What are the foibe? What do we mean when we talk about foibe? Where are they located and why are they important in the history of the twentieth century?
What are the foibe?
What are the foibe? They are deep natural cracks in the ground typical of the Carso mountains, widespread in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The foibe were the stage for a horrendous spectacle that took place between 1943 and 1947 : thousands of men were thrown into these pits . The tragedy of the foibe has been analyzed and documented by the journalist and historian Gianni Oliva. He discovered that the foibe were not only places of executions, but also of desperation, as enemy soldiers, Christians and arrested partisans were detained in the foibe before being killed. The main goal of this tragedy was to erase an entire group of people from history, and it is a tragedy that cannot be easily forgotten.
First of all, to understand the historical situation, you should know that in the first twenty years of 1900, and still today, people of different ethnic groups lived in the Friuli region: Italians and Slavs (the latter can then be further divided into Croats, Slovenes, Serbs…). With the establishment of the fascist regime in Italy, Mussolini’s government implemented a policy of forced Italianization in this area of the country. Starting in 1922, a series of measures were introduced: the impossibility of speaking languages other than Italian in public, for example, or the change of one’s Slavic surname to Italian.
Thus the first revolutionary movements and anti-fascist organizations of social-communist origin were born (TIGR and Borba, then the OF, the Slovenian Liberation Front). At the end of the 1930s, with the outbreak of the Second World War , the policy of denationalization proved to be a real failure: the only result was to fuel hatred on the part of the “alien” population (Slovene, Croatian) towards the Italian State.
As soon as Hitler invaded Poland (September 1, 1939), almost all the Balkan provinces aligned themselves with the Axis except Yugoslavia , which however was about to reach an agreement with the German nation. While the Yugoslav head of state Cvetković was in Vienna to meet the Führer and sign the agreement, a coup was organized in Belgrade that prevented the concordat from succeeding.
Hitler attacked Yugoslavia, conquered it and divided its territories between Italy and Germany. 800,000 Croats and Slovenes became part of the Kingdom of Italy. The OF then organized citizen revolts that provoked the response of the Italian State: 202 work camps were built in which partisans and rebels were integrated.
The armistice of Cassibile
On September 3, 1943, Italy secretly signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies : the Italian army began to crumble little by little, making room for the Wehrmacht troops. The consequence was a real power vacuum, following which, towards the end of 1943, the Slavic communist movements asserted themselves in a stable manner, remaining hidden for the entire duration of the war.
These organizations aimed to strengthen the trinomial Italian=master=fascist: in this period the affair of the foibe began, during which a considerable number of innocent people were tried and convicted, killed to achieve the goal of erasing every trace of the Italian fascist regime.
From 1 October 1943, Operation Cloudburst took place, organized by Nazi Germany, which thus obtained dominion over all of Friuli and Istria. Hitler, in order to appease the communist currents that had come to light following the armistice, appointed Friedrich Rainer as head of this region , who tried to establish a new policy of Germanization. This policy was different from the fascist one, because it made the local population more involved in public spheres, while maintaining the strongest powers (the army, for example) in German hands.
It was during this period that the Risiera di San Sabba was used as a concentration camp: it was in fact the only Italian concentration camp equipped with a crematorium. In 1944, Mussolini’s fascist regime lost power completely. The Italians, together with Slovenians and Croatians, found themselves in the hands of German generals who prevented them from any form of freedom of expression.
The Resistance
At the beginning of 1944 the Italian Resistance developed , but it did not have a unified current. It included:
- the GAP (Patriotic Action Groups) of communist origin,
- the CLN (National Liberation Committee)
- the Osoppo Brigades led by the Christian Democracy.
These three groups later came into conflict with the Yugoslav resistance.
Also during this period, thanks to the OF, Slovenia managed to proclaim its independence and Croatia was taken from Italy to be annexed to Yugoslavia.
Of particular significance was the rise of Marshal Tito, head of the Yugoslav Communist Party , who became head of government and dictator. Tito had a very specific political objective: to annex all the territories inhabited by Slavs (therefore also a large part of Friuli) to his new Yugoslavia.
In the meantime, the Italian Resistance tried to create a united front with the Slovenian and Croatian ones , but failed because the aliens claimed first of all to define the borders of the states that would be born as a result of the partisan struggle. Several protagonists played a central role in the affair: Palmiro Togliatti and Georgi Dimitrov induced their respective armies to fight together for a single national liberation. The CLN (which directed the Italian Resistance) and the OF then found an agreement and joined forces, postponing the question of the borders until after the war.
In the first half of 1945, parallel to the Slavic partisan struggle, the second wave of the foibe phenomenon developed, despite the alliance with the CLN: thousands more people were thrown into the cavities.
In the early months of 1945 the Allies entered the scene: Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the British government , and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the USA , had different positions regarding how to intervene in the Friuli affair: support the Resistance or put an end to the sinkholes?
The partisan forces were still divided, despite the agreement between the Yugoslav and Italian governments.
The Allies decided to follow Roosevelt’s advice, opting for a wait-and-see attitude until, on 14 April 1945 , the Slovenians attacked Trieste. The new US president Truman (elected on 12 April of the same year) then decided to intervene in favour of Italy: on 2 May the Allies reached an agreement with Tito and the disputed territories were divided by the Morgan Line (the current border of Friuli). The Yugoslavian marshal was forced to sign the agreement due to Stalin’s lack of support .
