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126-717: Between 1922 and the beginning of World War II , the affected people were the German-speaking and Ladin -speaking populations of Trentino-Alto Adige , Friulians , and Slovenes and Croats in the Julian March . The program was later extended to areas annexed during World War II, affecting Slovenes in the Province of Ljubljana , and Croats in Gorski Kotar and coastal Dalmatia , Greeks in the Ionian islands and, to

252-567: A guardiamarina  [ it ] on an anti-submarine engine during World War II ; Antongiulio, an officer on the Eastern Front , where he was wounded in combat; and Niccolò, a fighter pilot who died in the skies of Greece and was decorated with the Gold Medal for Military Valour Memorial. Other sources, less detailed, reported Cobolli Gigli as being a member of a Slavic family. According to Giacomo Scotti, Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli

378-659: A Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron , promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward and eventually led to war with the United States and the Western Allies. In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria , again provoking little response from other European powers. Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on

504-578: A cautious French probe into the Saarland . The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany , which aimed to damage the country's economy and war effort. Germany responded by ordering U-boat warfare against Allied merchant and warships, which would later escalate into the Battle of the Atlantic . On 8 September, German troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw . The Polish counter-offensive to

630-627: A Dodecanese church to limit the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church . Fascist youth organizations were introduced on the islands, and the Italianization of names was encouraged by the Italian authorities. The islanders did not, however, receive full citizenship and were not required to serve in the Italian armed forces. The population was allowed to elect their own mayors. Lagos' successor, Cesare Maria De Vecchi , embarked on

756-510: A Fascist publication, that "The Istrian muse named as Foibe those places suitable for burial of enemies of the national [Italian] characteristics of Istria". The Slovene militant anti-Fascist organization TIGR emerged in 1927. It co-ordinated the Slovene resistance against Fascist Italy until its dismantlement by the Fascist secret police in 1941. At the time, some TIGR ex-members joined

882-575: A de facto annexation, but the Germans would not approve it. Nevertheless, the Italian authorities continued to prepare the ground for the annexation. Finally, on 22 April 1941, after discussions between the German and Italian rulers, Hitler agreed that Italy could proceed with a de facto annexation of the islands. Thus on 10 August 1941 the islands of Corfu , Cephalonia , Zakynthos , Lefkada and some minor islands were officially annexed by Italy as part of

1008-665: A decision of provincial Fascist secretaries dated 12 June 1927. On a specific order from the prefect of Trieste on 19 November 1928, the Edinost political society was also dissolved. Croat and Slovene financial co-operatives in Istria, which at first were absorbed by the Pula or Trieste savings banks, were gradually liquidated. In 1927, Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli , the minister for public works in fascist Italy, wrote in Gerarchia magazine,

1134-480: A family of national liberalism persuasion. There is a dispute about his family origins. According to Pietro Valente, Cobolli Gigli was born from Nicolò Cobol ( Koper , 1861 – Trieste, 1931), an elementary school teacher and Italian irredentist , to which Trieste has dedicated a Carso trail ( la Napoleonica ) for his creation of municipal recreation centers during the Habsburg times of Austria-Hungary . The name

1260-538: A forced Italianization campaign in 1936. The Italian language became compulsory in education and public life, with Greek being only an optional subject in schools. In 1937 the elected mayors were replaced by appointed loyal fascists. In 1938, the new Italian Racial Laws were introduced to the islands. The cultural remnants of the Venetian period were Mussolini's pretext to incorporate the Ionian Islands into

1386-663: A higher degree than other linguistic minorities in Italy". It is estimated that around 10 to 13 percent of the young people born in Sardinia are still competent in Sardinian, and the language is currently used exclusively by 0.6% of the total population. A 2012 study conducted by the University of Cagliari and Edinburgh found that the interviewees from Sardinia with the strongest sense of Italian identity were also those expressing

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1512-561: A lesser extent, to the French- and Arpitan -speaking regions of the western Alps (such as the Aosta valley ). On the other hand, other indigenous communities, such as in Lombardy , Venetia and the island of Sardinia , had already undergone cultural and linguistic Italianization starting from an earlier period. The former Austrian Littoral (later renamed the Julian March ) was occupied by

