Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills Operationszone Alpenvorland | |||||||||
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| 1943–1945 | |||||||||
 The Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills ("OZAV") | |||||||||
| Capital | Bozen | ||||||||
| Government | Commissariat | ||||||||
| High Commissioner | |||||||||
• 1943–1945 | Franz Hofer | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 1943 | |||||||||
| 1945 | |||||||||
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| Today part of | Italy | ||||||||
The Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills (German : Operationszone Alpenvorland (OZAV); Italian : Zona d'operazione delle Prealpi) was a Nazi German occupation zone in the sub-Alpine area in Italy during World War II. [1]
OZAV was established on 10 September 1943 by the occupying German Wehrmacht, as a response to the Allied Armistice with Italy proclaimed two days earlier following the Allied invasion of Italy. It comprised the provinces of Belluno, Bolzano and Trento. The Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, comprising the provinces of Udine, Görz, Trieste, Pula, Rijeka, Kvarner Gulf and Ljubljana, was established on the same day. Both operational zones were separate from the Italian Social Republic (RSI), based in Salò on Lake Garda, which governed the remainder of Italy that had not yet been occupied by the Allies. [2]
OZAV was administered by High Commissioner Franz Hofer. The zone was administered as part of the Reichsgau of Tirol-Vorarlberg. [3] The capital of the zone was Bolzano. Hofer wanted to amalgamate the operation zone to his Gau and thus bring forth the reunification of Tyrol and the territorial resurrection of the old Austrian crownland of Tyrol. [4] This did not take place, as Hitler wanted to show consideration for Mussolini, although the Salo government had almost zero influence in the region during German rule. [5]
The Italian influence was resisted and dismantled by the Germans, who decreed the restoration of the provincial borders of 1919 (plus the addition of Belluno), and forced the resignation of the ethnic Italian Podestà in South Tyrol who were replaced by German-speaking mayors recruited from the local population identifying with the Third Reich. [6] In September 1943, the German language was given equal status with the Italian language. [6] German and Ladin names of streets and localities were displayed alongside Italian names. [6] Fascist and Italian-language newspapers were shut down and the importing of newspapers from the RSI was banned. [6] The Fascist party was outlawed. [6] Laws were introduced limiting the immigration of Italians escaping military service from the RSI. [6] However, the Italian lira remained the legal tender. [6]
The effect of these policies was a rapid and draconian reversal of the stringent policy of Italianization which had been imposed on the region by the Italian government beginning in the early 1920s. Military units in the region came under the Befehlshaber Operationszone Alpenvorland commanded by General der Infanterie Joachim Witthöft, a former divisional commander in the XXVII Army Corps of the German Army.
Primary enforcement of German regulations was performed by the Südtiroler Ordnungsdienst [7] (SOD, the "South Tyrol" civil police), which had been recruited from the ADO (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Optanten für Deutschland or Association of Optants for Germany); it was mirrored in Trento (Trentino) by the Corpo di Sicurezza Trentino (CST) and in the Belluno province by the Corpo di Sicurezza Bellunese (CSB), both composed of people drafted from all male residents between the eighteen and fifty years of age. The SOD was also actively involved in the pursuit of the Jews and the well-known “Dableiber” (those who had chosen Italy when they were compelled to declare their allegiance), like Josef Mayr-Nusser, Michael Gamper, Friedl Volgger, Rudolf Posch, and Josef Ferrari. Many of the Dableiber were current or former Catholic priests and were persecuted by the Germans.
On 12 September 1943, almost immediately after the start of the German occupation, SS and police leader for the Alpine Foothills Karl Brunner issued an order that all Jews in the region were to be arrested. [8] Many of those from the Jewish communities in the region were deported and murdered in the extermination camps. [9] [10] The region was also home to the Bolzano Transit Camp, which was active from summer 1944 until the end of the war and was used for the transit of Italian Jews to Auschwitz and other camps. [11] [12]
The region was the scene of some of the last German atrocities during World War II. Towards the end of the war, South Tyrol saw the presence of over 70,000 German soldiers and members of the police, ready for a possible last defence. After the German surrender in Italy, celebrations of the Italian-speaking population broke out; which saw 11 people killed in Merano on 30 April and 41 people killed at Bolzano on 3 May 1945, when Wehrmacht and SS units fired on civilians. This and the ongoing encounters between German troops and Italian partisans has been referred to as the Battle of Bolzano (Italian : Battaglia di Bolzano). [13] Blame for these killings has been laid on SS and police leader Karl Brunner, [10] but also on the chaotic circumstances on both the Italian and German side following the surrender. [13]
Trento, also known in English as Trent, is a city on the Adige River in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol in Italy. It is the capital of the autonomous province of Trento. In the 16th century, the city was the location of the Council of Trent. Formerly part of Austria and Austria-Hungary, it was annexed by Italy in 1919. With 118,142 inhabitants, Trento is the third largest Italian city in the Alps and second largest in the historical region of Tyrol.
