‘Forgotten history’: war and population movements, 1914–1918

At the outbreak of war in August 1914 about six million Italians were living abroad. The war immediately ruptured the mobility of labour that had been a characteristic feature of Italian society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The mobilisation of the army, the initial fighting and the transition to a war economy resulted in an almost total, immediate – although not organised – repatriation of about 500,000 Italians from Alsace-Lorraine, the Rhineland, France, the Hapsburg Empire and the Balkans.Footnote ⁵ Population movements gathered momentum in the period before and after Italy entered the war in May 1915. Surrounded by growing popular hostility and fearing internment, some 86,500 regnicoli (the so-called Reichsitaliener, or Italian citizens who lived in the Hapsburg lands) left Trento, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria and Dalmatia and sought refuge in Italy. Around 35,000 left Trieste alone.Footnote ⁶ Among these were irredentist ‘political’ refugees who supported the Italian cause and voluntarily fled to Italy or deserted from the Austrian army. After Italy's entry into the war, 42,216 civilians, most of them women, children and the elderly, were expelled from Austria-Hungary and repatriated through Switzerland; Italian officials termed them ‘repatriates’ (rimpatriati).Footnote ⁷

During May and June 1915, Italian troops occupied Austrian territories and evacuated civilians, ethnic Italians, citizens of the Habsburg Empire. Some of them were labelled as ‘refugees’ by military authorities and were evacuated because they were living too close to the battlefield; others were considered to be ‘internees’ – civilians who were sent away from those territories and compelled to take permanent residence in Italy, since they jeopardised military security. In 1915 the Italian military authorities managed the evacuation of about 52,000 people from these areas, including 10,000 from the mountain area of Friuli, 12,000 civilians of Slavic origin from the Isonzo valleys and another 30,000 from the border areas of Veneto, Trentino and Lombardy.Footnote ⁸ To these figures should be added 3,000–5,000 Italian-speaking Austrian civilians from the occupied areas who had been interned by the Italian military authorities, either because of the ‘spy psychosis’ or because of a denationalising project that entailed the forced removal of civil and religious bodies believed to be loyal to the Habsburg monarchy. In the Austrian lands, meanwhile, around 100,000 ethnic Italians who were citizens of the Habsburg Empire were interned in Bohemia, Moravia and Lower Austria.Footnote ⁹

The military manoeuvres following the establishment of the Italian–Austrian front in the north-eastern Alps had a deep impact on civilians behind the lines. In May 1916 the Austrian Strafexpedition on the Asiago plateau brought about the evacuation of about 110,000 people. However, the defeat at Caporetto made the refugee a familiar figure in the country as a whole. Between 25 and 28 October 1917, Austrian and German forces broke through the Italian lines and succeeded in occupying the areas of Udine, Belluno and part of Treviso, Venice and Vicenza. One million soldiers and half a million civilians fled.

These population movements have been neglected because of the dominant myth of a victorious nation and the wish to forget the defeat at Caporetto: Fascist Italy exalted the courage of soldiers, while refugees represented defeat. Being predominantly women and children they did not symbolise a victorious (and masculine) ‘nation at war’. Mainly focused on the battle zone and the home front, Italian historians did not analyse the phenomenon of mass displacement in the border zones.Footnote ¹⁰

The test of 1914

The return of the emigrants in August 1914 represented the first important testing ground for public and private assistance because of its sudden character. It foreshadowed issues that emerged later in the war. As soon as Italian consulates reported the emigrants’ difficult situation, Prime Minister Antonio Salandra entrusted the Commissariato Generale dell'Emigrazione (the General Committee for Emigration) with their repatriation. The ministry of the interior was charged with the task of moving the workers to their original municipal districts and offering them financial assistance.Footnote ¹¹ But border guards reported the size and rate of the return movement (running at between 2,000 and 5,000 daily), and stressed that unemployed people could subvert public order.Footnote ¹²

The lack of government preparation brought to the fore the activities of socialist and Catholic organisations (the Società Umanitaria and the Opera Bonomelli) which had been devoted to the protection of emigrants since the beginning of the century. These activities were largely confined to the main railway stations in Milan, Turin, Udine, Padua and Verona. For example, in Milan, the co-ordination between the Umanitaria, the Bonomelli and the town council allowed the transit and the settlement for a few days of over 120,000 emigrants in August and September 1914. Thanks to private donations, more than 50,000 meals as well as medicine, shoes and garments were provided for the poorest people. The emergency caused by those returning was believed to be both exceptional and temporary. As it happened, most emigrants had a home to which they could return. The main problem was a lack of work. Meanwhile, only a handful of these repatriates could be defined as ‘refugees’ in the sense of being deprived of their possessions and being made homeless.

