 290–3. 15 Giuricin, “Il Settembre ’43 in Istria e a Fiume,” cit., pp. 30–1. 16 Paladin, La Lotta Clandestina di Trieste, cit., p. 74. 17 Ibid., p. 79 18 On the symbolic value of the small town of Pisino, a center of Croatian urban identity in Istria, see V. D’Alessio, “Italiani e Croati a Pisino tra Fine Ottocento e Inizio Novecento: La Costruzione di Identità Conflittuali,” in Cattaruzza (ed.), Nazionalismi di Frontiera, cit., pp. 73–122. 19 Drndić, Le Armi e la Libertà dell’Istria, Fiume, Edit, 1981, pp. 387 ff. 20 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 211. 21 Drndić, Le Armi e la Libertà dell’Istria, cit., pp. 364 ff. 22 Giuricin, “Il Settembre ’43 in Istria e a Fiume,” cit., p. 106. 23 See R. Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra; il Caso delle Foibe Giuliane 1943–1945,” in Clio—Rivista Trimestrale di Studi Storici, 33, 1996/I, pp. 115–37, especially p. 118. See also R. Pupo and R. Spazzali, Foibe, Milan, Paravia-Mondadori, 2003, pp. 7–14. 24 Ibid. pp. 140–3. For Giovanni Miccoli’s interpretation, see Pupo, Ibid., pp. 144–47. 25 F. Čulinović, Stvaranje Nove Jugoslavenske Države, Zagreb, Svenčilište, 1959, pp. 290 ff. De facto, the new Yugoslav state was founded in the Jajce session of AVNOJ. The new power took away the right to represent the Yugoslav people from the government in exile, considered a traitor. King Peter was denied the right to reenter the country. Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 212. See also Ibid. for the text of the decree of annexation. 26 Čulinović, Stvaranje Nove Jugoslavenske Države, cit., p. 288 ff. 27 See Drndić, Le Armi e la Libertà dell’Istria, cit., p. 390. 28 On this extremely important point see the essay by the Slovenian historian T. Ferenc, “La Questione Nazionale nei Rapporti tra il Movimento di Liberazione Sloveno e quello Italiano,” in G. Arfé (ed.), Trieste 1941–1947, Trieste, Edizioni Dedolibri, 1991, pp. 57–74. Italian historians who have studied this issue have not taken the implications of these events sufficiently into consideration. 29 On the German occupation of this area, see G. Fogar, Sotto l’Occupazione Nazista nelle Province Orientali, Udine, Del Bianco, 1968, pp. 28–48; Giorgio Liuzzi, Violenza e Repressione Nazista nel Litorale Adriatico 1943–1945, Trieste, Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel FriuliVenezia Giulia, 2014, pp. 207–19. According to Yugoslav sources, the German retaking of Istria caused the deaths of two thousand partisans and of two thousand five hundred civilians killed in reprisal; one thousand two hundred fortyfour people were taken into custody, and four hundred twenty-two were sent to concentration camps in Germany. See Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 202 f. Contemporary German sources report even higher numbers. 30 Talpo, Dalmazia: Una Cronaca per la Storia (1943–1944), cit., pp. 1176–81. 31 Ibid., pp. 1432–44. 32 See Pupo, Il Lungo Esodo, cit., pp. 77–80. 33 K. Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione Prealpi e Litorale Adriatico 1943–1945, Gorizia, Edizione Libraria Adamo, 1968, p.63 [original German edition, Die

The Eclipse of the Italian State  207 Operationszonen “Alpenvorland” und “Adriatisches Küstenland” 1943–1945, Vienna, Publikationen des Österreichischen Instituts für Zeitgeschichte und des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte der Universität Wien, 1969]. 34 See Rainer’s deposition in Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 228. 35 On Odilo Globocnik see Johannes Sachslehner, Zwei Millionen Ham’ma Erledigt: Odilo Globočnik—Hitlers Manager des Todes, Vienna-Graz-Klagenfurt, Styria, 2014; B. Rieger, Creator of Nazi Death Camps: The Life of Odilo Globočnik, London-Portland, OR, Vallentine Mitchell, 2007. 36 There is a list of these functionaries in Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 307. 37 Ibid., p. 301. 38 See A. Agnelli, La Genesi dell’Idea di Mitteleuropa, Milan, Giuffrè, 1971. 39 Document no. 3, Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., Appendix-Documents, pp. 199–201. 40 See H. Schneider-Bosgard, Bandenkampf: Resistenza e Controguerriglia al Confine Orientale, Antonio Sema (ed.), Gorizia, LEG, 2003, pp. 155–6. [Original German edition, Bandenkampf in der Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland, Trieste, Deutscher Adria-Verlag, no year, probably 1945]. 41 Rainer’s Deposition, in Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 230. The document was also reproduced in E. Apih, “Tre Documenti sulla Politica Nazista nel “Litorale Adriatico”,” in, Il Movimento di Liberazione in Italia, no. 106, 1972, pp. 39–76, especially pp. 66–76. On collaboration by the economic élites in Trieste, see Michael Wedekind, Nationalsozialistische Besatzungs- und Annexionspolitik in Norditalien 1943 bis 1945, Munich, Oldenbourg, 2003, pp. 383–93. 42 E. Collotti, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordine Europeo, Milan, Vangelista, 1974, pp. 16 ff. Stuhlpfarrer also reaches similar conclusions, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 152. 43 Schneider-Bosgard, Bandenkampf, cit., pp. 103–4. 44 According to Mario Toscano, the Reich was planning to annex both areas of operation. But his only documentary evidence is some notes from Goebbels’s diaries. Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 300. Collotti leans, on the contrary, toward the hypothesis of the protectorate, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordine Europeo, cit., p. 13. See ch. VI of this book, pp. 155, 157 on German designs on Trieste even before September 8. 45 Document no. 3, in Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 200. Felix Kraus reasserted these ideas in a report written in December 1943 for Vienna’s Südosteuropa Gesellschaft [Southern European Society]: “This is a single great German-Latin-Slavic area of transit in Europe, which is also endowed with that arm of the Mediterranean Sea that penetrates most deeply into the continental land mass. The tasks we need to carry out in this area regard its nationalities and peoples. These pose a problem that only German leadership can resolve successfully at its roots, if we look at its historical and territorial preconditions. The Reichsgau [administrative unit created by the Third Reich] of Carinthia, supported by the might of the entire Reich, will be in charge of restoring order to this territory, of resurrecting its awareness that, as a ‘headland,’ they have a specific place in a reordered Europe, and of turning it toward the center of the continent, which is its natural center of gravity” (Ibid., pp. 220–2, especially p. 222). 46 Schneider-Bosgard, Bandenkampf, cit., p. 192. 47 Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 95. 48 Collotti, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordine Europeo, cit., pp. 48 f. On the recognition of Slovenian linguistic and cultural rights by the German

208  The Eclipse of the Italian State administration see also Wedekind, Nationalsozialistische Besatzungs- und Annexionspolitik, cit., pp. 318 f. 49 According to Sachselehner, in February 1945 there were 25.354 men engaged in armed collaboration in the Adriatisches Küstenland. Sachslehner, Zwei Millionen Ham’ma Erledigt, cit., p. 324. 50 Kranjc, To Walk With the Devil, cit., pp. 196–98. 51 Rainer’s deposition, Stuhlpfarrer, Le Zone d’Operazione, cit., p. 225. 52 D. Rossetti, Sette Lettere di Argomento Municipale, C. Pagnini (ed.), Trieste, Società di Minerva, 1944. 53 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 308. 54 Ibid., p. 326. 55 See G. Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945. Società e Resistenza, Trieste, Istituto per la storia del movimento di liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 1999, pp. 92–8. 56 See R. Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò: Resistenza Politica e Militare Italiana a Trieste, 1943–1947, Gorizia, LEG, 2003, pp. 125–7. 57 E. Apih. “Nazismo e Presenza Etnica Tedesca nell’Italia Nordorientale,’ in Problemi della Resistenza in Friuli, Atti del I Convegno di Studi, Udine, Del Bianco, 1983. 58 T. Judt, “The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in I. Deák, J.T. Gross, T. Judt, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 293–323, especially pp. 294–5. It was also dangerous to be a Serb in Croatia, a Russian (until 1943), or a Ukrainian or a German (after 1943). Ibid. 59 Cusin, La Liberazione di Trieste, cit., p. 32. 60 See M. Coslovich, I Percorsi della Sopravvivenza: Storia e Memoria della Deportazione dall’Adriatisches Küstenland, Milan, Mursia, 1994, pp. 325–73. 61 Pupo, Il Lungo Esodo, cit. 62 In his testimony, given almost thirty years after the events in question, one of the partisan attackers declared that these actions aimed to “raise the level of conflict,” thus making German retaliation inevitable and creating a chasm between occupiers and local population. In this case, the attacker was the Azerbaijani Mirdmat Sejdov, a former lieutenant in the Red Army, former Wehrmacht prisoner and collaborationist who had subsequently joined Tito’s Ninth Corps. Se S. Maranzana, Le Armi per Trieste Italiana: Dopo Cinquant’Anni in Esclusiva i Documenti dei Servizi Segreti e gli Interrogatori dei Protagonisti della Lotta contro Tito, Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 2003, p. 213. See also M. Rossi, Soldati dell’Armata Rossa al Confine Orientale 1941–1945, Gorizia, LEG, 2014. 63 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 332–3. 64 G. Fogar, “Litorale Adriatico,” in Collotti, Sandri and Sessi (eds.), Dizionario della Resistenza, cit., vol. I, pp. 582–594; T. Matta “Rappresaglie di Trieste,” in Collotti, Sandri and Sessi (eds.), Dizionario della Resistenza, cit., vol. II, pp. 397–9. 65 In the course of 1944, the following villages were burned down in retaliation for partisan actions: Lokve, Komen, Rihemberk, Podgradje, Kuteževo, Fabce, Šmarje, Kozina, Beka, Ocizla, Forni di Sotto, Torlano, Nimis, Faedis, Attimis, Sedilis. On April 30, 1944, 257 inhabitants of the Slovenian village Lipa were murdered after their houses were burned down. S. Sachslehner, Zwei Millionen Ham’ma Erledigt, cit., pp. 323 ff. 66 Collotti, Il Litorale Adriatico nel Nuovo Ordine Europeo, cit., pp. 93–5. 67 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 345. After Teheran, British aid to Tito’s movement greatly outpaced the amount of aid provided by the Soviet

The Eclipse of the Italian State  209 Union. See also Churchill’s enthusiastic speech to the British Parliament on February 22, 1944: “Around and within these heroic forces, a national and unifying movement has developed. The Communist element had the honour of being the beginner, but, as the movement increased in strength and numbers, a modifying and unifying process has taken place, and national conceptions have supervened.” Mr. Winston Churchill, War and International Situation, February 22, 1944, Commons, in http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/mr-winstonchurchill/1944 (accessed January 22, 2015). See also J. Pirjevec, Il Giorno di San Vito: Jugoslavia 1918–1992. Storia di una Tragedia, Turin, Nuova Eri, 1993, pp. 179–81. Fitzroy Maclean, the new chief of the British mission seconded to the headquarters of the Yugoslav liberation movement, played a prominent role in these events. 68 See L. Giuricin, “Istria Teatro di Guerra e di Contrasti Internazionali (Estate 1944-Primavera 1945),” in Centro di Ricerche Storiche—Rovigno, Quaderni, XIII, 2001, pp. 155–246, especially p. 183. 69 Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., pp. 136–42. 70 Paladin, La Lotta Clandestina di Trieste, cit., pp. 193–4. Stefani calculates the number of effectives in the division, which was comprised of Garibaldi and Osoppo units, at 2,500 men. The decision to unify the military commands of the Osoppo and Garibaldi divisions was taken at the end of August 1944. See F. Stefani, Senza Pace: L’Incerto Confine Orientale Italiano in Trent’Anni di Storia (1915–1945), Udine, Cooperativa editoriale il Campo, 1988, p. 429. 71 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 98. 72 Sala, “La Seconda Guerra Mondiale,” cit., p. 573. 73 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 113. 74 See G. Radossi, “L’Unione deli Italiani dell’Istria e di Fiume. Documenti Luglio 1944–1o Maggio 1945,” in Centro di Ricerche Storiche—Rovigno, Quaderni, 2, 1972, pp. 266–333. 75 Ibid., doc. n. 10, Bollettino, Agitprop Obl. K.K.P.H., per l’Istria (sezione di lingua italiana), Relazione sulla Conferenza dei Quadri Italiani, September15, 1944, pp. 256–62, especially p. 260. 76 However, the subordination of the Italian Communists to the Croatian communist organization had already become apparent at the end of 1943. See L. Giuricin, “La Difficile Ripresa della Resistenza in Italia e a Fiume,” in Centro di Ricerche Storiche—Rovigno, Quaderni, 12, 1999, pp. 5–60, especially pp. 13–47. 77 Ibid. 78 The Garibaldi Friuli Brigades and the Briško-beneški odred created a shared command on May 7, 1944. See Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 49. 79 See Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., pp. 138–9. 80 Ibid., p. 141. 81 D. De Castro, La Questione di Trieste: L’Azione Politica e Diplomatica Italiana dal 1943 al 1954, vol. I: Cenni Riassuntivi di Storia della Venezia Giulia Sotto il Profilo Etnico-politico, Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1981, p. 288. 82 Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., pp. 136–42. Fogar rightly assesses the agreements between the Italian and Slovenian Communist Parties as “fragile.” The agreements were systematically ignored in both the political and the military context. 83 See B.C. Novak, Trieste, 1941–1954: The Ethnic, Political, and Ideological Struggle, Chicago-London, The University of Chicago Press, 1970, p. 105; R. Gualtieri, Dalla Resistenza al Trattato di Pace 1943–1947, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1995, p. 65.

210  The Eclipse of the Italian State 84 The asymmetry between the abstract declarations of the Italian Communist Party and the policy of annexation practiced by the Slovenian Liberation Front and the Croatian National Liberation Committee in the territories that, even though occupied by the Germans, belonged nonetheless to Italy, has been highlighted for the first time by M. Cattaruzza, in “L’Esodo Istriano: Questioni Interpretative,” in M. Cattaruzza, M. Dogo, and R. Pupo (eds.), Esodi: Trasferimenti Forzati di Popolazioni nel Novecento Europeo, Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000, pp. 209–36, especially pp. 222–9. On the Slovenian territorial claims that called into question even the Italian-Austrian border of 1866, claiming Slavia veneta [Venetian Slavia] (the valleys of the Natisone), see N. Troha, “Il Movimento di Liberazione Sloveno e i Confini Occidentali della Slovenia,” in Qualestoria, 31, 2003/2, pp. 109–38, especially pp. 116–9. A newly-founded research institute tied to the chairmanship of the Slovenian Liberation Front, and headed by the historian Fran Zwitter, was entrusted with the task of studying how to proceed in establishing the western borders. 85 After the official disbanding of the Comintern, George Dimitrov managed its reorganized central apparatus from Moscow. In a letter of March 28, 1944, he said that the territorial controversy between the Italians and the Yugoslavs was politically premature, and went on to assert that these questions ought to be taken up only after the defeat of the common enemy. See Novak, Trieste, 1941–1954, cit., p. 103. 86 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 277 f. 87 A. Pizzoni, “La Questione della Frontiera Orientale Italiana tra Cln e Alleati. Deposizione al Processo per l’Eccidio di Porzus,” in P. Neglie (ed.), Nuova Storia Contemporanea, 1, 1997/1, pp. 104–42, especially pp. 130–2. 88 See Stefani, Senza Pace, cit., pp. 411–15. 89 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 352 f. 90 R. Pupo, “La Questione di Trieste: Un Panorama Interpretativo,” in Id., Guerra e Dopoguerra al Confine Orientale d’Italia (1939–1956), Udine, Del Bianco, 1999, pp. 139–90, especially p. 159. 91 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., pp. 54, 68. 92 Ibid., pp. 52–4. 93 A.G.M. de Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1983, pp. 116–8. 94 R. Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa di Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” in id., Guerra e Dopoguerra al Confine Orientale d’Italia (1939–1956), cit., pp. 67–106, especially pp. 72–3. 95 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 360 f. Stone stated in a message of September 11, 1943, that the Supreme Allied Command intended to establish its own military government in the two zones of operation. 96 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 86. De Roberti has good reasons for saying that the Italian government was concerned first of all with modifying the terms of the armistice; only much later did it confront the problem of the territories on the eastern border. See de Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., p. 173. 97 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 361. 98 A. Tarchiani, Dieci Anni tra Roma e Washington, Milan, Mondadori, 1955, pp. 56 f. 99 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 361 f. 100 De Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 192–3. 101 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 68. 102 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 362 f.

The Eclipse of the Italian State  211 103 Aga Rossi illustrates well Roosevelt’s indifference to the European order. Undoubtedly, this was supposed to be defined within the boundaries of a British-American and Soviet sharing of power, but in a context in which the old continent would ultimately become much less relevant. E. Aga Rossi, “Alle Origini del Mondo Bipolare: La Politica di Roosevelt Verso l’Europa (1941– 1945),” in Storia Contemporanea, 25, 1994/2, pp. 223–46. 104 De Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 180–1. 105 Pupo, “Il Lungo Esodo,” in Cattaruzza, Dogo, and Pupo (eds.), Esodi: Trasferimenti Forzati di Popolazioni nel Novecento Europeo, cit., p. 82. However, communist hegemony was almost complete in the new government. See Gualtieri, Togliatti e la Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 97. 106 G. Valdevit, “Foibe: L’Eredità della Sconfitta,” in Id., Foibe. Il Peso del Passato: Venezia Giulia 1943–1945, Venice, Marsilio, 1997, p. 22. 107 See “Appunti del Colloquio di I.V. Stalin con il Capo della Delegazione del Comitato Nazionale di Liberazione della Jugoslavia A. Hebrang sulla Struttura Militare della Jugoslavia, i suoi Problemi Territoriali e i Rapporti con la Bulgaria e l’Albania,” in Ventunesimo Secolo, 1/1, 2002, pp. 87–103. 108 L. Gibiansky, “L’Unione Sovietica, la Jugoslavia e Trieste,” in G. Valdevit (ed.), La Crisi di Trieste: Maggio-Giugno 1945. Una Rivisitazione Storiografica, Trieste, Istituto regionale per la storia del movimento di liberazione del FriuliVenezia Giulia, 1995, pp. 39–78, especially pp. 45–7. 109 Ibid. 110 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 363 f. 111 Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa di Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” cit., p. 77. 112 Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., p. 165. 113 See de Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 149–60. The Foreign Office recommended a line of demarcation that ran more or less along the 1914 Austro-Italian border in the north. In the south it included Gorizia, Duino, Trieste, and the valley of the Dragogna [Dragonja] River as far as the coastal town of Pirano [Piran] in Istria (Ibid., p. 160). According to this document, the new (Italian and Yugoslav) holders of the frontier territories were supposed to recognize the right of their inhabitants to request evacuation from those territories. Each country had to agree formally to welcome the evacuees, and to take all measures necessary for their evacuation, reception, and upkeep (Ibid., p. 208). Regarding British support for the forced transfer of populations including in the area of Venezia Giulia, see Cattaruzza, in “L’Esodo Istriano: Questioni Interpretative,” cit., pp. 220–1. 114 G. Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste 1941–1954: Politica Internazionale e Contesto Locale, Milan, Angeli, 1986, pp. 20–1. It is noteworthy that the first considerations pointing in that direction were inserted within the context of establishing “collaboration among Turkey, Greece, and Yugoslavia, under British protection.” 115 It was the December 1944 German offensive in the Ardennes that delayed the end of hostilities in Europe. 116 Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa di Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” in id., Guerra e Dopoguerra al Confine Orientale d’Italia (1939–1956), cit., pp. 17–66, especially p. 58. See also P. Karlsen, Frontiera Rossa: Il PCI, il Confine Orientale e il Contesto Internazionale 1941–1955, Gorizia, LEG, 2010, pp. 65 f. 117 Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa di Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” cit., pp. 67–106, especially pp. 98 f. It appears that the meeting took place on October 17. Kardelj’s minutes report: “He [Togliatti] does not call into

212  The Eclipse of the Italian State question the fact that Trieste should belong to Yugoslavia, but he recommends that we apply a national policy that may please the Italians.” 118 P. Spriano published these directives for the first time in Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, vol. V: La Resistenza: Togliatti e il Partito Nuovo, Turin, Einaudi, 1975, pp. 436–8. 119 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 295 f. 120 Spriano, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, cit., vol. V, pp. 434–5. 121 Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa di Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” cit., p. 89. 122 Roberto Spazzali rightly emphasizes that until the capture of Luigi Frausin, the philo-Italian position of Trieste’s Communists was stronger than that of communist leaders in the rest of Italy. See Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 63. 123 See, for example, Gualtieri, Togliatti e la Politica Estera Italiana, cit., pp. 82–3. 124 L. Gibiansky, “La Questione di Trieste tra i Comunisti Italiani e Jugoslavi,” in E. Aga Rossi and G. Quagliariello, L’Altra Faccia della Luna: I Rapporti tra Pci, Pcf e Unione Sovietica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997, pp. 173–208, especially p. 190. 125 De Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 180–7. 126 Ibid., pp. 188–9. 127 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 257. 128 See also Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 64. 129 Stefani, Senza Pace, cit., pp. 448–9. 130 Between the end of August and the beginning of September 1944, the SS arrested Luigi Frausin, Umberto Felluga, a member of the Action Party, and four of Trieste’s communist leaders. This happened after three meetings of the newly-formed Italo-Slovenian Anti-Fascist Joint Committee had revealed profound disagreements between the Italian and Slovenian representatives. Carlo Schiffrer, the anti-fascist historian from Trieste, favors the thesis that the Slovenians betrayed the Italians. Luigi Frausin was tortured and shot. Umberto Felluga died in a concentration camp in Germany. See Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 353. Giovanni Paladin also explicitly asserts the thesis that information was given to the SS. He defined their roundup as “Julian Porzûs.” See Paladin, La Lotta Clandestina di Trieste, cit., pp. 167–73. We find some strangely ambiguous statements about Frausin in Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 268. Pacor does not deny that there may be some truth to the accusations, but he judges these assertions to be “inappropriate” and not substantiated by incontrovertible evidence. 131 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 357. 132 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 51. On February 8, 1944, the Istrian Communist Pino Budicin also fell with a comrade in a gunfight with a group of Fascists whom they found themselves confronting alone. See Giuricin, “La Difficile Ripresa della Resistenza,” cit., pp. 47–8. 133 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 58–69. 134 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., pp. 310 f. 135 Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., p. 239. 136 Until now no documentary evidence has emerged that the Slovenian Liberation Front ordered that massacre. However, Antonio Giulio de Robertis quotes a report received by the Foreign Office a few days before the massacre at Porzûs: “. . . in that report, a British liaison officer with the Slovenian partisans operating in north-eastern Italy, communicated that the unit to which he was detached had captured a few Italian partisans belonging to the Osoppo Brigades. When he complained, the Slovenian commander answered that he had obeyed orders and that he would send away the British mission if it obstructed operations. The report’s author then expressed the opinion that the Slovenians

The Eclipse of the Italian State  213 meant to attack the general command of the Osoppo Brigades. The Foreign Office’s reaction was swift. Maclean promptly received instructions to raise the question forcefully with Marshal Tito.” A.G.M. de Robertis, La Frontiera Orientale Italiana nella Diplomazia della II Guerra Mondiale, Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1981, p. 247. See also T. Piffer (ed.), Porzûs: Violenza e Resistenza sul Confine Orientale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012. 137 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 359 f. 138 Novak, Trieste, 1941–1954, cit., p. 112. 139 Ibid., p. 103. 140 De Robertis, La Frontiera Orientale Italiana nella Diplomazie della II Guerra Mondiale, cit., pp. 248–9. 141 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., pp. 341 f. The standard reference on the Italian resistance in Trieste is now Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit. 142 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 273. In summer 1942 it seems there were only 53 members of the Slovenian Communist Party on the coastal area claimed by them, and as many belonging to the Croatian Communist Party in Istria. See Ibid., pp. 274 f.

8 From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum

1 Tito’s Army in Trieste On February 20, 1945, Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces for all operations in the Mediterranean, summoned a meeting of the political committee to discuss how to proceed in the Mediterranean theater of operations. Once again, American and British premises and concerns about the new balance of power1 in Europe framed the hypotheses taken into consideration. Stone, the American Admiral serving as Head of the Allied Commission, reiterated the need to subject Italy in its entirety to Allied occupation, as stipulated by the armistice. Alexander, on the contrary, showed his preference for an agreement with Tito. The British representatives argued that, in a multipolar perspective, the Yugoslav government would soon be called upon to share the obligations of the United Nations, thus making it impossible for Tito to become the privileged interlocutor of the Allies, as feared by the Americans. At the time, British politicians still cultivated the illusion that Yugoslavia would establish a government of national unity with the participation of all political forces, a situation in which Great Britain could exert all its influence.2 Tito and Alexander met a day later. Alexander supported the Allied occupation of Venezia Giulia as the best option, which would then result in taking control over the port of Trieste and over the communication lines with Austria. Tito retorted by acknowledging the Allies’ needs, but demanded that the Yugoslav civil administration continue to operate even in the towns under Allied control, excluded the possibility that Istria might have any strategic importance, and claimed Yugoslav sovereignty over all territories east of the Isonzo River, once the Anglo-American troops had left the region.3 On March 7, 1945, in a meeting of the Central Committee of the Slovenian Communist Party, Franc Leskošek gave the following instructions regarding the occupation of Trieste: “Prepare qualified staff for Trieste—the police. Set up the entire apparatus in 28 hours, pick up the reactionaries, bring them here, and try them here [in Slovenia]—but no executions there.”4 On March 20 Tito’s armies launched their final offensive, followed by the Allied forces three weeks later. The Yugoslavs advanced rapidly: Bihać

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  215 fell on April 4, Senj on April 10. The Germans retreated north, while on April 20 the partisan Fourth Army entered Sussak (Fiume’s Croatian suburb), where the Germans set up their last line of defense, entrenching themselves around Fiume. Coming from the south, the Fourth Army got around Fiume and reached Istria from the sea. In mid-April the Yugoslavs arrested a few small British military units present in Istria. The possibility of a partition of the areas of occupation, not yet formalized by the accords, took shape on the ground instead.5 Trieste National Liberation Committee, pressured by the Slovenian representatives, found itself in a difficult situation. The Slovenes wanted to create a power-sharing body (the Italian-Slovenian Antifascist Committee), tasked with supporting annexation as the expression of the city’s democratic component.6 The Veneto Italian Communist Party’s insurrectional triumvirate violently attacked the Trieste National Liberation Committee, refused to lend it any support, and decided not to send any representatives to Trieste. The Milan National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy showed uncertainty. In a meeting on April 19, its communist representative proposed the disbanding of the “chauvinist” National Liberation Committee,7 which was even targeted with the usual accusation of contacts with the Nazis and the Fascists, the same accusation that had been launched against the Osoppo Brigade to justify the massacre of Porzûs. The National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy tried to gain time, a choice which de facto led to the interruption of all contacts between the Italian resistance movement and the non-communist partisans in Trieste. From April 28 onward, the National Liberation Committee in Trieste waited with feverish anticipation, ready to launch the insurrection. The Italian resistance comprised at most three thousand poorly-armed men (including members of the civil guard and customs control police), who would not be able to engage in armed resistance for very long. Timing was therefore extremely important: the insurrection had to start not too long before the arrival of the Allies, but soon enough to avoid a Yugoslav occupation of the city. In the meantime, the German troops, under the command of SS General Odilo Globocnik, had begun a partial evacuation, and were preparing to entrench themselves in Carinthia for their last effort at resistance. Some collaborationists and Fascists also abandoned the city, following the Germans. The National Liberation Committee rejected any accord with Prefect Bruno Coceani who asked them to join the Italian collaborators in defending Trieste against the advancing Yugoslav army, an option which spelled disaster from a political point of view, and which was totally unrealistic from a military standpoint. Poorly armed, the Italians could not put up any resistance to Tito, whereas, tellingly, the Allies’ representatives in Friuli had received directives instructing them to prevent any gathering of forces aiming to resist the Yugoslavs.8 On April 30, at 5:20 a.m., Trieste’s sirens announced the beginning of the insurrection, in which took part members of both the National Liberation

216  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum Committee and of the philo-communist organization Workers’ Unity. The Germans dug themselves in at four strongholds, refusing to surrender except in the presence of British and American officers. The first effectives of the Yugoslav army entered the city on May 1. Since the British Eighth Army was nowhere to be seen, the National Liberation Committee had no choice but to stop fighting so as to avoid clashes with the Yugoslavs.9 On April 27, Churchill had sent a telegram to Truman and to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which strongly advocated the swiftest advancement into Venezia Giulia and the military occupation of the widest possible territory. Only on April 28 did Admiral Alexander receive orders to that effect: the “race for Trieste” thus began on the Western Allies’ side with an unbridgeable delay.10 In the afternoon of May 2, the Eighth Army finally entered the city, while the Germans were still barricaded in the Hall of Justice, the Castle of San Giusto, and the Karstic village of Opicina. Events assumed a frenzied pace. The surviving Germans surrendered to the Allies. Despite the National Liberation Committee’s desperate attempts to deliver the city to the New Zealand General Bernard Freyberg, the Yugoslavs were the ones who took ownership of the symbols of power, namely the prefecture and city hall, where they took down the Italian flag and raised the Yugoslav flag. The officers from New Zealand were escorted to the Hôtel de la Ville as “guests.” The forty days of Yugoslav occupation of the city thus began–the event that marks the origin of the issue of Trieste. The Western Allies continued to disagree on the most preferable temporary status of Venezia Giulia. The Americans favored occupying the entire region, even though President Truman was not willing to risk an armed clash with the Yugoslavs to achieve that goal, while the British leaned toward occupying the strategic centers of Trieste and Pola, and were more open to the possibility of using force to achieve those limited goals. Meanwhile, on May 1, Togliatti launched one more appeal inviting people to welcome Tito’s soldiers as liberators, and exhorting Trieste’s workers to reject any provocation that might “sow discord between the Italian people and democratic Yugoslavia.”11 On the eve of the march on Trieste, the Slovenian communist leader Boris Kraigher sent the following instructions: All the non-German units and the entire apparatus of the police and administration of Trieste must be considered as enemies and occupiers. Prevent the proclamation of any power that declares itself antiGerman. Any Italians responding to this description may only capitulate and deliver themselves to the Yugoslav army of liberation. Anything or anyone acting against our army is an army of occupation . . . Expose any insurrection that does not rely on the leading role of Tito’s Yugoslavia against the occupier of the Adriatic Littoral, on the City’s Command, and on cooperation between Italians and Slovenes. Do consider any such insurrection as support to the occupier and the beginning of civil war.12

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  217 This latest passage reproduces almost word by word Palmiro Togliatti’s letter to Bonomi of February 7, thus further corroborating our thesis that: a. the Yugoslav liberation movement was greatly concerned by, and tried to avoid at all costs an insurrection in Trieste carried out by a National Liberation Committee independent of the Slovenian Communist Party; b. Togliatti used all the tools at his disposal to avoid that development, thus fulfilling the wishes of his Yugoslav comrades. We should not interpret Togliatti’s subsequent statements about defending an Italian Trieste as support for Italian sovereignty, but rather as an acknowledgement of the national rights of the majority of the people,13 a request which the communist leader had already formulated in his meeting with Kardelj and other Yugoslav representatives in Bari, on October 17, 1944. Even though Togliatti shared the Yugoslav aims, he soon became aware that Italians were increasingly opposed to transferring Trieste to Yugoslavia, a factor which he had not taken sufficiently into consideration. In the very first days of May, demonstrations for an “Italian Trieste” had already taken place; the Yugoslavs’ brutal repression of a pro-Italian demonstration on May 5, which left three dead on the ground,14 caused great distress. Even within the Communist Party, not everyone agreed on giving up Venezia Giulia. Hence the warnings to the Yugoslav comrades, and especially the Slovenian ones, not to demonstrate openly in favor of annexation, because this would put the Italian Communists in an impossible position and would lead to the unification of “reactionary forces.” Between February and May 1945, Togliatti sent as many as three messages to Dimitrov, urging him to encourage the Yugoslavs to behave with moderation. Dimitrov turned a deaf ear, for at that time Yugoslavia enjoyed maximum Soviet support.15 Stalin himself supported the Yugoslav line as he made clear in his reply to Togliatti on May 28, advising him to embrace the request for the annexation of Trieste to Yugoslavia.16 But when Togliatti and the Socialist Minister Pietro Nenni had the opportunity to meet a Yugoslav representative in Rome, on May 31 and June 1, they both tried to persuade him that “the issue of Trieste is a terrible weapon in the hands of the reactionaries who will use it against progressive forces in Italy.”17

