September 8 as the day of Italy's redemption in the Second World War. September 8 as the beginning of the Resistance and the fight against Nazi-fascism on a larger scale. The usual ceremonies have insisted on these aspects, but for the Italians of the eastern border this date is well represented by the title of the famous essay by Ernesto Galli Della Loggia «The Death of the Fatherland».

A Fatherland that had entered into agony in the retreats in Russia and North Africa, in the war of attrition in the Balkans and in the collapse of the fascist regime. A Fatherland idealized and exalted in the unredeemed lands until it materialized in November 1918, presenting itself in the austere guise of the military Governorate first and of the Mussolini dictatorship later, with not even two years of liberal Italy marred by social and political tensions in between. A Fatherland that especially in the border provinces exacerbated with the policies of nationalization of the masses an Italianness that had little to do with the myth of brotherhood among the peoples led by Rome, a myth with which the large Mazzinian community of Trieste and Istria had identified. A homeland weakened by the efforts required by the Second World War and which had seen the infiltration of increasingly large groups of Slovenian and Croatian partisans on its eastern border, who fought not only in the name of anti-fascism, but above all to wrest Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, Fiume and Zara from Italy.

In an Italy that had been infiltrated by the elephantine and all-encompassing apparatus of the National Fascist Party until July 25, 1943, when Benito Mussolini was deposed, it was difficult to find someone who had not owned a party card or held positions in some organization of the regime. In the rest of the peninsula almost everyone quickly and without major problems replaced the rough wool with displays of convinced anti-fascism, in the lands of the eastern border it was not so simple.

The disorder and the general stampede that followed the release of the statement by the head of the Government Pietro Badoglio regarding the armistice on the evening of September 8th created a power vacuum that led to the definitive collapse of the Italian State on the political, military and institutional levels. This space was quickly occupied by German troops: there were few episodes of military resistance by the disoriented Armed Forces, lacking orders and motivation, whereas in the former Yugoslavia there was a National Liberation Army that had Tito as its charismatic political and military leader. His partisans flaunted the red flag of communist internationalism, but aimed at territorial expansion at the expense of neighboring Italy and Austria.

Having established itself in the eyes of the Western Allies as the most tenacious opponent of the German presence on the lands of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which had been defeated and seemed defeated in April 1941, it did not hesitate to direct Anglo-American bombers on Zara, razing it to the ground after dozens of bombings. Having taken possession of most of the weapons, ammunition and provisions of the Italian divisions stationed in the Balkans after 8 September and having dissolved in the face of the German columns, that partisan army was also able to temporarily take possession of portions of metropolitan territory (the Istrian hinterland, Split and other locations that had become part of the Governorate of Dalmatia in the spring of 1941) and unleash a first wave of arrests, deportations, violent interrogations and mass massacres.

While the king and the government were fleeing to Brindisi, in the Istrian peninsula the Germans were only taking possession of the coast, fearing a landing, so in the hinterland the military garrisons were disappearing, the authorities were not receiving orders from above and the partisans of the Slovenian Communist Party and the Croatian Communist Party took power. On September 15, they unilaterally declared the annexation of Istria to the future Yugoslavia and had already begun to persecute those who, by virtue of their social or working role, represented the Italian State, a presence that had to be eradicated and annihilated: teachers, public officials, security agents and their relatives were targeted.

Similarly, in Dalmatia and in Split in particular, the "Titoites" struck hard at the already reduced Italian community before being defeated by the German divisions, which assigned the Dalmatian coast, except Zadar, to the Independent State of Croatia.

This first massacre of Italians caused about a thousand victims in the space of a month. In fact, at the beginning of October 1943, the German troops launched an offensive that forced the partisans to withdraw from Istria, which became part, together with Trieste, Gorizia, Udine, Ljubljana and Fiume, of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Coast, a sort of German military governorate in which the powers of the Italian Social Republic, established by Benito Mussolini in central-northern Italy, appeared very ephemeral.

The Kingdom of Italy was reduced to a Kingdom of the South without legal personality on the international level following the signing of the unconditional surrender and the RSI was grappling with German political and military interference. The Resistance, which on the eastern border saw its national belonging questioned not only by the Slavic partisan forces, but also by the adhesion of the communist formations to the Titoist project, preferring annexation to the new communist Yugoslavia rather than remaining in an Italy belonging to the capitalist Western world. The Fatherland, after the exasperation of the twenty years of fascism, had died on September 8 and had been buried in the provinces of the eastern border; or rather, thrown into sinkholes.

Lorenzo Salimbeni – 08/09/2021

Source: The Adige