Word: germanic
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Almost forgotten in the ballyhoo about home-yearning German minorities in Eastern Europe is the fact that Allies Italy and Germany also have between them a little minority problem of their own. Living just south of the Brenner Pass, in what Austrians call the South Tyrol and the Italians insist upon referring to as the Upper Adige, are some 200,000 German-speaking people who, by the Treaty of St. Germain signed in 1919, were transferred from Austrian to Italian sovereignty. Last week the Fascists and the Nazis, having long soft-pedaled this delicate situation, decided to solve...
Although Italy promised many times after the War to respect the language, customs and education of the Germans she was acquiring, scarcely had Fascism begun to operate in Italy before the South Tyrolese became one of the worst treated minorities in Europe. In an effort to Italianize the district, German schools were forbidden, German newspapers outlawed, German place names changed (Bozen, for instance, became Bolzano), even German surnames on tombstones were effaced...
Little Austria could scarcely afford to make effective protest, but the German Republic many times pointed out that Italy was not living up to her sworn obligations. When Adolf Hitler came to power the South Tyrolese hoped that this exponent of "One People, One State, One Leader" would soon look into their case. The Führer soon showed, however, that he would not allow the plight of a mere 200,000 Germans to interfere with the destiny of some 80,000,000. At Rome, in May 1938, the Führer declared before Il Duce that the present Italian...
...spectacle of the Nazi Gestapo operating in Italy, of German instructors and troops in Italian military establishments, of German "tourists" arriving in Italy by droves (some of them never returning), is not palatable to patriotic Latins. When the military alliance between Italy and Germany was signed in Berlin last May and the controlled Italian newspapers carried huge headlines describing the "wave of enthusiasm" spreading over Italy, it could not be detected in the streets. Two days later the country celebrated the 24th anniversary of Italy's entry into the World War against Germany and Austria. Work stopped at noon...
...summer of 1939 finds Benito Mussolini less liked and more openly criticized than for years past. Little jokes, about the German "invasion" of Italy, are beginning to circulate quietly. Anti-Mussolini posters have appeared (briefly) in Milan and Turin. Viva Hitler legends, painted on all the houses along the railway route taken by the Führer on his trip to Rome last year, have been unanimously painted over. There is a dour expression on Italian faces as they watch the heavy-booted Nazi chiefs who now are seen all over the Italian landscape. Crown Prince Umberto, supposed...