All the same, the fear of disorder prompted a repressive response by the police and the army in the north-eastern part of the country that was most affected by the repatriations. In September 1914 there were some popular riots, and unemployed immigrants demanded ‘bread and work’. Through the ministry of the interior the Italian government tried to devolve the task of assistance to the local authorities. The ministry sent prefects to assess the number of distressed repatriates and to provide basic relief funds. The civil authorities and some members of the middle class responded enthusiastically, by collecting promises of funds and by setting up committees. In many north-eastern cities assistance was provided by the emigration secretariats, parishes and municipalities, which provided household goods, subsidised food, kitchens, night shelters and other accommodation. The provision of this assistance reflected traditional practice, that is to say it was temporary aid given according to family status and age: the town councils and local charities drew up lists of people and provided discretionary relief. The aid given by the municipalities did not have a universal character; it favoured the residents, and it was temporary; refugees received funds from charities.Footnote ¹³

The criteria for receiving support from a socialist organisation such as the Umanitaria were very strict, requiring enrolment in the organisation and a certificate of previous employment. Funds were given only after formal application to the organisation.Footnote ¹⁴ Generally, the subsidies were paid as vouchers to be used in council kitchens, in order to prevent idleness, ‘vice’ and undue demands on funds. Meanwhile, the crisis of employment encouraged widespread antipathy towards workers. For example, newspapers usually portrayed the ‘unemployed poor’ as idle and potentially dangerous. In the popular imagination the refugees were assigned to this category.

During the winter of 1914–15 the inadequacy of the municipal and private charities, together with riots in north-eastern regions caused by shortages of food and work, forced the central government to intervene by providing subsidies, public works programmes and food rationing. These measures were late and ineffective and reflected a wish to appease the rioters and to support the military mobilisation.Footnote ¹⁵ The crisis highlighted the importance of the local administrators and the private organisations as mediators between the state and the people. This difficult relationship helped to consolidate two traditional tools for mass control and the prevention of disorder, namely public works (schools, roads, aqueducts, shipways etc.) and government subsidies. Public works started in March 1915 but ended when Italy entered the war two months later. On the other hand, the administrative management favoured the political criteria. The ‘prefects’ – employees of the minister of the interior that, since unification, co-ordinated state activities, monitored local government and ensured the maintenance of public order – were preferred to the technical organisations of the age of Giolitti (Ufficio del Lavoro, the Central Labour Bureau, and Uffici di collocamento provinciali, or county employment agencies). By entrusting ‘prefects’ with the interpretation of the law, the emergency anticipated the centralising and authoritarian trends which would arise during the war. Thus the first months of war, characterised by suspicion and repression, were associated with a policy of assistance that hinged upon the need to maintain public order in the interest of national security. The criteria for assistance were in the first instance governed by political rather than humanitarian considerations.

Discontinuities of war, 1915–1917

During summer 1915 a precise division of responsibility between military and civilian authorities for managing displaced civilians was established. Full powers were given to the government and the general staff headquarters respectively. The front line was managed by the General Secretariat for Civil Affairs, which registered, selected and relocated refugees, internees and evacuees. Meanwhile the rest of the country was ruled by the ministry of the interior, whose ‘prefects’ sorted and controlled the refugees. In this respect the government relied on the municipalities and local civil assistance committees, these latter embodying the patriotic mobilisation of the middle classes.