2 The Yugoslav Policy of the Fait Accompli The issue of the fate of Trieste arose in that context. By occupying the city, the Yugoslavs presented all parties with a “fait accompli” which stood in direct contradiction with the most recent accords stipulated between Tito and Alexander on March 2, 1945. The accords established that the AngloAmericans could install their military administration wherever it was necessary to maintain control over road and railroad communications with Austria, an area which included Trieste and Pola. As already mentioned,

218  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum Tito demanded, for his part, that the Yugoslav civil administration continue to operate in those territories even in the case of occupation by the Allies. Such a seemingly innocent clause actually meant that several bodies set up by the Yugoslavs would have to remain in force: the Liberation Committee, the Italian-Slovenian Antifascist Committee, the militia for the people’s defense, the people’s tribunal, the committees operating in each factory, the neighborhood committees of liberation, and various mass organizations supporting the occupation.18 All these organizations would guarantee the Yugoslav forces firm control everywhere, including in the areas under Allied administration.19 By May 1, 1945, Trieste was in Yugoslavia’s hands. In a message to Alexander on May 3, Tito justified the breach of the accords by mentioning that unforeseen (and actually specious) German resistance20 had made those measures necessary. Tito also insisted that the occupation had a political as much as a military significance, because the Yugoslavs were exercising control over territories that were theirs from a national point of view, and that had been unjustly awarded to Italy after World War I.21 This turn of events demonstrated that the British policy of negotiating with the Soviet Union to divide central, eastern, and Balkan Europe into two spheres of influence was a complete failure, as the American choice to open a second front in Normandy rather than in the Adriatic had foretold. In fact, Churchill had proposed landing in the Adriatic as the best way of moving Allied troops through the Balkans as far as Hungary. From the American point of view, what mattered was to negotiate a global rather than a European balance of power with the Soviet Union. After the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, Roosevelt became persuaded that the Soviet Union would become the hegemonic power in eastern and central Europe, even though it was not yet clear what consequences this would have for the domestic policy of those countries that found themselves in the shadow of the Soviet area of interest.22 At that time, in fact, the Americans thought of “influence” over countries in terms of control over their foreign policy, which meant that the countries in question would remain free to decide their own domestic and economic policies.23 A global accord between the two powers, together with Great Britain and China, was supposed to contain Soviet hegemony, and to guarantee a stable international order under the auspices of the United Nations.24 In Gorizia, Chetnik partisans retreating with the Germans perpetrated numerous killings that marred the liberation, while the National Liberation Committee disbanded upon the arrival of Yugoslav troops; any kind of resistance meant civil war. The Yugoslav liberation army occupied Fiume on May 3. As an apt warning, the old autonomist leader Mario Blasich was strangled in his own home. In the first few days after liberation, more people lost their lives, including Giuseppe Sincich, who also favored autonomy, and members of the National Liberation Committee. In light of these events, the minutes

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  219 of the already mentioned meeting between the Soviet leaders and some representatives of the Yugoslav liberation movement, which took place in Moscow on January 9, 1945, read like a grim prophecy. When the Yugoslavs raised the issue of the anti-fascist militants in Trieste and Fiume who demanded autonomy under British protection, Stalin jokingly suggested that they should be drowned, since they were a numerically insignificant group.25 Trials, deportations to concentration camps, disappearances, and mass burials in the foibe resumed in the entire occupied area, on a larger scale than that of September 1943 in Istria. These operations did not escape the attention of the British Ambassador to Belgrade, Ralph Stevenson, who wrote to Harold Macmillan, at the time Acting President of the Allied Commission : “The Yugoslav army is concerned with liquidating its political opponents before anyone can intervene.”26 The occupiers also took some rather radical economic measures, asserting their control over banks, setting a very low limit for withdrawals, and confiscating all property owned by Germans and collaborationists. Just as forceful were the interventions against the press and the media: the Yugoslavs shut down the old newspapers and launched four new ones, controlled by the Communists, and took over the radio.27 For the Yugoslavs, on the one hand, it was imperative to strike against Italian anti-Fascism which, if left free to express itself, could become an effective instrument for justifying Italian aspirations to the region, calling into question the otherwise powerful equation: Italy = Fascism. On the other hand, it was necessary to proceed somewhat cautiously with the Anglo-Americans and with the National Liberation Committee for Northern Italy. To resolve this quandary, on April 28 the regional committee of the Slovenian Communist Party instructed its representative in Trieste, Albin Dujc, to accuse part of the Trieste National Liberation Committee of being “imperialist” and “pro-fascist.” The instructions cleverly asserted: “Exposing the National Liberation Committee must not mean that we do not acknowledge its successes in northern Italy; rather, it means that we must publicly acknowledge the existence of elements of the Trieste National Liberation Committee who have betrayed the struggle of the liberation movement in northern Italy.”28 As had happened during the insurrection of September 1943 in Istria, non-Communists perceived the Yugoslav occupation as a subversion of the natural order of things. In his reportage Primavera a Trieste [Spring in Trieste],29 the Istrian writer Pier Antonio Quarantotti Gambini compared the city to a drifting ship overtaken by pirates. An atmosphere of insecurity and terror reigned there. The “people’s powers” acted with full discretion, basing their decisions on lists of suspects prepared in advance, following the suggestions of their own intelligence service.30 In the first days of May 1945, in the Karstic village of Basovizza, the military tribunal of the Yugoslav Fourth Army organized summary trials which ended by throwing an indefinite number of people into the foibe, with the active participation and incitement of local Slovenes. On the basis of testimony collected on site

220  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum by the Psychological Warfare Branch of the American Thirteenth Corps, one of the priests present at those trials addressed each of the condemned with these words: “You have sinned until now, you have enjoyed torturing the Slavs; now you can only entrust your soul to God. You have fully deserved the punishment that awaits you.” The same priest then added that he had not given last rites to those about to die because “it was not worth his while.”31 Edvard Kardelj, then Foreign Minister of the Yugoslav revolutionary government, had given the order to “cleanse” the area, adopting a revolutionary rather than a national criterion: “Cleanse this region, relying not on the principle of nationality, but rather on Fascism.”32 The Yugoslav authorities forced the National Liberation Committee underground in Trieste and Istria. They executed some anti-Fascists by throwing them into the foibe, dispatched others to prison camps in Slovenia, or arrested them, as was the case with the socialist historian Carlo Schiffrer. In Trieste alone, it appears that 160 people, members of the National Liberation Committee, of the Freedom Volunteers Corps and of the Customs Police went “missing.”33 The Socialist Augusto Verzutti and Licurgo Olivi, a member of the Action Party, disappeared in Gorizia without leaving a trace.34 Looking back at those events, an old Italian Communist said years later: “Anyone who opposed the Yugoslav annexation of the territory was considered a Fascist.” When the Anglo-Americans requested the restitution of 2,472 people who had disappeared during the first days of May 1945, the Yugoslav authorities replied that those were Fascists who had fallen during the struggle for the liberation of the city, or known criminals whom the people themselves had executed. In reality, a great many of those people were taken to concentration camps in Slovenia, where some died from hunger or extreme hardship, some were executed, and some were finally released.35 Between 1943 and 1945 it appears that between four and five thousand people went missing in the territories that the philo-Yugoslav partisan units or the Yugoslav liberation army occupied, temporarily or definitively. A report of the Headquarters of the British Thirteenth Army to the Supreme Mediterranean Command assessed that three thousand people were killed in the province of Trieste alone between May 1 and June 12.36 Even if we leave numbers aside, the inexplicable “disappearances” and the even greater number of interrogations, incarcerations, intimidations, and violent attacks created a widespread climate of uncertainty and dread which pushed a massive number of people to leave the territories subject to the new “people’s powers.”37 Later, however, after relations between Yugoslavia and the Cominform broke down, no one had any interest in resurrecting the memory of these deplorable events. Still, the occupying army also tried to set up institutions that might ensure some consensus, first and foremost a Consulting Body with an Italian majority. The united trade unions and other philo-communist organizations were able to elect as many as one thousand three hundred forty-eight delegates,

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  221 with women voting for the first time in the city’s history. The delegates, in their turn, elected the Consulting Body, which had one hundred twenty members.38 This body was a modified version of those seemingly democratic grassroots institutions, like the popular liberation committees created during the Yugoslav resistance, which the Communists, always in the minority, controlled completely, as the only political force that could count on its own, autonomous organization.39 In any case, we must acknowledge that the Yugoslav Communists succeeded in winning over part of the Italian population, especially people of working-class, peasant, or petit-bourgeois origin.40 This happened in Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, and Fiume, thus contributing significantly to the strengthening of Yugoslav demands. Demonstrations in favor of Yugoslavia with banners and signs in Italian represented an excellent diplomatic weapon that confirmed the popularity of their requests, even though a significant number of anti-communist Slovenes and Croats would have preferred to remain linked to the Italian state. Unable to give visibility to their preference, they became an anonymous mass lost among the many that chose to leave the country.

3 The Issue of Trieste When it came to Trieste, however, the Allies had no intention of accepting a fait accompli. Everyone still remembered Hitler’s various coups de main that had led France and Great Britain to declare war. Neither Great Britain nor the United States were ready to put up with similar behavior on Tito’s part. Whereas they did not at all oppose territorial concessions to Yugoslavia at Italy’s expense, they asserted that any further acquisition of territory by Yugoslavia must take place through regular channels: peace treaties and a consensual procedure—not de facto acceptance of military conquest. In a message of May 8 to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, the American Ambassador to Italy, Alexander Kirk, emphasized that America’s acquiescence in Tito’s illegal methods would have disastrous consequences, and that Tito’s arguments were the same that the Japanese had used right before the attack on Manchuria, that Mussolini had employed to justify the invasion of Abyssinia, and that Hitler had leveraged to legitimate his aggressive moves.41 Allied acceptance of the Yugoslav military occupation of Venezia Giulia would create a dangerous precedent, which carried the danger of undermining American prestige in Europe and of jeopardizing the continent’s future order. In a previous message, on May 4, 1945, Kirk had reminded Stettinius that “some governments” only understood a firm hand, and that everyone expected the United States to be consistent with their own principles. Yielding to Tito would have negative repercussions for the very possibility of establishing a lasting order in Europe. The Belgrade accords of June 9, 1945, forced the Yugoslav liberation army to retreat beyond the Morgan line, which had been drawn to separate

Figure 8.1  North Adriatic 1945–47

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  223 the zones of occupation of the occupying powers, and which, after a few tormented years, was destined to become the new border between Italy and Yugoslavia.42 The British and Americans also occupied the naval base of Pola, crucial for maritime communications. They dismantled the people’s tribunal and the militia for popular defense, and established an Allied military government which was independent from the Allied organs of control established in Italy. The disbanding of the institutions created by the “people’s power” took place despite Article Three of the Belgrade accord, which stated that “the Allied military government” would utilize “those Yugoslav civil administrations already in place which prove to be functioning in a satisfactory way in the opinion of the Supreme Allied Command.” But the same Article Three also stated that “the Allied military government will have the power to use those civil authorities deemed best in any given place, and to change the administrative staff at its discretion.”43 This prerogative emphasized once again the special features of the Allied occupation in Venezia Giulia.44 In response to this new scenario, the Yugoslav communist movement launched an all-out defense of the institutions of popular democracy, first of all the mass organization Unione antifascista italo-slava [UAIS, from now on, Slavic-Italian Anti-Fascist Union], created in May. Active support and participation in this organization became the litmus test for separating anti-Fascists from Fascists and reactionaries, thus reducing once again the operating margins of those democratic anti-Fascists who favored maintaining a tie with the Italian state.45 The Partito Comunista della Regione Giulia [PCRG, Communist Party of the Julian Region], which was subjected to the iron rule of the Yugoslavs, prepared itself for a long war of attrition,46 in which the strongholds already conquered in the school system, in the universities, in associations, or in the media, played a central role. Clandestine structures became stronger, thanks also to the availability of weapons that had never been returned. The Yugoslav intelligence services even infiltrated the Allied administration.47 The following months saw a definitive end to the possibility that Yugoslavia might install a democratic government including members of the government in exile, a turn signaling that the division of Europe into two spheres of influence, each in harmony with the political system of its respective superpower (the real novelty that emerged in the aftermath of World War II!), was becoming reality. Even after the Yugoslav troops retreated, all exchanges between Palmiro Togliatti and the Soviet leadership show that Togliatti continued to pursue an ambiguous policy regarding Trieste, which was supposed to become an “international” city no longer under Italian sovereignty. In August 1945, through the trade union leader Di Vittorio, Togliatti sent a proposal to Moscow which envisioned autonomy for Trieste, followed by a plebiscite a few years later. He said: We have made this proposal because the general sentiment in Venezia Giulia is in favor of Yugoslavia, including the Italian proletariat of

224  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum Trieste. Therefore, once autonomy is achieved, all the elective offices, both at city and government levels, will lean mainly toward democratic Yugoslavia, which would be able, de facto, to rule the district.48 In the first meeting of the communist parliamentary group in the Constitutional Assembly, Togliatti had anticipated the contents of this letter, remarking that Trieste would probably be “autonomous, under shared Italo-Yugoslav sovereignty.” On this occasion too, Togliatti proved that the issue of Trieste concerned him above all because it could negatively affect Italian public opinion by reinforcing nationalistic and fascist positions.49 At any rate, the Yugoslavs considered even this option insufficient, and they informed Dimitrov that they rejected the compromise.50 In the meantime, tensions increased on the eastern border where the two opposite sides began to form paramilitary groups, including members of the Osoppo Brigades, Fascists,51 and communist partisans. According to Giampaolo Valdevit, the entire apparatus of the Communist Party maintained a “quasi-military” structure in Trieste.52 The Italian front launched massive demonstrations in March 1946, upon the arrival of the inter-Allied Commission charged with establishing the ethnic composition of the area in contention. When, on June 30, 1946, the Giro d’Italia [Italy’s biking tour race] was attacked right outside Monfalcone and prevented from moving ahead, a real “Slav hunt” broke out in Trieste. The headquarters of associations were attacked and destroyed. On July 1, the Slavic-Italian Anti-Fascist Union and the Confederation of United Trade Unions declared a general strike, while the Italian paramilitary squads continued rioting. At the final count, three people were dead and 138 wounded, with more than four hundred arrested. The Italian front comprised a disparate range of characters and groups: representatives of democratic parties, hooligans, Fascists, and common criminals—among the latter the “Cavana squads,” which took their name from a rough neighborhood in Trieste and soon gained a dubious reputation. A leading role in the reorganization of the pro-Italian groups was played by the Ufficio per le zone di confine [from now on, Office of Border Areas], which reported directly to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and managed to send abundant funds to the nationalist associations, whereas several different channels were used to arm the paramilitary squads.53

4 Diplomatic Negotiations At the Potsdam Conference the Allied formed a Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), tasked with preparing the peace treaties. The CFM presented the peace treaty with Italy at the Paris Peace Conference, inaugurated in July 1946, where the Italian Delegation was admitted with merely consulting functions. In general, historical research regarding these themes and recent works even more so have not considered Italy as a relevant factor for

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  225 the definition of the post-war order. Almost unanimously, historians have defined Italian politics “the politics of impotence,” not because of ill will on Italy’s part, or a lack of skills among its representatives, but because of the situation on the ground.54 The government of the Kingdom of the South already had a Border Commission in place, which did all it could to follow the evolving situation in Venezia Giulia. The Italian Navy had also considered adventurous plans for landing in Istria, in coordination with Junio Valerio Borghese’s Fascist Decima Mas [the Tenth Assault Vehicle Flotilla], in which Admiral de Courten played a major role. In the end, however, nothing was done.55 Italy’s political parties were divided between two options: one was to hold firmly to the 1939 border as a means for starting negotiations from a position of strength; and another, more realistic, was to espouse the line first proposed by Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, and adopted by the President of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister Alcide De Gasperi. As a matter of fact, this line was also the most equitable from a national point of view.56 As remarked above, the Italian negotiating position in Paris was rather weak. Italy was considered an ally of Germany. Yugoslavia, on the contrary, was a country that had been attacked by the Axis powers, which had fought on the side of the Allies from the very beginning, and which, a unique case in Europe, had succeeded in liberating itself from the German occupiers almost completely on its own. Besides, the Soviet representatives at the conference, Molotov and Višinskij, strongly supported the Yugoslavs’ demands. In addition, we should not forget that at the time of the negotiations, the Yugoslav army occupied a large part of the contested territory, except for Trieste, Gorizia, and Pola. The Anglo-Americans were convinced that the Yugoslavs would not retreat behind the Morgan line without a fight.57 At the London meeting of September 1945, the members of the CFM agreed on the principle that the border line between Italy and Yugoslavia should be as fair as possible from a national point of view, meaning that the national minorities left outside their respective borders should be more or less even in number. An International Boundary Commission was accordingly sent to check the territory in question between March 9 and April 5, 1946, which received only three hundred fifty pro-Italian resolutions, and a remarkable 3,650 in favor of Yugoslavia. It goes without saying that presence of the Yugoslav army as the occupying force in most of that territory put enormous pressure on the local population to express preferences in line with the occupiers’ expectations.58 We should also keep in mind, more than has been done until now, Stalin’s attitude toward the Yugoslav demands. On several occasions, and repeatedly at the Potsdam Conference,59 Stalin asserted that it was the people of Venezia Giulia that was demanding annexation to Yugoslavia. In the meeting of January 1945 with the Yugoslav representatives in Moscow, the Soviet dictator had stated in no uncertain terms: “It is necessary that the local population itself ask for annexation.”60 In

226  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum the case of the Yugoslav claims on Venezia Giulia, Soviet support clearly depended on the possibility of invoking the principle of self-determination, as confirmed by the fact that the Soviets did not support other Yugoslav requests that Stalin himself rightly considered excessive. However, the Soviets’ decision to take the will of local peoples as the basis for their argument meant that these were subjected to even greater pressure, including, at times, terrorist tactics,61 making them feel compelled to conform to the occupiers’ expectations. In May, the Boundary Commission’s members presented four different border lines to the Council of Foreign Ministers. Not surprisingly, the Soviet one was the most favorable to Yugoslavia; it even contemplated Italy’s withdrawal behind the 1866 border. The American line left Trieste and Istria to Italy, with the Istrian border running more or less along the old 1797 border between Venice and Austria. The British line was not very different from the American one, except that it awarded the Arsa mines and Albona to Yugoslavia. Lastly, the French line was almost as favorable to the Yugoslavs as the Soviet one; only the towns of Capodistria, Pirano, and Buie [Buje] in northern Istria would remain in Italy, while Pola, Rovigno, and Parenzo were awarded to Yugoslavia. On June 15, 1946, the Ministers reached a compromise which reproduced the Soviet line almost exactly: the area between the border traced by the Soviets62 and the one traced by the French, south of Monfalcone, would become a Free Territory, ruled by a governor appointed by the United Nations Security Council.63 The border line drawn by the French was accepted in the north. This solution represented a great diplomatic success for the Soviet Union. In the meantime, the Western powers continued to occupy Trieste, while Yugoslav troops occupied Zone B of the Free Territory, mostly because the “Four Great Powers” had reached the conclusion that only the use of force would make the Yugoslavs withdraw.64 The favorable response to establishing a Free Territory appears to find its justification in the same reasoning: the use of force would likely be necessary, if Trieste were to be awarded to Italy. This meant, as often happens in these situations, that, by signaling their willingness to use force and to attempt a military solution, the Yugoslavs saw their negotiating position improve, a worrisome development that the Allied wanted to avoid at almost any cost.65 While still in the United States, Don Luigi Sturzo, the former leader of Partito Popolare Italiano [Italian Popular Party] in exile, followed the diplomatic proceedings with great attention and noted Italy’s negotiating weakness with enormous anxiety. He summarized the issue of Trieste with great clarity: It is impossible to believe that London and Washington will fight with Russia in Trieste for Italy’s beautiful eyes. Today Trieste is the symbol of their contest: the ideal and strategic meeting-point of eastern and western civilization, as Budapest, Prague, and Vienna were in the past. These cities are now lost, but not Trieste. Not yet. Trieste can be taken

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  227 by surprise by a combined attack of Yugoslav troops (with the Russians behind in the distance), or by a popular rebellion from Istria’s Slavic towns, which Slovenes and Croats have infiltrated. Whoever conceived the Morgan line of occupation, believed he was appeasing Tito. The same is true today of the petty politics of British and American generals and colonels and their experts, who have tolerated the killing of so many Italians of Istria, making the local situation murkier and murkier.66 Meanwhile a widened commission, comprising the four Foreign Ministers plus the representatives of Italy and Yugoslavia, assumed responsibility for drafting a Statute for the future TLT, to be presented at the Peace Conference about to open in Paris on July 29, 1946.67 This attempt failed. On the one hand, the Allies’ representatives disagreed on the powers to be assigned to the governor and to the elective assembly, respectively. On the other hand, the Yugoslavs went so far as to propose that Yugoslavia should: a) appoint the governor, who would be assisted by a high commissioner with oversight and control functions; b) represent the territory abroad; and c) exercise direct sovereignty over at least a section of the port.68 In the course of these negotiations, the British representative suggested, as a security measure, to evacuate the Italians from Istria, because Great Britain could not guarantee their safety.69 Alberto Tarchiani, then Ambassador to Washington, wrote the following sharp remarks regarding this point: The Yugoslavs asserted over and over that they would not sign the treaty if the Free Territory were comprised of the entire area included within the French line. In fact, they did sign it only because the TLT ended up by being much smaller, since they held Zone B securely and exclusively in their hands, and never gave it up.70 De Gasperi, invited to the May 3 meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris, behaved with dignity and realism. However, he did not seize the opportunity to call for a plebiscite in the part of Istria lying between the border lines drawn by the Allies, as the American Secretary of State Byrnes had suggested. The United States repeated several times that they strongly supported a plebiscite, whereas the Soviet Union and Great Britain opposed it, agreeing to it only if it concerned the entire territory, which clearly reduced the possibility of an outcome favorable to Italy.71 Besides, the Italian government did not even take the option of a plebiscite into consideration, fearing that Austria might do the same for South Tyrol. According to Rusinow’s Solomonic remark, this meant that Italy kept more territory than it was fairly entitled to on the Austrian border, but lost territories on the eastern border that, from an ethnic point of view, it should rightfully have maintained.72

228  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum The Paris Peace Conference took place between July 29 and October 15; at the end, twenty-one countries signed the peace treaty with Italy, confirming and sanctioning the position that had emerged in the course of the negotiations of the Council of Foreign Ministers. On July 3, an agreement had been reached whereby the French line would become Yugoslavia’s western border, whereas, west of that line, the territory between Duino [Devin] in the west and Cittanova d’Istria [Novigrad] in the east would form the TLT.73 Zone A of the new small state (de facto, Trieste) would temporarily remain under Anglo-American administration, whereas Zone B would come under Yugoslav control. The UN Security Council was given the responsibility for securing the independence and integrity of the Territory, and for approving its Statute. An extensive and detailed attachment established the rules for the creation of a duty-free port within the port of Trieste, which was supposed to become the main infrastructure for the international trade of Yugoslavia and the central European states. The peace treaty went so far as to foresee the creation of an international commission which would oversee the free port. Its members were France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, and Hungary.74 The Allies continued to overestimate the potential of the port of Trieste, nurturing the illusion that a duty-free regime would help the port play the role it had once had at the time of the Hapsburg Empire. It cannot be ruled out that this spectacular miscalculation regarding Trieste’s strategic importance strengthened the Anglo-Americans resolution to hold on to the city at all costs, and not to give it up to a country, Yugoslavia, that belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence. In support of this hypothesis, we can note that, as early as December 1944, the Foreign Office drafted an important document which argued that a top priority in establishing the new border was to ensure that the countries of the interior could access the port. The document already recommended the creation of a free port and assigned the oversight of its administration and commercial traffic to an international authority.75 On August 10, 1946, in his speech to the Paris Peace Conference, De Gasperi expressed his bitterness over the fact that the French line no longer set the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, but rather between Yugoslavia and the Free Territory. He declared that the new border damaged the integrity of the nation, and foresaw a future when the TLT might become the theater of grave international conflicts that would engulf the neighboring states.76 In November, Palmiro Togliatti, supported by the Socialist leader Pietro Nenni, who in the meantime had become Foreign Minister, began direct negotiations with Tito. These led to the proposal to transfer Gorizia and Monfalcone to Yugoslavia, whereas an autonomous Trieste would remain under Italian sovereignty. The transfer of Monfalcone meant breaking the territorial continuity between Trieste and Italy (the so-called “MonfalconeTrieste corridor”), thus transforming the city into an enclave within the Yugoslav state. Besides going nowhere, these negotiations threatened to

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  229 weaken Italy’s negotiating position, because they signaled that Italy was willing to reopen the conversation about the conditions established at the Peace Conference.77 The peace treaty was signed on February 10, 1947, in Paris, coming into effect on September 15 of the same year. On this occasion, the new, republican Italy proved quite inefficient, by allowing Yugoslav troops to encroach on the borders in several areas that, no matter how small, had nonetheless been awarded to Italy, at least on paper. Reaching an agreement regarding 24 kilometers of the border line proved impossible, which meant that Yugoslavia occupied almost all the “pockets” under dispute. Only the 1975 Treaty of Osimo78 rectified this situation—up to a point. These “pockets” extended Yugoslavia’s bargaining margin, a card that could be played during negotiations. Italy followed the discussions on the fate of Trieste with heartfelt participation. On February 10, 1947, as the peace treaty was signed in Paris, the sound of sirens halted life in the capital, which stopped to signal its silent protest, while the Constituent Assembly suspended its proceedings for half an hour. Demonstrations took place, organized by associations of combatants who, together with disabled veterans, and high school and university students marched to the Altare della patria where a delegation laid a laurel wreath.79 Ivanoe Bonomi, then a deputy in the Constituent Assembly, summarized Italy’s territorial sacrifices on the eastern frontier in an editorial in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera: On the eastern frontier, the mutilation [of the country] is incommensurably more extensive and painful. That Italy which, through the Treaty of Rapallo, had succeeded in reaching the watershed and in creating a great arc which, through Mount Nevoso, welded together western Istria, which is 100 per cent Italian, with the equally Italian core of Fiume, thus reaching Dante’s border on the Quarnero, must now give up Istria in its entirety, limit the extent of its territory to the Isonzo River, and accept that Gorizia (which has remained Italian) be linked to the sea only near Duino.80 Even after the Allies had signed the peace treaty, the Constituent Assembly engaged in a long and highly contentious debate not only on its contents, but on whether or not it was advisable to accept it, even though the treaty was going to come into effect with or without the consent of the Italian representative body. It is noteworthy that the territorial concessions along the eastern border played a secondary role in the debate, apart from speeches by the Julian deputies Pecorari and Valiani.81 On July 31, 1947, after long, tortuous proceedings, the Assembly voted two hundred sixty-two to sixty-eight (with eighty abstentions) to authorize ratification of the treaty, but only after its ratification by all the Allied powers. The Communists abstained and the Socialists did not participate in the vote. The Italian government

Figure 8.2  Peace Treaty, 10 February 1947

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  231 officially recognized the treaty on September 1,82 following its ratification by the Soviet Union on August 29. As the peace treaty came into force, Italian nationalists began rioting in Trieste. They threw bombs. A little girl died. The Yugoslavs tried to force the issue by asking the Allied authorities to allow their military vehicles to enter the city. They based their demand on their interpretation of Annex VI (Article 1), and Annex VII (Articles 1 and 5), which established that the territory of Trieste would continue “to be administered by the Allied military commands within their respective zones,” which included Yugoslav troops. This attempt, however, was completely unsuccessful. The Yugoslavs were informed that the Anglo-Americans were prepared to resort to the use of force to prevent Tito’s troops from entering Zone A.83 A frantic and violent climate marked the first post-war years in Trieste. Its population lived in a condition of permanent nationalist mobilization: passers-by sported tricolored rosettes, girls wore white-red-and-green ribbons in their hair, and on special occasions the façades of buildings disappeared under a wall of Italian flags. The Yugoslavs organized similar manifestations of nationalist sentiment in their strongholds in neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city, and in Slovenian villages in the Karst. Inevitably, extremists and vandals joined in this mass mobilization, destroying the offices of political rivals, committing acts of vandalism, and attacking and beating up people. Insurmountable walls of hatred divided the city for, as Carl Schmitt remarked in the 1930s, the one who does not allow us to live as we wish is our enemy.84 Even Giani Stuparich, a democratic Italian intellectual who volunteered in the Italian army in World War I, evoked Schmittian tones when, in Trieste nei miei Ricordi [Trieste in my Recollections], cried out in exasperation: “What did they want to do with us? Why did they tear us away from the land to which we belong? Why did they want us to be other than who we are?”85 The Office of Border Areas in Rome became directly involved in the campaign for Trieste by giving strong financial support to the Comitato per la difesa dell’italianità di Trieste e dell’Istria [Committee for the Defense of the Italian Identity of Trieste and Istria], created in 1952 with Mayor Gianni Bartoli as its chairman. The Movimento sociale italiano [Italian Social Movement, heir to the Fascist Party, made illegal by the Constitution] officially belonged to the Committee.86 Besides, a cluster of clubs, all of them radical, though to different degrees, such as the Oberdan Clubs and the Cavana Club, orbited around the Committee,87 and ended up by receiving public funds through underhanded means. The amount of this financial support was enormous,88 thus leading inevitably to an artificial proliferation of nationalistic associations which included a substantial number of profiteers. On February 2, 1949, Giulio Andreotti, then Undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, wrote to the board coordinating operations among the political parties in Trieste: . . . it does not appear inappropriate to reconsider whether 11 weeklies, 43 sporting associations, 56 cultural clubs, 14 combatant, veteran,

232  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum and partisan organizations, and twenty youth associations, are not too many for Trieste. They all receive subsidies. [We wonder] whether they are vital and efficient, and whether their only or at least their main goal should be to defend the Italianità of Trieste.89 This state of affairs, characterized by the hasty re-legitimation of Fascists, the ambiguous unanimity of Italian forces, and an unprincipled style of operations in which the boundary between legality and illegality was blurred in the name of the supreme ideal of the nation, bode ill for Trieste’s post-war politics. This poisoned concoction was destined to have a baleful impact on the life of the city even after its restitution to Italy. In the late 1940s and 1950s, in the name of political emergency, the government tolerated and nourished right-wing extremism, which then escaped the control of political parties and became a radicalizing factor in the political struggle and a breeding ground for subversion for decades to come. Besides, this worrisome political phenomenon did not even succeed in defending national interests effectively. On the contrary, the “neofascist discourse” used to articulate those interests ended up by discrediting them completely both in the eyes of public opinion and of the Italian government. The definitive transfer of Istria led the Italians now under Yugoslav sovereignty to leave the region. Almost all Italians took advantage of the option of choosing their country of residence, as established in the peace treaty. Article 19, points 2 and 3 of the second section of the treaty mandated that those citizens “whose customary language is Italian” but who resided in territories awarded to other countries, “shall be entitled to opt for Italian citizenship within a period of one year from the coming into force of the present Treaty. Any person so opting shall retain Italian citizenship and shall not be considered to have acquired the citizenship of the State to which the territory is transferred . . . The State to which the territory is transferred may require those who take advantage of the option to move to Italy within a year from the date when the option was exercised.” Finally, Annex XIV regulated their property rights: “Persons who opt for Italian nationality and move to Italy shall be permitted . . . to take with them their movable property and transfer their funds . . . Further, they shall be permitted to sell their movable and immovable property under the same conditions as nationals of the Successor State.”90 However, the profound instability and illegality into which Istria fell after the Yugoslav Communists took over meant that those who left the country were unable to sell their immovable property or to transfer their movable patrimony to Italy, as one can normally do. This state of affairs marked the beginning of a long legal quarrel, which began between Italy and Yugoslavia and continues to this day between Italy and the successor states of Slovenia and Croatia. In the last decades, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, several studies have been published in Italy on theme of the “abandonment of the lands” that had been transferred to Yugoslavia. The majority of Italians and also many