1638-399: A massive and violent Italianization of the annexed provinces: the political secretaries of the fascist party, of the after-work club, of the agricultural consortia and doctors, teachers, municipal employees, midwives were sent to administer them, immediately hated by those whose jobs they took away. Italian was imposed as a compulsory language for officials and teachers, although Serbo-Croatian

1764-480: A new currency, the Ionian drachma, was introduced with the aim to hamper trade with the rest of Greece, which was forbidden by Parini. Transportation with continental Greece was limited; in the courts, judges had to apply Italian law, and schooling followed the educational model of the Italian mainland. Greek administrative officials were replaced by Italian ones, administrative officials of non-Ionic origin were expelled,

1890-524: A pretext to initiate the invasion. The first German attack of the war came against the Polish defences at Westerplatte . The United Kingdom responded with an ultimatum for Germany to cease military operations, and on 3 September, after the ultimatum was ignored, Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the Phoney War period, the alliance provided no direct military support to Poland, outside of

2016-728: A pretext to worsen relations. On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig , and to allow a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession. The Poles refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a confrontational meeting with the British ambassador Nevile Henderson , Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered its claims rejected. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland after having staged several false flag border incidents as

2142-575: A race as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass , Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps . I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians. This expressed a common Fascist opinion against the Croatian and Slovene minority in

2268-475: A secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland , Finland, Estonia , Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence. The pact neutralised the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of

2394-774: A similar pact and rejected ceding part of its territory to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939, and was subsequently expelled from the League of Nations for this crime of aggression. Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, Soviet military success during the Winter War was modest, and the Finno-Soviet war ended in March 1940 with some Finnish concessions of territory . In June 1940,

2520-531: A two-front war, as it had in World War   I. Immediately afterwards, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it. In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which served as

2646-604: The Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish declaration of non-aggression . The situation became a crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. On 23 August the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, after tripartite negotiations for a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom, and Soviet Union had stalled. This pact had

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2772-689: The British Empire , with fighting in the Balkans , Mediterranean, and Middle East , the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz , and naval Battle of the Atlantic . Through a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany took control of much of continental Europe and formed the Axis alliance with Italy , Japan , and other countries. In June 1941, Germany led the European Axis in an invasion of

2898-581: The German Revolution of 1918–1919 , and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic , was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the political right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into

3024-853: The German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France 's declaration of war on Germany two days later on 3 September 1939. Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria , on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor , who stated that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and

3150-562: The Grande Communità del Nuovo Impero Romano (Great Community of the New Roman Empire). As soon as the fascist governor Piero Parini had installed himself on Corfu he vigorously began a forced Italianization policy that lasted until the end of the war. The islands passed through a phase of Italianization in all areas, from their administration to their economy. Italian was designated the islands' only official language;

3276-676: The Italian Social Republic and the Republican Fascist Party . As chairman of Italstrade  [ it ] , he collaborated with the Germans through Organization Todt in the construction of defensive structures. For this reason, at the end of the war he was tried for wartime collaboration and sentenced in the trial of first instance to 19 years in prison; this sentence was later annulled on appeal on 9 April 1946. He died on 22 July 1987 in Malnate at

3402-576: The Italian mainland , and Allied offensives in the Pacific—cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France at Normandy , while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and pushed Germany and its allies westward. At the same time, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled

3528-553: The Japanese Navy and captured key islands . The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories ; the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops; Hitler's suicide ; and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945 . Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration ,

3654-640: The League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant . The United Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria . When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to

3780-731: The Nationalist rebels , led by General Francisco Franco . Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis: Mussolini sent more than 70,000 ground troops, 6,000 aviation personnel, and 720 aircraft to Spain. The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic . More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades , also fought against

3906-690: The Rome–Berlin Axis . A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact , which Italy joined the following year. The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allies and new regional warlords . In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan , which had long sought influence in China as

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4032-522: The Sardinian language ceased to be regarded as an identity marker of a specific ethnic group, and was instead lumped in with a dialectal conglomerate which, in the Mainland, had long been subordinate to the national language. The jurist Carlo Baudi di Vesme, in his 1848 essay Considerazioni politiche ed economiche sulla Sardegna , stated that Sardinian was one of the most significant barriers separating