The criteria for evacuation corresponded to the need for military security immediately behind the lines. Those civilians evacuated from the Isonzo front, after a short stay behind the lines were sent to Novara, Florence and Parma, from which they were subsequently allocated to virtually every Italian region and in particular to Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Campania, Umbria and Sicily. The authorities adopted a dual strategy. On the one hand they created ‘colonies’ of 100–300 people, supported by the state and living in schools, barracks, convents and council buildings. On the other, they relocated small groups of refugees who became self-sufficient thanks to a daily government subsidy. These decisions, often arbitrary, generated confusion, mistrust and even outright hostility among the host populations. Groups of ‘political exiles’ and irredentists set up autonomous committees, such as ‘Trento-Trieste’, to promote the Italian cause. They were subject to strict police control.Footnote ¹⁶

The government failed to anticipate the difficulties of managing the refugees. In December 1915 Prime Minister Antonio Salandra eventually admitted to the Chamber of Deputies that assistance to refugees and internees had been randomly organised, since expectations of a short-lived war had convinced the government and the army to take only temporary measures rather than to work out an ‘organic’ and centralised plan of assistance. Salandra had appealed to elite social groups and to the middle classes to assist the families of the recalled reservists, as well as the wounded, the disabled ex-servicemen and the refugees through the organisation of the aforementioned civil assistance committees.Footnote ¹⁷ During the first two years of war, assistance was managed by individual committees and charities which, together with the municipalities, organised housing, gave small subsidies and tried to find some employment for the refugees. However, as surveys from 1916 revealed, this assistance was weak and fragmented, since it depended on local initiatives and on the work of single individuals. The subsidies were not homogeneous. They were often unjustifiably revoked, especially for the employed. Furthermore, the relocation process was often incomplete and the housing system left much to be desired, especially in the south.Footnote ¹⁸ Assistance was subject to cost constraints because the municipalities tried to save money and disliked the idea of relieving refugees. Private associations and charities had only a limited role, whereas the ‘prefects’ and the military authorities took care of registering the population and managed the funds as a means of social control.Footnote ¹⁹

The Austrian Strafexpedition of May 1916 changed this picture, because refugees now became a mass phenomenon.Footnote ²⁰ Henceforth the ‘prefects’ and municipal authorities were involved more deeply in assistance to refugees. Notwithstanding the plethora of committees and municipal commissions devoted to the assistance of the refugees, the money provided by the civil assistance committees in 1916 and 1917 was very low. In all refugees received less than 800,000 lira, compared to the 59 million lira given to the families of the recalled reservists; in per capita terms the subsidies were miserly.Footnote ²¹

In general, as the committees claimed, the voluntary contributions were insufficient in north and south alike, especially in the towns, where need far outstripped the available contributions.Footnote ²² The government urgently needed to pay more attention to the ‘refugee question’. In July 1916 groups of political refugees demanded the creation of a central council for refugees, as well as an increase in subsidies and the possibility of moving out of the unhealthy and poorest areas of southern Italy. Nevertheless, the government acted only slowly. Only in October 1917 did it establish a central committee for the refugees, and the defeat at Caporetto prevented it from starting work. Even then, the military and police authorities retained control of the refugee population.Footnote ²³

The emergency phase, November–December 1917

The defeat at Caporetto turned this displacement into a matter of national importance. After October 1917 about 500,000 refugees arrived in the country by train or on foot. They were tired, sick, frightened and badly lacking essentials. The difficult military situation and the fear of ‘defeatist’ propaganda led the government to keep the refugees out of big cities such as Rome and Bologna and to prevent them from travelling to destinations that had not been approved by police authorities. This first phase of ‘assisted segregation’ was followed by the government's creation of a more widespread system of assistance.Footnote ²⁴

The ‘Caporetto refugees’ found very little housing, as a result of which communities and families were scattered throughout the country. The census conducted in September 1918 showed that Lombardy took in 98,997 refugees and Tuscany 83,036, followed by Emilia with 78,417, Piedmont with 62,869 and Liguria with 32,175. Others moved to the central and southern regions; Milan and Florence received 47,614 and 39,741 refugees respectively. Schools, convents, hotels, summer camps, barracks and factories were commandeered or rented by the state on behalf of the refugees. Those who could rely on friends or acquaintances or who were economically self-supporting were allowed to go where they wished.