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  233 Slovenes and Croats who became refugees, at least three hundred thousand, left entire towns almost empty. Their motivations varied, but undoubtedly the new authorities adopted policies that played a central role in the development of this phenomenon: they created a climate of intimidation, introduced war measures such as forced labor, used evictions and confiscations (a process that struck Italians first of all) to reduce social stratification, and let local political cadres carry out anti-Italian reprisals. In other words, there were many and complex reasons, a mixture in which the national factor and the social factor (the struggle against the bourgeoisie) reciprocally strengthened one another.91 For several decades, Italian students and analysts have ignored the issue of the “exodus” from Istria. In Italy, leftist public opinion and the Communists considered the Istrian refugees with suspicion, and at times with overt hostility. Many years ago, Claudio Magris recollected a symbolic, although anecdotal episode which took place at the Bologna railroad station in February 1947, where communist railroad workers prevented a religious association from helping and feeding a group of Istrian refugees, threatening to go on strike if the refugees got off the train.92

5 From the Peace Treaty to the Partition of the Free Territory In the post-war era the Americans had to take over responsibility for managing the issue of Trieste from the British. They saw Zone A as the last bastion against the spread of Communism in Italy and in Western Europe in general.93 In this context, Trieste was an important trench line for preventing the expansion of the Soviet system toward a third set of states, beyond the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe and its zone of occupation in Germany.94 As the policy of containment reached its full development, Trieste was turned into a bulwark against the spread of Communism “toward France and finally toward the Pyrenees.”95 It also appears that the Americans saw their own presence on the ground in Zone A as a guarantee against the likely spread of Communism in northern Italy as a whole.96 In Zone B, Yugoslavia proceeded with full annexation: it introduced its own currency (July 2, 1949),97 instituted daylight saving time (already used in the rest of the country), called for elections, and so forth. The local population responded to these measures by expressing growing dissent and by engaging in passive resistance. These activities were always repressed brutally, at times with the shedding of blood. The disappearance of people— without any explanation—arbitrary arrests, beatings, and ambushes created a permanent atmosphere of dread which hovered over everyone, while the omnipresent spying network, Ozna, was prompt in recording any expression of dissent, no matter how insignificant. Especially worrisome was the attack on Bishop Antonio Santin, assaulted in Capodistria where he had gone to administer Confirmation on June 19, 1947, the day celebrating the local patron saint. He described the events himself: “They dragged me

234  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum brutally down the staircase, while beating me on my head with fists and sticks. I arrived in the courtyard as amice, rochet, cross, and shoes were flying about me.” He was taken back to Trieste in an uncovered truck put at his disposal by the Yugoslav authorities: “We looked like two people being taken to their execution. They had placed groups of their comrades along the road, their hands full of rocks. As we passed by, they pelted us with stones.”98 The process of establishing the Free Territory ground to a halt, because the great powers increasingly disagreed over the appointment of the governor, and over the distribution of powers between the governmental bodies and the elective assembly. The Soviets supported granting more power to the popular assembly and to the Government Council. If the Soviet proposal had been approved, it would have only taken a hint of a coup for the Free Territory to fall into Yugoslav hands, which was precisely the aim behind arguments in favor of granting broad powers to the popular assembly rather than to the governor.99 The British representative in Paris, Waldock, informed the Foreign Office that Yugoslavia had prepared a plan to undermine the decision of July 3, so as to get control over the Free Territory and to transform it into a Yugoslav appendix, governed by the Slovenes and ruled by terror.100 Following these assessments, the British and Americans boycotted the establishment of the Free Territory of Trieste, which sooner or later would very likely have fallen into communist Yugoslavia’s hands.101 In a Tripartite Note issued in March 1948, the United States, Great Britain, and France declared themselves in favor of transferring the entire Free Territory to Italy, and asked the Soviet Union to open negotiations. On the one hand, this was a propaganda move aiming to help anti-communist parties in the 1948 elections; on the other hand, it was a demonstrative action against the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia which were held primarily responsible for the failed attempt to institute the Free Territory.102 The Cominform’s disavowal of Yugoslavia in June 1948 caused the situation to change yet again. In the context of the emerging Cold War, the issue of Trieste stopped being the point of friction between the superpowers and became, according to Trieste historian Valdevit, a merely peripheral conflict.103 On the other hand, the rift between Moscow and Belgrade opened new possibilities for drawing Yugoslavia into the Western camp. The United States in particular began a policy of concessions to a potential and interesting new ally, while considering with great favor a plan (which ultimately came to nothing) for creating a Balkan Entente in which Yugoslavia would be the central piece, but would include Greece and Turkey, two members of NATO.104 Trieste’s loss of relevance as a foreign policy issue meant that the Italian government could now expand its area of intervention there and increase its initiatives in Zone A, which, according to Carlo Sforza, was to be treated more and more like an Italian province. The government began to pursue this goal in 1948, by launching important endeavors that

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  235 would integrate Zone A into Italy from both an economic and administrative point of view, and making it one of the beneficiaries of the Marshall Plan.105 In 1949, administrative elections were held. At the official opening of the academic year, the Rector of the University of Trieste, Angelo Cammarata, declared that Italian sovereignty had never ceased, since the Free Territory had never become reality.106 In 1951 Sforza again requested the application of the Tripartite Note, at least with regard to the transfer of Zone A to Italy.107 In 1952, Manlio Brosio, Italian Ambassador to London, prepared a concrete plan for a de facto stealthy transfer of Zone A to Italy. The Allies, however, did not accept the crucial points of this request. Tensions then started to mount in Trieste itself. During a ceremony commemorating the 1948 Tripartite Note, serious incidents took place between Italian demonstrators and the police.108 Even though a concrete step was taken through the London Memorandum of May 1952, with the appointment of an Italian political advisor, Diego De Castro, seconded to the Allied military government, and of an Italian High Director who took over some administrative prerogatives, the government remained in the hands of General Winterton, the military commander at that time.109 Yugoslavia immediately responded to what it considered a unilateral initiative of the western powers by accelerating the harmonization of Zone B with the rest of the country: it restructured the territory politically and administratively; it appointed political advisors of the Slovenian and the Croatian government; and it introduced Yugoslav passports.110 The situation became increasingly fragile as both Italy and Yugoslavia became convinced that a solution was drawing near, while each feared being subjected to the initiative of the other. The Allies almost expected the Italians to embark in D’Annunzio-style coups. Indeed, unrest must have reached worrisome levels, at least in clandestine organizations. In response to Yugoslav military maneuvers near the border, Italy amassed troops on the eastern border.111 In the meantime, the Allies became convinced that leaving the problem of Trieste unsolved was potentially more destabilizing, and a greater source of international tensions, than guiding it toward a resolution. In the fall of 1953 the United States decided that the time had come to resolve the question. The war in Korea had ended, and important decisions waited regarding the constitution of the European Defense Community, with the possibility of including western Germany, even though this plan failed because in August 1954 the French Parliament did not ratify the new body. On September 8, 1953, the United States and Great Britain issued a joint note in favor of transferring Zone A to Italy; at the same time, they informed Yugoslavia that the Allies would not object to their annexation of Zone B. Fearing that this would mean an unfavorable change in the balance of power, Yugoslavia reacted negatively, even though the partition of the Free Territory corresponded exactly, as Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera remarked, to the proposal that Tito had made to the British Foreign Minister, Eden, as

236  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum recently as the spring of 1953.112 The Italian Foreign Minister, Paolo Emilio Taviani, had weapons delivered to the Italian resistance, to ensure at least a temporary defense of the status quo if the Yugoslavs were to attempt a coup. As evidence of the climate in Trieste, Taviani recorded this decision in his diary, remarking that “. . . all the political parties . . . have set aside all their ideological differences and have created units ready to fight, placed in such a way as to keep each other in check.”113 Taviani informed the Prime Minister, Pella, and Undersecretary Andreotti, as well as the British Secret Service, of the “substantial”114 shipment of weapons to Trieste. In Trieste, meanwhile, tension continued to mount. After the commemoration of the end of World War I at Redipuglia which drew at least a hundred and fifty thousand people, disorders broke out in the city, manipulated by sections of the Italian intelligence services, which wanted to force the Allies’ hand, and to achieve the transfer of Zone A to Italy, de facto and in the shortest time possible. The detonator of these violent demonstrations was the lowering of the Italian flag from the balcony of City Hall by the Allied police. Six people died. International tensions rose so high that armed conflict between Italy and Yugoslavia could not be excluded. Tito, for his part, declared that Yugoslavia would consider the entry of Italian troops into Zone A as an act of war which would lead to armed conflict. In the days before Tito’s declaration, disorders broke out throughout all Yugoslavia, with attacks against Italian, British, and American consulates and offices of cultural organizations.115 Tito amassed troops in Zone B, thus inducing the Allies to withdraw the bipartite note.116 Yugoslavia’s violent reaction to the Anglo-American note, which actually corresponded to its claims of a few months previously, further strengthened the negotiating power of Moscow’s former satellite. On the contrary, Italy now found itself demanding that partition follow literally the stipulations for the Free Territory of Trieste, a point on which it had showed complete intransigence as recently as the negotiations of April-May 1953. According to Tarchiani, De Gasperi had committed a serious diplomatic error in rejecting the American proposal in February of that same year, when Secretary of State Foster Dulles suggested that Zone A and several coastline towns located in Zone B, including Pirano, should be transferred to Italy.117 From the point of view of the negotiations, the situation had thus worsened in just a few months, partially because Italian diplomacy had waited way too long. Yugoslavia was finally brought to the negotiating table a year later, with the acknowledgement, at least informally, that any agreement coming out of the negotiations would be final. The Yugoslav Ambassador Vladimir Velebit tried to extract further advantages in Zone A in exchange for giving up Trieste. The requests ranged from repeating the request for a Slovenian corridor on the coast west of Trieste, which would keep the city separated from the Italian territory, to the transfer to Yugoslavia of the suburbs that were mainly Slovenian, and the establishment of a free zone. The historian Raoul Pupo remarks:

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  237 As further compensation for the territorial sacrifice Yugoslavia would make, the Ambassador subordinated the possibility of reaching an agreement to several conditions: autonomous status for Trieste and the creation of a special regime for the port; monetary compensation for Yugoslav citizens and organizations damaged by fascist legislation; a statute for minorities; an Italian financial contribution to the rebuilding of Yugoslav roads interrupted by the new border; a declaration by the western powers that they would not recognize any further territorial demands from Italy. This package of political and economic demands was substantial; even if Velebit changed them somewhat during the negotiations, emphasizing the financial component more and more, he continued to insist firmly on the entire package throughout the conference, de facto carrying out a negotiation parallel to, but just as tough as the one he conducted regarding the territorial clauses of the agreement.118 Paolo Emilio Taviani also appeared fully aware of the consequences that the acceptance of the Yugoslav demands would have for Trieste: Ugo Stille, a serious, well-informed journalist, and a specialist on these issues, mentions demands previously made by Tito regarding Slovenian villages in the interior of Zone A (San Dorligo, Sgonico, and Monrupino), as well as a corridor in the territory of Trieste itself to gain access to the Gulf of Servola, possibly as a free zone. Stille contends that these demands are outdated. This is true for the former. Tito has no interest whatsoever in cabbages and potatoes, which are the only form of wealth in the Karstic villages. But he can entertain the idea of Slavifying Trieste through the free zone, which would permit Slovenian and Croatian workers (less expensive than Italian workers) to invade peacefully the port and the industries in the Valley of Muggia.119 Yugoslavia had formulated similar requests, clearly aimed at exercising heavy pressure on Trieste, during the negotiations of spring and summer 1953, when Italy’s negotiating position seemed stronger, so much so that De Gasperi had been able to demand substantial concessions regarding the Istrian coast as far as Umago [Umag], in exchange for adjustments to the ethnic line in Zone A. Those negotiations had gone nowhere because the Yugoslavs had continued systematically to raise the stakes.120 Velebit insisted on Yugoslavia’s right to build a commercial, industrial, and maritime center between Trieste and Zone B, which would become a new Trieste, and would replace the city in all the functions it had traditionally performed for its hinterland. The Yugoslavs wanted to build this new city between Servola and Zaule, de facto a Yugoslav “new Trst” which would cut off Trieste completely. In exchange, Velebit was willing to make small territorial concessions on the coast of Zone B.121 It is extremely

238  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum interesting to note that later on Italy agreed to these (modified) requests, rejected by the Allies at the time, during the negotiations for the Treaty of Osimo in 1975, including the creation of a free zone straddling the border, which never became a reality because of the lively and widespread protests of a substantial part of the people of Trieste.122 As the historian Massimo de Leonardis remarks, during the negotiations of 1952 and 1953 the Yugoslavs said so many times that Capodistria, Isola d’Istria, and Pirano were Italian, and that they were not interested in them, that it becomes impossible for the Italians “to think that they only used that argument as a tactical diversion.”123 It is plausible, on the other hand, that the Yugoslavs’ goal was, once again, to break the territorial continuity between Trieste and the Italian state. Istria’s coastal towns would remain very small enclaves over which Italy could exercise only nominal, rather than actual sovereignty, as would also hold true for Trieste. As the negotiations were reaching their decisive phase, between June and August 1954, some details leaked to the Italian press. Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera reported in various articles that the Yugoslavs had claimed the right to build, if they so wished, an international port in Capodistria, thus in Zone B, in competition with Trieste, and to this end they had requested a strip of territory in the peninsula of Muggia, indispensable for the development of that port. The newspaper speculated that these were probably tactical moves, aiming to gain a share of American financial support and some other concessions in return in the port of Trieste.124 On October 5, the London Memorandum sanctioned the partition of the TLT, which Italy continued to consider temporary, even if, de facto, that partition marked the conclusion of the troubled process of definition of the borderline that had resulted from World War II. At least, this solution opened a new space for Italy by breaking the impasse which the unsolved problem of Trieste had created. Until the London Memorandum, Trieste had remained the central issue of Italian foreign policy for all the republican governments,125 causing massive interference when the country had to make fundamental choices, such as whether to ratify the European Defense Community, or what attitude to take toward the Balkan Entente. After living in a highly unpredictable situation for eleven years in a city that had constantly been at the mercy of external forces which determined its fate, the majority of Trieste’s population greeted the return of the city to Italy with real jubilation. The official program of the celebrations had to be suspended because from the Duino checkpoint onward the bersaglieri could only move forward at a walking pace, surrounded as they were by the applauding crowd. Il Piccolo reported: [The bersaglieri] finally reached the beach, but they could not step on the “Audace” pier because they were no longer alone. Inside their trucks, on fenders and hoods, and on the roofs of the drivers’ cabins, clinging to any point of purchase in incredible and crazy ways, young

Figure 8.3  North Adriatic 1947–54

240  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum and not-so-young people, women and boys were with them, huddling around them, seizing their plumes and waving them at the cheering crowd that tossed flowers and pressed toward the convoy from all sides in jubilation.126 Only the hoisting of the Italian flag in Piazza dell’Unità could be carried out on time, at noon. On November 4, in the presence of the President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi, the crowd poured once again into the streets to hail the parade of the armed forces.127 In Rome, as the news of Trieste’s return to Italy spread, the Associazione nazionale combattenti e reduci [Combatants and Veterans National Association] organized a demonstration which ended at the Altare della Patria. Demonstrations also took place in other cities to celebrate the return of the city of “San Giusto” to the fatherland.128 On October 26 many students deserted their classrooms to participate in parades, many windows were decked with the tricolor, and public buildings were all lit up.129 It felt as if the country had gone back to the end of the Great War. In the years between 1945 and 1954 the issue of Trieste had affected profoundly Italian public opinion. In the moments when the fate of the city hung in the balance, and on the far from rare occasions when the people of Trieste gathered to mourn their fellow citizens, people protested and expressed their pride in all major Italian cities, with massive participation from high school and university students.130 Nationalist and neofascist groups often engaged in violent acts, but the majority of demonstrators only wished to express their patriotic feeling and participation in the city’s fate. In the end, after Yugoslavia succeeded in obtaining a small territorial change at Punta Grossa, right outside Capodistria,131 the Yugoslav Executive Council approved the accord, even though the Foreign Minister Alex Bebler reiterated that Yugoslavia would not cease its efforts to realize all its aspirations: what the country had obtained through the London Memorandum was only the maximum that present circumstances would permit.132 On October 25, Tito could tell the Executive Council that Yugoslavia had received recognition of its right to Zone B, and had also obtained a strip in Zone A. Going against the Allies’ previous assurances to Italy, the Yugoslav premier also asserted forcefully that Capodistria might become “an outlet for the entire southern area of the Slovenian Littoral, which would finally guarantee an outlet to the sea for the Slovenian people, after so many centuries of adversity.”133 The exodus from Zone B of the last Italians still living there now began, bringing to a conclusion, at least for the time being, the process of ethnic simplification that had started at the end of World War I. That process had affected Italians much more than Slovenes, first of all because of Italy’s disastrous defeat in the second global conflict, and second because of the policies that Yugoslavia enacted in the territories it annexed and administered.134 The London Memorandum established far-reaching, state-of-the-art guarantees for the protection of both minorities, and the right to transfer mobile

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  241 and real assets for those who left either Zone A or Zone B. People were entitled to sell their assets, to have the proceeds deposited in the national banks of either Italy or Yugoslavia, and to have access to them within two years.135 As a matter of fact, the two countries carried on litigation for decades, thus keeping the refugees who, understandably, felt mocked by their own government, in a state of discontent which was being manipulated for political purposes. Besides, Italy and Yugoslavia enacted only partially the measures for the protection of minorities, especially the right to use one’s own language in dealings with the authorities,136 Slovenian in particular, leading to decades-long disputes between the Italian state and the organizations of the Slovenian minority in Italy. There were many reasons why the Americans pushed for a relatively rapid resolution of the issue of Trieste, but two of them stand out: their need to defuse a possible cause of tension, and their hope of integrating Yugoslavia into the Western system of military alliance. Aiming to set up some kind of military cooperation between Yugoslavia and the Western bloc, the Americans met the Yugoslavs for talks in Belgrade and Washington,137 but their hopes were dashed after the Yugoslavs refused to establish a formal military rapport with NATO, in 1955. A year later the National Security Council cancelled the accord for mutual security linked to military aid to Yugoslavia. At the same time, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union began the process that would result in their rapprochement, while Italy and Yugoslavia started the negotiations that would give definitive status to the territorial order established by the London Memorandum. Italy always considered it, however, a temporary arrangement, which its Parliament never ratified. Between 1945 and 1954 the issue of Trieste mobilized Italian public opinion, overshadowing any other problem in foreign policy. In 1948 Fulvia Franco, who was from Trieste, was elected Miss Italy. The symbolic import of her election favored her as much as her unquestionable beauty. When the Sanremo Festival [the top popular music competition in Italy] was held in 1952, Nilla Pizza triumphed by singing Vola, Colomba! [Fly, Dove!],138 the story of two young people in love, whose lives are split between Zone A and Zone B. It was easy to interpret the text as the expression of a wish for the return of Trieste to Italy. Italians made themselves hoarse by singing all together “with impassioned loudness: ‘Tell her, dove, tell her that I wiiiilll return, I wiiiilll return!’ ”139 In commenting on the Americans’ lack of understanding for the impassioned participation of the Italians in the fate of the border, Paolo Emilio Taviani remarked: Can Americans understand what Trieste has been for those who fought in World War I? Can they come to understand once and for all that more than half a million Italian families have a son who died for Trento and Trieste? That World War I was fought by our fathers and has been studied and felt by all of us—not just by the Fascists, but by all Italians—as

242  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum the Fourth War of Independence? The national independence of Trento and Trieste.140 According to Taviani, the transfer of Trieste to Yugoslavia would have caused the complete failure of European and Atlantic policy, and opened the door to a nationalism that would have been difficult to control and contain.141 With the entrance of the bersaglieri in Trieste and the embrace between the city and the army, an era came to a close in the history of both Italy and Venezia Giulia. The mobilization for Trieste was perhaps the only pre-ideological and pre-political patriotic reaction in Italy during the post-war era.142 With the collapse of Fascism and the chaotic disbanding of September 8, the idea of the fatherland had become subordinated to the ideals and programs of the various parties, each of which claimed the status of exclusive and authentic interpreter of that idea. After the catastrophe of World War II, as Emilio Gentile remarks, it became impossible to reconstruct a patriotism meant as a foundation of shared values, memories, and culture, and as a projection into the future of a community identified as one nation. The crisis became manifest with the 1961 celebrations for the centennial of Italian unification: “Right at that time, people became aware that the myth of the nation was vanishing from the civic conscience of Italians, taking with it the love of the fatherland and the sense of duty toward the state.”143 Such a laceration in Italian political culture could only have profound repercussions for the fate of the border.

Notes 1 On this issue, central to our understanding of the situation in Venezia Giulia, see Aga Rossi, Alle Origini del Mondo Bipolare, cit., pp. 225 ff. 2 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 76 f.; Id., “La Sconfitta Dimenticata. La Venezia Giulia e il Conflitto d’Interessi tra l’Italia e l’Inghilterra nell’Ultima Fase della Guerra,” in Id., Il Dilemma Trieste: Guerra e Dopoguerra in uno Scenario Europeo, Gorizia, LEG, 1999, pp. 79–94. 3 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 77–9. 4 See R. Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra; il Caso delle Foibe Giuliane,” in Valdevit, Foibe. Il Peso del Passato, cit., pp. 33–58, especially p. 42. 5 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., p. 88. 6 On these exhausting negotiations, conducted with total determination, see Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., pp. 230–2. 7 Ibid., pp. 228–9. 8 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., p. 88. 9 We can read a detailed reconstruction of the events in Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., pp. 251–319. 10 See E. Aga Rossi, Bradley F. Smith, Operation Sunrise: La Resa Tedesca in Italia, 2 Maggio 1945, Milano, Mondadori, 2005, pp. 219–21 [Original English version: Operation Sunrise: the Secret Surrender, New York, Basic Books, 1979]. In his telegram to Truman, Churchill declared that the sympathy he had had for Tito completely vanished. But the Americans underrated Churchill’s distancing from Tito.

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  243 1 See A. Agosti, Togliatti, Torino, Utet, 1996, p. 306. 1 12 Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra; il Caso delle Foibe Giuliane,” cit., p. 47. 13 We agree with De Castro’s assessment in La Questione di Trieste, cit., vol. I, pp. 378–80. See especially p. 378: “Affirming and defending Italianità means nothing. One can affirm Italianità both by keeping the Italians in Italy, and by defending them as a minority in another state.” 14 Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., pp. 325–6. 15 See A. Aga Rossi and V. Zavslasky, Togliatti e Stalin: Il Pci e la politica estera staliniana negli archivi di Mosca, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997, pp. 139–41; Giblansky, “La Questione di Trieste tra i Comunisti Italiani e Jugoslavi,” cit., pp. 197–9. 16 Ibid., pp. 198–9. 17 Ibid., p. 199. 18 Among the latter, we can mention the Italian-Slav Antifascist Union, the Antifascist Italian Women association, the Cultural Center of Trieste, and so forth. Spazzali, . . . l’Italia Chiamò, cit., p. 309. 19 See Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS, from now on), 1945, vol. I: Europe, Washington, D.C., 1968, pp. 1108–10. At the Potsdam Conference the parties repeatedly took into consideration the Yugoslav protests that in Trieste the “people’s powers,” hurriedly set up during the forty days of occupation, had not been preserved. See FRUS, 1945, vol. II: The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), Washington, D.C., 1960, pp. 1213–21. The Soviet delegation to the Conference supported those protests. See Ibid., pp. 1221 f. 20 In a communication of May 5, 1945, to the American Secretary of State Stettinius, the American Ambassador to Italy, Alexander Kirk, said that Tito justified the “race for Trieste” by pointing to the danger that the Germans who had surrendered in Italy might move to the Yugoslav front! See FRUS, 1945, cit., vol. IV, p, 1141. 21 Ibid., pp. 1140–1. 22 On the theme of American, British, and Soviet aims in Europe in the final phase of World War II, see A. Hillgruber, “Der ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Id., Die Zerstörung Europas, cit., pp. 339–54. Id., “ ‘Jalta’ und die Spaltung Europas, in Ibid., pp. 355–70. On the Soviet objectives, see also V. Mastny, “Soviet War Aims at the Moscow and Teheran Conference of 1943,” in Journal of Modern History, 47/3, 1975, pp. 481–504. 23 On the question of how the influence of the Soviet Union on eastern European countries was perceived between 1943 and 1945, see E. Aga Rossi, “Introduzione,” in Id. (ed.), Gli Stati Uniti e le Origini della Guerra Fredda, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984, pp. 11–82, especially pp. 33–46. George Kennan, on the contrary, immediately declared his support for the division of Europe into spheres of influence. See Ibid., p. 57. 24 Aga Rossi, “Introduzione,” cit., p. 37. 25 See “Appunti del Colloquio di I.V. Stalin,” cit., pp. 87–103, especially p. 97. 26 Valdevit, “Foibe: L’Eredità della Sconfitta,”cit., p. 24. The Americans also reached similar conclusions. See the memorandum prepared by the Department of State, dated May 8, 1945, in which we can read: “In Trieste the Yugoslav are using all the familiar tactics of terror. Any Italian of any importance is being arrested. Yugoslavs have taken over complete control and are conscripting Italians for forced labor, seizing the banks and other valuable property, and requisitioning grain and other supplies on a large scale.” FRUS, cit., vol. IV, pp. 1146–8, accessed January 27, 2015, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/ FRUS.FRUS1945v04, 27 See De Castro, La Questione di Trieste, cit., vol. I, p. 214. Diego De Castro had been the Italian representative with the Allied military government in Zone A, and political advisor to the commander of the area.

244  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum 28 N. Troha, “Tra Liquidazione del Passato e Costruzione del Futuro. Le Foibe e l’Occupazione Jugoslava della Venezia Giulia,” in Valdevit, Foibe. Il Peso del Passato, cit, pp. 59–95, especially p. 60. Nevenka Troha’s contribution represents a milestone in research on the theme of the foibe, above all because of the sheer volume of documents used by the Slovenian historian in this work. 29 P.A. Quarantotti Gambini, Primavera a Trieste: Ricordi del ’45, Milano, Mondadori, 1951. 30 Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra,” cit., p. 49. “From an operational point of view, in the first days of May arrests of civilians were carried out partially by the political police Ozna, and partially by military units comprising regular troops and partisans, including the Italian units incorporated into the Yugoslav liberation army. The military units were under the orders of the Command of the Fourth Army and of local Commands responsible for maintaining order. But they all acted on the basis of lists provided by the security services, which had prepared lists of ‘enemies of the people’ way in advance, by utilizing a large network of Italian and Slovenian informers.” 31 This episode, which Apih already reported in Trieste, cit., is taken from Valdevit, “Foibe: L’Eredità della Sconfitta,” cit., pp. 16 f. 32 Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra,” cit., p. 42. 33 These are the estimates we can find in E. Maserati, L’Occupazione Jugoslava di Trieste (Maggio-Giugno 1945), Udine, Del Bianco, 1966, pp. 96 f. 34 Fogar, Trieste in Guerra, cit., p. 255. 35 Valdevit, “Foibe: L’Eredità della Sconfitta,” cit., p. 18; Pupo, “Violenza Politica tra Guerra e Dopoguerra,” cit., p. 45. 36 De Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 436–7. 37 By M. Cattaruzza, in “L’Esodo Istriano: Questioni Interpretative,” cit. 38 Novak, Trieste, 1941–1954, cit. pp. 169–70. 39 In referring to Max Weber’s theory of power, Wolfgang Reinhard aptly remarks that “the powerful are organized, whereas the powerless are not.” Geschichte der Staatsgewalt: Eine Vegleichende Verfassungsgeschichte Europas von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, München, Oldenbourg, 1999, p. 17. 40 On this point, see G. Sluga, The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe, New York, State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 83–109. 41 FRUS, 1945, cit., vol. IV, p. 1148. 42 It should be remembered that, for the Foreign Office, the temporary demarcation line was supposed to represent the basis for fixing the definitive border. 43 Maserati, L’Occupazione Jugoslava di Trieste, cit., p. 144. 44 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 112 f. 45 Ibid., p. 116. 46 The Party had been founded on August 13, 1945, under the leadership of the Slovene Boris Kraigher and afterward, Branko Babić. The PCRG followed a rigid line favoring annexation, from which the Italian Communist Party was able to distance itself without difficulty. See Fogar, Trieste in Guerra 1940–1945, cit., p. 252. 47 See G. Valdevit, “Gli Alleati e la Questione di Trieste fra Peace Making e Guerra Fredda,” in A. del Boca and others, Confini Contesi: La Repubblica Italiana e il Trattato di Pace di Parigi (10 Febbraio 1947), Torino, Edizioni Gruppo Abele, 1998, pp. 87–100, especially pp. 91–2. 48 This document was published for the first time in a little-known book by R. Risaliti, Togliatti tra Gramsci e Neciaev, Prato, Omnia minima, 1995, pp. 50–3. 49 See Gualtieri, Togliatti e la Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 155. To avoid these dangers, the suggestion was “to link the situation to the fascist past, and to insist

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  245 on it, especially with the middle class, so as to create difficulties for any nationalist or fascist attempt at insurrection.” Ibid. 50 Aga Rossi and Zavslasky, Togliatti e Stalin, cit., pp. 142–3. 51 Pacor, Confine Orientale, cit., p. 347; Giacomo Pacini, Le Altre Gladio: La Lotta Segreta Anticomunista in Italia. 1943–1991, Torino, Einaudi, 2014, pp. 54–104. 52 Valdevit, “Dalla Crisi del Dopoguerra alla Stabilizzazione Politica e Istituzionale,” in Finzi, Magris and Miccoli (eds.), Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., p. 615. 53 On this point, see Maranzana, Le Armi per Trieste Italiana, cit. Maranzana publishes documents of great interest, even though in a somewhat disorderly form and without a critical apparatus. Many of these documents were collected or produced in the context of the criminal investigation of the Gladio organization. See also D. D’Amelio, A. Di Michele, G. Mezzalira (eds.), La Difesa dell’Italianità: L’Ufficio per le Zone di Confine a Bolzano, Trento e Trieste (1945–1954), Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015. 54 On the numerous Italian initiatives with the Allies, see De Castro, La Questione di Trieste, cit., vol. I. 55 There is an extensive reconstruction of these attempts in R. Pupo, “L’Italia e la Presa del Potere Jugoslava nella Venezia Giulia,” in Id., Guerra e Dopoguerra al Confine Orientale d’Italia (1939–1956), cit., pp. 67–106; especially pp. 81–95. 56 De Castro, La Questione di Trieste, cit., vol. I., p. 312. 57 On this important aspect, see M. de Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” in R.H. Rainero and G. Manzari (eds.), Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, Gaeta, Stabilimento grafico militare, 1998, pp. 95–115, especially pp. 98–9. 58 We do not wish to deny that many Slovenes, Croats, and even Italians did indeed want annexation to the new socialist Yugoslavia. In any case, the presence of Tito’s Eighth Army and Ninth Corps prevented the local people from freely expressing their preferences regarding the future of the area. In Trieste, on the contrary, which was occupied by the Anglo-Americans, there were both proItalian and pro-Yugoslav demonstrations. See Ibid., p. 100. 59 See M. Cattaruzza, “1945: Alle origini della ‘Questione di Trieste’,” in Ventunesimo Secolo, 4, 2005/2, pp. 97–112. 60 See “Appunti del Colloquio di I.V. Stalin,” cit. 61 See M. Cattaruzza, “L’Esodo Istriano: Alcune Proposte di Concettualizzazione,” in de Vergottini (ed.), La Storiografia della ‘Questione Giuliana’,” Atti del Seminario di Studi di Bologna, Bologna, 15 dicembre 1997, cit., pp. 123–30. 62 The Soviets had seriously considered the option of internationalizing Trieste already in March 1945. See Gibiansky, “L’Unione Sovietica, la Jugoslavia e Trieste,” cit., pp. 52–3. This further confirms the scale of the Soviets’ success. 63 It was the French Foreign Minister, Bidault, who presented the proposal of the Free Territory in Paris. On the different phases leading to this proposal, see Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana,” cit., p. 41. Already on June 4, 1946, the British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, declared in the House of Commons that he had accepted the French line, together with the American representative, Byrnes. He thus put the Western powers in a situation from which there was no return. 64 The British historian Arnold Toynbee already proposed an international status for Trieste in a position paper in September 1945. The American expert Philip Mosley then made it his own. See also de Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., pp. 98–9. 65 Ibid., p. 111. Sergio Romano has raised the intriguing hypothesis that a delay of a few months in drafting the treaty would have favored Italy. The launch of the Marshall Plan by the United States, and the growing inflexibility of the Soviet Union in the countries of Eastern Europe occupied by the Red Army de

246  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum facto started the Cold War, in contrast with the fluid situation that prevailed until the very end of 1946. See S. Romano, “Un Trattato Sbagliato al Momento Sbagliato,” in A. Ventura (ed.), Per una Storicizzazione dell’Esodo Giulianodalmata, Atti del Convegno di Studi, Padova 6 febbraio 2004, Padova, Cleup, 2005, pp. 21–3. 66 L. Sturzo, “Le Sorti dell’Italia a Parigi,” in Il Mondo, maggio 1946; now in Id., La Mia Battaglia da New York, Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2004, pp. 411–6, especially p. 415. 67 A. Biagini, “Il Confine Orientale,” in Rainero and Manzari (eds.), Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, cit., pp. 87–94, especially p. 91 68 Ibid., pp. 91–2. See also De Castro, La Questione di Trieste, cit., vol. I, p. 491. De Castro rightly remarks that acceptance of the Yugoslav amendments would have been tantamount to an annexation of Trieste by Yugoslavia. 69 Biagini, “Il Confine Orientale,” cit., p. 92. 70 Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, cit., p. 122. 71 De Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., pp. 102–3. 72 Rusinow, Italy’s Austrian Heritage, cit., p. 404–5. Gaetano Salvemini and other anti-fascist exiles strongly supported the plebiscite. It was not by chance that Italy picked up the proposal again on September 10, five days after the signing of the De Gasperi-Gruber accord which saved the Brenner border. See de Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., p.107. 73 On the Statute of the Free Territory of Trieste, see Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, Introduction and note by A. Giannini and G. Tomajuoli, Milano-Roma, Jandi Sapi, 1948, pp. 116–8, 171–83. 74 Ibid., pp. 187–94, especially pp. 192–3 on the International Commission. 75 De Robertis, Le Grandi Potenze e il Confine Giuliano 1941–1947, cit., pp. 103–5. 76 See A. De Gasperi, “Alla Conferenza dei Ventuno. Parigi, 11 Agosto 1946,” in Concretezza—Rivista politica quindicinale, 10, 10 agosto 1964, pp. 63–6, especially p. 65. 77 De Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., p. 108. 78 See P. Pastorelli, La Politica Estera Italiana del Dopoguerra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1987, pp. 107–11, 211. We can read a careful and very detailed reconstruction of those “pockets” and of the controversial parts of the border line in Valussi, Il Confine Nordorientale d’Italia, cit., pp. 241–7. 79 See also “Una Triste Giornata,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 11 febbraio 1947; “La Nota di Protesta Sarà Letta Oggi da Sforza,” ivi. 80 I. Bonomi, “A Queste Condizioni,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 11 febbraio 1947. 81 Benedetto Croce voted against the treaty in the Constituent Assembly, declaring that its approval would make the Italians lose all respect for themselves. Strangely enough, in his speech the eastern border is not even mentioned. See B. Croce, Contro l’Approvazione del Dettato della Pace: Discorso Tenuto all’Assemblea Costituente il 24 Luglio 1947, Bari, Laterza, 1947. 82 M. Cuzzi gives us an accurate reconstruction of the events, in “La Ratifica del Trattato di Pace,” in Rainero and Manzari (eds.), Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, cit., pp. 225–52, especially pp. 246–7. 83 Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana: 1944–1947,” cit., p. 54. 84 See above, ch. 5. 85 G. Stuparich, Trieste nei miei Ricordi, Milano, Garzanti, 1948, p. 233. 86 Maranzana, Le Armi per Trieste Italiana, cit. p. 96. 87 Ibid., pp. 97–9.

