The South Tyrol Way E-Book

Hans Karl Peterlini

• Herausgeber: StudienVerlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 491

Beschreibung

In lively language, Hans Karl Peterlini guides us through the recent history of South Tyrol. He illuminates the developments and key events, including the fighting in the First World War, the option and Italianisation of the country under the fascists, the political efforts for autonomy and the bomb attacks. Furthermore, Peterlini tells the stories of the people of South Tyrol, their economies, cultural creations and lifestyles, their misunderstandings, and achievements in reconciliation - right up to the present day.

Leseprobe

Inhalt

Heirs to the War

Becoming a Country

Fine Cuisine and Bitter Times

In the Grip of the Dictatorship

Between Ideologies

Home to the Realm of Nothing

“Liberation” as Trauma

1945: a New Beginning

The Taboo and Sting of the Brenner Border

Playing Poker for the Province

A Spirit of optimism and the „Death March“

Change of Strategy

Light and Shadow of a Mass Protest

A Country Burns

From the Night of Fire to the Milan Trial

Negotiations Under a Hail of Bullets

Breaks and Break-ups

The New Lightness of Being South Tyrolean

Learning Autonomy

“One Tyrol” with Two Faces

The Turning of the Years

Harvest Time

Power and Provinciality

Lessons of a Success Story

A Laboratory for the Future?

Bibliography

Heirs to the War

Nationalism and wartime trauma in the cradle of a European conflict region – from the London Secret Treaty to the farewell of the Habsburg monarchy

South Tyrol is a war child. At the origins of the country as it understands itself in the present, there was a traumatic experience that tore away ideas about the future, securities, and livelihoods. It confronted people with completely changed living conditions and political perspectives. “This is the end, an end of horror,” the daily newspaper Der Tiroler described the situation in Bozen on 8 November 1918. A beginning that could bring an end to the horror was probably hard to see at the time.

The end of the First World War meant the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, to which Tyrol had belonged for centuries (cf. Sporer-Heis, 2008). This so-called “old Tyrol” comprised today’s North and East Tyrol in Austria, today’s South Tyrol, the Italian-speaking Welschtirol – or Trentino – from Salurn to Borghetto, and the Ladin-speaking Dolomites valleys in Trentino and Belluno (cf. Taibon, 2005; Moroder, 2016). The “country” reached from Kitzbühel on the north side of the Alps to Lake Garda.

Cracks in this unit had been announced long before that. In 1809, during the legendary Tyrolean freedom fights against the Napoleonic-Bavarian occupation, the German, Italian, and Ladin Schützen (shooters)1 still marched together for their ideal of “God, Emperor, and Fatherland” (Cole, 2000, p. 338; Cole, 2001, p. 78); from the middle of the 19th century onwards, the German- and Italian-speaking Tyrols, in particular, began to diverge. The liberal revolutions of 1848, in which the awakening national language consciousness spurred on the need for more freedom, triggered completely different moods in the Italian and German parts of Tyrol (cf. Heiss & Götz, 1998, p. 9). The German district governor, Johann Jakob Staffler from the Puster Valley, complained, for example, in 1848 that “the evil spirit of defiance and want of discipline” was spreading and that “nonsensical cries” of “freedom, equality, brotherhood” were being heard everywhere (Staffler, J., 1901, p. 78). At the same time, a liberal elite in Trento tried to lever the mood for the annexation of Welschtirol to Lombardy. The area around Milan was Austrian at the time but represented a homogeneous Italian-language and economically vital region. When the troops around Giuseppe Garibaldi, animated by the national idea of Italian unity, advanced against the Austrian borders, German-Tyrolean students and shooters, or riflemen (the Schützen), marched shoulder to shoulder to the southern front (Fontana, 1978, pp. 23–4). This concord is remarkable because the students were inspired by and enthusiastic about the spirit of national liberty (though German), while the shooters were loyal to the emperor.

In Welschtirol, the situation was less clear. Vast parts of the population still identified themselves with the monarchy, but intellectual and open-minded clerical circles increasingly oriented themselves toward Italy. Hardening, discord, and nationalisms that were building up even within the old Tyrol were harbingers of the subsequent breakup. Welschtirol longed for more autonomy and an upswing from its hinterland existence on the edge of the monarchy. At the same time, significant and increasingly nationalistic forces in German-speaking Tyrol opposed it (Peterlini, H. K., 2008a, p. 27). A German patriotic mobilization marked the centennial celebrations in 1909 in memory of 1809 and an inner withdrawal of Welschtirol from the monarchy (cf. Heiss, 2008, pp. 119–24; Hirn 1909/1983).2 The war was already casting its shadow at this time.

The shots from Sarajevo which killed the heir to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, landed right in the middle of a powder keg, unleashing the readiness for war that had been held back only with difficulty through alliances, pacts of attack and non-aggression. Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 must also be seen in the light of the power struggles between Germany and Austria on the one hand and Russia, France and Great Britain on the other. Otherwise, it would be difficult to understand how the assassination could have triggered the chain reaction that plunged Europe into an unprecedented war. Of particular importance for Tyrol was the problematic relationship between Austria and Italy. The Italian state had only emerged from the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1861. It had established its young national identity precisely during the wars of independence over the Austrian-dominated northern Italian territories, especially with the conquest of Piedmont in 1858 and Milan in 1859 as the most critical steps toward the unification of Italy (cf. Forcher & Peterlini 2010, pp. 197–201). An early uprising against Austria had succeeded in 1848 but was still short-lived. Field Marshal Radetzky was first beaten in Milan and reclaimed the territory after three months. In 1866, Austria was still able to defend Veneto and Friuli but had to cede both areas because of its defeat by Prussia, which was allied with Italy. In 1870, Italy also conquered Rome and pushed back the papal states. Italian unification was almost complete, except for the last two “unredeemed” territories of Trento and Trieste, the terra irredenta (cf. Chisholm, 1911).

