History of South Tyrol - Annexation By Italy

Annexation By Italy

Under the Treaty of London (1915) Italy "shall obtain the Trentino, Cisalpine Tyrol with its geographical and natural frontier (the Brenner frontier)" and after the ceasefire of Villa Giusti (November 3, 1918) Italian Troops occupied uncontested the territory and as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement marched further into North Tyrol and occupied Innsbruck and the Inn valley.

During the negotiations between Austria and the victorious Entente powers in Saint-Germain a petition for help, signed unanimously by all the mayors of South Tyrol, was presented to US President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had announced his Fourteen Points to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918 and the mayors reminded him of point 9: "A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality."

But when the Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed on September 10, 1919 Italy was nonetheless given by Article 27, section 2 the ethnic German territories South of the Alpine watershed.

It has been claimed that Wilson later complained about the annexation:

"Already the president had, unfortunately, promised the Brenner Pass boundary to Orlando, which gave to Italy some 150,000 Tyrolese Germans-an action which he subsequently regarded as a big mistake and deeply regretted. It had been before he had made a careful study of the subject...."

As Italy had not yet adopted the toponymy created by Ettore Tolomei, all the names of locations in the treaty, with the exception of the Adige river, were in German (the same monolingual German approach to local names can also be observed in the Treaty of London).

At first the territory was governed by a military regime under General Guglielmo Pecori-Giraldi, directly subordinated to the Comando Supremo. One of the first orders was to hermetically seal the border between South Tyrol and Austria. People were not allowed to cross the new frontier, and the postal service and the flow of goods were interrupted; censorship was introduced and officials not born in the area were dismissed. On November 11, 1919 General Pecori-Giraldi proclaimed in the name of King Victor Emmanuel III in Italian and German: "... Italy is willing, as sole united nation with full freedom of thought and expression, to allow nationals of other language the preservation of their own schools, private institutions and associations." On December 1, 1919 the King promised in a speech: "a careful maintenance of local institutions and self-administration"

Italy formally annexed the territories on October 10, 1920. The administration of the conquered territory passed from the military to the newly created Governatorato della Venezia Tridentina (Governorate of Venezia Tridentina) under Luigi Credaro. The term Venezia Tridentina had been proposed in 1863 by the Jewish linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli from Gorizia, who sought to include all of the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire claimed by Italy into a wider region called Venezia (the Julian March was accordingly named Venezia Giulia). The Governatorato included the present day region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol and the three Ladin communes of Cortina, Colle Santa Lucia and Livinallongo, today in the Province of Belluno. The northern part of Tyrol (comprising North Tyrol and East Tyrol) became what is today one of the nine federal states of Austria.

On January 21, 1921 the Governatorato, while retaining military and police control, ceded administrative control to the newly created provincial council of the Provincia di Venezia Tridentina located in Trento. On May 15, 1921 the people of the area participated for the first (and until April 18, 1948 the only) free and democratic elections (the people of Venezia Tridentina and Venezia Giulia did not participate in the general election of June 2, 1946). The result was a resounding victory for the Deutscher Verband (German Association), which won close to 90% of the votes and thus sent 4 deputies to Rome.