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  247 88 Ibid., for more information about the amount of this financial support. 89 Ibid., p. 129. 90 See, for example, the different versions of the peace treaty, Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, cit., pp. 115, 215. 91 The analysis that synthesizes these issues is in Pupo, Il Lungo Esodo, cit. See also O. Moscarda, “La “Giustizia del Popolo”: Sequestri e Confische a Fiume nel Secondo Dopoguerra (1946–1948),” in Qualestoria, 1997, pp. 209–32; ead. “I Poteri Popolari in Istria: Prospettive di Ricerca,” in La Ricerca, 1998/1999, pp. 10–12; ead. “L’Istria Epurata (1945–1948). Ragionamenti per una Ricerca,” in Cattaruzza, Dogo, e Pupo, Esodi, cit., pp. 237–52; ead. “Contributo all’Analisi del “Potere Popolare in Istria e a Rovigno (1945),” in Centro di Ricerche Storiche di Rovigno—Quaderni, 15/2003, pp. 51–82. 92 Galli della Loggia, La Morte della Patria, cit., pp. 115–16. 93 Valdevit, “Dalla Crisi del Dopoguerra alla Stabilizzazione Politica e Istituzionale,” cit., p. 611. 94 See Hillgruber’s sharp remarks in “Der ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” cit. See also Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana: 1944–1947,” cit., pp. 80 f. Ivi, see the British “bastion paper” on the Soviet Union’s paths of expansion. 95 See Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana: 1944–1947,” cit., pp. 42 f.; Hillgruber, “Der ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” cit. Valdevit reproduces the quotation, taken from an opinion paper of the American War Department, in, “Gli Alleati e la Questione di Trieste, cit., p. 97. 96 De Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., pp. 98–9. 97 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 224, 249. 98 See G. Botteri, Antonio Santin, Pordenone, Studio Tesi, 1992, pp. 57 f. See also A. Santin, Al Tramonto: Ricordi Autobiografici di un Vescovo, Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1978. 99 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 155 f. See also de Leonardis, “La Questione di Trieste,” cit., p. 107. 100 Valdevit, “Dalla Crisi del Dopoguerra alla Stabilizzazione Politica e Istituzionale,” in Finzi, Magris and Miccoli (eds.), Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., vol. I, pp. 581–661, especially p. 608. 101 Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana: 1944–1947,” cit., p. 43. 102 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 196–8. 103 Valdevit calls the question of Trieste after the break between Moscow and Belgrade “a relic of the Cold War.” Ibid., pp. 237 f. 104 See M. de Leonardis, “L’Italia, la Diplomazia Angloamericana e la Soluzione del Problema di Trieste (1952–1954),” in E. Di Nolfo, R.H. Rainero, and B. Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza in Europa (1950–1960), Settimo Milanese, Marzorati, 1992, pp. 737–53, especially pp. 737–8, 744. 105 Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana: 1944–1947,” cit., p. 77. 106 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., p. 238. 107 Ibid., pp. 240 f. 108 De Castro, La Questione di Trieste, vol. II: La Fase Dinamica, Trieste, Edizioni Lint, 1981, pp. 171–91. 109 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., p. 247. 110 Ibid., p. 249. 111 On the escalating tension between Italy and Yugoslavia, see the diary of Paolo Emilio Taviani, then Minister of Defense, I giorni di Trieste: Diario 1953– 1954, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1998, pp. 45–52.

248  From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum 112 A. Guerriero, I Furori di Tito, in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 14 ottobre 1953. 113 See Taviani, I giorni di Trieste: Diario 1953–1954, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1998, pp. 53–5. It appears that the decision to arm the Italian resistance was taken on October 20, 1953, in response to Diego De Castro’s insistent appeals. 114 Ibid., pp. 62–3. The partisan commander Martini Mari, who held the gold medal of the Resistance, was also sent to Trieste. There is ample documentation in Maranzana, Le Armi per Trieste Italiana, cit., pp. 28–35. 115 Valdevit, La Questione di Trieste, cit., pp. 262 f.; R. Pupo, “L’Ultima Crisi per Trieste,” in Id., Fra Italia e Jugoslavia, cit., pp. 91–150, especially pp. 124 f.; Anna Millo, La Difficile Intesa, Roma e Trieste nella Questione Giuliana 1944–1954, Trieste, Edizioni Italo Svevo, 2011. 116 Pupo, “L’ultima Crisi per Trieste” cit., p. 133. 117 Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, cit., pp. 232–5, 321. 118 Pupo, “L’Ultima Crisi per Trieste,” cit., p. 156. 119 Taviani, I giorni di Trieste, cit., p. 121. On June 5 Taviani learned from Foster Dulles that Tito had given up the corridor and the free zone. See Ibid., p. 126. 120 For the various reconstructions of the negotiations, see the Italian Ambassador to Washington, Tarchiani, Dieci Anni fra Roma e Washington, cit., pp. 277 f. The Yugoslav requests were very similar to those made a year later by Ambassador Velebit: the transfer of Servola and Zaule [Čavle], and a large corridor linking them to Yugoslavia, plus access to the sea for Yugoslavia in Muggia (Ibid., pp. 278–9). 121 Pupo, “L’Ultima Crisi per Trieste,” cit., pp. 156–8. 122 On this topic, see ch. 9. 123 De Leonardis, “L’Italia, la Diplomazia Angloamericana e la Soluzione del Problema di Trieste,” cit., p. 750. In this regard, the Yugoslavs found themselves agreeing with the British, who favored changes in the border between Zone A and Zone B on the basis of ethnic principles; they also favored moving populations in order to ensure that the new border would define ethnically cohesive groups. See Ibid., 738–40, and, in greater detail, M. de Leonardis, La “Diplomazia Atlantica” e la Soluzione del Problema di Trieste (1952–1954), Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992, pp. 393–511. De Leonardis, however, does not realize the possible long-term implications of transferring to the Yugoslavs a corridor leading to the sea in Zone A, or of territorial transfers close to the city. See Ibid., pp. 495–6. 124 See “A Roma si Attende una Comunicazione sull’Esito dei Sondaggi Alleati a Belgrado,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 18 maggio 1954; “Una Zona Franca Jugoslava Verrebbe Creata nel Porto di Trieste,” ivi, 10 giugno 1954; “Imminente Passo di Brosio al Foreign Office per Trieste,” ivi, 13 giugno 1954; “Brosio Darà Oggi la Risposta a Roma alle Proposte Concernenti il Tlt,” ivi, 15 giugno 1954; “Con la Carta Geografica alla Mano i Triestini Confutano le Tesi di Belgrado,” ivi, 26 agosto 1954. 125 On this point see Manlio Brosio’s comments in de Leonardis, La “Diplomazia Atlantica” e la Soluzione del Problema di Trieste, cit., p. 510. See also E. Di Nolfo, “La ‘Politica di Potenza’ e le Formule della Politica di Potenza. Il Caso Italiano (1952–1956), in Di Nolfo, Rainero, and Vigezzi (eds.), L’Italia e la Politica di Potenza in Europa (1950–60), cit., pp. 709–24, especially pp. 713–4. For an assessment of the position occupied by the issue of Trieste in the foreign policy of De Gasperi, Pella, and Scelba, with special regard to the European Defense Community, see G. Quagliariello, “La Ced, l’Ultima Spina di De Gasperi,” in Ventunesimo Secolo, 3, marzo 2004, pp. 247–86, especially pp. 261 ff. 126 “Il Sole Era nel Cuore della Folla,” in Il Piccolo, 27 ottobre 1954 (second special issue).

From the “Race for Trieste” to the London Memorandum  249 127 See “Trieste Accoglie Oggi Luigi Einaudi Stretta Intorno al Tricolore e ai Suoi Soldati,” ivi, 4 novembre 1954. 128 See “Omaggio di Ex Combattenti all’Altare della Patria,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 7 ottobre 1954. 129 “Giubilo di Popolo in Tutta la Repubblica,” in Il Piccolo, 27 ottobre 1954 (second special issue). 130 See, for example, “Manifestazioni di Protesta a Roma e in Altre Città,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 23 marzo 1952; “La Città delle Cinque Giornate Inneggia a Trieste Italiana,” Ibid., 25 marzo 1952; “Per Trieste Tutti gli Italiani si Schierano in un Fronte Unico,” Ibid., 26 marzo 1952; “Nella Memoria dei Caduti la Fede in Trieste Italiana,” Ibid., 26 marzo 1952; “Milano Proclamerà Oggi la sua Fede in Trieste Italiana,” Ibid., 27 marzo 1952; “Ha il Suono delle Campane di S. Giusto la Voce della Città delle Cinque Giornate,” Ibid., 28 marzo 1952; “Monito di Scelba ai Giovani a non Lasciarsi Trascinare a Violenze,” Ibid., 10 marzo 1953; “Agenti Provocatori fra gli Studenti Romani,” Ibid., 12 marzo 1955; “Nessuna Manifestazione nell’Anniversario della Dichiarazione Tripartita per Trieste, “ Ibid., 19 marzo 1953. 131 “Piccole Modifiche Territoriali e Difesa dei Diritti delle Minoranze,” Ibid., 5 ottobre 1954. Even so, this modification concerned five square kilometers and four thousand people. See Taviani, I giorni di Trieste, cit., pp. 147, 151. 132 “L’Accordo per Trieste Approvato dal Consiglio Esecutivo Jugoslavo,” Ibid. 133 “Tito Garantisce il Rispetto delle Minoranze Italiane,” Ibid., 26 ottobre 1954. 134 See Pupo, Il Lungo Esodo, cit. 135 “Il Passaggio dei Poteri e le Rettifiche Territoriali,” in Il Nuovo Corriere della Sera, 6 ottobre 1954. 136 “Le Norme per la Difesa dei Diritti delle Minoranze,” Ibid., 6 ottobre 1954. 137 There is mention of this important issue in G. Valdevit, “Trieste 1945–1954 (e un po’ oltre). Bilancio Storiografico e Prospettive di Ricerca,” in Cattaruzza (ed.), Trieste, Austria, Italia tra Settecento e Ottocento: Studi in Onore di Elio Apih, cit., pp. 423–46, especially p. 439. See also Pupo, “Il Contesto Internazionale della Questione Giuliana,” cit., pp. 96 f. 138 See G. Borgna, Le Canzoni di Sanremo, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1986, pp. 30–1. 139 A description of these events is in G.G. Vené, Vola Colomba: Vita Quotidiana degli Italiani negli Anni del Dopoguerra 1945–1960, Milano, Mondadori, 1990, pp. 238–9. 140 Taviani, I giorni di Trieste, cit., p. 67. 141 Ibid., p. 59. 142 Emilio Gentile mentions a “residual national sentiment, which still burst into flames of patriotic passion, for example during the discussions on the peace treaty, or on the issue of Trieste.” See Gentile, La Grande Italia, cit., p. 319. 143 Ibid., p. 373. See also pp. 229–373, for an analysis of the crisis of the Italian nation after September 8, 1943.

9 The Long Post-War Era and Its End

1 A Divided Society In the1950s and 1960s, the eastern Italian border was the object of opposing and contrasting pressures. On the one hand, several initiatives, especially at the regional level, pointed toward normalization between Italy and its Yugoslav neighbor; on the other hand, the drastic shrinking of Trieste’s shipbuilding and machinery industries generated a wave of street protests and riots, which led in turn to barricades and violent clashes with the police. A few years later, the Osimo Agreements of 1975 caused an even more profound split between civil society and political institutions, giving birth to the civic movement Lista per Trieste [from now on, List for Trieste]. In a short time, the List for Trieste would become the strongest political force in the city, threatening the long-standing supremacy of the Christian Democratic Party. The eastern border remained a point of international friction. The clandestine Stay Behind organization, also known as Operation Gladio, launched by NATO, assembled weapons and men in the Friuli and in the province of Trieste, with the goal of opposing a possible Yugoslav or Soviet attack against a very vulnerable border.1 The first squads of what would become the Gladio organization had already been formed in Friuli in 1945 under Allied occupation,2 in response to destabilizing Yugoslav initiatives in the Slavia Veneta [Venetian Slovenia] and in the area around Gorizia.3 According to CIA documents made public in 2004, Trieste remained a center of Soviet, American, and Yugoslav spy networks.4 The local Italian Communist Party, whose leader at the time was Vittorio Vidali, a “man of Moscow” with an ambiguous past to say the least, maintained a strong Stalinist identity and its own, efficient clandestine apparatus. Just as active was the extra-parliamentary far right, which carried out acts of violence and intimidation against the Slovenian minority and even some bomb attacks, fortunately without victims, and defaced partisan monuments systematically (through raids in the Karstic region).5 Relations between Italians and Slovenians were rare and marked by icy mistrust. In 1965, the Socialist Party appointed as Trieste town councilor the Slovenian

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  251 Dušan Hreščak, who had a Titoist past; a wave of indignation and protests erupted in the city.6 The cold war opened unbridgeable gaps in civil society. In the part of Venezia Giulia that had remained Italian after the peace treaty, divisions at the local level echoed, amplified, those in the rest of the country, while new ones emerged specific to the border region. Extreme polarization between Communists and nationalists (including, in the latter case, an undeniably fascist component) added to the tensions between Italians and Slovenes, and between the indigenous population and refugees from Istria. These fission lines intertwined and overlapped, strengthening one another; their build-up generated a violent and uncompromising opposition between Right and Left, reaching a level of intensity that had few parallels in the rest of Italy. Unlike in the rest of the country, in fact, ideological choices became inseparable on the eastern border from options regarding loyalty to the state and the nation. Democratic issues and aspirations were squashed by the nationality question, which trumped every other issue and to which every other issue was subordinated. A long time ago, the historian Elio Apih remarked that the weakness of Trieste’s democratic tradition was a specific feature of the city. More recently, Giampaolo Valdevit has reasserted this point.7

2 The Process of “Normalization” With Trieste’s return to the motherland secured, the strong and sincere involvement of the entire nation, which had suffered and feared together with the city during the crucial phases of the crisis,8 began to wane. At this point, Italy entered a phase in which the normalization of what remained of the Julian region and its full inclusion in the political and social life of the country became paramount. The agent of normalization was the new Christian Democratic political class, a link between the region and central power and an indispensable mediator in the process of negotiation and allocation of resources. The economic historian Giulio Sapelli has adopted the apt term “political entrepreneur” to describe a political staff that was crucial to the economic and political reality of post-war Italy, and whose main task was to “manage the distribution, and in some cases the creation of economic resources (through financial and organizational incentives).”9 These negotiations with the central power for the allocation of resources to the eastern periphery yielded their first results right after the signing of the London Memorandum, in the form of a Fondo per le iniziative economiche a Trieste e a Gorizia [Fund for Economic Initiatives in Trieste and Gorizia], which was de facto a tool for distributing funds to companies at a subsidized rate. Then, in 1955, the Zoli government approved the “forty-five billion lire statute,” which provided funds for the (modest) expansion of the port’s facilities and of a broad and varied infrastructural road network linking above all the port of Trieste to Austria. This attempt, one of many made to revive the port as the driving

252  The Long Post-War Era and Its End force of Trieste’s economy, was destined to fail.10 Serious delays plagued all these initiatives, thus adding to the crisis of the shipbuilding and shipping companies.11 The hegemony of the Christian Democratic Party represented a novelty for the political culture of Trieste (unlike for the Friuli and Gorizia), where Catholicism had never before given life to significant political movements. This new political class undoubtedly benefitted from the prestige of the Church which, after the collapse of the fascist regime and the gradual withdrawal of the various occupying powers (German, Yugoslav, and AngloAmerican), became the major point of reference for a community deprived of local political leadership, and at the mercy of decisions taken by alien powers to a large degree. In the years of “eclipse” of the Italian state, the Bishop of Trieste, the Istrian Antonio Santin, de facto acted as the representative of a community which felt disoriented and fearful.12 Besides the prestige of the Church, the loss of credibility of the other political forces and the strong presence of up to eighty thousand Istrian refugees in the areas around Trieste and Gorizia also contributed to the entrenchment of the Christian Democrats’ power. The refugees, in particular, were devoted Catholics, much more tied to their own parishes than the people of Trieste as a whole, shaped as they were by the secular and Masonic tradition typical of national Liberalism or by the positivist culture of internationalist Socialism. Starting in 1957, a new Christian Democratic political class arose in Trieste, comprised of followers of the Catholic thinker and politician Giuseppe Dossetti, and linked to the progressive current in the Christian Democratic Party led by Mariano Rumor and Amintore Fanfani. The most prestigious representatives of this new political class were first Corrado Belci and then Guido Botteri, secretaries of the Christian Democratic Party at the provincial level.13 We should also add that, given the events that took place in this area after both world wars, the local people had participated neither in the electoral mobilization of 1919, nor in the general political election and the referendum that gave life to the Italian Republic in 1946. Besides, about two fifths of the local electorate was pro-Yugoslavia or in favor of autonomy (that is, in favor of the establishment of the Free Territory), so that, when Trieste was returned to Italy, a profound gap and a significant delay marked the local political culture vis-à-vis the developments that had taken place in the rest of the country ever since 1944.

3 A Region with a “Special Statute” The status of “autonomous region with special statute” attributed to FriuliVenezia Giulia in 1963 fostered more open relations with Yugoslavia. The two countries signed treaties regarding border traffic in 1955, and completed them with subsequent accords in 1957, 1962, and 1967.14 These turned the Yugoslav-Italian frontier into the most permeable border zone between countries which had, respectively, a democratic parliamentary system and a

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  253 communist regime. After Yugoslavia liberalized travel abroad in the 1970s, Trieste became the preferred shopping destination of the Yugoslavs. In 1978 alone the city registered 2.5 million arrivals from Yugoslavia,15 which became the core of a lucrative retail trade of goods, mostly of low quality but almost impossible to find in Yugoslavia and in the countries of Eastern Europe. After the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the transition of its Republics to a market economy, this important sector of the region’s economy was destined to decline. The peak in border trade came in 1988, with 858 billion lire in the Trieste area, and 592 in the area around Gorizia. In 1993, these figures plummeted to 20.7 billion for Trieste and 2.4 for Gorizia.16 The acknowledgement that Friuli-Venezia Giulia was a “special” region, following the model of the Aosta Valley, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sicily, and Sardinia, had already emerged during the debates in the Constituent Assembly and was included in the Constitution. The region was formed by joining together the Friuli with what was left of Venezia Giulia after the stipulation of the peace treaty (1946–47).17 The pro-autonomy tendencies present in the political cultures of both the Friuli18 and Giulia had different motivations and different historical and ideal points of reference, but they found common cause in the request for “special treatment.” In particular, the Action Party in Venezia Giulia and pro-autonomy groups in the Friuli supported a large degree of autonomy for their respective regions. The Action Party placed these demands in the context of the ideal of European federalism. Giovanni Paladin, their leader in Trieste, asserted at the beginning of 1944: Those Slavs who will go on living in Giulia on the Italian side of the border will no longer have to worry about national issues. As members in a federation of free European peoples, they will be given all the assurances they need to cooperate with the Italians, with whom they share the same territory, in a condition of complete juridical equality with them. They will thus be able to contribute to their common economic development, and to shaping the moral unity of Venezia Giulia.19 Several other representatives of the Trieste CLN justified autonomy by arguing that the renaissance of Trieste’s international trade could only occur if the city became a free port. According to the reconstruction of the Trieste historian Arduino Agnelli, the Constituent Assembly approved the institution of Venezia Giulia as an autonomous region somewhat by chance, in the context of Article 116, as an amendment to a proposal by Fausto Pecorari, a Christian Democratic Julian deputy, who wanted to assign that status to the entire region of Venezia Giulia, including Zara.20 In June 1947, the Constituent Assembly granted the status of “autonomous region with a special statute” to Friuli-Venezia Giulia and then used the Tenth Transitory Article of the Constitutional Charter to defer its coming into force until after the stipulation of the peace treaty with Yugoslavia.21 The Chamber of Deputies

254  The Long Post-War Era and Its End finally established the region on January 31, 1963. Later, the legislative measures adopted to repair the enormous damage caused by the 1976 earthquake in the Friuli and to realize the public works planned by the Osimo Agreements, remarkably broadened its powers.22

4 Prospects for Economic Development By the end of the 1960s the dismantling of the economic structure erected for Trieste in the second half of the nineteenth century was complete. That structure was based on political and economic assumptions completely different from those facing the city after its inclusion into Italy. The international crisis that hit the shipbuilding industry led to the closing of the Fabbrica Macchine, of the Saint Mark shipyard, and of the Lloyd’s arsenal as a ship repair facility. The city reacted with violent street clashes, in 196623 and then again in 1968, which expressed the frustration both of the local workers who lost their jobs, and of the disillusioned citizens of Trieste who experienced those events as a betrayal by the motherland. The November 1966 political elections saw ten thousand blank ballots and a remarkable strengthening of the political forces favoring independence.24 Port traffic too showed no sign of recovering, in part because the Treaty of Rome of 1957, which established the European Economic Community, approved tariff reductions for the ports on the North Sea (first of all Hamburg), but nothing at all for Trieste.25 In reality there were two paths available for the revitalization of the city: to transform the entire urban area into a duty-free zone; or to strengthen its infrastructure linking the city to its hinterland. The Italian state did neither.26 The local Christian Democratic class negotiated several forms of economic support with the Cipe [Comitato interministeriale per la programmazione economica, Interdepartmental Committee for Economic Planning]: a plan for the production of diesel engines (the Grandi Motori company); the choice of Trieste as the terminal of a big pipeline carrying oil to Bavaria; and the expansion of Monfalcone’s shipbuilding facilities as the future center of the region’s shipping and machinery production. On October 22, 1966, Italcantieri, headquartered in Trieste, was launched, in charge of coordinating the entire public-sector shipbuilding industry in Italy.27 Except for the facilities in Monfalcone, this plan never took off. The Grandi Motori in particular proved incapable of guaranteeing a regular production schedule.28 Those substantial investments (the largest ones Iri made in the period after World War II) became de facto social welfare nets, by guaranteeing an artificially high occupational level.29 Trieste thus became more and more an “assisted” area as happened to many sectors of the economy in the Italian South,30 but the frustration engendered by the downgrading of the city was stronger because people vividly remembered (a glorified version of) the golden times of the past. The discontented overlooked the fact that, if assessed through indicators such as bank deposits, per capita income, and so forth, Trieste

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  255 maintained one of the highest standards of living in Italy. The historian Giampaolo Valdevit emphasized years ago that Trieste had taken the path of changing from an industrial to a service-base “subsidized” economy ever since the time of the Allied military government. Given the precariousness of the local situation, employment in the public administration was artificially inflated so as to ease already sharp social tensions. Financial support from the European Recovery Program of the Marshall Plan, calculated for Trieste on a per capita basis, was four times higher than what was allocated for Italy.31

5 The Treaty of Osimo At the end of the 1960s, Italy intensified its diplomatic contacts with Yugoslavia, thanks also to the new climate of international détente fostered by Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. External pressure must have contributed to the Italian initiative,32 which became part of the process of growing cooperation between the two blocs leading to the Helsinki Declaration.33 Italian-Yugoslav relations went through ups and downs, in part because both countries experienced a period of profound destabilization in the first half of the 1970s. In Yugoslavia, the communist parties of the various republics fought one another (especially in Croatia), while Ustaše survivors in exile tried to stage coups d’état, accompanied by serious episodes of guerrilla war. Italy also went through a phase of intense social conflict and subversive activities: terrorist groups on the Left perpetrated a series of politically motivated murders, while the extreme Right launched its subversive attempts and executed a series of bloody attacks which, even to this day, have not been completely clarified. Despite these internal difficulties, relations between the two countries continued with cordial regularity. In 1959 an Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs went to Belgrade. In 1960 Yugoslavia returned the courtesy through a visit of the Foreign Minister Koča Popović,34 at the same time as the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Segni went to the Yugoslav capital. Frequent reciprocal visits continued at the highest level throughout 1962.35 For the first time a President of the Italian government, Aldo Moro at that time, paid an official visit to Belgrade, November 8 through 12, 1965. He agreed to refinance Italian loans to Yugoslavia, while declaring his availability to foster relations between Belgrade and the European Community. Further accords were stipulated in a climate characterized by growing reciprocal trust.36 On February 10, 1971, a friendly joint communiqué followed a meeting in Venice between the two Foreign Ministers, Aldo Moro and Mirko Tepavac. The President of the Italian Republic, Giuseppe Saragat, went to Belgrade from October 2 through 6, 1969. Tito’s visit to Italy, planned for 1970, cancelled in response to Aldo Moro’s declarations about the legitimate national interests that remained unfulfilled, only took place in 1971, March 25 to 27.37 Finally, on March 19–20, 1973, the Italian Foreign

256  The Long Post-War Era and Its End Minister, Giuseppe Medici, and the Yugoslav Vice-President of the Federal Council and Secretary of State, Miloš Minić, had a meeting in which Italy announced that a team of experts was preparing a proposal for addressing all the problems still unresolved between the two countries.38 A few days before Giuseppe Medici’s visit to Yugoslavia, Tito had met informally with Eugenio Carbone, General Director of the Italian Ministry of Industry and future negotiator of the Treaty of Osimo. According to Corrado Belci, it seems that Tito suggested to Carbone to settle the border issue while he himself was still alive, because if Yugoslavia was to come apart at his death, Italy would find itself in a less favorable situation.39 According to the reconstruction of events by the Italian Ambassador to Yugoslavia at that time, G. Walter Maccotta, Aldo Moro also shared this assessment.40 After a brief, tense phase in 1974, which escalated to the point of a massing of Yugoslav troops along the border, in 1975 Italy and Yugoslavia signed, unbeknownst to the wider public, the Treaty of Osimo (in a small town of that name in the Marche region), thus sanctioning once and for all the border between Italy and Yugoslavia.41 The two countries acknowledged unconditionally that Trieste belonged to Italy, and Zone B to Yugoslavia (part in Slovenia and part in Croatia). Trusting in the then-prevailing climate of international détente, the agreement also contained economic measures which, at least on paper, aimed to reestablish the old function of the port. The Treaty reasserted the two countries’ wish to cooperate, confirmed their renunciation of the use of force, the inviolability of the borders, the respect for territorial integrity, and the principle that both states would grant “. . . the most extensive protection possible to citizens belonging to the various ethnic groups, in accordance with each country’s constitution and legal system, a goal that each Republic tries to attain in its own way, and by drawing inspiration from the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the universal agreements on human rights.”42 In his turn, on October 1, 1975, Foreign Minister Miloš Minić declared to the Assembly of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that Yugoslavia considered the protection of minorities a central point.43 After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the new Slovenian Republic fully adopted this principle, which has remained central in diplomatic relations between Italy and Slovenia. In a subsequent speech, on March 1, 1977, Minić reasserted that, on the basis of the principle of reciprocity in the treatment of minorities, the Yugoslav government expected the treatment of the Slovenian minority in Italy to include full equality, free development, and non-discrimination.44 One of the clauses of the Treaty of Osimo established a duty-free zone straddling the border,45 a proposal launched by Italy which looked dangerously similar to the one advanced by Ambassador Velebit in 1954 in London. (In any case, public opinion did not see the similarity between the two.)46 This zone, a space where duty-free industrial activities could be performed

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  257 and formalities completed, included both Yugoslav and Italian territory, while a permanent Italian-Yugoslav Committee would manage it. This project was the result of an unusual procedure, to say the least. Aldo Moro, the Prime Minister at the time, entrusted the negotiations with Yugoslavia to the General Director of the Ministry of Industry, Eugenio Carbone, already mentioned, thus bypassing the staff of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.47 The plenipotentiary Camillo Giurati, Director of the Italian delegation in the mixed Italian-Yugoslav Committee for border issues, resigned in protest on September 11, 1975. Originally, Italy had chosen to place the transborder duty-free area in Muggia (exactly the same area requested many years before by the Yugoslav Ambassador Velebit during the negotiations for the London Memorandum!). Now the Yugoslav signaled their preference for the Karstic territory between the villages of Opicina and Basovizza, and the Slovenian center of Sesana.48 According to a remark of Giampaolo Valdevit, Eugenio Carbone, “under pressure to reach a conclusion, accepts the Yugoslav proposal which, however, distorts the Italian one.”49 Carbone’s interlocutor in the negotiations was the Slovenian Boris Šnuderl, a former federal minister, “who knows Italian matters and the Italian language very well, and is also an expert on economic problems.”50 According to Walter Maccotta, the idea of doing “something in favor of the inhabitants of Trieste” came from Aldo Moro.51 That the option chosen for revitalizing the economy of the Adriatic port was a duty-free zone straddling the border, justifies the interpretation that Šnuderl was in favor of that project. And even if we accept the notion that the Italian negotiators were in good faith, this proposal shows, to say the least, a surprising level of amateurism and an amazing lack of preparation. Beside the industrial duty-free zone, which became the target of strong protests in Trieste, the treaty included several measures for economic cooperation, which remained completely unfulfilled. There was the idea of establishing a mixed commission devoted to water management, for example, aiming to improve the supply of water and electricity, and of forming joint ventures for the shared production of electric power by exploiting the waters of the Isonzo, Judrio, and Timavo rivers. A dam on the Isonzo River near Salcano [Solkan] was planned, as were feasibility studies for building a Monfalcone-Gorizia-Ljubljana navigable canal linked to the canals networks in Central Europe, and to the Black Sea [!], and for connecting the Venice-Trieste-Udine-Tarvisio motor highway to the Nova Gorica-PostojnaLjubljana, Fernetti-Postojna, and Hrpelje-Kozina-Rjeka roads. The ports of the northern Adriatic were supposed to establish “close and permanent cooperation.” Other articles envisaged agreements for the defense of the environment, the exploitation of electric power, and the utilization of raw materials.52 The treaty regarding the borders and the agreement for economic cooperation formed one single package which the Chambers could only accept or reject in its entirety. When vociferous protests against the treaty broke out in