4158-598: The Slovene Partisans . As a result of the repression, more than 100,000 Slovenes and Croats emigrated from Italian territory between the two world wars, the vast majority to Yugoslavia. Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the writers Vladimir Bartol and Josip Ribičič , the legal theorist Boris Furlan , and the architect Viktor Sulčič . During the Italian annexation of Dalmatia in World War II , Giuseppe Bastianini immediately gave way to

4284-535: The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941. By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, massing forces on the Soviet border. Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later. On 31 July 1940, Hitler decided that

4410-598: The Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation ; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe , drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact

4536-709: The Sudetenland , an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement , which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands. Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed

4662-428: The Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria , and Chahar and Suiyuan . After the 1936 Xi'an Incident , the Kuomintang and CCP forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan. The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with

4788-466: The Trans-Olza region of Czechoslovakia. Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded

4914-506: The Treaty of Craiova . The loss of one-third of Romania's 1939 territory caused a coup against King Carol II, turning Romania into a fascist dictatorship under Marshal Ion Antonescu , with a course set towards the Axis in the hopes of a German guarantee. Meanwhile, German-Soviet political relations and economic co-operation gradually stalled, and both states began preparations for war. In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden , which

5040-401: The United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany. Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , in which they had agreed on " spheres of influence " in Eastern Europe. In 1940, the Soviets annexed the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania . After the fall of France in June 1940, the war continued mainly between Germany and

5166-426: The Wehrmacht rapidly advanced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium, trapping the bulk of the Allied armies in a cauldron on the Franco-Belgian border near Lille. The United Kingdom was able to evacuate a significant number of Allied troops from the continent by early June, although they had to abandon almost all their equipment. On 10 June, Italy invaded France , declaring war on both France and

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5292-451: The aftermath of World War I and the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan . Key events leading up to the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria , the Spanish Civil War , the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , and Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland . World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany , under Adolf Hitler , invaded Poland , prompting

5418-402: The great powers —participated, with many investing all available economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities in pursuit of total war , blurring the distinction between military and civilian resources. Tanks and aircraft played major roles , with the latter enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II

5544-443: The province of Aosta including also part of the Italian-speaking Canavese . A secret society was organized in the region for the defense of the Aosta Valley identity and the use of the French language, the Ligue valdôtaine , whose founder was Anselme Réan, as well as a partisan activity which led to the Declaration of Chivasso , signed by the representatives of the communities Alpine in defense of their particularism. A member of

5670-404: The reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post–World War   II issues. No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed, although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 , which also restored full diplomatic relations between them. World War I had radically altered

5796-409: The Allies were attempting to cut off . Denmark capitulated after six hours , and despite Allied support , Norway was conquered within two months. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain , who was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10   May 1940. On the same day, Germany launched an offensive against France . To circumvent

5922-400: The Axis war against the Soviet Union, in Romania's case partially to recapture territory ceded to the Soviet Union . In early June 1940, the Italian Regia Aeronautica attacked and besieged Malta , a British possession. From late summer to early autumn, Italy conquered British Somaliland and made an incursion into British-held Egypt . In October, Italy attacked Greece , but the attack

6048-421: The Blitz , but largely ended in May 1941 after failing to significantly disrupt the British war effort. Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy , using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic . The British Home Fleet scored a significant victory on 27   May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck . In November 1939,

6174-405: The European Axis declaring war on the US. Japan conquered much of coastal China and Southeast Asia , but its advances in the Pacific were halted in mid-1942 after its defeat in the naval Battle of Midway ; Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and

6300-442: The First World War, Cobolli Gigli began his political career in the fascist movement in 1919. That same year, under the pseudonym Giulio Italico, he produced the brochure Trieste, la fedele di Roma (English: Trieste, Faithful of Rome ). He followed the cursus honorum within the PNF, which he joined in January 1922. He was the federal secretary of Trieste's PNF from 1927 to 1930, and the city's vice-podestà from 1933 to 1934. As

6426-410: The French possessions of Syria and Lebanon , assisted by the Free French . With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations for war. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany, and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia , the two powers signed

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6552-426: The Germans, and the last large operational unit of the Polish Army surrendered on 6   October . Despite the military defeat, Poland never surrendered; instead, it formed the Polish government-in-exile and a clandestine state apparatus remained in occupied Poland. A significant part of Polish military personnel evacuated to Romania and Latvia; many of them later fought against the Axis in other theatres of