Italian irredentism, however, increasingly sought not only the Italian part of Tyrol – then Welschtirol, and now Trentino – but the entire area south of the Brenner Pass, i.e. including southern German- and Ladin-speaking Tyrol. Even a rather strategic reconciliation in the Austro-Italian “hereditary enmity” (Gatterer, 1972), when the Kingdom of Italy entered the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany in 1882, did not change this. Formal reconciliation remained a pact that the population did not feel for and which was easy to revoke. With the outbreak of the First World War, Italy seized its opportunity. Strictly speaking, the Triple Alliance was only obliged to show solidarity with its partners in the event of a defensive war, but not in wars of aggression. Thus, Italy initially declared itself neutral and, at the same time, began to negotiate with both sides. From Austria, it demanded Trieste, Istria, and Welschtirol, a proposal which Emperor Franz Joseph I initially firmly rejected. This position only loosened with increasing Italian propaganda for entering the war against Austria. In 1915, Vienna signaled its intention to cede “Tyrol as far as it is of Italian nationality” (Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 255). Too late: Italy had received more far-reaching promises in the event of its entry into the war alongside France, Great Britain, and Russia (Entente). With Article 4 of the London Secret Treaty of 26 April 1915, Italy was granted the territories of Trieste with the Istrian peninsula, Trentino, and “the Cisalpine Tyrol with its natural geographical and natural frontier” (Pollard, 1998, p. 20). The “natural frontier” was defined as the main ridge of the Alps with the Brenner Pass, and the Cisalpine Tyrol was simply the South Tyrol of today (cf. Moos, 2017). Immediately after that, on 4 May 1915, Italy resigned from the Triple Alliance, and on 23 May it declared war on Austria, its partner in the dissolved defense alliance.

Thus Tyrol was immediately on the verge of a virtually defenseless front. Tyrol’s conscripts had already been drafted to the Eastern Front, including the Kaiserjäger regiments, the Schützen, and the Landsturm regiments intended as a reserve. The Austrian military command had abandoned the Landlibell of 1511, which entrusted the Tyroleans with defending their land and saved them from military service outside the country. A whim of history, because this principle was one of the reasons why Tyrol had risen against the Napoleonic-Bavarian occupation in 1809, the densest initiation experience of the Tyrolean shooters’ tradition (cf. Peterlini, H. K., 2010a/b). From one day to the other, national defense, the central motif of Tyrolean identity under Austria, was in the hands of young boys and older men, who were rounded up into a defense force of some 30,000 men and sent to the southern outposts of the monarchy. The myth of national defense had been unintentionally reactivated by injury to the Landlibell (cf. Hartungen, 1995). The riflemen were assisted – another whim of history – by a relief corps from Bavaria, the former enemy territory (cf. Voigt, 2015). The mission of the 13 battalions of the German and largely Bavarian Alpenkorps was to hold the line at the Inn; the area south of the Brenner seemed to be lost. Nevertheless, the joint contingent was able to stop the “walk to Innsbruck” (Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 257) hoped for by the Italian side at the southern borders of Tyrol, until the Kaiserjäger and Shooters returned from Serbia and Russia and took over the national defense. Units of the Imperial and Royal Army supported them.

The “front in rock and ice” (Langes, 1983), as it is mythically transfigured, was cruel. The soldiers of the two armies faced each other in dogged trench warfare under extreme conditions, at exposed heights and in bitter cold, with meager equipment and impaired supplies. Apart from those areas lost in the first Italian onslaught, such as Ampezzo in particular, not a single meter of ground was surrendered. The price of this was unimaginably high on both sides. The Isonzo Front to the east was mainly fought over; the fourth of twelve Isonzo battles alone cost the Italian troops 120,000 and the Austrian army 70,000 dead. A previously unimaginable expression of the mechanization of the war was the mine war in the mountains, especially at Monte Piano, north of Ampezzo, in the Dobbiaco and Sesto Dolomites and the Pasubio massif east of Rovereto. The troops first tried to penetrate underground tunnels to reach the enemy camp and hit it with explosives. Blasted-off rock spurs and mountaintops often became mass graves. The blowing up of the so-called Donkey Ridge at Pasubio cost the lives of between 500 and 800 Italian soldiers. Despite such violence, the front line hardly changed. Only in the last Isonzo battle at Caporetto/Karfreit (now Slovenian Kobarid) in October 1917 did the Austrians manage an unexpected breakthrough as far as the Piave. This victory also shows the technical brutalization of the war. After the first ineffective use of poison gas, which Germany had already begun to use in 1915, Austria used aggressive substances at Flitsch/Bovec. Once the gases had evaporated, the Austrian and German troops were able to advance through the Naklo Gorge over the bodies of an entire Italian unit and the carcasses of horses and dogs (cf. Östa, 2014; Rauchensteiner, 1997).

Caporetto became a synonym for Italian war trauma. It raised hopes too early for a final victory on the Tyrolean side. This hope also resonates in a proclamation of the Tyrolean Volksbund of 9 March 1918. It is, at the same time, a document of the national narrowing of the once-supranational self-image of Tyrol through the war: the Volksbund demanded a correction of the Austrian borders by moving them back to Lombardy, Veneto, and Friuli; a stronger alliance between Austria and Germany; the introduction of German as the official language for the entire monarchy; the rejection of Czech and Slavic plans to found a state; the indivisibility of Tyrol from Kufstein, not only to Borghetto but even to Verona; the fight against irredentism by strengthening German nationality; the expulsion of the irredentists and expropriation of their property, withholding pardon and citizenship; and the investiture of a German bishop for Trento (cf. Haas, 1999, p. 100; Steininger, 2017, pp. 14–15).

The course of the war did not turn in Austria’s favor. In 1918, food became scarce in the hinterland of Tyrol, and farms were run only by farmers’ wives and children, who had to maintain food production largely without mechanical support. Hunger spread, riots and strikes occurred, the army was further weakened by summer flu, and gradually the material superiority of the Italian troops became apparent. It was also apparent that the possible duration of the war had been underestimated. Strategic ideas turned out to be untenable. The vaccination of soldiers needed to be improved, and strategies for the food situation had been given too little consideration (cf. Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, pp. 257–60). The previously delayed construction of essential railway lines now had to be carried out to build important supply lines under hail of bullets, above all the Toblach–Cortina line. The Val Gardena railway was laid in a rush via Klausen to Ortisei, but, for the time being, it was not for tourism but for transporting soldiers. The construction of the Fleimstal railway from Neumarkt to Cavalese started only in 1916 under the pressure of the war (Solderer, 1999, pp. 272–73).3

When Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose term of office had begun in 1848, died on 21 November 1916, the end of the monarchy was already in sight. His successor, Emperor Karl I, later revered as the Emperor of Peace, was not able to end the tragedy inherited from his predecessor, despite many efforts. The renaming of the Landesschützen as Kaiserschützen (from “country’s” to “emperor’s” riflemen) testifies to the helplessness of an emperor who desired peace but could not end the war. In 1914, even many intellectuals and opponents of the monarchy had gone enthusiastically into war. Now the great battle had lost its fascination. The morale of the troops and the civilian population was shattered. On some fronts, soldiers on both sides began to communicate with the enemy on the other side, or at least tried to get across messages – in one case, using a dog – about agreed breaks in the fighting.