258  The Long Post-War Era and Its End Trieste, this rigid approach left the Christian Democrats no room to maneuver. In the report presented to the Chamber of Deputies, Foreign Minister Mariano Rumor stressed Italy’s interest in the stability of Yugoslavia, and in reinforcing the balance of power in an area of strategic importance for the country. Rumor also mentioned unrest in the Balkan region (probably referring to the tensions between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia over Macedonia), and stated once again that the Treaty of Osimo was to be seen as a contribution to normalization.53 Right before the signing of the treaty, a lively debate sprang up in the Chamber of Deputies, which saw as protagonists all the deputies of Movimento sociale italiano-Destra nazionale [from now own, Italian Social Movement-National Right Party]. This debate took place in a half-empty chamber, further proof that the Italian political class was by now paying very little attention to events on the eastern border. We should not forget that the 1970s were years of deep social conflict in Italy, with terrorist movements rising from both the Left and the Right. Both the Parliament and the country were thus focusing on the serious events taking place in the domestic arena. Alfredo Pazzaglia, a deputy in the lower chamber, remarked that the stipulation of the treaty followed the meeting between Tito and the secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Enrico Berlinguer, in the context of the rapprochement between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communists.54 Renzo de Vidovich, a deputy of the Italian Social Movement Party from Trieste, highlighted the very close ties between the Italian Communist Party and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and emphasized the “Eurocommunist” significance of the operation. De Vidovich remarked: “They want . . . to facilitate the birth of the so-called communist ‘three-pole system’ in Europe, the third autonomous pole of European Communism, which ought to allow Communist Parties to enter into governments without incurring the U.S. veto.”55 When the chambers debated the ratification of the Treaty of Osimo, Stefano Menicacci, a deputy of the Italian Social Movement Party as well, also mentioned “the Tito-Berlinguer understanding of Easter 1975.”56 According to Menicacci, this agreement was a feature of the rapprochement taking place at the time between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, as confirmed by Brezhnev’s recent visit to Belgrade. Menicacci concluded: “We remain persuaded that an agreement with Tito only apparently serves the purpose of lending credibility to Eurocommunism, while de facto playing into the hands of Soviet imperialism.”57 It is a fact that Enrico Berlinguer closely followed the progress of the ratification of the treaty, rejoicing at the broad array of anti-fascist forces that coalesced in its support.58 Corrado Belci, Deputy of the Christian Democratic Party for Trieste and a supporter of Aldo Moro’s policy, emphasized instead that establishing the border once and for all would result in the stabilization of Yugoslavia— an incontrovertible fact—while adding: “Yugoslavia’s stability is in our national interest. A partition of Yugoslavia, or a drastic change in today’s

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  259 national balance of power within Yugoslavia, would be extremely costly for us, both in military and political terms.”59 De facto, the debate on the Treaty of Osimo took place with people already thinking of the “post-Tito” phase, and of the danger that Yugoslavia might become once again part of the Soviet bloc. It was at that time totally unthinkable that Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union would dissolve at the same time, as in fact happened some fifteen years later! In his report to the Foreign Policy and Migration Commission on November 26, 1976, the Chairman, Lorenzo Natali, explicitly stated that the Treaty of Osimo should be interpreted as contributing to Euro-Mediterranean balance, mentioning the high level of unrest in the Mediterranean basin fueled by unstable situations that had escaped the control of the parties involved,60 and made more dramatic by external factors. Natali’s narrative is such as to lead us to think that pressure was exercised on Italy to close the question of its border with Yugoslavia once and for all. Here is an example: “Much more significant territorial sacrifices accepted by other countries, such as Germany, made it impossible for people at the inter-European and international levels to understand why we insisted on the fact that our eastern borders were temporary.”61 And later on: Closing the controversy with Yugoslavia was dictated by a correct assessment of our credibility at the Atlantic and European levels. In the Atlantic context, we cannot play the role of involuntary provokers of possibly serious crises. Nor should we carry a legacy of resentment and frustration with us onto the European stage. A settled border will improve our military and political credibility in the West. We could no longer allow a dotted line to trace the perimeter of the Atlantic Alliance and the European Community. Our eastern border is also a European and an Atlantic border. Precise responsibilities flow out of it for us, both from a material and a moral point of view.62 On February 17, 1977, Senator Adolfo Sarti, Chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Commission for Foreign Affairs and Migration, further explained the reasons for establishing the Italian-Yugoslav border once and for all. Yugoslavia, a non-aligned country, was carrying out a domestic revisionist policy, if compared with the Soviet model. Above all, . . . it is . . . almost obvious to remark that communications between the Greco-Turkish European region, which aims to join the European Community, and the nerve center in Brussels require the geopolitical involvement of Yugoslavia. Given the privileged position and historical respect we enjoy as members of the Euro-Atlantic alliance and as co-founders of the European Community, supporting Yugoslavia as it is playing this role is, so far as we are concerned, one of the imperatives of the Osimo Agreements.

260  The Long Post-War Era and Its End It would thus appear that, at some level, Osimo was seen as a step in the process of integration of Yugoslavia into the Euro-Mediterranean area, following the directives of the Helsinki Declaration.63 The reinforcement of Yugoslavia’s role as the country leader of the non-aligned movement was undoubtedly in the interests of the United States. Besides, Helsinki’s final declaration appeared to create more space for a Eurocommunist policy asserting growing independence from the Soviet Union. We should not rule out, therefore, that the decision to conclude a treaty was reached in the context of the developing relation between Aldo Moro and Enrico Berlinguer. In his biography of Enrico Berlinguer, Silvio Pons emphasizes that, during the years between 1975 and Tito’s death, the Italian Communists and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia held broadly shared views on international détente, and on the need to go beyond the logic of the two blocs. According to Pons, the meeting between Berlinguer and Tito of March 29, 1975, led to a “real strategic alliance.”64 The strange path chosen by Moro to arrive at a treaty also seems to support this hypothesis. He bypassed not just the staff of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, but even the Foreign Minister himself. A month after the signing of the Treaty of Osimo, in an important meeting at the White House on December 12, 1975, Henry Kissinger and the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, France, and Germany agreed that Italy and Yugoslavia had such close ties as to make it impossible to hold even basic NATO military exercises in northern Italy. Even in case of a Soviet invasion of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death, Italian military involvement was considered uncertain.65 According to Sergio Romano, in the years between the Treaty of Osimo and the 1980s Yugoslavia was “the pride of Italian diplomacy, and the proof of its credibility as an agent of progress.”66

6 The Economy of the Eastern Border and its Revival. An illusion In his report to the two Houses of Parliament on the bill for the ratification and implementation of the agreements, on September 20, 1976, the Foreign Minister, Arnaldo Forlani, defined the Italian interest in the stipulation of the treaty as follows: We will know with certainty where our eastern border lies, and we will enact measures in favor of our border populations. In particular, we will create the preconditions for improving the economic situation mainly of Trieste and Gorizia, which the territorial layout established by the peace treaty damaged the most.67 The report by the Foreign Affairs and Migration Permanent Commission of the Chamber of Deputies also insisted on the treaty’s economic advantages. Chairman Natali (a Christian Democrat) remarked that Trieste was moving from a stagnant condition to one of real decline. Osimo could

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  261 restore its natural hinterland to the port, while the duty-free zone on the border between the two countries could revive industrial activities, so that Trieste could benefit greatly from the advantages deriving from the reopening of the Suez Canal.68 Natali boldly depicted a future scenario where navigable canals would be built, thus broadening the port’s hinterland enormously: As conceived in the agreement, the [industrial] duty-free zone [on the two sides of the border] is essential for imagining a MonfalconeGorizia-Lubiana waterway which, dividing then into two branches, will lead to the Black Sea, and, northeast-bound, to Maribor-Danubio [Danube], one in central and the other in eastern Europe. No one can fail to see how important this communication channel will be for capturing traffic directed toward and coming from central and central-eastern Europe. But the necessary premise for realizing this project is certainly the creation of a large “breathing space” for the warehousing, conservation, and processing of products, in an area free of tariffs, taxes, and so forth . . .69 The speaker was evoking here the resurrection of Trieste’s trading function. Rendered obsolete already in the second half of the nineteenth century, when long-distance transit of goods had replaced local trading, and sanctioned by the abolition of the free port in 1891, it was now possible to imagine a resurrection of that role as a means to overcome the fragmentation of the hinterland divided between the two blocs. That fragmentation had only increased after the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire and the establishment of nationalistic economic policies on the part of the successor states. The British historian Arnold Toynbee had already supported this vision for the future of the port, even though on a reduced scale. In a note to the Foreign Office of May 22, 1945, he proposed a large Commission for the port of Trieste, with representatives of the Free Zone, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary.70 The American Delegation to the Council of Foreign Ministers, which was created at the Potsdam Conference, also focused its attention on economic matters, advocating the creation of a free port within the port of Trieste.71 In reality, more than sixty years later, we can conclude that all the winners of World War II got it completely wrong when they assessed the strategic value and the potential for development of the port. We can conclude that the economy of the port of Trieste always paid a (more or less steep) price for the political fragmentation of the hinterland and for infrastructural deficiencies, which were themselves the consequence of that fragmentation, and of a disadvantageous orographic setting.72 It is noteworthy that, in the shared imagination, the tendency to overrate the concrete potential of the port of Trieste continues to this day, as do cyclical revivals of the myth of a broadening hinterland that would reach more or

262  The Long Post-War Era and Its End less continental dimensions, something that has nothing to do with the modest scale of the trading actually taking place in the northern Adriatic city.73 The articles of the economic agreement at Osimo devoted to the revival of the port’s activity are thus merely one aspect of a long-lasting attitude based on wishful thinking. This attitude constantly underestimates the disadvantages due to location (mountainous territory, absence of navigable waterways), and geopolitical factors (permanent fragmentation of the hinterland, starting at least in 1918). It is worthwhile at this point to quote the sober assessment, still valid today, made in 1947 by the American Colonel Dennis S. Birkensteth, who showed an acumen clearly lacking in most Italian politicians, and those of Trieste in particular: Trieste is the artificial creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, built by that Empire because it was the best outlet to the sea. But in those days much of the trade of Austria-Hungary and Czechoslovakia was artificially diverted to Trieste, the more natural routes being by inland waterways to the ports of the North. Even in the palmy days of the Hapsburg Empire it was necessary to have special railway rates to shipping and so on to keep Trieste going; under the Italians those subsidies were increased, but even so the place decayed.74 In the following decades, and especially after 1945, the port paid the price for not renovating the region’s railroad infrastructure, which, inevitably, could have been strengthened only with the support of the reluctant Yugoslav neighbor.

7  The Rebellion against the Industrial Free Zone The Treaty of Osimo ended by being the proverbial match that lights the fire. Strong, smoldering dissatisfaction in the region broke out into open opposition, taking the form of a rebellion against the central government. Even if these demonstrations were mostly nonviolent, they reminded people of the riots that had broken out a few years before in the southern and backward region of Calabria in favor of the town of Reggio as its capital. In Trieste, nationalist demands, environmental concerns, and issues of selfdetermination merged into the protests, creating an original mixture that found its common denominator in the rejection of the border settlement, and, above all, of the duty-free industrial zone, seen as a Trojan horse which would produce a Slav majority in Trieste. In a speech given at a Roman high school in November 1976, Manlio Cecovini, a Liberal and a Mason of Slovenian ancestry, gave the following assessment of the creation of a free zone on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, an assessment which evokes, surprisingly, what Ambassador Velebit had said, admittedly in a different vain, about Nova Trst in 1954:

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  263 The city [Trieste] will be surrounded by a belt of southern Balkan people. The Yugoslavs themselves calculate that, in the end, it will count up to 200,000 people. In other words, a new Trst will rise adjacent to Trieste, with its unstoppable push toward the sea, the center of the city, and the comforts and attractions of Trieste’s superior civilization, inevitably followed by ethnic degeneration, and demographic and linguistic contamination. This process may change the face of the city completely in a quarter of a century, to the point where it will cease to be an Italian city.75 In hindsight, knowing what we now know, namely that Yugoslavia would collapse, it would have been better for Italy to keep the arrangement established by the London Memorandum than to establish intangible borders. The List for Trieste countered Osimo with the proposal to establish a free port that followed the footprints of Empress Maria Theresa’s eighteenth-century model. This was a recurrent theme, which had always united almost all political forces: Communists, Socialists, and Liberals.76 In the 1976 municipal elections, the List for Trieste, which had collected up to sixty-five thousand signatures in favor of establishing a tariff-free zone for the entire city, not just for the port, became the first party, with 27.5 per cent of the vote. The Christian Democratic Party saw its support decline sharply, getting only 22 per cent. In 1980 the List reached its historical apex, with 33.3 per cent.77 All the while, the process of détente between Italy and Yugoslavia continued, with the visit to Belgrade of the Italian Foreign Minister, on June 1 and 2, 1977, and of his Yugoslav counterpart to Rome on November 14 and 15 of the same year.78 The List for Trieste marked the end of Christian Democratic hegemony in Trieste. The city’s political culture returned to its old liberal national and Masonic roots, with the extreme right (neither completely acceptable as of yet, nor accepted) supporting it in a lesser role. The weakness of political Catholicism certainly contributed to the débâcle. Faced with such unexpected but strong opposition, the free zone on the border remained on paper, as did other measures of economic integration between Trieste and its traditional hinterland. Not even Yugoslavia insisted in implementing it, having also lost interest after liberalizing its economic relations with the countries of the European Common Market in 1980.79 Of all the ambitious projects for economic cooperation planned in the Treaty of Osimo only a few were realized, in 1985: the road of Monte Sabotino which crossed Italian territory to link the two Slovenian centers of Solkan and Kum,80 and minor projects such as road and highway passes in the same province of Gorizia financed by Italy, but benefitting especially the Slovenian part of the Gorizia region. The new political formation, List for Trieste, revived measures intended to reinforce the privileged position Trieste enjoyed over the rest of Italy. The new political élite insisted on turning the entire city into a duty-free zone for

264  The Long Post-War Era and Its End all consumer goods, a proposal used as a weapon in its negotiations with the government, which led to ensuring large supplies of gasoline at subsidized rates. In 1980, the year when the List achieved its greatest electoral success, it obtained a tripling of the fund for Trieste in support of productive activities. Thanks to public financial support, the city enjoyed a high standard of living throughout the 1980s, despite the lack of competitiveness of the basic sectors of its economy, starting with the port.81 The entrance onto the scene of the List for Trieste prompted the Italian government to commit substantial resources that could help contain the situation in a delicate border area. The people of Trieste took the supplies as something to which history entitled them because of the dramatic events the city had experienced in the course of the “short century.” In 1983, the Treaty of Rome further improved the Treaty of Osimo in important ways. It also ended the long-lasting dispute about the Italian properties beyond the border that the socialist state had appropriated. Yugoslavia agreed to reimburse Italy to the amount of one hundred and ten billion dollars, starting on January 1, 1990.82 Unfortunately, in 1990 Yugoslavia went through the crisis that would result in its dissolution, which turned Italy into the creditor of Slovenia and Croatia.83 The Treaty of Rome also established the restitution of around a hundred real estate properties to their previous owners or their heirs. Both articles became the object of heated negotiations between Italy and Slovenia in the period when Brussels was evaluating Slovenia’s application for membership in the European Union. The year 1986 saw the opening of the last leg of the Udine-Tarvisio highway, meant to link the road system that serves Friuli’s economy and the port of Trieste with the Trans-European North South Vorway system, thus connecting Friuli Venezia-Giulia and Austria.84 Instead, the ambitious plans for unifying all the infrastructures of the traditional hinterland of the port, and, if possible, for expanding them, remained on hold and would continue to do so even after the dissolution both of the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia. In many ways, the history of the Treaty of Osimo reveals to what degree the idea of “fatherland” had lost its hold on people, a process which, according to Emilio Gentile, started at the beginning of the 1960s. Italian public opinion showed no interest whatsoever in the negotiations.85 In the parliamentary debate, too, only deputies of the Italian Social MovementNational Right Party based their arguments on nationalist ideas. Majority leaders contended that the most positive aspect of the treaty lay in increasing the stability of the region, both in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean context. Speakers emphasized Italy’s interest in a solid and independent Yugoslavia.86 If compared to the country that had mobilized, united, in the first 1950s, Italy now looked completely different. Only members of the post-fascist Social Movement remembered the sacrifice made by more than six hundred thousand Italians who had died to conquer borders most of which were now lost. The Parliament and the government showed total

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  265 indifference to the fate of the small patches of territory formally still under Italian sovereignty. They thus gave up Zone B without asking for anything in return, and went so far as to propose assigning extraterritorial status to the area around Trieste near the border. National interest now seemed to be one and the same with contributing to the advancement of détente in Europe in the spirit of the Helsinki Declaration, rather than in pursuing any specifically Italian goal.87 The bitter remarks made by De Gasperi on the occasion of the Paris Peace Conference, on October 21, 1946, now appeared totally outdated: “Italy is going back to the situation before the Risorgimento. Its frontiers remain completely open; territories that are part of the nation are taken away; the economic clauses are extremely burdensome.” Sergio Romano rightly notes that the country had changed since the time of the London Memorandum. The government could now fairly easily do things that would have triggered opposition and protests at that time.88 Osimo is one more piece of evidence that the issue of the eastern border no longer influences Italian foreign policy, having become a merely local issue, to be solved once and for all and as soon as possible in the name of the spirit of Helsinki. In the very first years of the 1990s, Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis launched the “Pentagonal Initiative,”89 intended as a network for cooperation between Italy and Central Europe, meaning Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. This initiative aimed at the revival of a more active national foreign policy, capable of competing with the traditional German presence in the area, and of contrasting the vigorous activities of the AlpsAdriatic Working Groups, founded in 1979 with Slovenia, Carinthia, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia at its core.90 The realization of the road network established by the Treaty of Osimo came within the scope of the “Pentagonal Initiative,” now inserted within the futuristic European Community plan called “Corridor 5,” a west-east railroad route linking Lisbon to Kiev.91

8 The Dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Independence of Slovenia and Croatia As Yugoslavia entered its final crisis, major Julian politicians, first among them the Christian Democratic President of the Region, Adriano Biasutti, strongly supported the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Biasutti could play an effective role in favor of the independence of the two separatist republics and their accession to the European Union, thanks to the broad foreign policy prerogatives enjoyed by the Region,92 recognized as a semiindependent actor with the law of January 19, 1991. Initially, the Foreign Minister, Gianni De Michelis, issued some feeble declarations in favor of maintaining the integrity of the Yugoslav state,93 to which Italy had recently transferred substantial resources in the form of subsidized loans. However, his successor, the Christian Democratic Foreign Minister, Emilio Colombo, promptly declared that, when it came to the Treaty of Osimo, Slovenia and

266  The Long Post-War Era and Its End Croatia would take over Yugoslavia’s responsibilities completely. During an extensive debate in the Chamber of Deputies on October 22 and 23, 1991, a resolution was approved asking the government to recognize the new states. The debate focused on two themes in particular: protection of the Italian minority, now divided between the two new republics, and prospects for economic cooperation.94 Emilio Colombo expected that the Right would voice profound dissent when presented with the automatic mechanisms that made Slovenia the successor to Yugoslavia in its treaties and agreements. Therefore, in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on November 22, 1992, he depicted the legal void that would arise if the new states were not recognized, declaring that such a situation would be greatly detrimental both to the economy of Trieste, and to “the satisfaction of the basic interests and needs of the local people.”95 On January 15, 1992, Italy recognized Slovenia as an independent state, thus joining the large majority of countries that took the same decision, about a month after Germany, the Vatican State, Sweden, and Iceland. On July 31, 1992, the Slovenian Ambassador to Rome declared that Slovenia would replace Yugoslavia in fifty bilateral agreements and treaties between Italy and Slovenia, including the Treaty of Osimo. It appears that the Italian Foreign Minister himself informed Slovenia about some of these accords, because Yugoslavia had not kept its republics informed about all its international treaties and obligations.96 According to the journalist Stefano Lusa, at this point, “on its eastern flank Italy faced two nations full of rancor, strengthened by German, Austrian, and Hungarian support.”97 In fact, in the course of the first contacts with Slovenian politicians who were seeking support for the imminent declaration of independence (later confirmed by plebiscite), the Slovenes forcefully raised the issue of the protection of the Slovenian minority in Italy, while stating that they would make a similar commitment regarding the small Italian groups in Slovenia (some 2,000 demoralized souls) only in the context of a reciprocal agreement. Thus, whereas Italy reached a memorandum of understanding with Croatia for the protection of the Italian minority as early as January 15, 1992, Slovenia refused to sign it, even though it had participated in the negotiations and had approved the text, advancing the argument that there was no clause binding Italy to do the same with respect to its Slovenian minority.98 In the memorandum, for the first time, there was mention of the “mass exodus of the Italians from areas that were their historic places of residence.”99 In a press release issued on October 28, 1992, the Italian Foreign Minister tried to defend the government from the polemical attacks triggered by the hasty acknowledgment of Slovenia as successor state of Yugoslavia. He declared that the Italian government had followed international custom: a state which finds itself the heir to parts of the territory of a predecessor state agrees to replace the latter through a unilateral declaration, according to which “the rights and obligations under treaties signed by the predecessor state will become the rights and obligations

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  267 of the successor state, in so far as those rights and obligations regard the successor state.” It is significant that in its concluding, optimistic passage, the Foreign Minister mentioned promising future developments for the port of Trieste, “called upon to perform again its historical function as the main outlet on the Adriatic Sea. Several projects move in this direction, notably the new road links with the hinterland of Trieste and beyond.”100 Julian nationalists and a considerable part of the refugee associations (for example the Gruppo Memorandum 88 [Memorandum 88 Group]) proposed instead that, in exchange for recognizing the two republics, Italy should request something significant in return, going from the restitution of assets, either still available or denationalized, that belonged to the exiles, all the way to the revision of the border. In a speech given at a conference organized in Venice by the journal Limes, the Mayor of Trieste Giulio Staffieri (List for Trieste) launched the idea of taking the Treaty of Rome of 1924 as the basis for negotiations. This was the Treaty whereby Italy had obtained the city of Fiume, in addition to the border set in the Treaty of Rapallo!101 Relations between Italy and Slovenia changed drastically and suddenly when the center-right coalition won elections in Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi was appointed Prime Minister. Pressured by Alleanza Nazionale [from now on, National Alliance], the government ventured on a firmer policy toward the new state. Its first act was to initiate litigation requesting that immobile property owned by the state be restituted to Italians who had left the country as a consequence of the peace treaty and the London Memorandum. The main weapon Italy had at its disposal was to delay its assent to the accession of Slovenia to the European Union. Some representatives of National Alliance (for example Deputy Mirko Tremaglia) seized the opportunity and tried to tie the renegotiation of the Treaty of Osimo with the revision of the eastern border, something that, understandably, unnerved Slovenia. The United States and Germany also reacted quite negatively to the Italian forays, fearful that Italy’s emphatic revisionism might trigger a chain reaction in other Eastern European countries in the form of demands by German refugees, with incalculable consequences for European stability. Besides, the United States and Germany were interested in a rapid integration of Slovenia into the European Union and NATO.102 Slovenia countered Italy’s greater intransigence by insisting on its demand for a “global protection” of its own minority.103 The Slovenian government decided to detail its claims through the outmoded instrument of a “White Book” which collected various historical documents about relations between the two countries, starting from the Treaty of London, and prefaced by a resentful introduction by the Foreign Minister, Zoran Thaler.104 This chill in diplomatic relations took place at the same time as the issue of providing direct capital investments to the new republic occupied center stage; Italy played a marginal role in it, coming in last after Austria, Croatia, Germany, and even France.105 De facto, as already remarked, Italian politicians continued to overvalue the economic advantages that would arise for

268  The Long Post-War Era and Its End the frontier area from the independence of Slovenia (and, secondarily, of Croatia). Indifferent to any realistic and documented analysis of the situation and of economic trends, they depicted euphoric and unfounded scenarios of economic growth, and of the recovery of Trieste’s trading role in the central European area.106 As the new republic enjoyed a favorable press in almost all EU countries, Italy found itself isolated in trying to oppose its entry into the European Union.107 In October 1994, the foreign ministers, Antonio Martino and Lojze Peterle, one of the founders of the Slovenian Christian Democratic Party, met in Aquileia, where they managed to agree on a compromise. Italy pledged to support the accession of Slovenia to the EU in exchange for Slovenia’s commitment not only to harmonize its real estate regime with EU norms, but also to freeze the sale of a number of properties owned by Italians before the “exodus,” until Slovenia’s harmonization with European norms was completed.108 Article 4 of the draft of the joint declaration declared: In the spirit of mutual understanding and cooperation which inspires the two governments, Slovenia will adopt the measures necessary to ascertain the number, location, and condition of real estate properties of the then owners, today Italian citizens, or of their descendants or successors, somehow acquired by the public domain of the authorities of the former Yugoslavia and still available for public use, while keeping the expectations of their public beneficiaries in consideration. By December 31, 1994, the Slovenian government will propose adequate policies to ensure that those properties will not be alienated until the moment when the norms regulating the access of foreigners to the ownership of those properties will come into force.109 Italy pledged to enact policies in favor of the Slovenian minority, such as the restitution of Narodni Dom [the People’s House] in the neighborhood of San Giovanni, and the granting of funds for Slovenian schools in the Valley of the Natisone, in the province of Udine.110 The Slovenian Foreign Minister Peterle also signaled his support for the important project of reconstructing a shared memory of the events that the Italians and the Slovenes living in the border area had lived through, starting from the acknowledgement that fascist and communist totalitarianism had caused great sufferings to both sides.111 In this context, better protection for minorities was an obligation both countries had to take seriously: Italy by introducing a comprehensive minority protection law; and Slovenia through policies that could remedy the negative consequences of the division of the Italian minority between Slovenia and Croatia.112 In an unprecedented move in the history of diplomatic relations, the Slovenian Parliament refused to ratify the agreement negotiated by its Foreign Minister.113 EU partners responded coldly to this development; Slovenia found itself diplomatically

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  269 isolated for the first time since its journey toward independence began. A solution to this problem came two years later, in the form of the “Solana Compromise,” so called because the Spanish Foreign Minister proposed it during the six months of Spanish Presidency of the EU. Italy changed its attitude as well. According to the memoir of Piero Fassino, Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs from 1996, Prime Minister Romano Prodi, spurred, it seems, by Bill Clinton to end the dispute with Slovenia, accepted the recommendation of the American President and immediately sent Piero Fassino to Ljubljana. At this point, the Solana plan broke the impasse.114 According to the “Solana Compromise,” Slovenia agreed to allow all EU citizens to purchase real estate four years after its accession to the Union. EU citizens who had been living in the country for at least three years would be able to buy properties from the moment Slovenia became a member of the Union. This way, the dispute with Italy was separated from the accession process. On April 11, 1996, the final document of the Madrid summit reported the EU’s support for the compromise proposed by the Spanish Presidency, and the Slovenian Parliament authorized the government to sign the Association Agreement outlined in the Solana plan. The Foreign Minister, Zoran Thaler, declared his country’s commitment to enacting the measures established by the plan. On June 10, 1996, the Association Agreement was signed.115 Afterward, Italy, Slovenia, and Hungary resumed their cooperation. They formalized their relations through the so-called Trilateral, which the foreign ministers of the three countries formed in Rome on October 23, 1996. About twenty representatives of industrial firms, banks, and insurance companies then accompanied the Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, in his first visit to Ljubljana, on March 11, 1997. At the Budapest summit of May 20, 1997, Prodi stressed Italian support for the entry of Slovenia and Hungary into the EU and NATO.116 On May 1, 2004, Slovenia gained full membership in the European Union. Croatia did so on July 1, 2013. On December 20, 2007, at midnight, Slovenia entered the Schengen Area after adopting the euro on January 1 of the same year. Subsequently, controls at the Slovenian-Italian border were abolished. The border became permeable and porous, almost imperceptible.117 Thanks to the newly-gained freedom of movement, people on both sides cultivated the illusion that the pace of integration would be rapid. After gaining independence, Slovenia focused its efforts on strengthening its highway network. The most important international highway crossing Slovenia is the E57, linking Austria (via Graz) and Hungary with Maribor, Celje, Ljubljana, and the port of Koper [former Capodistria]. A second international highway joins Salzburg with Jesenice, Ljubljana and Zagreb in Croatia. In 2001, the Italian Minister of Transportation, Pier Luigi Bersani, approved a variation to Corridor 5 [the Lisbon-Kiev railroad line], whereby Koper would be linked to it in Slovenian territory, “even in the case of a possible connection with Trieste.”118 Slovenia is now going to complete

270  The Long Post-War Era and Its End a second access to the port of Koper, and planning to double the crucial railroad tracks between Divača and Koper, possibly linking Koper to Corridor 5. Both the government and the port authorities continue to repeat that Slovenia will never establish a Divača-Trieste railroad connection. This would mean that Corridor 5, if realized, would bypass the port of Trieste completely.119 By strengthening its infrastructures, Koper surpassed Trieste in container traffic in 2007 despite the relatively good performance of the latter: in fact, the container traffic of Koper increased from Teus 218,970 in 2006 to Teus 674,033 in 2014. The respective data for Trieste are Teus 220,310 in 2006 and Teus 506,011 in 2014.120 Besides, by 2012 the Slovenian port became the most important port for Austria.121 Slovenia’s transport policy makes us wonder whether there is any concrete possibility of an economic revival of Trieste, which numerous politicians at the national and regional levels hail as “the new European center of gravity,” while trumpeting the formation of a cross-border “Euroregion” characterized by an integrated system of ports along the Trieste-Koper axis.122 We can conclude by acknowledging that what the Trieste Socialist Angelo Vivante foresaw in 1912 has come true: central European traffic could gravitate toward another Adriatic port, once Austrian interest in supporting the port of Trieste ceased.123 In February 2015 the President of Luka Koper’s Management Board (the company that administers the port) gave an interview in which he said that Koper had already overtaken the other Adriatic ports as competitors. Now, he continued, the port strove to gain further trading quotas with the northern European ports.124 In comparison, Trieste has become more engaged in transshipping activities for other Italian ports, and in roll on/roll off shipping services for Turkey.125 This is an altogether different scenario from the one envisaging an integrated Trieste-Koper port area, and a metropolitan environment growing around the port. To sum up the state of economic relations between Italy and Slovenia, we can undoubtedly assert that Italy is a strong trade partner for Slovenia; import-export with Italy comes second only to Slovenia’s trade with Germany. The border area, however, appears to be excluded from this intense economic exchange.