6678-410: The Ionian islands ended in September 1943, after the armistice of Cassibile . World War II Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers . Nearly all the world's countries —including all

6804-417: The Italian Army after the Armistice with Austria . Following the annexation of the March by Italy, 400 cultural, sporting (for example Sokol ), youth, social and professional Slavic organizations, and libraries ("reading rooms"), three political parties, 31 newspapers and journals, and 300 co-operatives and financial institutions had been forbidden, and specifically so later with the Law on Associations (1925),

6930-422: The Italianization of geographical names, streets and squares. A special office for the Adriatic lands offered loans and benefits to those willing to denationalize, and in the meantime purchased land to redistribute to former Italian combatants. Scholarships were established for Dalmatians who wanted to continue their studies in Italy and 52 Dalmatian Italians and 211 Croatians and Serbs made use of them. In 1919, at

7056-431: The Julian March. Italian teachers were assigned to schools and the use of Croatian and Slovene languages in the administration and in the courts restricted. After March 1923 these languages were prohibited in administration, and after October 1925 in law courts, as well. In 1923, in the context of the organic school reform prepared by the fascist minister Giovanni Gentile , teaching in languages different from Italian

7182-418: The Kingdom of Italy. Even before the outbreak of World War II and the Greek-Italian 1940-1941 Winter War , Mussolini had expressed his wish to annex the Ionian Islands as an Italian province. After the fall of Greece in early April 1941, the Italians occupied much of the country, including the Ionians. Mussolini informed General Carlo Geloso that the Ionian Islands would form a separate Italian province through

7308-413: The Law on Public Demonstrations (1926) and the Law on Public Order (1926), the closure of the classical lyceum in Pazin, of the high school in Volosko (1918), the closure of the 488 Slovene and Croat primary schools followed. The period of violent persecution of Slovenes in Trieste began with riots on 13 April 1920, which were organised as a retaliation for the assault on the Italian occupying troops by

7434-545: The Mainland's economic growth; Italianization had thus become a mass phenomenon, taking roots in the hitherto predominantly Sardinian-speaking villages. To many Sardinians, abandoning their language and acquiring Italian as a cultural norm represented a means through which they could distance themselves from their original group, which they perceived as marginalized and lacking in prestige, and thereby incorporate themselves into an altogether different social group. The Sardinians have been thus led to part with their language as it bore

7560-450: The Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War   II but generally favoured the Axis . His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front . In July 1937, Japan captured

7686-452: The Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out of commission after a carrier attack at Taranto , and neutralising several more warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan . Italian defeats prompted Germany to deploy an expeditionary force to North Africa; at the end of March 1941, Rommel 's Afrika Korps launched an offensive which drove back Commonwealth forces. In less than a month, Axis forces advanced to western Egypt and besieged

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7812-405: The Sardinians in relation with mainlanders and the Italian language, perceived as a symbol of continental superiority and cultural dominance. Many indigenous cultural practices were to go extinct, shifting towards other forms of socialization. Within a few generations Sardinian, as well as Alghero 's Catalan dialect , would become a minority language spoken by fewer and fewer Sardinian families,

7938-423: The Soviet Union occupied the entire territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as the Romanian regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region . In August 1940, Hitler imposed the Second Vienna Award on Romania which led to the transfer of Northern Transylvania to Hungary. In September 1940, Bulgaria demanded Southern Dobruja from Romania with German and Italian support, leading to

8064-421: The Soviet Union , opening the Eastern Front and initially making large territorial gains. Japan aimed to dominate East Asia and the Asia-Pacific , and by 1937 was at war with the Republic of China . In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories in Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific , including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii , which resulted in the US and the UK declaring war against Japan, and

8190-418: The Soviet Union and Mongolia . The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron , which emphasised Japan's expansion northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. This policy would prove difficult to maintain in light of the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the Soviets. Japan and the Soviet Union eventually signed

8316-575: The Soviet Union should be eliminated and aimed for the conquest of Ukraine , the Baltic states and Byelorussia . However, other senior German officials like Ribbentrop saw an opportunity to create a Euro-Asian bloc against the British Empire by inviting the Soviet Union into the Tripartite Pact. In November 1940, negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the pact. The Soviets showed some interest but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940, Hitler issued

