Men and boys from the Ilirska Bistrica area in Italian military uniform

Abstract

Between 1922 and 1943, after the Treaty of Rapallo came into force, men enlisted in the Italian armed forces and boys forcibly incorporated into special battalions of the Italian army left the Ilirska Bistrica area as Italian citizens, joining the military structures of a state that was not their homeland. Having their names Italianized and coming from an environment that the fascist regime had stripped of its national identity, they risked their lives for the military interests of the Kingdom of Italy. The contribution sets forth selected topics, focusing on conscripts deserting in 1935, before and after the war in Ethiopia, on survivors’ personal experiences during the interwar period and the Second World War as well as on dead and missing soldiers and war captives. The author draws primarily on Italian archival sources, victimology sources, and oral sources obtained through conducting field research. To avoid generalizations, the article aims to highlight the different dimensions of enlistments and personalize the narrative by using the concrete names of deserters and dead soldiers as well as survivors’ testimonies.