The strict military regime was also perceived as a burden in German Tyrol, and it was much more severe in Welschtirol, whose war patriotism was considered untrustworthy. Although Italy’s declaration of war had caused only about 700 citizens of Trentino to defect to the Italian army, the brutal Austrian military justice system took merciless action. The execution of leading but also nameless irredentists was intended to set an example, but it created the first Trentino martyrs, Cesare Battisti and his companions Damiano Chiesa and Fabio Filzi. Battisti, a socialist member of the Imperial Council, had long fought in vain for autonomy for Welschtirol. In the war against Austria and its monarchy, he saw a chance to combine the dream of a more just society with the fight for a free Trentino. However, according to Battisti’s ideas, only the Italian-speaking part of Tyrol should join with Italy. He rejected the demand for the Brenner border because this would lead to German irredentism in the new Italy. Such an attitude toward German South Tyrol might have been valuable after the war (cf. Peterlini, H.K., 2008a, pp. 25–9; Gatterer, 1997).

The mass evacuation of the frontline area was painful for the population. On the Italian side, 30,000 people were resettled, and on the Austrian side, 70,000. In Mitterndorf in Lower Austria, the notorious barrack camp for the Welschtirol evacuees was built. Supply and rations were catastrophic. Many died of hunger and disease. 1,700 Welschtiroleans, considered politically unreliable, were sent to the internment camp of Katzenau, where they were partly treated like cattle (cf. Peterlini, H.K., 2008a, p. 130).

Emperor Karl’s last attempt to turn around the fate of the declining monarchy was also in vain. It came far too late. The Federalist Manifesto of 18 October 1918, addressed to all the peoples of the monarchy and asking them to form their parliaments and governments, might have been a saving measure if it had been carried out around 1910. However, even minor concessions, such as an Italian university in Trento or Trieste, were shelved for as long as possible. The German-Tyrolean majority boycotted the demand for autonomy for Welschtirol for so long that the war made it obsolete. In 1918, Deutschtirol lamented 20,000 dead, four per cent of the population. Welschtirol lamented 60,000 dead in Galicia alone. It shows a particularly cynical side of the multi-ethnic monarchy: the “unreliable” Welschtiroleans were the first to be sent to the Eastern Front in 1914 (ibid, p. 130).

The fact that the “home front” had been successfully defended could not compensate for the heavy losses and setbacks on many other fronts. The new national governments, formed after Emperor Karl’s appeal to the people, began to withdraw their troops from the front one after the other. Thus, the Imperial Manifesto did not stop the collapse of the monarchy but accelerated it (cf. Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 260). At the Italian front, this meant that the struggle had been in vain. Austria no longer seemed able to oppose a large-scale offensive by Italian troops with massive British support on the Piave. On 28 October, Emperor Karl instructed his emissaries to conduct negotiations for an armistice and, just one day later, the Italian-British army units reached Vittorio Veneto. Austria had to bow to Italian conditions during the negotiations held in Villa Giusti near Padua. The terms included not only the evacuation of the Italian-populated areas of the monarchy but also of Tyrol as far as the Brenner Pass.

The armistice was signed on 3 November 1918 and was to come into force the day after at 3 p.m. This 24-hour period became a time trap: whether this was due to an oversight, misunderstanding, or failure of the army command was never clarified precisely. The fact is that the Austrian troops ceased warfare immediately after the armistice, leaving the Italian troops free for almost 24 hours (cf. Östa, 2014b). Without a fight, they were able to disarm 400,000 imperial soldiers and occupy the area they had so far managed to conquer. The Austrian troops made a disorderly retreat. The officers fled on the next available train toward Vienna, while the soldiers returned emaciated, demoralized, often uninhibited, robbed, and looted. For a long time, the Austrian interpretation of history saw the unfavorable armistice as an Italian deception; more recent interpretations place the primary responsibility with the overburdened Austrian army command (cf. Rauchensteiner, 2013, p. 1049). The Italian troops advanced as late as 3 November to Trieste and Trento, and on 4 November they reached Salurn from the south and the Vinschgau and Mendel Pass from the west. The armistice agreement allowed them to advance as far as the Brenner Pass and to position smaller units in Innsbruck and other strategic places north of the main Alpine ridge. On 6 November, they reached Meran and Bozen; on 10 November, the tricolor flag was planted at the Brenner Pass; and on 14 November, several battalions marched triumphantly into Bozen, among them the father of Andrea and Pietro Mitolo, who would later become leading neo-fascist politicians (cf. Peterlini, H.K., 2003, p. 191).

In the collapse of the monarchy and the turmoil of a disbanded and overrun Austrian army, Italian troops were now the dominant force in the future South Tyrol area. “Our army command,” the daily newspaper Der Tiroler wrote about the invasion on the morning of 14 November, “turned to the Italian army command with an urgent request to speed up the advance, to take over orderly service in Bozen and, after the current disorder had been cleared up, to carry out the troop departures […] as quickly as possible” (Solderer, 1999, p. 300). The Italian troops would have complied with the first request consistently without an explicit invitation, but the Italian army command did not think about departure. The newspaper Corriere della Sera described the mood in German Bozen as dazed and as an attempt “to put on an indifferent face so as not to expose itself to those who have currently arrived and have no intention of leaving again” (Solderer, 1999, p. 301). Three days earlier, on 11 November, Emperor Karl had declared his renunciation of all participation in affairs of the state. Within a few weeks, the empire of the Habsburg monarchy broke into pieces: Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia had already left the monarchy on 6 October, Poland followed on 7 October, Hungary on 24 October, and the Czech Republic on 28 October: “It was not a rapid collapse, but a dying out. In the end, one nation after another renounced its allegiance to the monarchy and declared its independence” (Rauchensteiner, 1997, p. 77). On 12 November, the Provisional National Assembly unanimously proclaimed the Republic of German Austria. Not only Trento but even Deutschtirol south of the Brenner Pass, soon to be called South Tyrol, would no longer belong to it.

