Review
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a wave of ethnic violence erupted in Europe that spread rapidly throughout the Balkans and into the former Soviet Union. The surprising savagery kept attention away from the simultaneous resolution of an acrimonious minority conflict in South Tyrol, a region contested by Italy and Austria for most of the twentieth century.
In this compact study, Rolf Steininger details this dispute from Italy's partition and annexation of the Austrian province in 1918 to the present. While one critic has taken Steininger to task for neglecting Rome's desire to seize the Brenner Pass as protection against an ancient enemy, the evidence presented here suggests that, after the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, the motivations for annexation were largely emotional and nationalistic. Furthermore, Steininger adumbrates various schemes that would have allowed Italy to control the Brenner while leaving a fair number of German-speaking areas to remain Austrian.
Throughout, Steininger shows how the fate of South Tyrol has been determined by outsiders. At Versailles, the Italian government promised to guarantee the rights of the inhabitants, but even before Mussolini's rise to power, Roman authorities began to Italianize the region. Between 1922 and 1938, the Fascist regime banned the official use of German, muzzled the press, closed schools, destroyed Tyrolean monuments, and sealed the border with Austria. The Fascists were also responsible for ugly interrogations, imprisonments, and deportations. On the other hand, only 6.2 percent of farms changed hands, so that the character of the predominantly rural territory remained largely Austro-German. The one exception was Bozen, a city which experienced an influx of 12,000 Italian workers in a new industrial zone. Even so, most of the immigrants came from neighboring locations.
South Tyrol's most painful period occurred, as might be expected, during the Second World War. In 1939, Hitler and Mussolini agreed to resettle the German-speaking inhabitants in territory to be conquered in the East. That 86 percent of the community embraced this "Option Policy," Steininger sardonically writes, can be attributed to the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda and rumor mongering. Thereafter, some 75,000 persons left Alto Adige, further dividing the populace between "goers" and "stayers." When Italy changed sides in 1943, the German forces who quickly occupied South Tyrol were greeted as liberators. What followed, however, was military rule, forced conscription, and the deportation of Jews and other undesirables to Auschwitz. While few inhabitants resisted Nazi rule, a small group of courageous "stayers" did organize the South Tyrolean People's Party, which managed to establish contact with the Allies. Nevertheless, Italian authorities regained control of the province in 1945.
In the second half of his book, Steininger demonstrates a dazzling mastery of British, American, Italian, and Austrian archival sources to bring the story up to date. His narrative is not always easy to follow, given the complexity of the negotiations and intrigues he seeks to elucidate. The absence of a detailed map also makes for tough going, even for those familiar with the terrain. What Steininger demonstrates with brutal clarity is the inability of small ethnic communities to determine their own destiny. There was strong sentiment in the months following the German surrender to "rectify" the Italian-Austrian frontier. But British and American policy-makers decided against reopening the South Tyrolean question for fear of weakening their position in the Mediterranean against the Soviets.
For this reason, Steininger calls South Tyrol the "first victim of the Cold War," but also a beneficiary. This was because Whitehall felt it essential in the interests of Western unity, to bring Italy and Austria together. The result was the much touted
Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement of 5 September 1946, a vaguely-worded accord promising autonomous rights that the Italian Foreign Ministry cynically chose to consider "non-binding." Even so, mixed schools were reestablished and German-speaking émigrés permitted to return. Tensions arose in the 1950s, primarily over housing and social-welfare issues. There was much wrangling, an attempt by Austria to raise the South Tyrolean issue at the United Nations, and a series of fire-bombings that between 1956 and 1969 claimed scores of lives.
Steininger marshals impressive evidence to show how in 1964 the center-left government of Aldo Moro and Giuseppe Saragat took resolute action to negotiate a "Package" that after decades of difficult bargaining resulted in genuine autonomy. To what extent Christian Democratic altruism was crucial in bringing peace to South Tyrol may be open to further scrutiny. Whatever the case, Steininger concludes that economic prosperity and the attractiveness of Italian culture and lifestyle have also combined to alleviate tensions. To this may be added a common religion, a component notably absent in the bitter conflicts now raging from Northern Ireland to the Philipinnes.
Prof. EVAN B. BUKEY, University of Arkansas, in:
German Studies Review 28/2(2005) pp 447ff.