The birth of Yugoslavia. A vision from Italy (1918‐20)

: The article aims to give a brief survey of the attitude that an important part of the army showed towards the birth of the Reign of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after the first world war. Many documents of the Italian General Staff of the army, as a matter of fact, recorded a widespread belief in indicating as the national problems the Achilles' heel of the Yugoslav state. As a consequence, the most radical factions converged towards D’Annunzio’s plans to foment this national resistance of Magyars, Croats, Albanians and Macedonians against Belgrade and to subject this political question to Italian interests. This attitude had no immediate results but was soon retaken by Benito Mussolini, who seemed to use D’Annunzio’s intrigues as the main directive of his foreign policy with regards to Italian Eastern neighbor.

L’articolo si prefigge di descrivere la reazione di alcuni ambienti politici e militari italiani verso la nascita del Regno di Serbi, Croati e Sloveni e la difficile questione del confine orientale italiano in Istria e Dalmazia. In particolare, si citano alcuni documenti dell’Archivio dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito e alcuni rapporti diplomatici per descrivere la nascita di un vasto fronte anti‐Jugoslavo che trovava numerose adesioni all’interno dell’esercito e nell’opinione pubblica, e che trovò in Gabriele D’Annunzio una guida efficace e carismatica. Al di là delle velleità dannunziane, tale approccio sopravviverà negli anni seguenti e fornirà a Mussolini le linee guida della politica estera fascista nell’area balcanica