1 The Schützen (shooters) were to a small extent a standing militia; essentially, the shooters formed the Landsturm, which was only called up in the event of defence and was made up of men of the estates who were fit for military service. With the Landlibell of 1511, Tyrol had been granted the right by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian to organize its own defence; in return, the Tyroleans should not be conscripted outside their country. This tradition of military self-defence is continued today as moral and cultural “country defense.” Shooters no longer carry sharp weapons but limit the use of disabled rifles – long prohibited in Italy but now admitted – only to salutes on ceremonial occasions. The translation of the term Schützen as “shooters” only partially describes the contemporary movement; other possible translations are “riflemen” or “marksmen” (because of marches in period costume, cf. e.g. Peterlini 2010a, 2010b and 2011a).

2 It was not by chance that the mammoth 875-page work by Josef Hirn was published on the occasion of the 100th anniversary and reprinted for the 175th anniversary in 1984. It is thus an expression of the enduring power of memory of the 1809 uprisings.

3 In this first of five volumes about South Tyrol in the 20th century, the authors of single chapters are not named, so the quotation refers only to the editor of the volume.

Becoming a Country4

The transition from military occupation to civil administration and annexation

The Italian army’s occupation without a fight of the area up to the Brenner Pass created facts. However, in ignorance of the London Secret Treaty, the occupation was not considered permanent in Deutschtirol. On 12 November 1918, the Provisional National Assembly unanimously decided to establish the new Republic of German Austria. The “County of Tyrol, except for the closed Italian settlement area” was still taken for granted as belonging to the new state (Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 262). However, Tyrol seemed to want to take a unique path: still, in October, an independent “National Assembly” was convened, which was less oriented toward Austria than toward Bavaria and Germany, where, on 9 November, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and the Republic was proclaimed. In Austria, there were massive forces aiming to annex the new republic to Germany very soon. This intention did not promote a favorable attitude of the victorious powers on the South Tyrolean question (ibid, pp. 263–4). The 14-point declaration by American President Woodrow Wilson (1918a) on a new order of peace in Europe gave the Tyroleans hope. His speech on “peace without victory” (Throntveit, 2011, p. 448) on 22 January 1917 promised a just world order in which the right of the stronger should not prevail over the weaker. In a speech given on 27 September 1918 at George Washington’s grave, Wilson reaffirmed his position on the second of four points: “The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery” (Wilson, 1918, p. 398).5 Italy’s claims seemed limited by point 9 of the 14-point declaration, since the “readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.” Although the USA was the only victorious power not bound by the London Secret Treaty, Wilson no longer took such a clear position in the negotiations. He initially agreed to the principle that border corrections should also take into account the security needs of states. Thus, the USA regarded the Sexten mountains of South Tyrol as a natural barrier against invasion. The crucial point, however, was another. Wilson did not speak of the right of self-determination either in the 14 points or in most of his speeches, but of privileged self-government, by which he meant federalist solutions in the sense of internal self-determination (cf. Throntveit, 2011, p. 446). Moreover, he didn’t so much have small ethnic minorities in mind, but rather oppressed nations with a past as a state, which was not the case for South Tyrol (cf. Schwabe, 2001, p. 92).

The leading Tyrolean parties read “self-determination” where, at best, “self-government” was meant. After the completely exaggerated demands made before the war’s end, including Milan’s return to Austria, they were gearing up for a future with the new Austria or even an independent state (cf. Forcher, 2006, pp. 304–6). On the initiative of a South Tyrolean delegation, the Tyrolean government decided on 3 May 1919 “to bring to the attention of the Paris Peace Conference that Tyrol is determined to proclaim the right of self-determination and the closed German and Ladin settlement area up to the Salurner Klause as an independent, democratic and neutral Free State of Tyrol, if this is the only way to preserve the unity of this area” (ibid, p. 305). Only the fate of the Italian-speaking Tyrol was considered open. Thus, it was discussed whether the Welschtiroleans should get the opportunity to vote between Italy and Austria or the “Free State of Tyrol” for their future state affiliation.

Hopes were also raised by the – otherwise little appreciated – social democratic and socialist forces in Italy, which, in line with Cesare Battisti, wanted to refrain from annexing non-Italian territories. Even amid the jubilation of the Italian conquest on 21 November 1918, socialist leader Filippo Turati took the position in parliament that the right to self-determination should be respected when drawing borders. When, in July 1919, all of South Tyrol’s then 172 municipalities voted in a joint petition against the annexation of the country by Italy, Turati took the view that “this free expression of the will of a free population” (Lechner, 2000a, p. 20) must be respected. Leonida Bissolati, another socialist-oriented minister, even resigned from his post in protest against the looming annexation. In the struggle for Italian unification, forces had come together that were now breaking up. The socialist bloc was more sensitive to minorities, while the nationalist forces insisted on the Brenner border. Their most important spokesman became the Trentino-born irredentist Ettore Tolomei (cf. Ferrandi, 2020). The geographer and historian, who had long been considered an oddball, settled in the mountain village of Glen, near Montan, in 1906 to “scientifically” justify Italy’s claim to South Tyrol by translating all the names of places and fields. At the beginning of the war, he crossed the border into Italy and returned with the Italian troops to complete his life’s work (cf. Peterlini, 1999c, p. 248). A temporary companion of Battisti was Benito Mussolini, who had been expelled from Austria in 1909 because of his propaganda, which at first was less nationalistic than revolutionary-socialist inspired (ibid, p. 247). By contrast, the Catholic opponent of Battisti in Trentino, Alcide De Gasperi,6 was classified as austriacante (pro-Austrian). He remained a member of the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) until the collapse of the monarchy. When the Imperial Council, mainly suspended during the war, met again in 1917, the names of those members of parliament whose “mandates had been vacated by a final court decision” were read out, including that of his executed rival Battisti. De Gasperi, who became prime minister of Italy after the Second World War, kept the minutes (ibid, p. 249).

Immediately after the armistice, the politically significant forces in South Tyrol tried to form. One difficulty was that all connections over the Brenner Pass would be cut. Italian traffic and communications controls were rigorous, the Brenner was impassable, and postal and telegraph routes were blocked. Even carrier pigeons were confiscated to prevent any contact between South Tyrol and Austria. The South Tyroleans had to stand on their own. Thus, the Provisional National Council for German South Tyrol, as the occupied territory was now called, was convened (cf. Sölch, 1930, p. 406). In the spirit of “popular” cohesion, the Tiroler Volkspartei (Tyrolean People’s Party) and the Deutschfreiheitlichen Partei (German Liberal Party) ended their often-fierce battles between conservative and liberal ideology. The rift in the Social Democratic Party – which never gained a strong foothold in Tyrol – was not bridged (cf. Holzer, 1991, p. 46).