9 Remembrance Day Important changes have taken place at the beginning of the new millennium in the “politics of memory.” In 2004 the Italian Parliament, with support from the center-right parties but also from the post-communist coalition L’Ulivo [the Olive Tree], approved a bill establishing February 10 as Remembrance Day in memory of the refugees from Istria,126 to “preserve and renew the memory of the tragedy of all Italian victims, of the victims of the foibe, of the exodus of Istrians, Dalmatians, and people from Fiume from their territories after World War II, and of the most complex period of history on the eastern border.”127 This initiative intends to be moral compensation of a

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  271 kind for the exiles that, after the Treaty of Osimo, have been moving toward center and center-right political formations. Up to 86 large and small Italian towns celebrated Remembrance Day in 2005 with conferences, roundtables, film and documentary festivals, and lectures in schools and universities. To remember the victims, Italian consular authorities laid wreaths in the cemeteries of Split and Zadar. No similar ceremonies were authorized either in Istria or in Slovenia.128 There is no doubt that the events held on Remembrance Day heightened the solidarity Italian public opinion felt for the fate of the refugees from the territories transferred to Yugoslavia. It is also clear the most Italians now look at the tragic history of their fellow countrymen and women with greater sympathy than in previous decades. But we should also ask ourselves if a historical analysis of that period has truly been developed, an endeavor which requires addressing at least three issues and their interconnections: Italy’s participation in World War II, shaped as it was by its being a member of the Axis; the dissolution of the Italian state on September 8, 1943; and defeat in the war, sanctioned by the peace treaty. For many different reasons, until now historians and opinion makers have avoided dealing with these issues of national history. Public opinion at large still assigns the blame for the lost war to Fascism alone, whereas a sober assessment of the break in national history caused by the catastrophe of September 8 is yet to be done. In everyday political discourse, the myth of the Resistance129 as a collective popular movement prevails over the recollection of military and diplomatic defeat.130 The intertwining of the collapse of Fascism, the Resistance, and the foundation of the republic creates a fatal dilemma, because it makes it extremely hard to call into question the narrative of the Resistance as the birthday of the “new Italy.” As a consequence, we still lack the historical and conceptual frame within which to place the “exodus.” To a large degree, even recent historical analyses131 omit any serious discussion of the events tied to the Paris Peace Conference, where Italy, as a member of the Axis Alliance, was among the defendants, and they place those events in the shadow of Fascism, instead of considering them as the first hard test of republican Italy. Recollection of the “exodus” thus remains strangely blurred. The foreground is occupied by the lived experience of the victims, and by repentance for having ignored it for so long. Even a valuable book, unanimously well received, such as Il Dolore e l’Esilio [Sorrow and Exile] by Guido Crainz,132 which considers the Istrian exodus emblematic of all forced transfers of populations in Europe in the aftermath of World War II, does not take into consideration the role played by foreign policy, international relations, the rise of bipolarism, and the added value assigned at the time to the ethnic homogeneity of the states, after the devastating experience of World War II. Attention for day-to-day experience and memory of the victims, a theme on which people can broadly converge in the effort of building a European master narrative based on shared consensus and solidarity, still leaves

272  The Long Post-War Era and Its End central questions of national history in the shadows. The most important one is likely to be the structural weakness of the state that emerged more or less dramatically throughout the vicissitudes of the eastern border. With his usual clarity, Andreas Hillgruber remarked that Italy maintained its territorial integrity to a large degree only because at the end of World War II it was occupied by a group of homogeneous powers, without the participation of the Soviet Union. Having preserved its unity thanks to this turn of events, Italy had to give up its role as a great power, settling for the role of an intermediate power, “to which it had remained confined, all things considered, between 1861 and 1943.”133 Seen from this perspective, losing the territory of Venezia Giulia represented a negligible exception to the otherwise successful preservation of territorial integrity. By turning that loss into a local event, Italians can continue to cultivate an illusory and consoling vision of their national history.

10 The Italian Politics of Memory between 2010 and 2015: The Search for a Common Past The governments of Slovenia and Croatia responded almost with hostility to the Italian proclamation of February 10 as “Remembrance Day.” Their diffidence seemed to be justified when, in the 2007 commemoration, the post-communist Italian President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, strongly deplored the “nationalistic paroxysm” and expansionism of the Slovenian and Croatian liberation movements, which had been decisive in carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Italians. The Croatian President Stipe Mesić issued an official complaint; dismay spread in Ljubljana.134 In a surprising move, in 2010 Giorgio Napolitano changed course, and invited the Slovenian and Croatian presidents to attend a concert in Trieste, held in the pleasant setting of “Piazza dell’Unità d’Italia” and conducted by Riccardo Muti. The Italian Presidency wanted to usher in a new era of neighborly relations with the post-Yugoslav republics, “within the framework of European cooperation” shared by all countries in the region (except for Croatia, still a candidate at that time). The Slovenian President Danilo Türk accepted the invitation on condition that all participants would pay homage to the Balkan building, the main Slavic cultural center in Trieste which had been burned down by Italian nationalists and Fascists on July 13, 1920 (see Chapter IV, p.100f). In return, the three presidents lay a wreath at the modest monument in memory of the “exodus” of the Italians from Istria. Despite these petty negotiations, the event in Trieste was a remarkable success: for the first time the presidents of the three neighboring republics pledged to overcome the traumatic events of the past, and to work together for “a future of free and fruitful cooperation between our countries and our peoples in a United Europe.”135 The concert held in Trieste marked an improvement in the official relations between Italy and the two republics to the east. Slovenian President

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  273 Danilo Türk went to Rome for an official visit in in January 2011.136 A new tone could be detected also in Croatia. In Pula, authorities attended the commemoration of the tragic attack of August, 18, 1946, in which at least 64 Italians (among them many children) lost their lives.137 Even more significant was the performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, conducted by Riccardo Muti at Redipuglia (see Chapter III, p. 74f) on July 6, 2014, commemorating the victims of all wars, an event attended by the Presidents of Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and the head of the Austrian Federal Council.138 This moving ceremony was followed by a Slovenian one: the Presidents of Slovenia and Italy, Borut Pahor and Giorgio Napolitano, joined in the inauguration of a “bench of peace” on Mount Santo, one of the major theaters of the Great War in Slovenian territory. The two presidents stressed their commitment to peace “in the framework of a united Europe.” In 2015, finally, Slovenia took a significant step: it decided to pay reparations to a few thousands Italian exiles who had been persecuted by Slovenian Communists. The amount that was distributed varied from person to person, but it was not negligible. Slovenia had already passed a similar measure on October 25, 1996, compensating Slovenian nationals for the persecutions suffered under the communist regime: imprisonment in camps, physical and psychological hardships, expropriations, discrimination, killings of relatives, and so forth. Following an EU recommendation, Slovenia extended the same measure to Italian citizens, who were so surprised by such an unprecedented gesture that they received the news with suspicion. In the end, even leaders of the nationalistic associations of the exiles were forced to recognize the Slovenes’ good will and their sincere attempt to overcome a harsh and traumatic past.139 It thus appears that belonging to a supranational organization such as the EU has greatly contributed to improving relations and to articulating compatible historical narratives about the Italian-Slovenian-Croatian borderland. But this convergence has been achieved primarily by resorting to very abstract and general arguments, and to the all-encompassing category of “victim.”140 Universal victimization has been essential to constructing an imagined transnational community of the borderland, unified by the shared experience of suffering. We cannot yet say if we are witnessing the birth of a new historical narrative, destined to take the place of the traditional, nationalistic ones, or if the discourse of victimization will remain just a rhetorical device fit for public ceremonies and public speeches.

Notes 1 Pacini, Le altre Gladio, cit., pp. 68–215; G. Fasanella, C. Sestrieri, and G. Pellegrino, Segreto di Stato: La Verità da Gladio al Caso Moro, Turin, Einaudi, 2000, pp. 20–30; R. Spazzali, Trieste di Fine Secolo (1955–2004). Per una Storia Politica del Secondo Novecento, Trieste, Italo Svevo, 2006, pp. 225–8. 2 On these early initiatives, see F. Belci, “Aspetti del Dopoguerra in Friuli. Il Terzo Corpo Volontari della Libertà,” Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Nazionalismo e Neofascismo nella

274  The Long Post-War Era and Its End Lotta Politica al Confine Orientale, 1945–1975, 2 vols., Trieste, Istituto Regionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione nel Friuli-Venezia Giulia, s.d., vol. II, pp. 509–50. 3 On this point, see G. Valdevit, Dalla Crisi del Dopoguerra alla Stabilizzazione Politica e Internazionale, cit., pp. 581–661, especially pp. 590 ff. 4 Provocations and intense activity of espionage are said to have been going on in Trieste in the early 1950s, where they created a climate of reciprocal suspicion between the two superpowers, and between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. See J. Pirjevec, “Mosca, Roma e Belgrado (1948–1956),” in M. Galeazzi (ed.), Roma-Belgrado: Gli Anni della Guerra Fredda, Ravenna, Longo, 1995, pp. 85–93, especially p. 91; Anna Millo, “Il ‘Filo Nero’: Violenza, Lotta Politica, Apparati dello Stato al Confine Orientale (1945–1954)”, in D’Amelio, Di Michele, Mezzalira (eds.), La difesa dell’italianità, cit. pp. 415–38. 5 See Spazzali, Trieste di Fine Secolo (1955–2004), cit., pp. 51–6. 6 C. Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni (1945–1975), Brescia, Morcelliana, 1989, pp. 152–3. 7 See Valdevit’s remarks, Dalla Crisi del Dopoguerra alla Stabilizzazione Politica e Istituzionale, cit., pp. 612 ff. Valdevit defines the situation in Trieste until 1954 as “domestic cold war.” Obviously, such a situation could not resolve itself on its own in the following years. 8 Among the various gestures of support, Italians subscribed to a thirty billion lire national loan for Trieste. See Sapelli, Trieste Italiana, cit., p. 182. 9 Ibid., p. 191. See also G. Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, Milan, Bruno Mondadori, 2004, pp. 94–5. 10 Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., pp. 54–60. 11 Ibid., p. 94. 12 On the bishop’s role, see Botteri’s heartfelt biography, Antonio Santin, cit. 13 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., p. 94. R. Pupo. “Una Città di Frontiera. Profilo Storico del Dopoguerra Triestino,” in Guerra e Dopoguerra al Confine Orientale d’Italia (1939–1956), cit., pp. 231–70, especially p. 247; D. D’Amelio, “Democristiani di confine. Ascesa e declino del ‘partito italiano’ a Trieste, 1945–1979,” in Contemporanea: Rivista di Storia dell’800 e del ’900, XVII, 2014/3, pp. 413–40. 14 See M. Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo: Lineamenti Introduttivi e Testi Annotati, Trieste, Edizioni LINT, 1979, pp. 48 f. 15 See G. Battisti, Una Regione per Trieste: Studio di Geografia Politica ed Economica, Udine, Del Bianco, 1979, pp. 155–237. 16 E. Vrsaj, La Mitteleuropa 2000 e la Nuova “Ostpolitik” dell’Italia, Milan, Franco Angeli, 1997, pp. 122–3. 17 Uberti, a member of the Christian Democratic Party who was neither from Trieste nor from Friuli, introduced the option of forming one single region by unifying the Friuli and what was left of Venezia Giulia, which he presented to the second subcommittee at the Constituent Assembly. A. Agnelli, “Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia dalla Resistenza allo Statuto Speciale,” in A. Agnelli and S. Bartole (eds.), La Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia: Profilo Storico-giuridico Tracciato in Occasione del 20. Anniversario dell’Istituzione della Regione, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1987, pp. 21–57, especially p. 43. 18 On the pro-autonomy movement in Friuli, see A.M. Preziosi, “Udine e il Friuli dal Tramonto dell’Italia Liberale all’Avvento del Fascismo: Le Aspirazioni Autonomistiche di Girardini, Pisenti e Spezzotti,” in Agnelli and Bartole (eds.), La Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 105–41. 19 Agnelli, “Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia dalla Resistenza allo Statuto Speciale,” cit., p. 29.

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  275 0 Ibid., p. 45. 2 21 F. Luzzi Conti, “La Proposta di Regione e il Friuli tra il 1945 e il 1947,” in Agnelli and Bartole (eds.), La Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 143–67, especially p. 160. 22 M. Bertolissi, “Il Decollo della Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia nella Legislazione Nazionale,” in Agnelli and Bartole (eds.), La Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 321–51, especially pp. 329–30. 23 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., pp. 108–10. 24 Apih, Trieste, cit., p. 190. 25 Sapelli, Trieste Italiana, cit., p. 193. 26 Ibid., p. 192. 27 See Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., pp. 98–105. 28 See L. Lanzardo, Grandi Motori: Da Torino a Trieste Culture Industriali a Confronto (1966–1999), Milan, Franco Angeli, 2000. In 1966 Fiat launched a joint venture with Iri to develop Grandi Motori, but abandoned it in 1977 because of disappointing results. 29 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., p. 108. 30 This assessment came, for example, from Carlo Schiffrer, a careful observer of the situation. Sapelli, Trieste Italiana, cit., pp. 224–5. 31 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., pp. 69–71, 84. 32 This is also Corrado Belci’s opinion, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., pp. 162 f. 33 See Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, Final Act, Helsinki 1975, http://www.osce.org/mc/39501?download=true, consulted on June 23, 2014. 34 J. Pirjevec, Il Giorno di San Vito: Jugoslavia 1918–1922. Storia di una Tragedia, Turin, Nuova Eri, 1993, p. 420. 35 See M. de Leonardis, Dal Memorandum d’Intesa di Londra (1954) al Trattato di Osimo (1975), Trieste, Lega Nazionale di Trieste, 2010. 36 Ibid. 37 Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., pp. 162–70; M. Bucarelli, La Questione Jugoslava nella Politica Estera dell’Italia Repubblicana (1945–1999), Rome, Aracne, 2008, pp. 38–49. 38 Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., pp. 227–8. From the communication to Parliament of the Italian Foreign Ministers, Rumor (October 1, 1975). 39 Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., pp. 182–3. 40 See G.W. Maccotta, “Osimo Visto da Belgrado,” in Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, 60, January–March 1993, pp. 55–67, especially p. 55. 41 R. Pupo (ed.), “Osimo: Il Punto sugli Studi,” special issue of Qualestoria— Rivista di Storia Contemporanea, 41, 2013/2; V. Škorjanec, Osimksa Pogajanja, Koper, Annales, 2007. 42 Udina, Gli accordi di Osimo, p. 85. 43 Ibid., p. 340. 44 Ibid., p. 350. 45 It appears that this idea was launched by the Minister of the Treasury, Medici, and actively supported by Giulio Andreotti. See Belci, Trieste: Memorie di Trent’Anni, cit., p. 186. 46 However, in the parliamentary debate preceding the approval of the statute which would enforce the treaty, Deputy Baghino hinted almost in passing at the fact that “strangely enough, the area chosen is the one that Yugoslavia has always claimed as its own, the one that Yugoslavia has demanded for many years as part of its territory.” In Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VII Legislatura, Seduta del 16 Dicembre 1976, p. 3599. 47 See Renzo de Vidovich’s statements in Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VI Legislatura, Seduta del 2 Ottobre 1975, p. 23698.

276  The Long Post-War Era and Its End 48 See “Trattato tra la Repubblica Italiana e la Repubblica Socialista Federativa di Jugoslavia, con dieci allegati. Accordo sulla promozione della cooperazione economica tra la Repubblica Italiana e la Repubblica Socialista Federativa di Jugoslavia, con quattro allegati (un protocollo sulla zona franca e tre scambi di lettere). Atto finale. Scambio di Lettere, Osimo (Ancona), 10 Settembre 1975,” in Atti Parlamentari—Disegni di Legge e Relazioni—Documenti, pp. 105–45. 49 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., p. 119. It is not clear why, at the negotiations in Osimo, the Yugoslavs chose a location for the industrial area different from the area requested at the time of the London Memorandum. 50 Maccotta, “Osimo Visto da Belgrado,” cit., p. 63. 51 Ibid., p. 66. 52 The text of the accords is in Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., pp. 163–71. 53 Ibid., pp. 233 ff. 54 Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VI Legislatura, Seduta del 2 Ottobre 1975, p. 23675. 55 Ibid., p. 23698. 56 A day earlier, Mirko Tremaglia also mentioned that “the decision to stipulate the Treaty of Osimo was taken by the leaders of the two parties, hastened after the meeting between Berlinguer and Tito.” See Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VII Legislatura, Seduta del 7 Dicembre 1976, p. 3091. 57 See Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VII Legislatura, Seduta dell’8 Dicembre 1976, pp. 3146–7. 58 Valdevit, Trieste, cit., p. 117. 59 See Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VII Legislatura, Seduta del 16 Dicembre 1976, p. 3520. 60 In his speech Sarti mentioned Lebanon and Cyprus. See Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., p. 306. Deputy Anderlini especially emphasized tensions between Greece and Turkey in the Mediterranean, and the problem of Cyprus in particular. Atti Parlamentari, Camera dei Deputati, VI Legislatura, Seduta del 2 Ottobre 1975, p. 23695. 61 Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., p. 268. 62 Ibid. De Leonardis also favors the thesis that international pressure pushed Italy to close a controversy which stood in contradiction with the principles of Helsinki’s Final Act. See de Leonardis, Dal Memorandum d’Intesa di Londra (1954) al Trattato di Osimo (1975), cit. 63 Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., p. 281. These assessments are confirmed by the quotation in Sarti’s speech of the statements by the Yugoslav Vice Foreign Minister, Lazar Mojsov, who contends that the Helsinki Declaration created new conditions “for European collaboration in all fields.” 64 See S. Pons, Berlinguer e la Fine del Comunismo, Turin, Einaudi, 2006, pp. 60–5. 65 See The White House, Memorandum of Conversation, Friday, December 12, 1975. This document is one of those contained in a 28,000-page archive regarding the work of Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State from 1969 to 1977. This archive is the work of researchers of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. I wish to thank Giovanni Orsina for putting this document at my disposal. See also M. Sechi, “Quel Pci “Rispettabile” che Terrorizzava gli USA,” in Il Giornale, May 27, 2006. 66 S. Romano, Guida alla Politica Estera Italiana: Da Badoglio a Berlusconi, Milan, Rizzoli, 2002, p. 201. 67 Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., p. 239. 68 Ibid., pp. 260 f. 69 Ibid., p. 266. 70 See Administration of Ports Serving a Soviet or Partly Soviet-controlled Hinterland, memorandum attached to the letter by Arnold Toynbee of May 22,

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  277 1945, in “Public Record Office, Foreign Office, 371/50791,” b. 73, f. VII. I wish to thank Giulio Mellinato for reminding me of this very important document. 71 See, for example. T. Smith, “Gli Stati Uniti d’America e il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia,” in Rainero and Manzari (eds), Il Trattato di Pace con l’Italia, cit., pp. 17–27, especially p. 22. The Soviet logic of creating a closed system of states integrated with one another as much as possible from the economic and political points of view, clearly escaped the understanding of Western European signatories in particular. On this point, and for further bibliographical information, see Cattaruzza, “1945: Alle Origini della ‘Questione di Trieste’,” cit. 72 On the real challenge to the technical capabilities of the time, presented by building the Tauri railroad which linked Trieste with Prague via the shortest route, see Gerschenkron, An Economic Spurt that Failed, cit., pp. 75–6. 73 We can read a balanced and lucid analysis of the structural limits that created obstacles to the revival of the port in several contributions mostly published in the weekly journal Trieste. C. Schiffrer, Dopo il Ritorno dell’Italia: Trieste 1945–1969, Scritti e Interventi Polemici, G. Negrelli (ed.), Udine, Del Bianco, 1992, pp. 39–125. 74 Remarks made by Lt. Col. Dennis S. Birkensteth at the time of his departure from Trieste, November 14, 1947, Gma headquarters, lt. col. D.S. Berkensteth, Economic plan for BR/US zone of FTT for the six months oct. 1947-march 1947 (sic!), oct. 1947, in, National Archives, Washington, Record group 469, Eca mission to Italy, office of the director, subject file 48–57, p. 5; copy at Irsml, b. 76. I wish to thank Giulio Mellinato for reminding me of this document. D. De Castro proposes a similar evaluation in an autoritative piece, “Il Futuro di Trieste,” in T. Favaretto and E. Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto: Beni degli Esuli, Minoranze e Cooperazione Economica nei Rapporti Dell’Italia con Slovenia e Croazia, Milan, Angeli, 1997, pp. 154–62, especially pp. 157 f.: “With the 1914–18 war Trieste took the first blow because its port, which is, it is true, the geographic outlet of Middle Europe to the Adriatic Sea, does not at all play that role from an economic point of view. The Alps represent a barrier that must be crossed, while the wonderful network of great rivers and canals which exists to the north of them, favors the much less expensive traffic by waterway toward the ports on the North Sea. The Hapsburg Empire allowed special train fares (the best known was the so-called Danube-Sava-Adriatic Sea) which were not confirmed by the successor states with which various meetings were held after 1919. Besides, Trieste was a marginal port for Italy, less easy to reach, and therefore more expensive.” 75 M. Cecovini, Due Parole sul Trattato di Osimo, now in Ibid., Dare e Avere per Trieste: Scritti e Discorsi Politici(1946–1979), Udine, Del Bianco, 1991, pp., 126–35, especially p. 130. 76 See, for example, C. Colli, “Spoglio dei Quotidiani Triestini del Biennio 1946–1947,” Agnelli e Bartole (eds.), La Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cit., pp. 225–66. The analysis also includes weeklies and monthlies, and goes as far back as the 1970’s. 77 Apih, Trieste, cit., p. 193. 78 Udina, Gli Accordi di Osimo, cit., p. 72. 79 Apih, Trieste, cit., p. 193. 80 See B. Marušić, Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, Motovun, 1988, p. 97. 81 Valdevit, Trieste: Storia di una Periferia Insicura, cit., pp. 141–4. 82 The text of the agreement is printed in Slovenija, Italija: Bela Knjiga o Diplomatskih Odnosih—Slovenia, Italy: White Book on Diplomatic Relations, Ljubljana, 1996, pp. xii-xiii.

278  The Long Post-War Era and Its End 83 Slovenia deposited its share (40 per cent) of the compensation established by the treaty of Rome in a bank in Luxembourg. However, Italy has refused to this day to acknowledge that amount as the balance due according to the aforementioned treaty. 84 Sapelli, Trieste Italiana, cit., pp. 204 f. 85 See Dassovich, I Molti Problemi dell’Italia al Confine Orientale, vol. II, Dal Mancato Rinnovo del Patto Mussolini-Pašić alla Ratifica degli Accordi di Osimo (1929–1977), Udine, Del Bianco, 1990, p. 251. 86 see Ibid., pp. 272–82. 87 Antonio Varsori also agrees that in the 1970s most Italian policy makers saw the wish to pursue national interests in foreign policy as unrealistic or reactionary. See A. Varsori, L’Italia nelle Relazioni Internazionali dal 1943 al 1992, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1998, pp. 190–1. 88 Romano, Guida alla Politica Estera Italiana, cit., p. 200. 89 On the origin of the “pentagonal” strategy, which started as a “quadrangular” strategy in 1989, and on its rapid failure, see M. Antonsich, “Il Nord-Est tra Mitteleuropa e Balcani: Il Caso del Friuli-Venezia Giulia,” in M. Antonsich, A. Colombo, A. Ferrari, R. Redaelli, A. Vitale, F. Zannoni, Geopolitica della Crisi: Balcani, Caucaso e Asia Centrale nel Nuovo Scenario Internazionale, Milan, Egea, 2002, pp. 141–249, especially pp. 152–4; M. Bucarelli, “La Slovenia nella Politica Italiana di Fine Novecento: Dalla Disgregazione Jugoslava all’Integrazione Euro-atlantica”, in M. Bucarelli and L. Monzali (eds.), Italia e Slovenia fra Passato Presente e Futuro, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 2008, pp. 103–50, especially pp. 114–6. 90 Bucarelli, “La Slovenia nella Politica Italiana di Fine Novecento”, cit., p. 110. 91 According to Stefano Lusa, the realization of the road network represented the very core of Italian Ostpolitik. As we shall see below, the results were modest. S. Lusa, Italia Slovenia 1990/1994, Pirano, Il Trillo, pp. 17–30, especially pp. 108–9. 92 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., p. 41. 93 Ibid., pp. 26, 28, 38, 47, 67. 94 E. Greco, “L’Evoluzione delle Relazioni Politiche dell’Italia con la Slovenia a la Croazia dopo la Dissoluzione della Jugoslavia,” in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 25–50, especially pp. 27 f. 95 The text of Emilio Colombo’s speech is in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 183–9. 96 S. Romano, “I Rapporti Italo-sloveni e Italo-croati: Una Prospettiva Storica,” in Favaretto e Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 11–24, especially p. 21. 97 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., p. 79. 98 Greco, L’evoluzione delle Relazioni Politiche, cit., p. 37. 99 The text of the memorandum of understanding is in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 166 f. 100 Ibid., pp. 170 f. 101 These positions are widely shared by the local press and the publications of the associations of exiles. On Giulio Staffieri’s proposal, see “Osimo e la Questione Italiana,” in La Voce Libera, April 2, 1993, See also A. Belloni, “La Minoranza Italiana in Istria, Fiume e Dalmazia Dopo il Memorandum d’Intesa del 1992 tra Italia, Slovenia e Croazia,” in Fiume, 21, July-December 2001, fns. 7–12, pp. 69–75. 102 Greco, “L’Evoluzione delle Relazioni Politiche,” cit., p. 47. 103 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., pp. 153, 169. 104 Slovenija, Italija: Bela Knjiga o Diplomatskih Odnosih, cit. 105 T. Favaretto, “Le Relazioni Economiche tra Italia, Slovenia e Croazia e le Prospettive di Cooperazione,” in Favaretto and Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 70–5.

The Long Post-War Era and Its End  279 106 As an example among many, see Susanna Agnelli’s speech to the Chamber of Deputies, March 7, 1995. Ibid., pp. 194–7. 107 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., pp. 163–5. 108 Ibid., pp. 172–7. 109 Favaretto and Greco (eds.), Il Confine Riscoperto, cit., pp. 177 f. 110 Ibid., p. 178. 111 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., pp. 190, 212. 112 Romano, “I Rapporti Italo-sloveni e Italo-croati,” cit., p. 22. 113 Lusa, Italia Slovenia, cit., pp. 179, 189. 114 P. Fassino, Per Passione, Milan, Rizzoli, 2003, pp. 286–9. 115 Greco, L’evoluzione delle Relazioni Politiche, cit., pp. 47 f. 116 Vrsaj, La Mitteleuropa 2000 e la Nuova “Ostpolitik” dell’Italia, cit., p. 122. 117 M. Cattaruzza, “Italia e Slovenia ovvero del Confine che non c’è più”, in Il Mulino: Rivista bimestrale di cultura e politica, 57, 2008/4, pp. 761–71. 118 Antonsich, “Il Nord-Est tra Mitteleuropa e Balcani: Il Caso del Friuli-Venezia Giulia,” cit., pp. 180–2, emphasis by the author. 119 A. De Benedetti, L. Rastello, Lisbona-Kiev: Binario morto: Alla Scoperta del Corridoio 5 e dell’Alta Velocità che non c’è, Milan, Chiarelettere, 2013, pp. 168–9. 120 Information kindly provided by the Authority of the Port of Trieste, on January 12, 2016. The port of Trieste was also more severely affected than Koper by the economic crisis in 2009 and 2010. 121 See http://ava.rtvslo.si/radiocapodistria/articolo/2672, “Porto di Capodistria scalo principale per le merci austriache,” site consulted on January 21, 2016. Besides, as of 2016 Koper has also become the main port for Hungary and Slovakia and strives to gain major quotes of the traffic from and to the Czech Republic and Bavaria. 122 There is an assessment of the propagandistic and instrumental functions of the unrealistic possibilities in A. Sema, La Fine di Niente: Agosto 1994-Agosto 1995: Miti, Diplomazie e Localismi: Cronaca di una Storia Italo-slovenacroata-istriana, Trieste, Istituto regionale di storia, cultura e documentazione, 1999, pp. 22, 113, 121, 170–1. 123 See Vivante, Irredentismo Adriatico, cit., p. 243. 124 See http://faqts.blogspot.ch/2015/02/lunga-intervista-al-direttore-di-luka.html, site consulted on January 25, 2016. 125 Information kindly provided by the Authority of the Port of Trieste on January 12, 2016. 126 Statute no. 92, March 4, 2004. 127 See http://www.arcipelago.adriatico.it/speciale/GiornoRicordo_2005frame. htm, site consulted on September 5, 2005. 128 There is complete documentation of the celebrations for Remembrance Day 2005 on the site http://www.arcipelago.adriatico.it/speciale/L92_30_03_2004. pdf, site consulted on September 5, 2005. 129 On this point, see Galli Della Loggia, La Morte della Patria, cit., and Gentile, La Grande Italia, cit., pp. 248–9. 130 Among the few contributions to this topic is the pamphlet by G. Oliva, L’Alibi della Resistenza, Ovvero Come Abbiamo Vinto la Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Milan, Mondadori, 2003; R. Chiarini, 25 Aprile: La Competizione Politica sulla Memoria, Venezia, Marsilio, 2005. 131 We can find them mentioned in Valdevit, Foibe, cit., pp. 15–32. See also the considerations by A. Ventura, “Il Dramma della Venezia Giulia nel Suo Contesto Storico,” in Id. (ed.), Per una Storicizzazione dell’Esodo Giulianodalmata, cit., pp. 9–20. 132 G. Crainz, Il Dolore e l’Esilio: L’Istria e le Memorie Divise d’Europa, Rome, Donzelli, 2005.

280  The Long Post-War Era and Its End 133 Hillgruber, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, cit., p. 165. 134 M. Cattaruzza, O. Moscarda, “L’Esodo Istriano nella Storiografia e nel Dibattito Pubblico in Italia, Slovenia e Croazia: 1991–2006,” in Ventunesimo Secolo, VII, June 2008, pp. 9–29, especially p. 22. 135 Unsigned article, “Il messaggio di Napolitano, Türk e Josipović,” in L’Arena di Pola, LXVI, July 28, 2010, p. 3; see also S. Mazzaroli, “Trieste, 13 Luglio 2010. Concerto dell’Amicizia. Evento Mediatico, Prova di Riconciliazione od Ennesimo Cedimento?” in Ibid., pp.1–2. 136 S. Mazzaroli, “Prigionieri di un Passato che si Vorrebbe Rimosso, ” in L’Arena di Pola, LXVII, January 27, 2011, p.1. 137 The chronicle of the commemorations is reported in the corresponding August issues of L’Arena di Pola. Sixty-four bodies were identified. But the total number of victims is estimated to about one hundred. 138 “I Presidenti Italiano, Sloveno, Croato e Austriaco a Redipuglia Omaggiano le Vittime a 100 Anni dalla Prima Guerra Mondiale,” in L’Arena di Pola, LXX, July 23, 2014, p. 4. 139 C. Del Frate, “Foibe ed Esuli Istriani: La Slovenia ora ha Deciso di Pagare un Risarcimento,” in Corriere della Sera, October 17, 2015; P. Radivo, “Indennizzi Sloveni ai Profughi Italiani: Nessuna Truffa, Solo l’Applicazione di una Legge,” in Associazione Nazionale Venezia Giulia e Dalmazia, September 7, 2015, site consulted on November, 15, 2015. 140 M. Cattaruzza, “How Much Does Historical Truth Still matter?” in Historein— A Review of the Past and Other Stories, No. 11, 2011, pp. 49–58; T. Judt, “The Past is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” cit., pp. 293–323.