8442-402: The US dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago , the possibility of further atomic bombings, and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria , Japan announced its unconditional surrender on 15 August and signed a surrender document on 2 September 1945 , marking

8568-424: The United Kingdom and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence ; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece . Shortly after the Franco - British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel . Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced

8694-489: The United Kingdom attacked on 3   July in an attempt to prevent its seizure by Germany. The air Battle of Britain began in early July with Luftwaffe attacks on shipping and harbours . The German campaign for air superiority started in August but its failure to defeat RAF Fighter Command forced the indefinite postponement of the proposed German invasion of Britain . The German strategic bombing offensive intensified with night attacks on London and other cities in

8820-401: The United Kingdom. The Germans turned south against the weakened French army, and Paris fell to them on 14   June. Eight days later France signed an armistice with Germany ; it was divided into German and Italian occupation zones , and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime , which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet, which

8946-473: The United States was assisting China and the Western Allies, and had amended the Neutrality Act to allow "cash and carry" purchases by the Allies. In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased . In September the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases . Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention in

9072-606: The Yellow River ; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan , but the city was taken by October. Japanese military victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead, the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war. In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with

9198-566: The capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens or hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese . In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their first major victory at Taierzhuang , but then the city of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May. In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding

9324-403: The conflict well into 1941. In December 1940, Roosevelt accused Hitler of planning world conquest and ruled out any negotiations as useless, calling for the United States to become an " arsenal of democracy " and promoting Lend-Lease programmes of military and humanitarian aid to support the British war effort; Lend-Lease was later extended to the other Allies, including the Soviet Union after it

9450-526: The creation of a " New Roman Empire ". Adolf Hitler , after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when Paul von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. Following Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany and abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of

9576-579: The development of the road network in Ethiopia and personally supervise the work of the various construction sites directed by the engineer Giuseppe Pini. On 4 April 1939, at the National Institute of Roman Studies  [ it ] , he illustrated during a conference "the contribution of the Ministry of Public Works to the master plan of imperial Rome". In the national territory, he

9702-483: The difficulty for the Italian-speaking individuals to adapt to a completely different environment and, later on, the alliance between Germany and Italy: under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement , Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German people living in the province. They either had to opt for emigration to Germany or stay in Italy and become fully Italianized. Because of

9828-564: The directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union. Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli (28 May 1892 – 22 July 1987) was an Italian engineer and politician. From 1935 to 1939, he was member of Benito Mussolini 's Italian fascist government as minister of public works . Giuseppe Cobolli Gigli was born in 1892 in Trieste , then part of the Imperial Free City of Trieste and its Territory , into

9954-757: The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was established in 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference . The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military, and naval disarmament , as well as settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration. Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War   I , irredentist and revanchist nationalism had emerged in several European states. These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of

10080-501: The edge of an abyss which the muse called foiba , a worthy place of burial for those who, in the province, threaten with bold claims the national characteristics of Istria ." In 1934, Cobolli Gigli became a member of the Chamber of Deputies from Trieste. In January 1935, he was appointed Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Public Works. Aged 43, from 5 September 1935, upon the death of Luigi Razza , to 31 October 1939, he

10206-712: The end of May completed the German conquest of the Balkans. Partisan warfare subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia , which continued until the end of the war. In the Middle East in May, Commonwealth forces quashed an uprising in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria . Between June and July, British-led forces invaded and occupied

10332-511: The end of the war. World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the world, and it set the foundation of international relations for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The United Nations was established to foster international cooperation and prevent conflicts, with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—becoming

10458-530: The fascist ideologue Giuseppe Cobol, he wrote in the journal Gerarchia . In a September 1927 article entitled Il fascismo e gli allogeni (English: Fascism and the Aliens ), he theorized the ethnic cleansing of Venezia Giulia , by replacing the populations with native Italian settlers from other provinces the Kingdom of Italy . In Trieste, la fedele di Roma , about Pazin , he reported: "The village lies on