The supreme head of the National Council was the mayor of Bozen, Julius Perathoner, a charismatic personality with a highly German-national attitude in the tradition of the Liberal Party. On 16 November, the German South Tyrolean National Council issued an official gazette proclaiming the “Indivisible Republic of South Tyrol” (facsimile in Parteli, 1988, pp. 9–11) and a resolution to introduce its own taxes, currency, and stamps. However, the dream of an independent “State of South Tyrol” only lasted for a short time: the Italian military government dissolved the National Council in January 1919, as it had not been legitimized by either the Austrian or the Italian government.

The balance of power was quite different. On 30 October 1918, the Allied War Council unanimously decided on a proposal from Great Britain to demarcate the border laid down in the London Secret Treaty with Italy. US President Wilson also agreed. The United States and France tried to make the emerging Yugoslavia more favorable to the West by curbing Italy’s claims in the east. Thus, Friuli, Istria, and Trieste, but not Dalmatia, were connected to Italy by Fiume. In return, Italy was not to be disappointed, at least not regarding the Brenner Pass. Added to this was the uncertainty of whether Austria might not eventually join forces with Germany. Such a large new German state was regarded with concern; it was thought it should better not reach beyond the Brenner border. Deeply disappointed, the South Tyrolean communities sent a petition to Wilson as late as the spring of 1919 to remind him of his principles: “And now shall our German homeland become Italian, with its thousand-year-old culture and history, its people with their ancestral sense of freedom? At this thought, a single cry of the deepest pain echoes throughout the country” (Solderer, 1999, p. 20).

Peace negotiations had begun in Paris on 18 January 1919, and the negotiations for the peace treaty with Austria took place in the suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. On 24 April, the first draft was presented, and South Tyrol was awarded to Italy. The Austrian negotiating delegation under State Chancellor Karl Renner rejected the draft on 2 June. However, there was no space for maneuver: on 10 September 1919, the Austrian National Assembly adopted the peace treaty, including the provision for South Tyrol. Thus, South Tyrol’s future citizenship was decided. It took another year for the formal annexation: in the summer of 1920, the Italian parliament held a debate on the annexation of South Tyrol, but the socialists resisted in vain. On 10 October 1920, the annexation decree passed by the majority of the Italian parliament came into force: South Tyrol now belonged to Italy under constitutional law, as it had de facto belonged to Italy since the occupation of 1918.

In a first statement on the annexation, the Tyrolean People’s Party, the German Liberal Party, and the Social Democratic Party came together in a joint declaration: “South Tyrol has become the victim of the peace treaty which, despite the solemnly proclaimed right to self-determination, is tearing us away from our fellow citizens. We South Tyroleans have the unshakable hope that the day will come when justice and far-sighted politics will bring us national liberation” (cf. Fontana, 2010, p. 212). The letter ends with a rallying cry: “South Tyroleans! Let us face today in an upright manner! We call upon you to avoid any illegality and bear your fate with peace and dignity.” Despite this joint declaration, the Social Democrats did not join the German Federation. The positions of the People’s Party and, even more, the Liberal Party were too nationalistic for them.

The South Tyroleans still hoped for extensive independence within Italy. The government under Prime Minister Francesco Saverio Nitti was open to territorial autonomy, but decades of resentment of the former Welschtirol were taking their revenge. The determining figure was now the formerly “Austria-friendly” Alcide De Gasperi, who differed clearly from Battisti in his attitude toward South Tyrol. The Trentino politician not only spoke out against a special autonomy for South Tyrol but also demanded the annexation of the South Tyrolean lowlands, partly populated by Italians, to Trentino.

Possibly, in this first phase after the annexation, the South Tyroleans failed to recognize the necessity of actual political demands. Feeling that the injustice of the annexation could only be tempered by de facto independence, the Deutscher Verband (German Union) presented a comprehensive model of autonomy: primary legislative competence in all important areas, plus control of the transport system, customs and trade policy, fiscal sovereignty, jurisdiction, and its own military, based on the model of the standing organizations. The Nitti government could not agree to this, quite apart from the massive pressure from the ever-increasing right-wing opposition around the fascist party of Benito Mussolini. The Social Democratic Party’s draft, also without a chance, differed from the German Union’s, especially in social and democratic policy issues, namely by emphasizing party pluralism, more substantial rights of the working class, the anchoring of occupational safety regulations, and a clear separation of Church and state (cf. Corsini & Lill, 1988, p. 141).

A dividing line between the Social Democrats and the German Union had always been the attitude toward Trentino. Whether strengthening the social democratic-socialist cooperation between Germany and Welschtirol would have opened up other political solutions cannot be said. It is certain, however, that the hostile Deutschtirolean attitude toward Welschtirolean autonomy wishes now took revenge since the balance of power had been reversed. The Social Democrats tried to form an alliance across language groups by joining the Italian Socialist Party in 1920 as an autonomous section. Quite apart from their lack of electoral success, they were branded patriotically unreliable in South Tyrol (cf. Staffler & Hartungen, 1985, p. 188).

Between military occupation and formal annexation, the allies established a civil administration for South Tyrol. Until then, the liberal-minded General Guglielmo Pecori-Giraldi had maintained a prudent administration because of the precarious situation. District captains were replaced by Italian commissioners, as had been the custom during the Austrian administration, as state executive officers. However, the Austrian officials remained in place, and the municipalities were unaffected. Despite pressure from Ettore Tolomei, Pecori-Giraldi even stuck to familiar place names. In July 1919, the administration and control of the country passed to the Ufficio per le Nuove Province, which was directly subordinate to the Council of Ministers. For Venezia Tridentina, to which South Tyrol was assigned and subordinated, Luigi Credaro was appointed Vice Commissioner General. Like Pecori-Giraldi, he was a liberal professor in pedagogy, with scholarships in Germany and perfect knowledge of the German language. His policy in South Tyrol was ambivalent. On the one hand, he founded German schools in German-speaking villages. On the other, he fought the tendency of families in the bilingual area in the south of South Tyrol to send their children to German schools with severe punishment, even up to arrest and the dissolution of the municipal council of Neumarkt (cf. Fontana, 1993, pp. 189–92). Obsessed with protecting the “stolen souls” of Italian children from Germanization, he finally enforced the so-called Lex Corbino: Italian fathers had to send their children to Italian schools. This rule went hand in hand with ethnic-linguistic screening, which undermined the parental right to free choice of school, which had been in force until then. The check was often arbitrary; an Italian-sounding family name (common in this multilingual zone) was sufficient to force enrolment in an Italian school (ibid, pp. 205–7). Thus, Italianization measures were already in place during Italy’s liberal era.

