The Betrayal of the Tyroleans

[BundOstmark]

Here is an article that will shock and anger Austians in general and Tyroleans in particular. Many of the older folks in the Tyrol know this firsthand from the oppression and humiliation thay suffered at the hands of the Fascisti. The younger generations are not in full awareness of the betrayal by Nazi Germany and oppression by Fascist Italy.

The South Tyroleans caught in the middle were given the choice of leaving their homeland or forced to pledge allegiance to Italy. See attached document from the Suedtiroler Freiheit. In the photos it shows German SS and Fascist Blackshirts meeting at the Italian memorial in Bozen. This memorial is that is still standing in 2009 and is a constant reminder of the oppression and humiliation suffered by the forgotten Germans of the South Tyrol. Hitler and Mussolini were the grave diggers of the Tyrol.

[Hauke Haien]

Südtirol was annexed by Germany on 10 September 1943. Before that opportunity presented itself, it was a matter of national policy to redirect the futile attempts of Germanic conquest in the south and west toward the east. War against Italy could never have secured our future, victory against Russia would have.

The fact that Südtirol is now back in Italian hands is due to the efforts of our Allied friends, who negotiated it as payment in the first place. Your anti-German propaganda will not win you the magnanimous pity of the Allied powers, you can only hope to achieve their destruction.

[BundOstmark]

So are you defending the Third Reichs abandonment of the South Tyrol just to secure the alliance of a Mediterranean country who did not even treat the Austrians within its borders as human beings ?
Selling out a part of the Ostmark was not only treacherous but hypocritical.
No I'm not anti-German, but anti-South Tyrol sellout !

[Hauke Haien]

I want to make this very clear: There was never a choice of ever getting Südtirol without taking it back by force, which also would have ruined our chances of pulling it off successfully. I am sorry, but we cannot invade everyone. As I said, though, we managed to include it in the Reich as Operationszone Alpenvorland (administrated by Tirol-Vorarlberg) when Italy collapsed. It was not possible to achieve more than that.

[BundOstmark]

It would have been a better national policy of Hitler to persuade his Axis ally to return the South Tyrol to the Greater German Reich.
Or at the very least to compel the Italians to guarantee the South Tyroleans their language and culture rights to be kept intact and to protect them from the anti-German faction of the Fascisti. This would have earned Hitler the devotion and loyalty of all of the Austrians.

Moving forward to the present times, how can we get the South Tyrol back to Austria ?
If enough Austrian citizens put pressure on their own government to start the process of negotiating with Italy to return South Tyrol this would be a start.
Or why does not the EU order it back ?
They take the side of the Kosovar Muslims and allow its separation from Serbia.
Yet they ignore the occupation of a part of Austria that wants to be returned to Austria.

[Thusnelda]

Well, regaining and including Südtirol into the German Reich should have been a far more important issue than conquering Lebensraum in the east. Italy was an unstable and generally weak ally, and taking back Südtirol wouldn´t have been such a big problem if the proper political will would have been available. In fact, incorporating Sudetenland or Austria but abandoning Südtirol was a very weak solution, I condemn that approach in the strongest possible terms. Offering the population of Südtirol the option to resettle in a completely different territory (yet to conquer) was nothing more than a bad joke.

South Tyroleans are Tyroleans, Tyroleans are Austrians, Austrians are Bavarians and Bavarians are Germans. How can one who seriously believes in the sentence "Ein Volk, ein Reich/One folk, one empire" disregard them that blatantly?

Südtirol ist nicht Italien!

[Hauke Haien]

Well, regaining and including Südtirol into the German Reich should have been a far more important issue than conquering Lebensraum in the east.

No, it should not have been. Adding territory in the west and south could only strain our resource supply further, making it impossible to effectively hold on to our gains. The German people does not inhabit a space than can supply its needs; not now, not then. It had to be reshaped according to our needs first before permanent expansion could become a possibility.

[hodekin]

BundOstmark,

Among South Troleans, is it the majority wish that The South Tyrol be reunited with Germany?

I have to say that this episode is completely new to me and frankly I am very surprised that the South Tyrol was not 'negotiated' back into the Reich.

I have often thought that Hitler had an over inflated oppinion of Mussolini and Italy. From what I understand, the Italian fleet was quite awesome, but the rest of the military was to say the least, just not up to scratch.

But if you are suggesting that Hitler deliberately sacrificed and abandoned ethnic Germans in order to curry favour with Mussolini, then I find that most distasteful and contrary to my original belief on Hitlers view of Pan German unification.

Are there any other views on this matter?


hodekin

[Hauke Haien]

It is asinine to indulge dreams of a pan-German wonderland if there is no way of actually keeping it, and we did indeed lose Südtirol again, as well as Elsaß-Lothringen, Sudetenland, the eastern provinces and even the Reich itself. So, what should have been done differently?

Why of course, we should never have tried to solidify our power base at all, hoping instead that our enemies would not pick us apart at their leisure once we had wasted our time in Italy.

Even destroying France (and recovering Elsaß-Lothringen) or fighting England into retreat was in itself an untimely endeavour that only became necessary because they opposed us. Italy did not oppose us until 1943 and that is why there was no point in moving into Südtirol before that.

[Dagna]

But if you are suggesting that Hitler deliberately sacrificed and abandoned ethnic Germans in order to curry favour with Mussolini, then I find that most distasteful and contrary to my original belief on Hitlers view of Pan German unification.

It is not a suggestion. I believe it is a matter of fact. I don't believe there is an excuse for his behavior. He, Hitler the megalomaniac who never feared to speak what he thought, the center of the world, shy about claiming what was German? On the contrary. In Mein Kampf, Hitler made his true feelings about South Tyrol public. He claimed that Germans were just a small and irrelevant minority in Southern Tyrol and he acknowledged the German portion of Southern Tyrol as a permanent possession of Italy. He never claimed any part of the Southern Tyrol for his Third Reich, even before the alliance with Benito Mussolini.

Hitler's words:

On several occasions I have experienced such cases, in which the greatest energy had to be employed to prevent the ship of our movement from being drawn into a general current which had been started artificially, and indeed from sailing with it. The last occasion was when our German Press, the Hecuba of the existence of the German nation, succeeded in bringing the question of South Tyrol into a position of importance which was seriously damaging to the interests of the German people.

http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch06.html

Artificially? Damaging to the interests of the German people? Is this how a pan-Germanist speaks? Hitler was no pan-Germanist. I believe he was alien to the Germanic cause.