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The Italian Army in SloveniaMemory and Oblivion

The Italian Army in Slovenia: Memory and Oblivion [ The accounts of the Italian military in Slovenia, if compared to those of the veterans from Russia and Africa, are practically nonexistent. As we have seen, in order to obtain accounts of wartime experiences in Slovenia, it was necessary to refer to the stories provided by veterans from Croatia and Dalmatia as well. The reason behind this lack of accounts is difficult to explain. We can hazard a guess as to the reasons. First and foremost would be the difficulty in rationalizing and providing a motive for the personal and collective roles of Italian soldiers engaged in a war lacking any ethic, strategic or political. Fascist Italy occupied and annexed a territory without any “higher” motives for doing do, even for those times. While they had gone to Spain to defend Christian civilization from Bolshevism, to Ethiopia with the usual explanation of “the white man’s burden,” and to Russia to destroy, at their roots, the anti-European Communist groups that were against the corrupt Western democracies, and had been fighting to reestablish a principle of international justice, in Yugoslavia, the motives were solely those of imperialism that also revealed itself to be weak and beggarly. Also in comparison to the other Balkan theaters of war, there was a significant motivational gap when it came to Slovenia.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

The Italian Army in SloveniaMemory and Oblivion

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-44807-4
Pages
121 –136
DOI
10.1057/9781137281203_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[ The accounts of the Italian military in Slovenia, if compared to those of the veterans from Russia and Africa, are practically nonexistent. As we have seen, in order to obtain accounts of wartime experiences in Slovenia, it was necessary to refer to the stories provided by veterans from Croatia and Dalmatia as well. The reason behind this lack of accounts is difficult to explain. We can hazard a guess as to the reasons. First and foremost would be the difficulty in rationalizing and providing a motive for the personal and collective roles of Italian soldiers engaged in a war lacking any ethic, strategic or political. Fascist Italy occupied and annexed a territory without any “higher” motives for doing do, even for those times. While they had gone to Spain to defend Christian civilization from Bolshevism, to Ethiopia with the usual explanation of “the white man’s burden,” and to Russia to destroy, at their roots, the anti-European Communist groups that were against the corrupt Western democracies, and had been fighting to reestablish a principle of international justice, in Yugoslavia, the motives were solely those of imperialism that also revealed itself to be weak and beggarly. Also in comparison to the other Balkan theaters of war, there was a significant motivational gap when it came to Slovenia.]

Published: Oct 28, 2015

Keywords: Civilian Population; Reciprocity Principle; International Justice; Guerrilla Warfare; Public Memory

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