For Credaro, there was “a secular struggle between ‘Latinity’ and ‘Germanism’” in South Tyrol: “In Bozen, two powerful ethnic waves collide: the German race comes from the Baltic, the Italian race from the Mediterranean” (Lechner, 2005, p. 36). In this ideology, the assimilation of South Tyrol was only about restoring the Latin origin of South Tyrol – a basic assumption of the fascist South Tyrolean ideologue Ettore Tolomei. In this spirit, Credaro often acted against the will of the liberal government in Rome (cf. Di Michele, 2001, p. 55).

In 1920, Credaro banned all non-religious Tyrolean rallies, letting off firecrackers, and the hoisting of flags except for the tricolor. The occasion for this was the Sacred Heart of Jesus fires of 13 June 1920, which were undoubtedly intended as a political demonstration. Mayors who used the names “Tyrol” or “German South Tyrol” in their correspondence were prosecuted. The mayor of Salurn was even deposed for this reason. The fact that Italy had now achieved full sovereignty over South Tyrol and no longer had to show any consideration for the situation played a role in these tightened measures. In the peace treaty, Italy had not been obliged to give special treatment to South Tyrol to fulfill the promise made by Victor Emanuel III to respect local institutions and customs. It was a voluntary expression of will, not an assurance. In June 1920, the regionalist Nitti government resigned, and the new prime minister, Giovanni Giolitti, took a centralist course.

After the annexation decree came into force in October 1920, all South Tyrolean mayors had to take an oath to Italy and the Italian king. The mayor of Obermais, Alois Hölzl, took the oath expressly as a formal act only, and declared that he did not carry the oath inside him. Despite warnings from Rome not to overplay such cases, Credaro succeeded in getting the entire municipal council of Obermais dissolved (ibid, p. 118). In Bozen, Julius Perathoner caused irritation when Victor Emanuel III came to the town in October 1921. The mayor greeted the king in German (cf. Lechner, 2000b, p. 46). The South Tyroleans still believed they could hold their own in the new state. In the first democratic parliamentary elections, on 15 May 1921, the German Union got four members of parliament elected: Wilhelm von Walther, Karl Tinzl, Eduard Reut-Nicolussi, and Friedrich Graf (Count) Toggenburg. Apart from Tinzl, who, as the youngest, was to play a formative role in South Tyrolean politics, all had already gained active political experience in the Austrian monarchy. Count Toggenburg had been Landeshauptmann (Governor) of Tyrol and, in the last year of the war, Austrian Minister of the Interior. Eduard Reut-Nicolussi, who came from the old Bavarian Trentino linguistic enclave of Lusern, had been chairman of the Christian Social Party and the last South Tyrolean member of the Vienna National Council. He took his leave there to be elected to the Italian parliament for South Tyrol. Wilhelm von Walter was the only representative of the German Liberal Party. The Social Democrats, who had run alone, came out with nine per cent but remained without a mandate. In his first speech in parliament, Wilhelm von Walther made a legal protestation against the annexation as an “act of suppression of South Tyrol,” mentioning the “withholding of its right to self-determination” (Parteli, 1988, p. 96).

4 “Country” (Land) as a term for South Tyrol is not used in this book in the institutional sense but as a socio-spatial designation of the South Tyrolean territory that began to define itself as something of its own through the annexation and further historical developments. In the sense of constitutional law, South Tyrol became simply a province and gradually gained a high degree of autonomy. The equally possible term “state” for South Tyrol would cause confusion in the many issues of demarcation and relationship to the state of Italy. In contrast, “state” is used for the Austrian Bundesländer.

5 This passage is often confused in South Tyrol with Wilson’s 14 points, and indeed the mistake was also made by the author of this book (Peterlini, H.K., 2012, p. 23).

6 Originally, the politician spelled his surname as one word (Degasperi); later, he opted for the more distinguished-sounding separated version, De Gasperi. Since the latter spelling has prevailed in historiography, with few exceptions, the variant De Gasperi is also used here – except for occurrences in citations or book titles.

Fine Cuisine and Bitter Times

Experiences of alienation in the new state – lifestyles, restrictions, and loss of home

Suddenly finding oneself in another state had existential consequences for the South Tyrolean population after the First World War. Food prices rose dramatically due to shortages after the conflict. Most people lacked money. The population of South Tyrol at that time had subscribed 320 million crowns as war bonds. The new state did not take over these debts. The money was practically lost. Only Austrian kroner were accepted at first, but from 10 April 1919 onwards, only the lira was allowed. The currency exchange was highly disadvantageous. Before the war, the exchange rate had been roughly balanced at 100 to 105, but now it was fixed at 100 to 40. Even when this gradually improved to 100 to 60, the loss of capital was enormous. Those who had saved or lent money in crowns received less than or little more than half of it back. Loans from Austrian institutions were often wholly lost. The fact that inflation in Austria had an even more devastating effect was of little consolation to those affected in South Tyrol (cf. Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 268).

For economic life, traditionally oriented toward the markets in the monarchy, the closing of the frontier to the north had dramatic consequences. Without passenger, goods, postal, and financial traffic over the Brenner Pass (ibid, p. 267), sales markets and business connections collapsed. The export of fruit, wine, livestock, and other products to the north was prevented. At the same time, without any experience or networks, producers had to deal with Italian markets where competition seemed to be overpowering. Only where there had already been business with Italy, such as in the timber trade, were the consequences less paralyzing after the lifting of restrictions. Holidaymakers from German-speaking countries stayed away for the time being, many innkeepers were hostile to Italian guests, and communication difficulties were rife. The war had hit tourism so hard that hotels and guesthouses were up for sale en masse. Now Italian investors were able to secure bargains, for example the Savoy and the Kaiserhof hotels in Meran, renamed Excelsior. Other famous hotels in Meran also changed their names in 1920 due to the new political circumstances: the Erzherzog Johann became the Esplanade, the Habsburger Hof the Bellevue; Meran officially became Merano in the same year. Under fascism, the Italian takeover of hotels by expropriation was forced once again (ibid, p. 281–2).

