Fascist Italianization

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The village of Sterzing, Italianized as Vipiteno.

The Fascist Italianization was the violent and systematic process by which, between 1924 and 1945, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini forced foreign populations living in Italy to assume Italian culture and language, and worked on erasing any traces of existence of other nations on the territory of Mussolini's Italy.

This program of Italianization aimed to suppress the native non-Italian populations living in Italy (including French minority in Piedmont-Aosta Valley and the Albanians in Southern Italy), including the newly annected areas after World War I, where the Italians were in minority. The program later spread to areas annected during World War II. The affected populations were: Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March, Lastovo and Zadar (between 1941 and 1943 also in the Gorski Kotar and coastal Dalmatia), German-speakers in South Tyrol, parts of Friuli and the Julian March, Francoprovençal-speaking peoples in the Aosta Valley, as well as Greeks, Turks and Jews on Dodecanese.

Under the program the foreign groups were forced to attend Italian language schools and to use only the Italian language in public (including churches). Slovenian and Croatian institutions, such as the Narodni dom (Slovene National Club) in Trieste, were vandalized and German traditional institutions as well. Libraries and press were closed. Croatian, Slovenian, German and French toponyms were systematically translated and immigration of Italians from other regions of Italy was encouraged.

In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovenian and Croatian surnames, giving this attempts open legislative form, adding further pressure to these ethnic groups.^[1] ^[2] . Naturally, there was no exception for first names.

School certificates were not issued in "unwanted" languages, but in Italian, schools in "unwanted" languages were closed, school programmes that taught in "unwanted" languages were abolished. Use of unwanted languages were forbidden.

1 Julian March and Italian Dalmatia
2 WWII
3 Dodecanese
4 Venezia Tridentina (Bolzano)
5 Italianization of the language
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Julian March and Italian Dalmatia

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Most, however, resisted, as far as possible, these policies, sometimes with the support of local Catholic clergy eh were of same origin. Some Slovenians and Croatians willingly accepted Italianization as a compromise required in order to gain full status as Italian citizens and favour upward social mobility.

An Italian fascist minister Giuseppe Caboldi Gigli wrote 1927. in "Gerarchia": "Istrian muse gave a name fojb to the place which has dignity for funeral of those who in the porvince of Istria endangers its national (Italian) characteristics of Istria!" (La musa istriana ha chiamato Foiba degno posto di sepoltura per chi nella provincia d’Istria minaccia le caratteristiche nazionali dell’Istria) ^[3] ^[4] ^[5] ^[6]^[7] A Slovenian choirmaster Lojze Bratuž, who led several Slovenian language church choirs and thus resisted persecution of Slovenians in the area around Gorizia, was arrested on December 27, 1936, tortured and forced to drink gasoline and motor oil.

Italian administration has been stimulating the moving of Slavic population to Southern Italy (Puglia, Calabria) and East Africa. On the other hand Italians from Southern Italy (Puglia, Calabria) were stimulated to populate Istria and Zadar. In elementary schools and kindergartens were brought Italian teachers in order to keep the children under Italian influence on the entire day.

[edit] WWII

During WWII Italy occupied almost all Dalmatia, and Italian administration tried with all means to Italianize the region. Among other things, it was forbidden to listen any radio station in Croatian, and breaking that rule could be enough to be identified as an enemy of the state and executed. Croats and Slovenians were not allowed to buy land and properties and there were making drastic measures to ensure that.^[8] The main programmer of these intention was Italo Sauro (son of Nazario Sauro), personal counselor of Benito Mussolini for Italianization.
In fact, Italian occupying forces showed no hesitation in commiting war crimes in order to transform occupied territories into ethnic Italian territories.^[9].
During the war Italian administration operated many concentration camps specifically for former subjects of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The survived victims of these camps (Rab concentration camp, or the worst one, on Molat island) never received any kind of compensation from Italy.

"Si ammazza troppo poco" ("There are not enough killings") were words of general Mario Robotti , Commander of XI. division displaced in Slovenia and Croatia in 1942 . His superior Mario Roatta was even more specific with the statement:"Non dente per dente, ma testa per dente" ("Not tooth for tooth but head for tooth")^[10] ^[11] ^[12] ^[13]

[edit] Dodecanese

The policy affected also the inhabitants of Dodecanese, conquered by Italy in 1912. Although the islands were overwhelmingly Greek-speaking, punctuated only by a relatively small Turkish-speaking minority and even smaller Ladino-speaking Jewish minority (with few Italian speakers), schools were required to teach in Italian, and the Greek Orthodox religion of most of the inhabitants was strongly discouraged. These measures caused a good deal of Greek emigration from the islands, replaced by a moderate amount of Italian immigration.

[edit] Venezia Tridentina (Bolzano)

In 1939 Hitler and Mussolini reached an agreement on the status of Germans living in the Venezia Tridentina, in the province of Bolzano: they could emigrate to Germany and in the Greater German Reich's territory of Crimea or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this "Alto Adige Option Agreement", South Tyrolean society was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay ("Dableiber"), were condemned as traitors, those who left ("Optanten") were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of the World War II, this agreement was never fully accomplished. Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up to illegally teach children the German language.

[edit] Italianization of the language

In the 1930s a program of Italianization of the language was started. Foreign words were forbidden and new Italian words were created (such "calcio" instead of "football", or "consociazione" instead of "club").