10 Conclusion

This book analyzes events occurring in the context of the rise of a specific state form in Europe. As an ideal type, the modern state is characterized by a centralized structure, it is legitimated by a nationally homogenous population, and it enjoys widespread control over its territory. This state model was supposed to ensure the optimal utilization of the resources within its boundaries, so as to meet the complex challenges of the second phase of industrialization, modernization, and the mobilization of civil society. According to Charles Maier, territoriality encapsulates all the factors that enable control over a political space defined by borders, while providing the context for the expression of national and ethnic identities.1 In the period that covers, more or less, the years between 1870 and 1980,2 the state was confronted with tasks that required a remarkable mobilization of material and human resources. The means required by the liberal state paled in comparison—not to mention the ancien régime, which was founded on completely different institutions and social structures. These transformations, tied to a specific phase in the process of industrialization and modernization, made it imperative for all European states to promote the saturation of border areas as completely as possible. This meant ensuring a degree of control at the periphery comparable to that ensured at the core; promoting the nationalization of the entire population; and exercising unquestioned sovereignty on the entire territory. It thus required making the geographical border lines coincide with the best strategic ones that could define and protect a community engaged in a project of national homogenization and of civil and economic growth. In other words, a project of social transformation open onto the future and capable of affecting the institutional, cultural, and political levels3 could become reality only if the state4 succeeded in setting firmly and clearly the boundaries of the space in which this project would be carried out. The crisis of the supranational empires, which reached its apex with the catastrophe of World War I, is tied to their inability to mobilize the necessary resources to attain that project and to saturate the territory to the same degree as the nation states. According to Charles Maier again, the presence of too many rebellious and reluctant subjects made it too risky for

282 Conclusion the empires to engage in a mobilization which, if truly similar to the one enacted by the nation states, could trigger a powerful boomerang effect,5 as indeed happened when the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires launched their attempts at reform and democratization. The centralization of decision-making at the expense of traditional decentralized structures went hand in hand with the realignment and opening up of the élite strata. Besides the great landowners,6 members of financial, industrial, scientific, and professional groups played a greater and greater role within the nation state, while the building of railroad and road networks contributed to homogenizing and nationalizing the territory.7 Even the military now became a resource which politics could mobilize at any time both at home and abroad.8

2 The Kingdom of Italy and the Problem of National Borders The formation of Italy as a nation state took place within the framework of the transformation sketched above. The nation state was supposed to foster a process of unification and modernization of the various social arrangements present on the peninsula, which were often fragmented and backward, and to bring Italy in step with the advanced European countries. From the moment of its inception, the state thus drew its primary source of legitimation from the nationality principle. This meant, as Gaetano Salvemini, among others, remarked, that the political class could not disown the ideal motivations of irredentism, that is, the aspiration to channel even the most peripheral components of the national community into the space controlled by the state. Only by completing this process would the Risorgimento be accomplished. On their part Italy’s irredentists, even though a minority, kept alive the awareness that there was a “great frontier problem.” At some critical junctures, such as the execution of Guglielmo Oberdan, they succeeded in generating substantial sympathy for their cause. Irredentism could also count on members of the Italian Parliament and on intellectuals—the poet Giosuè Carducci being its most famous supporter. With his verbal excesses he even caused diplomatic tensions with the Austrian ally, especially on the occasion of Oberdan’s death. Irredentists saw a war against Austria not only as a means to bring the Risorgimento to completion from a territorial point of view, but also to give concrete expression to the spiritual process of nationbuilding which seemed far from complete.9 In the end, the objective was to saturate civil society with a national project to be attained by the mobilization of the “nation in arms.” The irredentists refused to address the issue of the plurinational character of Venezia Giulia, which recorded significant Slovenian minorities even in Trieste and in the Gorizia region, and Croatian ones in Istria. In the wake of a position taken by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1866 and authoritatively validated

Conclusion  283 even by Dante who, in Canto IX of Purgatory, had placed the frontiers of Italy “at Pola where the Quarnero sets a bound for Italy,” the irredentists set the natural borders of Italy along the mountain chain of the eastern Julian Alps. On the eve of World War I, following the Libya campaign and in the presence of an organized nationalist movement, Italian public opinion began to pay more attention to the “unredeemed” territories of Trentino and Venezia Giulia. In Trentino, the Italian press showed great concern for attempts to denationalize the region which were carried out by pan-Germanic and regionalist Tyrol associations. In Venezia Giulia, the political gains of Slovenes and Croats were a source of anxiety, as was Austrian policy, increasingly restrictive toward Italians coming from Italy, whom the Lieutenancy of the Adriatic Littoral tried to expel from public service. In 1913, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa published a series of articles on the oppression of the Italians in the “unredeemed lands.” These reportages were, as a matter of fact, well-orchestrated propaganda coordinated by the nationalist Attilio Tamaro, a native of Trieste, and Andrea Torre, a deputy in the Italian Parliament, and written by the journalists Luigi Barzini and Virginio Gayda. Even if with great exaggerations, their articles identified a real problem, caused not so much by Austrian policy as by the Slovenian and Croatian national movements. Without a turn in events, the still-dominant position of the Italians in Venezia Giulia would have waned as had happened in Dalmatia, where no municipality had been in Italian hands since 1882. In a 1912 essay, the writer and, later, World War I volunteer Scipio Slataper, who was from Trieste, depicted a future scenario in which Latin civilization in the eastern Adriatic would survive only in those aspects “which the Slavs will be forced to learn from us.” Thus, even before those territories changed hands and became Italian, one could see a conflict take shape which would be hard to solve, with different states clashing in the attempt to impose their own exclusive national imprint on the disputed lands. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 radically altered the European scenario. For the first time the idea of completing national unification became a concrete possibility with the incorporation of the “unredeemed” territories still under Hapsburg sovereignty into the Kingdom of Italy. In the mobilization leading to the intervention, it is extremely problematic even to try to separate the goals of the Risorgimento from the aims of power politics. In the last years of the nineteenth century, the political climate in Europe was such that national sentiment was one and the same with ambitions of power, the conquest of colonial spaces, and imperial expansion. Max Weber’s inaugural lecture of 1896 is symptomatic of this climate. The great sociologist declared that it would have made no sense to have a German nation state if not as the launching pad for power politics. The goal of replacing Austria as the foremost power in the Adriatic, obstinately pursued above all by the Italian Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino,

284 Conclusion embodied the contemporary Zeitgeist; it did not repudiate in any way the goal of completing Italian national unity. We should rather consider that kind of discourse as providing the language through which national goals could be expressed at that time. The pressure that the lobby of the exiles, and especially the Dalmatians, who were the most radicalized, could exert on several members of the government, explains why Italy made such extreme demands when dealing with the Entente. In terms of human lives lost, and of mobilization of national resources, World War I was the most demanding endeavor that Italy had to take on as a unitary state. The dead were more than six hundred thousand, one hundred thousand of whom died in captivity. Despite the rout at Caporetto which allowed the enemy armies to penetrate deeply into national territory, the war front and the entire country survived that terrible test. The war indeed represented, especially for newly-appointed officers and for the great mass of soldiers of peasant origin, a powerful push toward nationalization. Victory in the war created a wave of sincere patriotic sentiment in the country. Today, it is almost moving to read the reports describing a rejoicing country, where stores closed for “national jubilation,” workers improvised parades, and airplanes dropped flowers and leaflets onto the crowd.

3 The Weakness of the Italian State in the Domestic and International Arenas The scenario at the Paris Peace Conference did not meet the expectations Italy had when it joined the conflict, and after bearing a loss of human lives which was comparable, relatively speaking, to the losses suffered by the major European powers. For many complex reasons, the Hapsburg Empire had dissolved, so that Italy found itself claiming its “unredeemed” territories not from a defeated enemy but from a newly-formed victor state: the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. As a consequence, whereas no problem arose for Italy from incorporating about two hundred thousand German people in South-Tyrol, settled in tightly-knit communities between Salorno and the Brenner Pass, on the eastern frontier Italy could not secure those territorial gains that the Treaty of London had promised in the event of victory. The crucial factor was the opposition of the American President Woodrow Wilson, who proposed a new border line. By including Trieste and the coast of Istria, this line was indeed the fairest from an ethnic point of view, but it completely undermined Italy’s control not only over the Adriatic, but also over the strategic frontier running along the watershed of the eastern Julian Alps. In 1920 Italy and Yugoslavia signed the Treaty of Rapallo, which established that Italy would renounce most of its claims on Dalmatia while obtaining a border that could most easily be defended from enemy attacks in the north-east. According to the Foreign Minister, Carlo Sforza, from a

Conclusion  285 military point of view Italy did not have such a perfect border even at the time of the Roman Empire. Beyond the difficulties the Italian state encountered at the high diplomatic level, however, other difficulties emerged, already starting in the armistice phase with the occupation of the territories outlined in the Treaty of London. The Italian troops were repeatedly forced to retreat from the Slovenian or the Croatian territory, where the population received them wearing white-red-blue rosettes to demonstrate their national allegiance. Even in territories with an Italian majority, Slavic committees had sprung to life in favor of annexation to the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The management of the southern railroad which linked Trieste and Vienna, proved especially difficult, because of the boycott enacted by the Serbian military authorities and the local Slovenian functionaries. The impression taking hold among the Italian occupying forces was that they did not find themselves in liberated lands, among compatriots who had suffered under the foreign yoke, but in treacherous territory where dangers lay hidden and which could become the target of sudden attacks by foreign powers (chiefly Yugoslavia). The support provided to the first fascist squads by the Intelligence Bureau for the Occupied Territories and by the Military High Command is a sign of this weakness. Neither the Army nor the Civil Commissary that replaced it in August 1919 believed that they had the resources necessary to respond to possible attacks or forays across the border organized by Slovenian and Croatian irredentists with the support of Yugoslavia. This state of affairs arose in the very first months of the occupation, and was, in the long run, the most serious challenge that Italy faced on the eastern frontier. Italy quickly became aware that it could exercise only partial control over the newly-acquired territories, given the insufficient degree of nationalization of all the border populations, and not just the Slovenes and the Croats, whose sense of loyalty to the Italian nation state was feeble. This acknowledgement led representatives of the Italian state to employ very unscrupulous means such as the already-mentioned fascist squads, which sprang up from an ultranationalist cluster of activists prone to violence, supported, furthermore, by the occupation authorities. Not incorrectly, the Italian politician Angelo Tasca remarked that in Venezia Giulia the Fasci had a quasi-official mandate. D’Annunzio’s adventure in Fiume, on the other hand, belongs to a different set of issues. It was the first coup de main carried out in various contested areas in the aftermath of World War I (another being, for example, Vilnius, in Lithuania, which was occupied by squads of Polish volunteers). The occupation of the town by D’Annunzio’s legionnaires became a diplomatic success: Fiume was not assigned to Croatia but became a Free State, and in 1924 the town and its territory were divided between Italy and Yugoslavia. In any case, the ambiguity showed by the Nitti government toward the rebellion of troops and officers, and the passivity of Chiefs of Staff who

286 Conclusion overlooked mutinies and spreading acts of disobedience, highlight the crisis that plagued institutions at the end of the war. According to Pietro Badoglio, appointed extraordinary military Commissioner for Venezia Giulia, the rebellion could have grown to alarming proportions. Not erroneously Carlo Sforza asserted that the moral poisoning of the country began with the adventure in Fiume. The crisis of the liberal state thus revealed itself on the eastern frontier with greater clarity and with more serious consequences than in the rest of Italy. Institutional weakness, the propensity to choose emergency solutions, and uneven control of the border territory became permanent traits shaping the relationship between the Italian state and Venezia Giulia for a long time, even many years after the end of World War II. These uncertain first steps of the Italian state right at the moment when it was supposed to take possession of the territories gained through World War I, already show how illusory it was to believe that Italy could belong to the exclusive club of the great European powers. Another factor that characterized the situation on the eastern frontier after the end of World War I and that would have long-term implications was the national conflict among local Italian, Slovenian, and Croatian populations, which inevitably dragged the nations that were their referents into the fray. The national struggles within the Hapsburg Empire had shaped the Italian élite in Venezia Giulia, which had looked to Italy first of all as a source of support in their struggle against the national enemy they faced in loco. For these social groups the enemy was not the Austrians but the Slavs. Their anti-Slavic radicalism was often more virulent than among the Fascists. All they wanted was to gain ample autonomy, which would allow them to continue to live as much as possible as they had under the Empire, once their annoying national rival had been eliminated. An emblematic representative of this view was Francesco Salata, from Cherso, the head of the Central Office for the New Provinces, instituted immediately after the end of the war. Not erroneously, Dennison Rusinow remarked that the contribution of the Julian people to border Fascism had shown genuinely “Austrian” traits. For the Slovenes and Croats as well, the orientation toward Serbia was motivated by their opposition to the Italian solution.10 Slovenian and Croatian politicians of the Hapsburg Monarchy had hurriedly set up a Commission for the independence of Yugoslav lands as soon as they heard of the negotiations between Italy and the Entente which would result in the Treaty of London in April 1915. The regional interests of Slovenes and Croats hung like a sword of Damocles over the relations between Italy and Yugoslavia, preventing the two countries from being successful in their efforts at reaching détente, as they tried with the Treaty of Rome (1924) and with the Ciano-Stojadonović Agreement (1937). The political dissolution of the former Hapsburg space thus generated instrumental forms of loyalty. However, relations between Italy and the Italian group in Venezia Giulia reached its lowest point much later, between

Conclusion  287 1975 and 1980, when the List for Trieste took shape in opposition to the Treaty of Osimo. For Slovenes and Croats, on the other hand, the crisis in their relations with Yugoslavia led the two republics to declare independence in 1991. A few intellectuals showed capable of articulating a national rather than a local vision tied to the Hapsburg past. Among them we find the essayists Scipio Slataper and Giani Stuparich, and the historian Carlo Schiffrer. In a letter written in 1926 Schiffrer said: “I should wish . . . that Trieste will change from unredeemed city to Italian city, finally able to be something relevant in the life of the nation.”11 Trieste intellectuals who collaborated to the prestigious avant-garde journal La Voce were among the very few who conceived a cultural role for Hapsburg Trieste in Italy, and who were willing to subordinate irredentism to Italy’s priorities. Once in power, in the border territories Fascism tried to practice a policy of centralization, nationalization, and incorporation of the population into its mass organizations. In other words, for the Fascists the issue was to build the totalitarian state on the eastern border as much as everywhere else. The policy adopted toward alien populations took the form of denying their national specificity, of disbanding their local cultural, economic, and recreational network; and of forcing the inclusion of Slovenes and Croats into the totalitarian structures of the regime. These populations experienced as severe traumas the closing of schools where instruction took place in their own languages, and the prohibition to teach in Slovenian and Croatian even in extracurricular classes. In the border area Fascism underestimated spectacularly the profound roots that the new Slovenian and Croatian citizens had in their own linguistic and cultural identity, and how much influence the all-reaching network of Slovenian nationalists had on the mostly peasant local population. In fact, the policy of national oppression practiced toward the “alien” populations had counterproductive effects on the attempts to win them over to Fascism, despite some success in creating a fascist militia among the Slovenes, and in having Slovenian children join the Balilla organization in notirrelevant numbers. Starting in the mid-1920s, a clandestine movement took shape in Venezia Giulia, successful in organizing some attacks and demonstrative actions. Fascism responded with an exemplary trial which sentenced the defendants to several hundred years in jail and to four death sentences, promptly carried out. However, even in its totalitarian phase the fascist regime could never gain full control over the border territory. Attacks, fires, and political assassinations continued, with investigators mostly failing to identify those responsible. The problems that plagued Venezia Giulia both in foreign and economic policy showed to be more serious and harder to solve than it was thought at first. Hopes for economic penetration into the Balkans and revival of traffic with the hinterland proved unrealistic, especially after the crisis of 1929, when these areas fell into a profound economic slump. To

288 Conclusion this we should add that, in the Danubian basin and in the Balkans, Italy also faced the economic penetration of Germany and the political competition of France. After a phase in which Venezia Giulia’s entrepreneurs enjoyed remarkable autonomy, including in financial matters, Fascism turned the shipyards over to IRI, which led to a boom in shipbuilding at a level never seen before. Fascism invested substantial resources in the economy of Trieste and carried out a quite coherent project of integration of Venezia Giulia into the Italian economy. The geographer Giorgio Valussi remarked: “Never before did the regional landscape show so many signs of the state’s presence.”12 Despite all these efforts, it became clear that the region would not play the important role of “gate to the east” imagined in the nineteenth century, and that the multinational composition of the population presented much more serious problems than was believed right after the victorious war. Further complications arose. The revisionist aspiration of the Nazi government aggravated the pressure exerted by clandestine groups supported by the Yugoslav neighbor and also by part of the local population, to the point that in 1937 Mussolini launched a policy of rapprochement with Yugoslavia to protect himself against possible territorial demands by Germany. Soon afterwards, though, Italy stipulated the Pact of Steel with Nazi Germany, as a partner with full equal rights. After entry into the war in 1940, however, the military defeats Italy experienced on all fronts rapidly transformed the Italian ally into a satellite, like all the other central European states that had fallen into the arms of the Reich. Some were hoping to obtain the revision of the peace treaties, whereas others, such as Romania, wished to stem the erosion of their territories by the Soviet Union.13 All the important acquisitions in Dalmatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, or anywhere else occurred “by grace of the Führer” and they stood only in so far as Nazi Germany stood. In any case, liberal Italy had put up a much better performance in World War I than fascist Italy did in World War II. The spread of the resistance in the occupied areas of Slovenia and Dalmatia after Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, triggered reactions among the occupying forces which were a mixture of savagery, impotence, and incompetence. Following the disbanding of the military after September 8, 1943, the Italian state disappeared not only from the occupied territories of Yugoslavia, but also from Istria, Fiume, and Trieste, which became the theater of a bloody war of succession between Germany and the Yugoslav liberation movement led by the Communists. A historical assessment of the presence of the Italian state and its institutions in Venezia Giulia from November 4, 1918, to September 8, 1943, must take into account its insufficient control over that territory from a military point of view (with the failure to stem Slovene and Yugoslav incursions), and over that population from the point of view of its national identity: even irredentists and nationalists remained tied to the mind-set and culture of the

Conclusion  289 late Hapsburg Empire.14 On its eastern border Italy was thus far from realizing that national saturation of the territory and that capacity to mobilize resources that characterize a modern nation state.

4 The Aftermath of the War At the end of World War II, on the eastern frontier Italy had retreated, more or less, to its 1866 border. Contrary to expectations, at the Paris Peace Conference Italy was treated as a defeated state, subjected to several punitive conditions which, however, were reduced substantively during the Cold War. The Italian border was set at Duino, whereas the area of Trieste and a strip of the Italian northern coast were supposed to form the Free Territory of Trieste. On February 10, 1947, the day that the treaty was signed, at the sound of the sirens at 11 a.m., the bustle of Rome stopped, the Constituent Assembly interrupted its work, and several demonstrations erupted in protest. In 1947, in his “Introduction” to Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di una Storia Politica e Culturale [Venezia Giulia. A Sketch of a Political and Cultural History], the historian Ernesto Sestan wrote: “The millenary oak of Italy, struck by lightning and storms over and over again, has drawn back its protective shade from its farthest lands.”15 National mobilization continued throughout the alternating and complex events that led to the partition of the Free Territory between Italy and Yugoslavia and to awarding Trieste to Italy, following the London Memorandum. Before it was all over, there were serious moments of tension between the two countries, with movement of troops at the border on both sides and violent demonstrations in Trieste, then under allied administration, clashes which appear to have been manipulated by branches of the Italian intelligence apparatus. In previous years, through the Office for Border Areas, the Italian government had financed, underhandedly, organizations in favor of the Italian solution (including the neo-Fascists), partially to counterbalance the strong influence of the Slovenian and pro-independence organizational network. Like in the aftermath of World War I, in the very first years of the 1950s Italy managed not to lose too much control over the territory by resorting to heterodox solutions based on cooperation between institutions and paramilitary squads. In the aftermath of World War II, the Italian presence was further weakened by the military and political control which the Anglo-American forces exercised over the territory in question, meaning, at this point, the city of Trieste alone. Italian and Slovenian nationalists and the Communists exerted great pressure on the population: each group claimed to enjoy the consensus of the majority among the inhabitants of the area in contention. However, those expressions of consensus were first and foremost the outcome of the enormous organizational effort by several organizations,16 each with its own orientation, which aimed to control the situation and mobilize the population.

290 Conclusion Until the London Memorandum, the issue of Trieste was the central problem of Italian foreign policy, conditioning and hindering other important choices, such as joining the European Defense Community. With the London Memorandum and the restitution of Trieste to Italy, a phase ended in the national history of the border territories. Sergio Romano has correctly remarked that the Risorgimento held its last celebration in Trieste on October 5, 1954. In the following years, Venezia Giulia disappeared from the “mental map” of Italians. The idea of “national interest,” which had been the cement holding together the republican political class and Italian public opinion, came unglued to the point that it played no role whatsoever during the negotiations for the Treaty of Osimo. Today, when dealing with Slovenia and Croatia, Italian foreign policy sets aside almost completely questions regarding the former Italian territories or issues specific to the border area, such as railroad lines. The question of the eastern frontier which ended in 1954 played a crucial role in the history of the Italian nation. It remained for about fifty years one of the great themes capable of triggering national mobilization. However, the events on the eastern Italian border in the first half of the twentieth century also laid bare the fact that Italy was a weak state, almost unable to root its institutions in the border area and to impose its own unquestioned sovereignty, with an extremely limited capacity to take on and carry out tasks and functions central to a modern nation state. A dichotomy thus characterized the history of unified Italy: on the one hand the country participated fully in the cult-like climate of European nationalism, while on the other hand the state did not have sufficient resources (in the broad sense of the term) to carry out the process of nationalization so as to include the political frontiers of the country. From this dichotomy arises, as I believe, the difficulty of placing these events within the frame of the history of Italy in the twentieth century.

Notes 1 See Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History,” cit., p. 808. 2 Starting in the 1980s, the growing weight of supranational institutions, which are absorbing more and more tasks once the domain of the nation state, is eroding the central role of the nation state itself. The overlapping of national, supranational, and transnational bodies, which rely on heterogeneous sources of legitimation and operate in fields with uncertain boundaries, characterizes the European (and not only European) situation today. It is hard to predict the developments of these changes in the long-run, when the national space is being opened up once again and the monopoly of sovereignty is called into question. In any case, it appears that the nation state is undergoing a radical transformation, at the end of which its features will likely be profoundly different in comparison to the ones we know well. On the long-term perspective of calling the nation state into question, see Reinhard, Geschichte der Staatsgewalt, cit., p. 26. See also C.S. Maier, “Transformation of Territoriality, 1600–2000,” in G. Budde, S. Conrad, and O. Janz (eds.), Transnationale Geschichte, Themen, Tendenzen und Theorien, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, pp. 32–55, especially

Conclusion  291 pp. 48–55. On the implications of new shared and trans-state identities among several groups of migrants, also of second generation, see R. Salih, “Mobilità Transnazionali e Cittadinanza. Per una Geografia di Genere dei Confini,” in S. Salvatici (ed.), Confini: Costruzioni, Attraversamenti, Rappresentazioni, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2005, pp. 153–66. 3 On the theme of the nation as the tool for realizing an open-ended equalizing process, see D. Langewiesche, “Nationalismus—Ein Generalsierender Vergleich,” in Budde, Conrad, and Janz (eds.), Transnationale Geschichte, Themem, Tendenzen und Theories, cit., pp. 175–89, especially pp. 182–8. 4 On the relationship between modernity and nationalism the indispensable reading is E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalisms, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983. 5 Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History,” cit., p. 814. 6 On this theme the mandatory reference is A.J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War, New York, Pantheon Books, 1981. 7 On the role played by the railroad and the postal service in promoting the nationalization of the territory, even though its relationships with the formation of regional identities is complex, see S. Weichlein, Nation und Region: Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich, Düsseldorf, Droste, 2004. 8 Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History,” cit., p.814. 9 According to Paolo Pezzino, “the fragmentation and the segmentation of local cadres and the weakness of organized interests characteristic of the Italian bourgeoisie” was the reason why the bourgeoisie saw a unifying element in patriotism, and in those “great fortunes of the fatherland,” which found in Carducci their highest bard. See P. Pezzino, Senza Stato: Le Radici Storiche della Crisi Italiana, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2002, p. 12. 10 See D. Šepić, Italja, Šaveznici i Jugoslavensko Pitanje, 1014–1918, Zagreb, Školska Knjiga, 1970. 11 M. Cattaruzza, “Il ‘Carlo Schiffrer’ di Elio Apih,” in Quaderni Giuliani di Storia, 13, 1993/1–2, pp. 235–41, especially p. 238. 12 Valussi, Il Confine Nordorientale d’Italia, cit., p. 251. 13 Cattaruzza, Dyroff, and Langewiesche (eds.), Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War, cit. 14 On these issues, see Lunzer, Triest, cit. 15 Sestan, Venezia Giulia: Lineamenti di una Storia Etnica e Culturale, cit., p. IX. 16 Pamela Ballinger rightly mentions “the tremendous and continual ideological labor required to ensure and police the various boundaries between states, ethnic groups, and center/periphery.” See P. Ballinger, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans, Princeton-Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2003, p. 45. On the ambiguous character of border lines even after the establishment of the nation state and on the need to legitimize the frontier permanently, see also some remarks by R. Petri, “Gerarchie Culturali e Confini Nazionali. Sulla Legittimazione delle Frontiere dell’Europa dei Secoli XIX e XX,” in Salvatici (ed.), Confini, cit., pp. 79–99, especially p. 80.

Names Index

Abbazia 56, 141 Abyssinia 143, 145, 221 Adalia 65 Adelsberg 92; see also Postojna Adriatic 2, 3, 5n9, 8 Figure 1.1, 9, 10, 11, 13, 22n9, 25n41, 26n52, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 48n50, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 77n39, 79n77, 80n90, 85, 86, 89, 103, 104, 109 Figure 4.1, 111, 112, 113, 114, 121n147, 125, 126, 127, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147n22, 156 Figure 6.1, 157, 172n10, 173n31, 184 Figure 7.1, 195, 196, 201, 202, 216, 218, 222 Figure 8.1, 239 Figure 8.3, 257, 262, 266, 267, 270, 277n73, 283 Adriatic coast see Adriatic Adriatic Littoral 185, 216, 283; see also Adriatisches Küstenland Adriatic Sea see Adriatic Adriatisches Küstenland 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192 Aerenthal, Count Alois Lex von 42 Africa 145, 146, 157, 159 Agram 85; see also Zagreb Aidussina 92; see also Ajdovščina Ajdovščina 92 Albani, Felice 21 Albania 59, 62, 65, 66, 106, 111, 112, 121 – 2n163, 155, 157, 180, 211n107 Alberti, Mario 22n1, 42, 53, 54, 80n90, 143 Albertini, Luigi 54, 76n12, 79n74 Albona 102, 181, 226 Alexander, Harold 196, 197, 198, 202, 214, 216, 217 Alexander, Kirk 221, 243n20 Alighieri, Dante 10, 23n13, 34, 113, 229, 283

Alps 34, 35, 160, 265, 277n73 Alto Adige 65; see also South Tyrol Andrassy, Gyula 13, 14, 15, 16 Andreotti, Giulio 231, 236, 275n44 Antalya 65; see also Adalia Apih, Elio 22n6, 36, 39, 44n1, 48n55, 61, 88, 126, 133, 136, 207n41, 244n31 Aquileia 72, 268 Ara, Camillo 56 Arbe 65, 158, 159, 168, 173 – 4n32, 174n34, 177n94, 177n97, 177n98 Arendt, Hannah 148n29 Arnerich Antonio 129 Arsa 3, 226 Arsa region 102 Arsa River 34, 89 Ascoli, Graziadio 10, 11, 37 Asia Minor 91 Assling 90, 143 Austria 2, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23n14, 23n19, 24n22, 24n26, 25n34, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 48n62, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76n16, 78n45, 79n73, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 113, 128, 131, 132, 140, 142, 143, 152n147, 161, 163, 196, 198, 214, 217, 226, 227, 228, 251, 264, 265, 267, 269, 270, 282 Austria-Hungary 37, 57, 59, 62, 69, 72, 78n45, 78n47, 79n72, 83, 85, 86, 262 Austrian Littoral 8 Figure 1.1, 40, 65 Austrian territories see Austria Avezzana, Giuseppe 16, 20, 26n57 Babić, Branko 204, 244n46 Badoglio, Pietro 87, 105, 106, 106, 108, 117n56, 173n31

294  Names Index Bakar 155; see also Buccari Balbo, Cesare 12, 13, 24n29, 30, 56, 69 Balkan Europe see Balkans, the Balkan peninsula see Balkans, the Balkans, the 12, 15, 18, 30, 33, 41, 42, 48n62, 52, 53, 54, 58, 72, 76n16, 89, 142, 143, 146, 154, 157, 166, 172n10, 186, 196, 198, 218, 258 Banat 57, 78n47, 87, 88, 115n17 Barthou, Louis 142 Bartoli, Gianni 231 Barzilai, Salvatore 12, 55, 67, 68, 87, 116n38 Barzini, Luigi 42, 43, 48 – 9n63, 92, 283 Basovizza 219, 257 Battisti, Cesare 53, 55, 56, 77n36 Bavaria 254, 279n120 Bazlen, Roberto 37 Bebler, Alex 240 Belci, Corrado 252, 256, 258, 273 – 4n2 Belgrade 58, 101, 113, 123, 124, 132, 136, 139, 152n129, 155, 202, 219, 221, 223, 234, 241, 255, 258, 263 Benelli, Sam 103 Beneš, Eduard 140 Benussi, Antonio 101 Berlinguer, Enrico 258, 260, 276n55 Berlusconi Silvio 267 Bersani, Pier Luigi 269 Besednjak, Engelbert 128, 147n27 Bessarabia 88, 154 Bevin, Ernest 245n63 Bianco, Vincenzo 198 Biasutti, Adriano 265 Bidault, Georges 245n63 Bihać 174n36, 214 Birkensteth, Dennis S. 262, 277n73 Bismarck, Otto von 23n19, 24n28, 30, 31 Bissolati, Leonida 56, 68, 70, 77n35, 88, 94, 96, 115n16 Black Sea 114, 257, 261 Blasich, Mario 218 Blasina, Goffredo 151n111 Bloch, Marc 172n4 Bohemia 12, 32, 38, 54, 57, 187 Bolzano 62, 68, 123, 124, 125 Bombacci, Nicola 102 Bonghi, Ruggero 35, 36 Bonomi, Ivanoe 195, 200, 217, 229 Borgese, Antonio 72 Borghese, Valerio 225 Borgia Sedej, Franjo 137 Bosnia 17, 42, 83, 87, 160, 163, 178n105

Bosnia-Herzegovina 15, 42, 78n47, 85, 174n36 Bosnian territories see Bosnia Bovio, Giovanni 21 Bozen 62; see also Bolzano Brač 61; see also Brazza Brandt, Willy 255 Branik 131; see also Rifembergo Brazza 61 Brda 91 Brenner Pass 2, 60, 67, 86, 114n14, 148n35, 246n72, 284 Brezhnev, Leonid 258 Brignoli, don Pietro 162, 166, 175n51, 176n72 Brosio, Manlio 235, 248n125 Broz, Josip 159; see also Tito Bruck, Ludwig von 186 Buccari 155 Budapest 226, 269 Budicin, Giuseppe (Pino) 182, 192, 203, 212n132 Buffarini Guidi, Guido 169 Buie 226 Buje 226; see also Buie Bulgaria 83, 87, 155, 157, 197, 258 Bülow, Bernhard von 62 Burgwyn, H. James 115n31, 144, 153n 160, 159, 173n21 Butišnica River 65 Buzet 47; see also Pinguente Byrnes, James F. 227, 245n63 Caccese, Francesco 129 Cadore 72 Cadorna, Luigi 68 Cagni, Umberto 85, 104 Cairoli, Benedetto 18, 25n42 Cammarata, Angelo 235 Cape Planca 61; see also Cape Planka Cape Planka 61, 65 Capodistria 10, 17, 34, 168, 226, 233, 238, 240, 269; see also Koper Caporetto 67, 70, 73, 82n130, 91, 131, 284 Carbone, Eugenio 256, 257 Carducci, Giosué 19, 27n70, 28n71, 28n75, 282, 291n9 Carinthia 185, 188, 189, 197, 207n45, 215, 265 Carnia 65, 72, 78n47, 192 Carnic Alps 3, 9, 65 Carniola 83, 87, 115n17, 188, 189 Carrà, Carlo 74

Names Index  295 Casciana Luigi 119n99 Casella, Francesco 157 Castelnuovo 61 Cattaro 60, 61, 155, 158, 164 Cattaruzza, Marina 210n84 Cavallero, Ugo 167 Cavalotti 129 Cavallotti, Felice 20 Čavle 270; see also Zaule Cavtat 65; see also Ragusa Vecchia Cecovini, Manlio 262 Celje 269 Central Europe 2, 40, 54, 81n103, 89, 128, 145, 186, 187, 218, 257, 261, 265, 268, 277n73 Cerkljansko 202 Čermelj, Lavo 135, 146 Chabod, Federico 30 Charles I, Emperor 83, 84, 85, 91 Cherso 94, 111, 112, 147n6, 157, 286 Churchill, Sir Winston 195, 196, 201, 202, 208 – 9n67, 216, 218, 242n10 Ciano, Count Galeazzo 158, 173n21, 286 Čikola River 65 Ciliga, Ante 102 Cippico, Antonio 55, 76n32 Cisleithania 38 Cittanova d’Istria 228 Ciuffelli, Augusto 94 Clana 178n109 Clemenceau, Georges 111, 115n48 Clinton, Bill 269 Cobol (Cobolli), Giuseppe 129 Coceancig (Coceani), Bruno 98, 129 Cok, Ivan Marija 139 Colajanni, Napoleone 21 Collotti, Gaetano 171 Colombo, Emilio 265, 266 Colonna di Cesarò, Giovanni 67 Combi, Carlo 34, 41 Comeno 170 Comici, Gustavo 189 Condorelli, Tano 68 Contarini, Salvatore 141 Corfu 180 Cormons 11 Corridoni, Filippo 64 Corti, Luigi 16, 24n41, 24n42, 26n47 Cosulich, Guido 189 Credaro, Luigi 124 Crispi, Francesco 12, 20, 24n28, 31, 33, 38