Not all developments initially took an unfavorable course. While the hotel industry suffered from the scarcity of food in the first two post-war years, tourism soon revived and, in Meran, a spa season opened in September 1920 for the first time in six years. The Italians also discovered the “conquered territory” as a new holiday destination, which – as Ettore Tolomei registered with satisfaction – was definitely worth visiting in a national sense of success. Furthermore, when entry regulations were relaxed in the following years, more guests from Austria and Germany came to South Tyrol. German-patriotic associations in Bavaria and Austria, such as the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA), stimulated national solidarity tourism to the lost territory of South Tyrol. Their propaganda included phrases such as “Wander out, German boys and girls, to the heights that the enemy set as a border for us …” (Steurer, 1980, p. 87). Many hotels were renovated or refurbished, for example the Elephant in Brixen, which was given a new façade, and the Grandhotel Karersee, which received hot and cold running water in all rooms. From June 1920, the Vienna–Meran railway line was actively used again. The local railways that had finally been built for the war but finished too late, such as the Val Gardena and Dobbiaco–Cortina lines, also became means of transport for tourism, the latter for the discovery of the upper Puster Valley by Italian visitors. In addition, there was the breakthrough of the automobile. In the summer of 1922, 23,000 cars were counted in Bozen, twice as many as two years earlier (cf. Solderer, 1999, pp. 40–2).

Tourism, which had changed dramatically, soon became an essential stimulus (and client) for developing modern, visually powerful advertising. The poster medium came into fashion with artistic and innovative aspirations. Following models such as Oskar Kokoschka and other modernist artists, Franz Lenhart coined a new, glamorous image of South Tyrol, which, with its surrealist, expressionist, and cubist elements, clearly stood out from the traditional “land in the mountains” and also from the image of a “Holy Land Tyrol” (Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, pp. 284–91). Many things flourished and revived in the country, while in Austria, the economy was in decline. Of course, only a few years later, the world economic crisis would destroy the brief upswing of the early 1920s in South Tyrol as well.

The local population quickly adopted some things from Italy, such as the initially completely unknown way of cooking pasta and serving it with tomato sauce. Thus “red sauce,” as the Italian tomato sauce for pasta was called, soon became a welcome change from the usual peasant diet in urban areas, which until then had been influenced more by recipes and culinary arts from the eastern areas of the monarchy (cf. Clementi, 2000b, p. 118). The German national gymnastics clubs warned against playing football as a “foreign” sport, as South Tyrol’s youth soon felt infected by the Italian national sport. In 1923, for example, a football section of the local sports club was set up in the village of Tramin, which was patriotic to Germany. However, many other rural communities and cities also had their own football clubs. Meran already had a football club in 1910, and due to its international public, sports such as golf, croquet, lawn hockey, bicycle racing, and motor racing took also place there. The town even became the destination for the Coppa delle Alpi motor race. In 1923, the legendary Fiat and Alfa Romeo driver Antonio Ascari celebrated a victory in Meran before winning his first Grand Prix in Monza in 1925; only one month later, he had a fatal accident at the Grand Prix in France (ibid., pp. 210–14).

In sports, South Tyrol was initially even allowed to connect with Austria. Sports clubs were able to maintain their contacts with North and East Tyrolean federations for several years, and South Tyrolean lugers and bobsledders were allowed to participate in the Tyrolean championships. The gymnastics clubs that had emerged from the German national movement – particularly strong in Bozen, Meran, Lana, Algund, Untermais, Kaltern, Val Gardena, Brixen, Bruneck, and Sterzing – now saw their sporting activities all the more as a political-patriotic homeland service. Under Generalstabshauptmann Georg von Tschurtschenthaler and the later Nazi Volksgruppenführer Toni Ruedl, young gymnasts renewed the gymnastics movement, which had become outdated in its styles and customs, and introduced outdoor sports, shorter trousers, and running shoes with nails. In 1923, Bozen gymnastics club took part in the first German post-war gymnastics festival in Munich. Winter sports were also boosted by the construction of the first ski lifts in Val Gardena and other areas. The cable car to Vigiljoch had already been in operation since 1912. Thanks to the one to Hafling, Meran Sports Club also attained a vital skiing section. With its stem turn, the “Arlberg technique” of the Austrians also influenced the skiing style in South Tyrol. But the revitalization of post-war life was soon drastically curtailed, and fascist appropriation and bans on clubs began to affect the sport (ibid.).

Italy’s political strategy for how to deal with South Tyrol was oriented from the outset toward “peaceful penetration,” whereby military governor Pecori-Giraldi had soberly distinguished between two possibilities for penetration: namely, a “quick and violent” one, as Ettore Tolomei had openly favored and which became the strategy of emergent fascism, or a “peaceful” one. This was the one on which Pecori-Giraldi decided, as he expected less resistance and more success in the long run from a careful Italianization (cf. Peterlini, H. K., 2008b, p. 163). Italy had practiced penetration strategies in its colonies in East Africa and, as a participant in the Italian colonial wars in Eritrea (1903) and Libya (1911), Pecori-Giraldi was undoubtedly familiar with them (cf. Lechner, 2005, pp. 34–5). Thus, the German population was to continue to have access to jobs in public offices, but management positions were to go to Italians; the domestic banks were to be gradually taken over by national institutes; in school policy, care was to be taken to ensure that the Italian communities were strengthened by having their own schools, while in German schools the curricula were to be adapted to those of the Italian schools. Thus, as early as January 1919, he had the curricula for history and geography oriented to Italy; for South Tyrolean pupils, the coordinates of their historical and territorial affiliation changed. The German schools themselves, however, remained in existence (cf. Seberich, 2000, pp. 53–7).

The creation of industrial jobs for workers from the southern areas was also an early concept of the Italian administration in South Tyrol, albeit gentler. The first wave of immigration was still restrained, with civil servants and military personnel in particular coming to take the administration and control of the country “into Italian hands,” so to speak. In 1921, the number of Italians in South Tyrol was around 20,000, with just over 200,000 German-speaking and almost 10,000 Ladin-speaking inhabitants. Considering the Italian minorities in old Tyrol before the war, likely around 13,000 people moved into the country between 1918 and 1921. In 1921, just under 6,000 Italians lived in Bozen, about 1,500 each in Meran and Brixen, and almost 400 in Bruneck (cf. Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, p. 270). There also existed a few Italian enclaves in the Unterland between Bozen and Salurn at the linguistic border to Trentino.