10584-518: The father of Cobolli Gigli was the Slovenian Nikolaus Kobolj. According to Claudio Sommaruga, Cobolli Gigli was the son of an elementary school teacher Nicholas Cobol, from Koper ( Italian : Capodistria ), and he first assumed the pseudonym of Giulio Italico, until Italianizing it in 1928 in the name Cobolli, and after becoming a gerarca he added a second surname, Gigli. An engineer, after having fought as irredentist in

10710-575: The first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia , staged the Mukden incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo . China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai , Rehe and Hebei , until

10836-864: The former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge incident , which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China. The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior cooperation with Germany . From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan , engaged the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou , and fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan . Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai , but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push Chinese forces back, capturing

10962-471: The invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia ) by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy ( Regno d'Italia ), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea . The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa ( Africa Orientale Italiana , or AOI); in addition it exposed the weakness of

11088-440: The island to the Mainland in such a way as to prevent either future attempts of political separation or curb a renewed interest on the part of Spain . In fact, the complex linguistic composition of the native islanders , theretofore extraneous to Italian and its cultural sphere, had been previously roofed by Spanish as the prestige language of the upper class for centuries; in this context, Italianization, while difficult at first,

11214-578: The islanders from the Italian Mainland, and only the suppression of their dialects could ensure that they might understand the governmental instructions, issued in Italian, and become properly "civilized" subjects of the Savoyard Kingdom. However, it was not until the rise of fascism that Sardinian was actively banned and/or excluded from any residual cultural activities to enforce a thorough shift to Italian. According to Guido Melis,

11340-696: The local Croatian population in the 11 July Split incident . Many Slovene-owned shops and buildings were destroyed during the riots, which culminated in the burning down of the Narodni dom ("National Home"), the community hall of the Triestine Slovenes, by a group of Italian Fascists, led by Francesco Giunta . Benito Mussolini praised this action as a "masterpiece of the Triestine fascism". Two years later he became prime minister of Italy. In September 1920, Mussolini said: When dealing with such

11466-557: The local gendarmes were partially replaced by Italian Carabinieri , although Parini initially allowed the Greek judges to continue their work, they were ultimately replaced by an Italian Military Court based in Corfu. The "return to the Venetian order" and the Italianization as pursued by Parini were even more drastic than the Italianization policies elsewhere, as their aim was a forced and abrupt cessation of all cultural and historical ties with

11592-605: The majority of whom have turned into monolingual and monocultural Italians. This process has been slower to take hold in the countryside than in the main cities, where it has become most evident instead. Nowadays, the Sardinians are linguistically and culturally assimilated into Italian and, despite the official recognition conferred to Sardinian by the national law in 1999, according to Giulio Paulis "identify with their language to lesser degree than other linguistic minorities in Italy, and instead seem to identify with Italian to

11718-588: The mark of a stigmatized identity, the embodiment of a long-suffered social and political subordination in a chained society, as opposed to the social advancement granted them by embracing Italian; such social stigma went beyond the Sardinian language itself to also encompass the Sardinian-influenced accent when speaking Italian, which, unlike other accents, was equally considered uncouth and befitting criminals, or ignorance. Research on ethnolinguistic prejudice has pointed to feelings of inferiority amongst

11844-550: The most unfavourable opinion towards Sardinian. The twelve major islands of the Dodecanese , of which the largest is Rhodos, were ruled by Italy between 1912 and 1945. After a period of military rule, civil governors were appointed in 1923 shortly after Fascists began to rule Italy and Italians were settled on the islands. The first governor, Mario Lago , encouraged intermarriage between Italian settlers and Greeks, provided scholarships for young Greeks to study in Italy and set up

11970-474: The old mother country. The only newspaper on the islands was the Italian language "Giornale del Popolo". By early 1942 pre-war politicians in the Ionian Islands began to protest Parini's harsh policies. Parini reacted by opening a concentration camp on the island of Paxi , to which two more camps were added on Othonoi and Lazaretto islands. Parini's police troops arrested about 3,500 people, which were imprisoned at these three camps. The Italianization efforts in

12096-424: The outbreak of World War II , this agreement was never fully implemented and most ethnic Germans remained or returned at the end of the war. Following World War II, South Tyrol was one of the first regions to be granted autonomy on the ground of its peculiar linguistic situation; any further attempts at Italianization were formally abandoned. In the 21st century, just over 100 years after the Italian annexation of