Croatia 32, 65, 83, 87, 107, 121 – 2n63, 157, 159, 160, 183, 197, 208n58, 232, 255, 256, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 272, 273, 285, 290 Croatian Istria see Istria Croatian territories see Croatia Croce, Benedetto 74, 195, 246n81 Curet, Giovanni 151n111 Curzola 158 Curzola Archipelago 61, 62 Cusin, Fabio 144, 190 Custoza 11, 17 Czechoslovakia 84, 92, 143, 261, 262 Dalmatia 7, 9, 10, 22n2, 22n4, 45n12, 47n29, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77n38, 78n47, 79n66, 83, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94, 103, 105, 106, 107, 112, 115n26, 120n125, 143, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 168, 173n26, 173n29, 173n31, 174n34, 175n41, 175n44, 183, 185, 201, 270, 283, 284, 288 Dalmatian region see Dalmatia D’Annunzio, Gabriele 64, 68, 79n77, 88, 94, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 119 – 20n114, 120n115, 120n124, 120n126, 121 – 2n163, 123, 189, 235, 285 Danube 140, 141, 142, 143, 197, 277n73, 288 De Ambris, Alceste 105, 110 De Castro, Diego 193, 235, 243n13, 246n68, 248n113, 277n73 De Gasperi, Alcide 195, 225, 227, 228, 236, 237, 246n72, 248n125, 265 Delcassé, Théophile 60 De Leonardis, Massimo 238, 245n57, 248n123, 276n71 Della Valle 151n111 De Michelis, Gianni 265 Depretis, Agostino 15, 18, 20, 25n42 De Revel, Thaon 99 De Vidovich, Renzo 258, 275n46 Devin 221n13; see also Duino Diarchies 67 Diaz, Armando 87, 93 di Cavour, Count Camillo Benso 23n12 Dimitrov, George 194, 210n85, 217, 224 Di Robilant, Count Carlo Felice Nicolis 15, 18, 19, 21, 25 – 6n46, 28n73 Di San Giuliano Antonio 48 – 9n63, 56, 59, 60

296  Names Index Divač 270 Di Vittorio, Giuseppe 224 Dodecanese Islands 65 Dolenjsko 176n77 Dollfuss, Engelbert 142 Dossetti, Giuseppe 252 Dragonja (Dragogna) River 211n113 Drndić, Ljubo 183 Dudan, Alessandro 67, 157 Duino 211n113, 228, 229, 238, 253, 289 Dujc, Albin 219 Durazzo 65 Durrës 65; see also Durazzo Eastern Europe 191, 218, 233, 243n23, 245 – 6n65, 261,  265 Ehrlich, Lambert 161, 175n47 Einaudi, Luigi 240 Esposito, Giovanni 185 Esterle, Carlo 56 Europe 2, 12, 14, 20, 24n28, 30, 31, 40, 50, 54, 56, 81n103, 89, 91, 92, 113, 116n37, 128, 137, 145, 155, 157, 186, 190, 196, 214, 218, 221, 223, 225, 233, 243n22, 243n23, 253, 258, 261, 265, 268, 271, 273, 281, 283 European continent see Europe European territories see Europe Evans, Sir Arthur 71 Fabiani, Max 100 Faidutti, Luigi 93 Fambri, Paolo 24n21, 35 Fanfani, Amintore 252 Fassino, Piero 269 Fauro, Ruggero see Timeus Ruggero Federzoni, Luigi 55, 104, 106 Felluga, Umberto 212n130 Ferenc, Tone 165, 168, 174n34, 175n47, 175n50, 176n65, 176n77, 176n83 Fernetti 257 Ferrari, Ettore 21 Fianona 90 Filiberto, Duke of Aosta 104 Fiume 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 71, 79n77, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 94, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115n20, 115n26, 116n44, 120n115, 120n120, 120n125, 120n129, 120n131, 121n139, 121 – 2n163,

123, 124, 125, 129, 133, 140, 141, 144, 155, 160, 164, 169, 170, 171, 181, 185, 188, 189, 191, 192, 195, 215, 218, 219, 221, 229, 267, 270, 285, 286, 288; see also Rjeka Florence 16, 27n60, 37, 48n50, 67, 94 Fogar, Luigi 137, 138 Forlani, Arnaldo 260 Foscari, Piero 55, 80n94, 121n137 Foschiatti, Gabriele 120n125, 203 Foster Dulles, John 236, 248n119 France 11, 12, 24n30, 25n34, 48n62, 52, 53, 54, 57, 64, 65, 66, 72, 76n21, 79n65, 84, 86, 87, 89, 111, 113, 140, 142, 143, 146, 154, 157, 159, 169, 180, 221, 228, 233, 234, 260, 261, 267, 288 Franco, Fulvia 241 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria 43, 50 Franz Joseph, Emperor 18, 19 Frausin, Luigi 203, 212n122, 130 Freyberg, Bernard 216 Fries-Skene, Baron Alfred 93 Friuli 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 72, 73, 185, 192, 194, 203, 216 Friuli-Venezia Giulia 208n55, 253, 264, 265 Galante Garrone, Virginia 114n12 Galicia 60, 79n72 Galli, Carlo 48 – 9n63 Gambara, Gastone 181 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 11, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23n19, 26n57, 34 Gayda, Virginio 43, 49n67, 139, 140, 283 Gentile, Giovanni 127 Germany 12, 24n28, 24n30, 25n41, 31, 34, 45n7, 51, 52, 53, 59, 62, 66, 79, 76n22, 80n90, 83, 90, 91, 115n16, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 154, 155, 162, 168, 173n19, 174n34, 181, 186, 187, 190, 195, 203, 206n29, 212n130, 225, 233, 235, 259, 260, 266, 267, 270, 288 Ghiglianovic, Roberto 67, 88 Giardino, Gaetano 104 Gigante, Riccardo 189 Gigante, Vincenzo 203 Gilas, Milovan 198, 201 Giolitti, Giovanni 48 – 9n63, 58, 62, 64, 68, 79n78, 94, 111, 112, 143 Giulietti, Giuseppe 105, 110

Names Index  297 Giunta, Francesco 101, 119n101, 123, 124, 173n24 Giuriati, Camillo 257 Giuriati, Giovanni 55, 68, 80n94, 107, 108, 110, 121n148 Globocnik, Odilo 185, 207n35, 215 Gorica 139, 257; see also Gorizia Gorizia 10, 11, 27n66, 33, 35, 36, 37, 57, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 73, 87, 91, 113, 115n18, 116n46, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 137, 139, 149n49, 153n166, 166, 170, 171, 182, 185, 188, 191, 195, 211n113, 218, 220, 221, 225, 228, 229, 250, 251, 252, 253, 257, 260, 261, 263, 282 Gorski Kotar 178n109, 203 Gortan, Vladimir 139 Görz 10; see also Gorizia Gradisca 11, 57, 60, 62, 64, 72 Grado 72 Grandi, Dino 129 Graz 269 Grazioli, Emilio 160, 167, 176n86, 177 – 8n100 Grazioli, Francesco Saverio 90, 116n44 Great Britain 52, 58, 64, 65, 66, 70, 84, 89, 111, 113, 116n37, 143, 154, 155, 169, 196, 214, 218, 221, 227, 228, 235, 212, 276n59 Greece 65, 69, 89, 115n17, 141, 146, 154, 159, 172n13, 180, 201, 211n114, 234, 276n59 Gregorčič, Simon 131 Gregorin, Gustav 78n43 Grey, Edward 60 Grossich, Antonio 90, 108 Gruber, Karl 246n72 Guerriero, Augusto 124 Gulf of Quarnero 23n13, 34, 35, 57, 59, 60, 65, 113, 185, 229, 283 Gulli, Tommaso 100, 118n96 Gumplowiz, Leopold 126 Haidenschaft 92; see also Ajdovščina Haymerle, Alois 33 Haymerle, Heinrich Karl von 18, 33 Hebrang, Andrija 196, 197, 198, 201 Hitler, Adolf 142, 144, 154, 157, 178n106, 185, 188, 221 Hodnig, Armando 67 Hohenlohe, Prince Konrad 43, 53 Host-Venturi, Giovanni (Nino) 107, 108, 120n120, 129 Hötzendorf, Conrad von 42

House of Hapsburg 9, 32, 73, 83, 131, 144 Hreščak, Dušan 251 Hrpelje 257 Hrvoj, Dragon 78n43 Hungary 32, 83, 88, 91, 142, 143, 152n147, 155, 161, 196, 218, 228, 261, 265, 269, 279n120 Idria 131; see also Idrija Idrija 131 Idrija River 11; see also Judrio River Ilirska Bistrica 170; see also Villa del Nevoso Imbriani, Matteo Renato 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 26n48 Imperiali, Guglielmo 58, 59, 60, 64 Isola d’Istria 238 Isonzo River 11, 59, 62, 72, 73, 86, 91, 102, 182, 202, 204, 214, 229, 257 Istria 7, 9, 10, 11, 22n8, 23n10, 27n70, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 44, 47n29, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 69, 78n47, 86, 90, 91, 101, 102, 117n73, 119n109, 138, 139, 141, 144, 148n46, 178 – 9n110, 181, 182, 183, 185, 188, 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205, 206n18, 206n29, 211n113, 213n142, 214, 215, 219, 220, 221, 225, 226, 227, 229, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 251, 252, 269 Istrian coast see Istria Istrian peninsula see Istria Iswolski, Alexander 42, 57, 60, 79n65 Italian Tyrol see Tyrol Jacchia, Pietro 97 Jajce 183, 206n25 Jelačić, Josip 32 Jesenice 90; see also Assling Jiulian Alps 9, 10, 17, 67, 283, 284 Jovanović, Arso 197 Judrio 131; see also Idrija Judrio River 11 Julian Alps 9, 10, 17, 34 Julian region see Venezia Giulia Karadjordjevič, King Alexander 142 Karadjordjevič, King Petar 99, 206n25 Karadjordjevič dynasty 70, 85 Kardelj, Edvard 164, 165, 193, 197, 198, 200, 201, 211n117, 217, 220 Karlin, Andrej 137

298  Names Index Karst 19, 73, 133, 134, 172, 231, 251, 257 Karst Plateau see Karst Kazlerović, Triša 71 Kefalonia 180, 205 Kennan, George 243n23 Kerka River 65 Kirk, Alexander 221, 243n20 Kissinger, Henry 260, 276n64 Klagenfurt 163, 185, 188 Kobarid 73; see Caporetto Kočevje 203 Komen 170, 208n65; see also Comeno Koper 10, 269, 270, 279n119, 279n120; see also Capodistria Korčula Archipelago 61; see also Curzola Archipelago Korošec, Antun 85, 161 Kosovo 107, 155, 288 Kotor 60; see also Cattaro Kozina 208n65, 257 Kraigher, Boris 216, 244n46 Kranjska 83; see also Carniola Krk 65; see also Veglia Krn 73; see also Monte Nero Kübler, Ludwig 191, 192 Kum 263 Kupa 155, 178n106 Kvarner Gulf 55; see also Gulf of Quarnero Labin 102; see also Albona Laginja, Matko 78n43 Lagosta 111, 112 Lampe, Franc 131 Lapčević, Dragiša 71 Larcher, Guido 56 Lastovo 112; see also Lagosta Leskošek, Franc 214 Le Tre Venezie 10, 133 Levant, the 37, 40, 53, 54, 143, 186 Liburnia 178 – 9n109 Libya 41, 42, 58, 65, 66, 167, 283 Lipa 208n65 Lipman, Dante 71 Lisarica 65 Lissa 11, 17, 61, 158 Ljubljana 10, 91, 92, 94, 98, 101, 132, 138, 145, 155, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 175n47, 177 – 8n100, 187, 188, 189, 200, 203, 257, 269, 272; see also Lubiana Lloyd Georges 111, 116n48 Lodi, Luigi 21

London 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 67, 71, 72, 111, 162, 195, 235, 256 Lorković, Ivan 78n43 Lovrić, Drago 99 Lubiana 10, 151n116, 155, 160, 161, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170, 178n109, 181, 185, 187, 261; see also Ljubljana Lussino 112 Macchio, Karl von 62, 64 Maccotta, Walter G. 256, 257 Macedonia 155, 258 Maclean, Fitzroy 202, 208 – 9n67, 212 – 13n136 Macmillan, Harold 219 Maffei, Carlo Alberto 21 Mahnič, Anton 93 Malatesta, Errico 110 Mancini, Stanislao 20, 28n73 Maranelli, Carlo 56, 77n39 Maria Theresa, Empress 263 Maribor 261 Mario, Alberto 17 Martini, Enrico (Mauri) 248n114 Martino, Antonio 268 Massola, Umberto 200 Matteotti, Giacomo 127 Mayer, Teodoro 17, 78n41 Mazzini, Giuseppe 9, 10, 11, 16, 24n25, 26n52, 30, 31, 69, 77n35, 282 Medici, Giuseppe 256, 275n44 Mediterranean Sea 118n95, 154, 157, 201, 207n45, 214, 259, 260, 264, 276n59 Melegari, Luigi Amedeo 15, 25n42 Menicacci, Stefano 258 Meran 124; see also Merano Merano 124 Mesić, Stipe 272 Metternich, Klemens von 180 Miani, Ercole 97, 120n125 Minić, Miloš 256 Mogorović, Bogdan 188 Mojsov, Lazar 276n62 Molotov, Vyacheslav 154, 225 Monfalcone 10, 94, 102, 182, 200, 224, 226, 228, 254, 257, 261 Montenegro 65, 70, 83, 85, 87, 121 – 2n163, 155, 159, 160, 168, 178n105, 288 Monte Nero 73, 131 Moravia 187 Moro, Aldo 255, 256, 257, 258, 260

Names Index  299 Mosconi, Antonio 94, 98, 101 Moscow 163, 194, 196, 202, 210n85, 219, 225, 234, 236, 243n22, 247n103, 250 Mount Caldera 10 Mount Maggiore 10, 57, 64, 66, 89, 171, 178 – 9n109 Mount Nevoso 2, 57, 90, 112, 148n35, 192, 229 Mount Perda 10; see also Mount Caldera Mount Sabotin 73; see also Mount Sabotino Mount Sabotino 73, 110 Mount San Michele 73 Mount Santo 73, 273 Mount Učka 10; see also Mount Maggiore Mrach, Giovanni 129 Muggia 237, 238, 248n120, 257 Mussolini, Benito 64, 74, 90, 104, 110, 111, 120n120, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147n35, 147n36, 149n50, 153n163, 154, 155, 157, 160, 164, 166, 167, 171, 175n44, 180, 185, 195, 205n1, 205n5, 221, 288 Muti, Riccardo 272 Nadiža River 11; see also Natisone River Naldi, Filippo 64 Naples 16, 20, 26n48, 196 Napolitano, Giorgio 272, 273 Natali, Lorenzo 259, 260, 261 Nathan, Ernesto 32, 37 Natisone River/Valley 11, 198, 202, 210n84, 268 Natlačen, Marko 160, 167 Near East 69, 89 Nenni, Pietro 217, 228 Nitti, Francesco Saverio 90, 94, 96, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 119 – 20n114, 120n131, 285 Notranjsko 176n77 Novak, Bogdan 204 Nova Trst 262; see also Trieste; Trst Novigrad 228; see also Cittanova d’Istria Oberdan, Guglielmo 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 27n66, 27n67, 27n68, 28n71, 28n77, 28n82, 28n83, 46n25, 52, 55, 144, 282

Oberdank 18; see also Oberdan Oberdorfer, Aldo 97, 118n75, 119n104 Olivi, Licurgo 220 Opatija 56; see also Abbazia Opčina 171; see also Opicina Opicina 171, 191, 216, 257 Orlando, Taddeo 176n69, 177n92 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele 71, 72, 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 116n39 Ottoman Empire 116n34 Padoan, Vanni 203 Pagnini, Silvio 189 Pahor, Borut 273 Paladin, Giovanni 181, 182, 192, 212n130, 253 Palagruža 112; see also Pelagosa Palmanova 11 Papini, Giovanni 39, 76n12 Parenzo 17, 226 Paris 9, 60, 67, 78, 78n44, 79n65, 81n107, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 96, 101, 103, 111, 116n31, 116n37, 169, 197, 225, 227, 229, 234, 245n63 Pašić, Nikola 57, 61, 66, 70, 78n47, 81n126, 84, 87 Pavelić, Ante 78n43, 85, 142, 145 Pazin 101; see also Pisino Pecorari, Fausto 229, 253 Pedrotti, Giovanni 56 Pelagosa 112 Peljasac 61; see also Sabbioncello Pella, Giuseppe 236, 248n125 Perathoner, Julius 124 Peterle, Lojze 268 Petitti di Roreto, Carlo 92, 93, 96, 98 Petrograd/Saint Petersburg 57, 60, 61, 78n47, 79n65 Piave River 27n66, 73 Pinguente 47n29 Piran 35; see also Pirano Pirano 35, 46 – 7n28, 211n113, 226, 236, 238 Piscel, Antonio 70, 80n88 Pisino 101, 139, 181, 182, 183, 206n18 Pisoni, Zeffirino 203 Pitacco, Giorgio 56, 67, 68 Pizzi, Nilla 241 Pletz/Bovec 73; see also Plezzo Plezzo 73 Plomin 90; see also Fianona Podgrad 61; see also Castelnuovo Poincaré, Raymond 60, 61

300  Names Index Pola 10, 17, 23n13, 34, 58, 85, 91, 94, 98, 99, 101, 102, 119n108, 129, 131, 134, 144, 181, 182, 188, 216, 217, 223, 225, 226, 283 Popović, Koča 255 Poreč 17; see also Parenzo Porto Barros 113 Porzûs 204, 212n130, 215 Postoina 10; see also Postojna Postojna 10, 92, 257 Postumia 92; see also Postojna Prague 98, 145, 226, 277n71 Prekmurje 115n17 Prezzolini, Giuseppe 39, 76n12 Pribičevič, Svetozar 85 Procraivez 151n111 Prodi, Romano 269 Puecher, Edmondo 97, 118n85 Pula 11, 273; see also Pola Punta Grossa 240 Quarantotti Gambini, Pier Antonio 219 Rab 65; see also Arbe Radič, Stefan 141 Raetian/Rethian Alps 17, 65 Ragusa Vecchia 65 Ragusin Righi, Luigi 131, 132, 133, 135, 136 Rahn, Rudolf 181 Raimondo, Fabrizio 121n137 Rainer, Friedrich 185, 186, 187, 188, 189 Raša River 34; see also Arsa River Redipuglia 74, 236, 273 Regent, Ivan 140, 163 Reggio [di Calabria] 262 Reina, Carlo 107, 108 Resio, Carlo 100 Ricasoli, Bettino 12, 24n30, 34 Rifembergo 131 Rizzo, Luigi 107, 108, 121n148 Rjeka 55, 130, 139, 257; see also Fiume Roatta, Mario 161, 165, 176n65, 176n70, 177n89, 177n93, 177n95, 177 – 8n100 Robotti, Mario 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 176n65, 177 – 8n100 Rocco, Alfredo 127 Romania 57, 79n72, 83, 87, 88, 143, 154, 157, 197, 288 Romano, Sergio 4, 25n44, 117n58; 245 – 6n65, 260, 265, 290 Romanov, Czar Nicholas 61

Ronchi 18, 104 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 196, 211n103, 218 Rossetti, Domenico 189 Rovereto 10 Rovigno 17, 151n111, 182, 226 Rovinj 17; see also Rovigno Rožman, Gregorij 161, 188, 189 Rumor, Mariano 252, 258 Rupnik, Leon 188, 189 Rusinow, Dennison 119n109, 125, 142, 143, 171, 172n13, 173n17, 178n109, 181, 204, 227, 286 Russia 52, 53, 61, 64, 65, 70, 76n16, 83, 89, 105, 23n19, 162, 226 Rybar, Otokar 78n43 Sabbioncello 61, 65 Sachselehner, Johannes 208n49 Saffi, Aurelio 34, 46n23 Salandra, Antonio 56, 58, 62, 78n54, 79n76 Salata, Francesco 27n66, 28n83, 46n25, 57, 77n40, 88, 94, 127, 128, 147n6, 157, 286 Salcano 257; see also Solkan Salorno 11, 59, 62, 284 Salvemini, Gaetano 21, 24n25, 30, 39, 42, 46n22, 51, 56, 57, 66, 70, 71, 72, 77n35, 81n125, 86, 88, 89, 94, 115n16, 140, 155, 195, 246n72, 282 San Daniele del Carso 170 San Sabba 190 Santin, Antonio 168, 233, 252 Saragat, Giuseppe 255 Sarajevo 50 Sarti, Adolfo 259, 276n59 Sauro, Italo 136 Sauro, Nazario 55 Sava River 277n73 Sazonov, Sergei Dmitrievich 57, 60, 61, 78n47 Schiffrer, Carlo 39, 118n96, 119n99, 212n130, 220, 275n30, 287 Schmitt, Carl 231 Schneeberg/Snežnik 2; see also Mount Nevoso Schott-Dessico, Edoardo 71 Sebenico 65 Segna 155 Segni, Antonio 255 Segré, Salvatore 58 Seismit-Doda, Federico 12, 20 Sejdov, Mirdmat 208n62

Names Index  301 Semich, Giovanni 71 Senj 115; see also Segna Serbia 52, 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 70, 76n16, 78n47, 79n72, 83, 84, 85, 87, 116n32, 286 Servola 237, 248n120 Sesana 170, 257 Sestan, Antonio 71 Seton-Watson, Robert 58, 71, 72, 77n35, 78n49, 86 Sežana 170; see also Sesana Sforza, Carlo 4, 107, 112, 113, 121n134, 141, 195, 234, 235, 284, 286 Šibenik 65; see also Sebenico Sincich, Giuseppe 218 Sinigaglia, Oscar 104, 121n148 Sklanica/Sveta Gora 73; see also Mount Santo Slataper, Scipio 19, 22n2, 26n55, 27n58, 27n60, 36, 39, 40, 43, 44, 55, 283, 287 Slavić, Matija 160 Slavic territories 83, 84, 85, 139 Slavonia 83 Slovakia 169, 279n120 Slovenia 3, 78n47, 84, 87, 82n130, 113, 140, 154, 155, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 171, 174n40, 176n72, 181, 187, 192, 193, 197, 214, 220, 232, 250, 256, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 278n82, 278n93, 288, 290 Slovenian Littoral 183, 192, 197, 198, 240 Slovenian territories see Slovenia Smodlaka, Josip 195 Šnuderl, Boris 257 Soča River 12; see also Isonzo River Solana, Antonio 269 Solkan 257, 263 Sonnino, Sidney 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 67, 69, 72, 77n32, 78n41, 84, 87, 89, 90, 94, 283 Sorel, Georges 51, 99, 110 Southeastern Europe 157 South Tyrol 10, 60, 62, 65, 68, 69, 124, 125, 131, 136, 147n6, 150n89, 153n160, 158, 173n16, 186, 187, 227, 284 South Tyrolean territories see South Tyrol Soviet Union 154, 159, 162, 164, 175n50, 177 – 8n100, 196, 218, 226, 227, 228, 231, 233, 234, 241,

243n23, 254n65, 247n94, 239, 259, 260, 261, 272, 274n4, 288 Spaini, Alberto 39 Spalaikovitch, Miroslav 57, 61 Spalatin, Alessandro 188 Spalato 88, 99, 100, 118n95, 138, 155, 157, 158, 164, 185 Spehar, Franck 188 Spinčić, Vjekoslav 78n43 Split 88, 271; see also Spalato Staffieri, Giulio 267, 278n100 Stalin, Josef 163, 196, 217, 219, 225, 226, 250 Stalingrad 218 Štanjel 170; see also San Daniele del Carso Stelvio Pass 65, 72 Stettinius, Edward 221, 243n20 Stevenson, Ralph 219 Stilfser, Joch 65; see also Stelvio Pass Stille, Ugo 237 Stojadinović, Kosta 160 Stone, Ellery 195, 210n95, 214 Strazzeri, Gustavo 181 Stuparich, Carlo 55 Stuparich, Giani 39, 40, 55, 231, 287 Sturzo, Luigi 195, 226 Styria 87, 115n17, 187 Šubašić, Ivan 196 Süditrol 65; see also South Tyrol Supilo, Franjo 59, 60 Sušak 111; see also Sussak Sussak 111, 124, 144, 155, 169, 215 Suvich, Fulvio 142, 143 Sveta Gora 73; see also Mount Santo Tagliamento River 70, 193, 203 Tamaro, Attilio 22n1, 27n67, 38, 48 – 9n63, 54, 56, 67, 76n26, 77n39, 80n90, 126, 143, 283 Tarchiani, Alberto 195, 227, 236, 248n120 Tasca, Angelo 88, 102, 147n9, 285 Taviani, Paolo Emilio 236, 237, 241, 242, 247n111, 248n119 Tepavac, Mirko 255 Testa, Temistocle 171 Thaler, Zoran 267, 269 Thomas, Albert 72 Timavo River 72, 257 Timav/Timava River 72; see also Timavo River Timeus Ruggero 7, 16, 40, 41, 43, 48n58, 53, 55, 76n22, 126, 146

302  Names Index Tiso Josef 169 Tito 154, 159, 163, 165, 183, 185, 192, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 208n62, 212 – 13n136, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 227, 228, 231, 235, 236, 237, 240, 242n10, 243n20, 245n58, 248n219, 251, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 276n55 Tittoni, Tommaso 90, 91 Toffanin, Mario 204 Togliatti, Palmiro 198, 200, 201, 216, 217, 223, 224, 228 Tolmein 91 Tolmino 91; see also Tolmein Tolomei, Ettore 55 Tomažič, Pinko 171 Tommaseo, Nicolò 9 Torre, Andrea 48n63, 54, 55, 60, 71, 283 Toscanini, Arturo 110 Toynbee, Arnold 245n64, 261, 276 – 7n69 Traù 99, 105 Tremaglia, Mirko 267, 276n55 Trentino 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 22n2, 23n19, 23n20, 24n28, 32, 34, 38, 43, 45n14, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 68, 72, 283 Trentino-Alto Adige 185, 253 Trento 10, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22n1, 26n57, 39, 43, 46n25, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 86, 96, 98, 103, 118n79, 120n125, 241, 242 Treves, Carlo 140 Tribania 65 Tribanij 65; see also Tribania Trieste 1, 3, 4, 5n13, 5 – 6n13, 7, 9 – 11, 14 – 21, 22n1, 22n8, 23n19, 23 – 4n20, 24n28, 25n41, 25n45, 26n55, 26n57, 27n58, 27n70, 32 – 41, 43, 44, 45n12, 46n25, 46 – 7n28, 47n32, 48n50, 48n62, 49n67, 49n72, 53 – 60, 62, 64, 65, 67 – 9, 77n39, 78n41, 86, 87, 91, 92, 94 – 104, 110, 113, 115n18, 116n48, 117n73, 117n74, 118n79, 118n85, 119n97, 119n101, 119n103, 119n108, 120n125, 123, 124, 126, 129 – 31, 134 – 9, 142 – 5, 151n111, 153n160, 153n163, 153n166, 155, 157, 160, 163, 168, 170, 171, 178n109, 181, 185 – 201, 203, 204, 207n41, 207n44, 211n113, 211 – 12n117, 212n122, 130,

213n141, 214 – 21, 223 – 6, 228, 229, 231 – 8, 240 – 2, 243n18, 243n19, 243n20, 26, 245n58, 245n62, 245n64, 246n68, 246n73, 248n114, 248n125, 249n142, 250 – 8, 260 – 70, 272, 274n4, 274n7, 274n8, 277n71, 277n73, 279n119, 279n124, 282 – 5, 287 – 90 Trnovo, Woods of 171, 192 Trogir 99; see also Traù Trst 237, 263; see also Trieste Truman, Harry 216, 242n10 Trumbić, Ante 57, 60, 62, 78n44, 111, 112 Tuntar, Giuseppe 102 Turati, Filippo 140 Türk, Danilo 272, 273 Turkey 40, 59, 88, 89, 141, 211n114, 234, 270, 276n59 Tyrol 9, 10, 11, 15, 23n12, 37, 60, 62, 66, 68, 69, 124, 125, 131, 136n6, 153n160 Učka 10; see also Mount Maggiore Udine 11, 20, 70, 73, 87, 129, 191, 204, 257, 264, 268 Umag 237; see also Umago Umago 237 United States 83, 86, 89, 90, 112, 118n95, 221, 226, 227, 228, 234, 235, 245n65, 260 Valdevit, Giampaolo 224, 234, 244n31, 247n95, 249n137, 251, 255, 257 Valiani, Leo 62, 69, 114n4, 229 Valona 59, 60, 62, 65, 111 Valussi, Giorgio 1, 5n8, 10, 246n78, 288 Valussi, Pacifico 39 Vatican State, the 266 Vega, Jurij 131 Veglia 65, 93, 158 Velebit, Vladimir 236, 237, 248n120, 256, 257, 262 Venetia, the 7, 10, 11, 22n2, 23n19 Venezia Giulia (Giulia) 2, 3, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45n14, 46n25, 47n28, 54, 55, 56, 65, 69, 71, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 102, 104, 105, 107, 119n109, 120n125, 121n143, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147n6, 147n9, 148n41, 148n43,

Names Index  303 150n91, 151n107, 151n116, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172n13, 178n109, 180, 181, 182, 185, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 205, 211n113, 214, 216, 217, 221, 223, 225, 226, 242, 242n1, 251, 252, 253, 272, 274n17, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290 Venezian, Felice 17, 32, 37 Venezian, Giacomo 9 Venice 10, 16, 24n30, 26n56, 46n25, 79n63, 103, 157, 175n44, 226, 255, 257, 267 Verdi, Giuseppe 47n42; 273 Verzutti, Augusto 220 Vidali, Vittorio 250 Vienna 15, 16, 18, 28n89, 32, 38, 45n13, 50, 53, 62, 75n7, 76n18, 83, 92, 93, 112, 161, 196, 226, 285 Vigezzi, Brunello 4, 54, 59, 64, 76n12, 76n19, 77n29 Vilfan, Josep 126, 128, 148n35 Vilhar, Miroslav 131 Villa del Nevoso 170, 177 – 8n109 Visconti Venosta, Emilio 14, 195 Višinskij, Andrej 225 Vittorio Emanuele II, King 14, 16, 34, 46n25 Vittorio Emanuele III, King 126 Vittorio Veneto 73, 81n124 Vivante, Angelo 39, 40, 42, 44 Vlorë 59; see also Valona Vojnović, Lujo 60 Volarič, Hrabroslav 131 Volosca 56, 141 Volosko 56; see also Volosca Volpe, Gioacchino 9, 22n4, 24n21, 45n2 Vratuša, Anton 194, 197 Waldock, Sir Hamphrey 234 Washington 195, 201, 226, 227, 248n120

Weber, Max 244n39, 283 Western Europe 233 Wickham Steed, Henry 58, 60, 71, 72, 77n32, 77n35, 86 Wilson, Henry M. 201 Wilson, Woodrow 2, 71, 72, 84, 86, 89, 90, 111, 112, 113, 115n48, 225, 284 Winterton, John 235 Xidias, Spiro 55 Yugoslavia 3, 57, 70, 72, 78n49, 85, 86, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 111, 112, 113, 114, 123, 124, 127, 130, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 151n116, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172n13, 173n31, 177n89, 177 – 8n100, 180, 183, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 211n14, 211 – 12n17, 214, 216, 217, 218, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245n58, 246n68, 247n111, 248n120, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271, 274n4, 275n45, 284, 285, 287, 288, 289 Zadar 59; see also Zara Zagreb 85, 92, 101, 132, 138, 269 Zakriž 203 Zanella, Riccardo 123 Zara 59, 61, 66, 71, 90, 94, 107, 111, 112, 129, 131, 155, 158, 159, 164, 185, 201, 202, 253 Zaule 237, 248n120 Zenatti, Albino 55 Zoli, Adone 251 Zona del Collio 91; see also Brda Zweig, Stefan 50 Zwitter, Fran 210n84