Introduction to part III

TY - CHAP

T1 - Introduction to part III

AU - Bosworth, Richard J B

AU - Maiolo, Joseph A.

PY - 2015/1/1

Y1 - 2015/1/1

N2 - In the rugged, stony hills above Trieste can be found the foibe, natural deep sinkholes. These sites were used by all competing wartime forces in the area - fascist, Nazi, communist, Slovene, patriotic Italian - ' for the easy and quick burial’ of those whom they killed. In such brutal actions, soldiers were repeating what the locals had done for decades or centuries, when secrecy was needed or the rules of the authorities were ignored. A small tale of murder, it might seem, yet they are slayings which have not been, and are not, forgotten. If anything, the power of the memory of the foibe, disputed between rival political groups and ethnicities, has grown with time. Despite worthy attempts by expert historians to settle such issues as the wildly inflated numbers of the victims in some accounts, no peace about this past has been signed. This small history of a minor front of one of the Second World Wars can still spark shock waves through the communities involved, while local feelings have also been nationalized. In Italy in 2005, Silvio Berlusconi instituted 10 February as a National Memory Day for Exiles and the Foibe, making it the third Italian celebration of that nation’s (disputed) memory of its war, in partnership or rivalry with 27 January, Holocaust Day, and 25 April, Liberation Day. Berlusconi is anything but an ideal history-maker. However, his political opponents have not resiled from the anti ‘Slav’ sentiments commonly expressed on II February and the crude nationalization of the past that is involved. The story of the foibe is a reminder that ‘the Second World War’ is not a neat historical particle that can be con fined to calendar dates between 1939 and 1945, and viewed as essentially a military or political fight between the armed forces at battle or the statesmen in charge of the domestic policy or diplomacy of this combatant or that.

AB - In the rugged, stony hills above Trieste can be found the foibe, natural deep sinkholes. These sites were used by all competing wartime forces in the area - fascist, Nazi, communist, Slovene, patriotic Italian - ' for the easy and quick burial’ of those whom they killed. In such brutal actions, soldiers were repeating what the locals had done for decades or centuries, when secrecy was needed or the rules of the authorities were ignored. A small tale of murder, it might seem, yet they are slayings which have not been, and are not, forgotten. If anything, the power of the memory of the foibe, disputed between rival political groups and ethnicities, has grown with time. Despite worthy attempts by expert historians to settle such issues as the wildly inflated numbers of the victims in some accounts, no peace about this past has been signed. This small history of a minor front of one of the Second World Wars can still spark shock waves through the communities involved, while local feelings have also been nationalized. In Italy in 2005, Silvio Berlusconi instituted 10 February as a National Memory Day for Exiles and the Foibe, making it the third Italian celebration of that nation’s (disputed) memory of its war, in partnership or rivalry with 27 January, Holocaust Day, and 25 April, Liberation Day. Berlusconi is anything but an ideal history-maker. However, his political opponents have not resiled from the anti ‘Slav’ sentiments commonly expressed on II February and the crude nationalization of the past that is involved. The story of the foibe is a reminder that ‘the Second World War’ is not a neat historical particle that can be con fined to calendar dates between 1939 and 1945, and viewed as essentially a military or political fight between the armed forces at battle or the statesmen in charge of the domestic policy or diplomacy of this combatant or that.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84953876490&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/CHO9781139524377.018

DO - 10.1017/CHO9781139524377.018

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84953876490

SN - 9781139524377

SN - 9781107034075

SP - 375

EP - 384

BT - The Cambridge History of the Second World War Volume II: Politics and Ideology

PB - Cambridge University Press

ER -