In contrast, fascist immigration policy quadrupled the Italian presence in South Tyrol within a few years. Forced immigration particularly impacted Bozen (80,000) and Meran (15,000) through the newly created Sinich district. In Bruneck, the number of Italians rose to just over 1,200, and in Brixen to 1,800, while in most rural communities the immigration rates remained marginal. While the first immigrants still felt like actors and future administrators of the “conquest,” the later new South Tyroleans came to the country mainly because of the jobs on offer and without political ideas. They lived somewhat isolated in the newly built working-class districts, hardly knew anything about the South Tyrolean reality surrounding them, but rarely experienced it as hostile, and were hardly aware of their strategic role in the plan of “penetration.” As a result, contact between the language groups was limited to a few areas, official interactions, school, and control authorities – not a particularly good prerequisite for cultural rapprochement. The local population probably gladly accepted the more fashionable clothing and typical Italian culinary dishes available due to the changing range of goods. But the conditions for cultural exchange and human understanding were too few, and the living environments were too separate.

Population figures were already crucial political capital. The 1921 census was distorted for a more substantial Italian presence (already corrected in the figures mentioned above). Data manipulation worked by retroactively assigning many people with Italian-sounding surnames to the Italian-language group in a revision. A separate column was introduced for Ladins, not so much out of ethnic sensitivity as of concern that otherwise, many Ladins would declare themselves Germans. As early as May 1920, at a rally on the Gardena Pass, 70 community representatives of all the Ladin valleys had made an absolute commitment to being part of an independent Tyrolean culture and raised the blue-white-and-green Ladin flag. The application for a union of all Ladins from Val Gardena, Enneberg, Buchenstein, Ampezzo, and Fassa was politically hopeless. However, it thwarted the strategy of the Italian administration to treat the Ladins as Italians and not as an independent language group. The Ladins seized the opportunity to declare themselves Ladin in the census to such an extent that their numbers were also pushed down by arbitrary revision (cf. Forcher & Peterlini, 2010, pp. 269–71).

The population policy had a drastic effect on thousands of workers and employees who had been born under the Habsburgs in other countries of the monarchy. The peace treaty of Saint-Germain laid down in principle that every Old Austrian was to be granted citizenship of the area where his or her home community was located after the new borders were drawn. In South Tyrol, however, only those persons who had resided in South Tyrol and had the right of residence before 24 May 1915 – the day of Italy’s entry into the war – were automatically granted the right to remain in Italy. For all others (born after 1915 or who had no official residence in South Tyrol), there was a solution that was only accommodating at first glance: they could choose between Italian citizenship or emigration. However, this “Option” was quite limited: many were denied Italian citizenship (cf. Lechner, 2005, pp. 52–3), some for political reasons, for example in the case of a secondary school teacher born in North Tyrol who had expressed hostility toward Italy in an article.

Many people who had lived and worked in South Tyrol before May 1915 now paid the price for the restrictive handling of the right of residence by the South Tyrolean municipalities. Especially the railway workers, traditionally social democratic, were often refused residency to deny them the right to vote and thus to protect the conservative majority (Peterlini, H. K., 1999b, p. 154). Thus, the closed attitude of the German Tyrolean parties was now avenged by a high loss of population (cf. Peterlini, H. K., 2008a, p. 172). On the other hand, Italian immigrants had to be granted the right of residence directly by the municipalities.

The “small option” (or “first option”) was no less traumatic for those affected than the great choice that Hitler and Mussolini forced on the South Tyroleans, namely to emigrate to the Reich or to remain culturally defenseless in Italy (cf. Hartungen, Kiem & Zendron, 1989). Furthermore, compared to the well-known “Option,” which was at least addressed historically and politically decades later, the small, first option has hardly received any attention up to the present day. It was not a genuinely free choice, either: many people who opted against Italian citizenship did not leave voluntarily. Many feared for their jobs if they remained in Italy, because of the anti-minority policies of the civil administration. Civil servants were particularly worried, as they had been placed in a highly precarious situation by the change of state. Vice General Commissioner Credaro, for example, had already planned for decades to dismiss teachers who had a residence in South Tyrol but were born north of the new border. Still, the government in Rome had prevented this for the time being (cf. Lechner, 2000a, p. 34).

Thus 90 per cent of the Südbahn employees left the country by 1923 and, in many cases, had to live for years in emergency camps at Innsbruck station. In the course of this option, several thousand people lost their conjured-up homeland due to a narrow-minded understanding of “home.” South Tyrol thus also lost a well-trained and politically educated class of civil servants, a serious blow in the face of rising fascism in Italy. A politically empowered South Tyrolean working class could hardly have prevented this, but it might have been helpful in strategies for the cultural-political survival of South Tyrol.

In the Grip of the Dictatorship

Fascism – the experience of a dictatorship as fascination and violent shock

Waving black flags and dressed in black shirts and trousers, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, officially established by Mussolini in 1919, shaped the political mood in Italian cities immediately after the war’s end (cf. Millan, 2013). Founded mainly as a fighting group against the feared left-wing revolution of trade unions, socialists, and communists, the squadristi marched with prepotent posturing, striking political opponents with their sticks, but increasingly also passers-by. The squadrismo ignited most violently in northern Italy (cf. ibid, p. 556), especially the region of Venezia Giulia in the border areas with Yugoslavia, where the enemy image of the “red danger” was charged with nationalist motives. In Trentino, the first fascio groups inspired themselves with nationalism. Upper-class and conservative circles first welcomed Mussolini’s movement as a kind of bourgeois protective force against socialism and political disorder instead of the mistrusted government (cf. Payne, 1995, p. 95). Alcide De Gasperi, wrote on 7 April 1921 in the political journal Nuovo Trentino of “actions in which violence may appear to be aggression, but in reality, it is defensive violence and therefore legitimate” (Zunino, 1979, p. 29). Soon the clashes resulted in deaths and eventually in the open execution of political opponents. The official forces of law and order held back and watched helplessly as fascism bypassed the state and took power (De Rosa, 1961, p. 40).