Quaderni, Vol. XXXVI No. 1, 2025.
Pregledni rad
NATIONALISMS AND IDEOLOGIES ON THE EASTERN BORDERS AFTER 8 SEPTEMBER 1943
Leonardo Raito
; Università degli Studi di Ferrara
Sažetak
The Italian occupation of the Balkans during the Second World War highlighted a
fundamental strategic ambiguity that caused extremely tough conflicts between
various nationalities. In Yugoslavia, the army began to get involved in politics, in
what was surely a baseline scenario, as the country was the natural outlet for Italian
nationalist expansionism, accompanied by serious propaganda efforts. Despite
the initial failed moves of Fascist diplomacy and some calls for an anti-Communist
crusade, the conflict was essentially presented as a national war, rather than an
ideological or technological clash, as was the case in other contexts. The internal
logic of the shift in occupation policy from 1941 to 1942 was in stark contrast to the
ideological motivations of the war: the alliance with the Croats was incompatible with
nationalist expansionism, and that with the pro-Western Serbs seemed to contradict
the international war fronts and ultimately with the anti-Communist crusade. The
situation generated internal polemics and disagreements, and although strategies and
decisions were approved by Mussolini, from 1942 onwards it was primarily the military
authorities who established alliances and priorities. Against this background, the
power vacuum caused by the collapse of the Italian army marked, with the armistice,
the onset of a new phase: the emergence of nationalisms and ideologies that had
been repressed, which represented the driving force of the fight against Nazism and
Fascism, for the liberation of the territories along the eastern border, although not
without strategic contradictions.
Ključne riječi
Nationalisms, Fascism, Occupation, Armistice, Repression
Hrčak ID:
336670
URI
Datum izdavanja:
23.10.2025.
Posjeta: 584 *