Italianization

Italianization or Italianisation (Italian: Italianizzazione) is a term used to describe a process of cultural assimilation in which ethnically non or partially Italian people or territory become Italian. The process can be voluntary or forced. It also refers to the sphere of linguistics where foreign words are absorbed into the Italian language.

Independent kingdoms and territories pre-Italian unification

Italian unification

The first phase of Italianization occurred with the unification of Italy. With the annexation of the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the Papal States, and the absorption of the Kingdom of Sardinia into the new Kingdom of Italy, all areas of modern-day Italy experienced an urgent and immediate Italianization in terms of laws and administration. Disenchantment over the new country and rulers led to the eruption of a series of revolts against the Italian state in the Sicilian countryside during the early 1860s. These riots eventually arrived on the Sicilian capital of Palermo where they were met by Italian military troops. On 27 May 1860, the Italian government sent a naval fleet to stage in the waters outside of Palermo. During the following weeks, thousands of Sicilians were killed as the Italian government heavily bombed Palermo in an attempt to fight the Sicilian people into submission.

Fascist Italianization

The village of Sterzing, Italianized as Vipiteno

The Fascist Italianization was the violent and systematic process of assimilation by which, between 1920 and 1945, Benito Mussolini's Fascist squads, named Blackshirts, forced minority populations living in Italy to assume the Italian language and culture, and worked to erase any traces of the existence of non-Italian minorities on the territory of Mussolini's Italy.

This program of Italianization aimed to suppress the native minority populations, first of all Slovenes living in the ex-Austro-Hungarian territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in First World War (i.e. Julian March) that were the first victims of Fascism in Europe, and Albanians in Southern Italy, as well as the Occitan minority in the Piedmont-Aosta Valley.

The program was later extended to areas annexed during World War II. The affected populations were Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March, Lastovo and Zadar; between 1941 and 1943 the Gorski Kotar and coastal Dalmatia; German-speakers in the South Tyrol, parts of Friuli and the Julian March, French and Francoprovençal-speaking peoples in the Aosta Valley, as well as Greeks, Turks and Jews on the Dodecanese islands.

Istria, Julian March, and Italian Dalmatia

During the period of occupation between years 1918 and 1920, all Slovene and Croatian cultural associations (Sokol, reading rooms etc) had been forbidden, and specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925), the Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926), the closure of the classical lyceum in Pazin, of the high school in Voloska (1918), the closure of the Slovene and Croatian primary schools followed.

On 13 July 1920, under a pretense of a retaliation for the insurgency in Split, the National Hall in Trieste, the cultural and economic centre of Slovene inhabitants of Trieste, was burned by the Blackshirts. The act was praised by Mussolini, who was at the time yet to become a duce, as a "masterpiece of the Triestine fascism" (capolavoro del fascismo triestino...). It was part of a wider pogrom against the Slovenes and other Slavs in the very centre of Trieste and the harbinger of the ensuing violence against the Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March.

In September 1920, Mussolini stated:

When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy ... We should not be afraid of new victims ... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps ... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians ...

—Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 20 September 1920

This confirmed the Fascist stance against the Slovene and Croatian population of the Julian March. Especially after Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, the violent Fascist Italianization of Slovene and Croatian populations and ethnic cleansing policies were under no international restraint in ex-Austro-Hungarian territories given to Italy in exchange for joining Great Britain in World War I. No undertaking about the rights of minorities in either the Treaty of Rapallo or the Treaty of Rome was given in Istria, Trieste's surroundings and Julian March, and after 1924 Treaty of Rome in Rijeka; Croatian, Slovene, German and French toponyms were systematically Italianized.

Fascist Italy brought Italian teachers from South Italy to Italianize ethnic Slovene and Croatian children, while the Slovene and Croatian teachers, poets, writers, artists and clergy were exiled to Sardinia and elsewhere to South Italy. In Istria the use of Croatian and Slovene languages in the administration and in the courts had already been restricted and was prohibited after March 1923 in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts, as well. Slovene and Croatian schools were prohibited with the scholastic reform of Fascist minister Giovanni Gentile on 1 October 1923. Use of Slovene and Croatian languages was systematically and brutally forbidden. Acts of Fascist violence were not hampered by the authorities.

In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croatian surnames, giving this program open legislative form, adding furtherly Italianizing all the minorities. There was no exception for first names. Some Slovenes and Croatians have under these circumstances "willingly" accepted Italianization in order to stop being a second-class citizens without upward social mobility.

Most native Slovenes resisted these policies with the support of local Catholic clergy of the Slovene origin. However local Slovene and Croatian teachers, writers, artists and clergy have been brutally punished for resisting Fascist ethnic cleansing policies. For example, Lojze Bratuž, a Slovene choirmaster who led several Slovene language church choirs and resisted the persecution of Slovenes in the area around Gorizia, was arrested on 27 December 1936, tortured and forced to drink petrol and engine oil and died because of it.

All Slovene and Croatian societies and sporting and cultural associations had to cease every activity in line with a decision of provincial fascist secretaries dated 12 June 1927. On a specific order from the prefect of Trieste on 19 November 1928 the Edinost political society was also dissolved. Croatian and Slovene financial co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste Savings Banks, were gradually liquidated. All non-Italians were forced to attend Italian language schools and to use only the Italian language in public places including churches. Slovene and Croatian institutions, were vandalized, as were German cultural institutions. Libraries and the media were closed.

After complete destruction of all Slovene minority cultural, financial and other organizations, and continuation of violent Fascist Italianization policies, the Slovene militant anti-Fascist organization TIGR emerged in 1927, co-ordinating the Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until its dismantlement by the Fascist secret police in 1941, after which some of TIGR ex-members joined Slovene Partisans.

In 1927, minister for public works Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli in fascist Italy wrote in Gerarchia magazine, a Fascist publication, that "The Istrian muse named as foibas those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria".

Dodecanese

The policy also affected the inhabitants of the Dodecanese islands, conquered by Italy in 1912. Although the islands were overwhelmingly Greek-speaking, with by a relatively small Turkish-speaking minority and an 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.

South Tyrol

Main article: Italianization of South Tyrol

In 1919, at the time of its annexation, the southern part of Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers. Under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German people living in the province. They could emigrate to Germany or the Greater German Reich's territory in the Crimea, or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this, the society of South Tyrol was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay, the so-called Dableiber, were condemned as traitors while those who left (Optanten) were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of the Second World War, this agreement was never fully implemented. Illegal Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up to teach children the German language.

World War II

During World War II, Italy occupied almost all of Dalmatia, and the Italian government made stringent efforts to Italianize the region. Among other things, it was forbidden to listen to any radio station in Croatian or Slovene, and those doing so risked being identified as an enemy of the state and executed. Yugoslavs were not allowed to buy land or property, and drastic measures were enacted to ensure that. The program was implemented by Italo Sauro, son of Nazario Sauro and personal counselor to Mussolini for Italianization.
Italian occupying forces were accused of committing war crimes in order to transform occupied territories into ethnic Italian territories.

The Italian government operated many concentration and internment camps for Slavic citizens, such as Rab concentration camp and one on the island of Molat. Survivors received no compensation from Italy after the war.

Mario Roatta was the commander of the 2nd Italian Army in Yugoslavia and to suppress the mounting resistance led by the Partisans adopted tactics of "summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages", for which after the war the Yugoslav government sought unsuccessfully to have him extradited for war crimes. He was quoted as saying "Non dente per dente, ma testa per dente" ("Not a tooth for tooth but a head for a tooth"), while General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian 11th division in Slovenia and Croatia was quoted as saying "Si ammazza troppo poco" ("There are not enough killings") in 1942.