The history of Tyrol, a historical region in the middle alpine area of Central Europe, dates back to early human settlements at the end of the last glacier period, around 12,000 BC. Sedentary settlements of farmers and herders can be traced back to 5000 BC. Many of the main and side valleys were settled during the early Bronze Age, from 1800 to 1300 BC. From these settlements, two prominent cultures emerged: the Laugen-Melaun culture in the Bronze Age, and the Fritzens-Sanzeno culture in the Iron Age.
South Tyrol is an autonomous province in northern Italy. An English translation of the official German and Italian names could be the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol, reflecting the multilingualism and different naming conventions in the area. Together with Trentino, South Tyrol forms the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province is the northernmost of Italy, the second largest with an area of 7,400 square kilometres (2,857 sq mi), and has a total population of about 534,000 inhabitants as of 2021. Its capital and largest city is Bolzano.
Bolzano is the capital city of the province of Bolzano - South Tyrol, in Northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third largest in historical Tyrol. The greater metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants and is one of the urban centres within the Alps.
Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol is an autonomous region of Italy, located in the northern part of the country. The region has a population of 1.1 million, of whom 62% speak Italian as their mother tongue, 30% speak South Tyrolean German and several foreign languages are spoken by immigrant communities. Since the 1970s, most legislative and administrative powers have been transferred to the two self-governing provinces that make up the region: the province of Trento, commonly known as Trentino, and the province of Bolzano, commonly known as South Tyrol. In South Tyrol, German remains the sizeable majority language.
The Italian Social Republic, known prior to December 1943 as the National Republican State of Italy, but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò, was a German puppet state and fascist rump state with limited diplomatic recognition that was created during the latter part of World War II. It existed from the beginning of the German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of Axis troops in Italy in May 1945. The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against it and the Italian Social Republic, leading to the Italian Civil War.
East Tyrol, occasionally East Tirol, is an exclave of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, separated from North Tyrol by parts of Salzburg State and parts of Italian South Tyrol. It is coterminous with the administrative district (Bezirk) of Lienz.
The South Tyrol Option Agreement was an agreement in effect between 1939 and 1943, when the native German and Ladin-speaking people in South Tyrol and several other municipalities of northern Italy, which had belonged to Austria before WWI, were given the option of either emigrating to neighboring Nazi Germany or remaining in Fascist Italy, where the German minority was subjected to repressive Italianization efforts.
Modern-day South Tyrol, an autonomous Italian province created in 1948, was part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Tyrol until 1918. It was annexed by Italy following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I. It has been part of a cross-border joint entity, the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, since 2001.
Franz Hofer was an Austrian Nazi politician.
The Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral was a Nazi German district on the northern Adriatic coast created during World War II in 1943. It was formed out of territories that were previously under Fascist Italian control until its takeover by Germany. It included parts of present-day Italian, Slovenian, and Croatian territories. The area was administered as territory attached, but not incorporated, to the Reichsgau of Carinthia. The capital of the zone was the city of Trieste.
Ettore Tolomei was an Italian nationalist and fascist. He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937.
In 1919, at the time of its annexation, the middle part of the County of Tyrol which is today called South Tyrol was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers. Under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German and Ladin (Rhaeto-Romanic) ethnic groups living in the region. They could emigrate to Germany, or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this, the society of South Tyrol was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay, the so-called Dableiber, were condemned as traitors while those who left (Optanten) were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of World War II, this agreement was never fully implemented. Illegal Katakombenschulen were set up to teach children the German language.
The Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino Euroregion is a Euroregion formed by three different regional authorities in Austria and Italy: the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian autonomous provinces of South Tyrol and Trentino.
The Reichsgau Tyrol-Vorarlberg was an administrative division of Nazi Germany consisting of Vorarlberg and North Tyrol. It existed from 1938 to 1945. It did not include East Tyrol (Lienz), which was instead part of Reichsgau Carinthia.
Polizeiregiment "Südtirol", later Bozen, and finally SS-Polizeiregiment "Bozen", was a military unit of the German Ordnungspolizei recruited in the largely ethnic-German Alto Adige region in north-east Italy in late 1943, during the de facto German annexation of the region. The ranks were ethnically German Italian draftees while officers and NCOs were Germans.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Bolzano/Bozen in the Trentino-South Tyrol region of Italy.
The Andreas-Hofer-Bund was an anti-Nazi organization founded in South Tyrol, Italy in 1939.
Two of the three major Axis powers of World War II—Nazi Germany and their Fascist Italian allies—committed war crimes in the Kingdom of Italy.
Karl Brunner was a German lawyer, SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor of the police and the SS and police leader in Salzburg and Bolzano. Brunner served as head of the Einsatzkommando 4/I during the invasion of Poland and the early stages of the German occupation in 1939, tasked with the killing of Polish civilians. During his time in Northern Italy he was also responsible for the arrest, and ultimately, the deportation of the Jews in his area of jurisdiction, as well as reprisals against Italian civilians.
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