12222-502: The permanent members of its security council . The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers , setting the stage for the Cold War . In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia . Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion . World War II began in Europe on 1 September 1939 with

12348-589: The political European map with the defeat of the Central Powers —including Austria-Hungary , Germany , Bulgaria , and the Ottoman Empire —and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia , which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of World War I , such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of

12474-547: The port of Tobruk . By late March 1941, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact ; however, the Yugoslav government was overthrown two days later by pro-British nationalists. Germany and Italy responded with simultaneous invasions of both Yugoslavia and Greece , commencing on 6 April 1941; both nations were forced to surrender within the month. The airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete at

12600-786: The region, 64% of the population of South Tyrol speak German as their first and everyday language. Fascism tried to Italianize Aosta Valley , suppressing the French-speaking schools ( French : Écoles de hameau ), establishing the exclusive use of the Italian language in judicial offices (Royal Decree of 15 October 1925, n. 1796), suppressing the teaching of the French language (Royal Decree 22 November 1925, n. 2191), Italianizing toponyms (ordinance of 22 July 1939) and suppressing newspapers in French, such as Le Duché d'Aoste , Le Pays d'Aoste and La Patrie valdôtaine . Furthermore, with Royal Decree n. 1 of 2 January 1927, Aosta Valley became

12726-722: The remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state , the Slovak Republic . Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region , formerly the German Memelland . Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig ,

12852-421: The resistance, Émile Chanoux, arrested by the fascist militia, was assassinated in prison on the night of 18-19 May 1944. In 1720, the island of Sardinia was ceded to Alpine House of Savoy , which at the time already controlled a number of other states in the Italian mainland, most notably Piedmont . The Savoyards had imposed the Italian language on Sardinia as part of a wider cultural policy designed to bind

12978-527: The resulting assimilation created "an intergenerational rift that could no longer be healed". After the end of the Second World War, efforts continued to be made to further Italianize the population, with the justification that by doing so, as the principles of the modernization theory ran, the island could rid itself of the "ancient traditional practices" which held it back, regarded as a legacy of barbarism to be disposed of at once in order to join

13104-462: The significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles . Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions , while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces . The German Empire was dissolved in

13230-433: The sole permissible language in courts of law. Illegal Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up by the local German-speaking majority to teach children the German language. The government created incentives to encourage immigration of native Italians to South Tyrol. Several factors limited the effects of the Italian policy, namely the adverse nature of the territory (mainly mountains and valleys of difficult access),

13356-498: The start or prelude to World War II. The exact date of the war's end also is not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 15 August 1945 ( V-J Day ), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia . A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951. A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed

13482-593: The strong Maginot Line fortifications on the Franco-German border, Germany directed its attack at the neutral nations of Belgium , the Netherlands , and Luxembourg . The Germans carried out a flanking manoeuvre through the Ardennes region, which was mistakenly perceived by the Allies as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles. By successfully implementing new Blitzkrieg tactics,

13608-461: The time of its annexation, South Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers. In October 1923, the use of the Italian language became mandatory (although not exclusive) on all levels of federal, provincial and local government. Regulations by the fascist authorities required that all kinds of signs and public notices be in Italian only. Maps, postcards and other graphic material had to show Italian place names. In September 1925, Italian became

13734-645: The two wars became World War II in 1941. Other proposed starting dates for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War   II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939. Others view the Spanish Civil War as

13860-407: The war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian , and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing, and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, promising

13986-475: The war. Germany annexed western Poland and occupied central Poland ; the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland ; small shares of Polish territory were transferred to Lithuania and Slovakia . On 6 October, Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France but said that the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. The proposal was rejected and Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France, which

14112-512: The west halted the German advance for several days, but it was outflanked and encircled by the Wehrmacht . Remnants of the Polish army broke through to besieged Warsaw . On 17 September 1939, two days after signing a cease-fire with Japan , the Soviet Union invaded Poland under the supposed pretext that the Polish state had ceased to exist. On 27 September, the Warsaw garrison surrendered to

14238-651: The world order , and soon began a massive rearmament campaign . France, seeking to secure its alliance with Italy, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia , which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription. The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed

14364-614: Was invaded by Germany. The United States started strategic planning to prepare for a full-scale offensive against Germany. At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact formally united Japan, Italy, and Germany as the Axis powers . The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country—with the exception of the Soviet Union—that attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three. The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary , Slovakia , and Romania joined. Romania and Hungary later made major contributions to

14490-467: Was a minister of public works of the Fascist era and son of Nikolaus Combol, Slovenian primary school teacher, born in 1863; the last name was Italianized spontaneously in 1928, and since 1919 had given himself the pseudonym patriotic Giulio Italico. When he became a National Fascist Party (PNF) leader, he took a second surname, Gigli, giving itself a touch of nobility. According to Federico Vincenti,

14616-617: Was abolished. In the Julian March this meant the end of teaching in Croatian and Slovenian. Some 500 Slovene teachers, nearly half of all Slovene teachers in the Littoral region, were moved by the Italians from the area, to the interior of Italy, while Italian teachers were sent to teach Slovene children Italian. However, in Šušnjevica (it: Valdarsa) the use of Istro-Rumanian language was allowed after 1923. In 1926, claiming that it

14742-464: Was among the proponents of the regulatory plan of Catanzaro and La Spezia (the first of the city), and the first signatory of the project to complete the former Busonera Hospital in Venice . In 1939, he became a national councilor of the Chamber of Fasci and Corporations . From 1939 to 1943, he was president of Agip , the Italian public oil company founded by Fascism. In 1943, Cobolli Gigli joined

14868-543: Was intended as a cultural policy whereby the social and economic structures of the island could become increasingly intertwined with the Mainland and expressly Piedmont, where the Kingdom's central power lay. The 1847 Perfect Fusion , performed with an assimilationist intent and politically analogous to the Acts of Union between Britain and Ireland , determined the conventional moment wherefrom, according to Antonietta Dettori,

14994-487: Was later changed to Cobolli during Fascist Italy . The addition of Gigli to the surname was related to the experience of irredentist fighting during World War I . The unredeemed volunteer fighters in the Italian Army assumed a battle pseudonym to protect their families, and many added it, as the war was over, to their last name, as element of honour. According to Valente, the children of Cobolli Gigli were Sergio,

15120-530: Was minister of public works in the Mussolini government , overseeing the great works carried out in the Italian colonies , a subject upon which he wrote the book Strade imperiale (English: Imperial Roads ), published in 1938. He specialized in the development of road network in Italian Ethiopia . By order of Mussolini, he went to Italian East Africa at the end of 1936 for six months to deal with

15246-511: Was postponed until the spring of 1940 due to bad weather. After the outbreak of war in Poland, Stalin threatened Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania with military invasion, forcing the three Baltic countries to sign pacts allowing the creation of Soviet military bases in these countries; in October 1939, significant Soviet military contingents were moved there. Finland refused to sign

15372-772: Was repulsed with heavy Italian casualties; the campaign ended within months with minor territorial changes. To assist Italy and prevent Britain from gaining a foothold, Germany prepared to invade the Balkans, which would threaten Romanian oil fields and strike against British dominance of the Mediterranean. In December 1940, British Empire forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East Africa . The offensives were successful; by early February 1941, Italy had lost control of eastern Libya, and large numbers of Italian troops had been taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with

15498-673: Was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless. The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year. Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement . In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed

15624-492: Was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croat surnames. In the Province of Trieste alone, 3,000 surnames were modified and 60,000 people had their surnames amended to an Italian-sounding form. First or given names were also Italianized. Slovene and Croat societies and sporting and cultural associations had to cease every activity in line with

15750-590: Was the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in 70 to 85 million deaths , more than half being civilians. Millions died in genocides , including the Holocaust of European Jews, as well as from massacres, starvation, and disease. Following the Allied powers' victory, Germany , Austria , Japan , and Korea were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders . The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in

15876-522: Was tolerated for communications within the civil administration. In the major centres, various signs written in Croatian were replaced by writings in Italian, Croatian flags, newspapers and posters were prohibited except the bilingual ones published by the Italian civil and military authorities; cultural and sporting societies dissolved, the Roman salute imposed, some Italian surnames restored. We also proceeded, as already in Julian March and South Tyrol , with

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