The distribution of the refugees was preceded by intense activity in Treviso, Vicenza, Milan, Turin, Florence and Bologna. Once again, the emergency was mainly managed by the socialist and Catholic organisations, while the state entrusted the ‘prefects’ with the distribution of aid. Voluntary committees, parish organisations and civil assistance committees again became involved. As in Milan during 1914, the Opera Bonomelli, the Umanitaria and the Red Cross accommodated refugees (by now numbering 200,000), providing them with clothes, shoes, milk and hot meals. Particular attention was paid to the care of the many children who had been separated from their parents during the flight.Footnote ²⁵ Subsequently these agencies arranged for accommodation, and thanks to a close network of parishes and trade union branches, they set up offices to trace missing persons and to disseminate news that might be useful to the refugees.Footnote ²⁶

Assistance committees: between solidarity, patriotism and middle-class activism

The displacement of people on this scale prompted a collaborative effort that involved the working class and middle class alike. The donations collected during November and December 1917 were publicised in the press and suggested that local trade unions, workers’ associations, parish congregations, professional bodies, publishers, soldiers, officers and emigrants sought to demonstrate their solidarity with the ‘fugitive brothers’ following Caporetto.Footnote ²⁷ Many committees arose thanks to the patriotic impetus given by the middle classes: the Comitato Trofarellese Pro Profughi (Turin), the Comitato di Soccorso di Pontevico (Brescia), the Segretariato assistenza profughi Arezzo were just a few of the hundreds of agencies that assisted the refugees, thus partially compensating for the delay and inefficiency of state support.Footnote ²⁸ Soon these organisations were joined by municipal committees in cities such as Milan and Florence, as well as by the American Red Cross, the civil assistance committees and Catholic organisations.Footnote ²⁹ The relief efforts became part of wartime mobilisation and resistance to the invader.

Refugees, too, organised their own associations, often led by deputies, administrators or people who came from the aristocracy or from the middle classes. They provided assistance and also worked to improve relations between the refugees and the host population. The north-easterners who fled in October 1917 now ‘discovered’ Italy for the first time. Having been accustomed to migrating abroad, they knew Habsburg territories better than they did Italy. As in France, refugees were represented by newspapers as ‘heroic’ victims of the barbarian. The occupied territory was portrayed as a ‘martyred land’ in which ‘slavery’ had become the norm. The patriotism of refugees was indicated by the image of ‘exile into homeland’, with flight as a conscious choice. Italian refugees were likened to the ‘French brethren’ who fled from Artois and Picardy.Footnote ³⁰ Refugee elites portrayed themselves both as ‘sons of the motherland’ and as affiliated with the ‘little homelands’ of Friuli and Veneto. In turn, newspapers and government propaganda framed assistance to refugees as an act of solidarity and brotherhood which helped to strengthen the country's resolve and reconstruct national identity. Humanitarian intervention could thus be construed as an essential patriotic and moral duty.Footnote ³¹

It is impossible to enumerate the multitude of Catholic and lay associations that, with financial support from the government, took part in this activity. The surviving documentation reveals that their actions were usually the same, namely to find buildings and then to notify the government, and to supply food, clothing and household goods. Once the initial emergency had been tackled, there were numerous other tasks to perform: to register the most needy cases, to distribute financial support, to open co-operative stores and to contact local and central government authorities for funds and employment on behalf of the refugees.Footnote ³² These associations were extremely skilful at fund raising since they already had contacts with the local authorities and notables, as in Caserta, Busto Arsizio, Pesaro, Ascoli, Benevento and Massa Carrara, where they collected pledges for thousands of lire.Footnote ³³ The figures conceal a mountain of paperwork as well as the need to become familiar with the law and with the operation of the bureaucracy. State controls became more extensive in 1918 as the government sought to avoid committing any more funds than were necessary. Municipal committees favoured immediate material assistance and regarded employment as secondary.Footnote ³⁴ Municipal kitchens and shops were set up to address the lack of food supplies. Tracing missing persons was another important function.Footnote ³⁵ In many respects the committees operated along traditional charitable lines that dated back to the nineteenth century. At the same time the war introduced new features, such as the development of a bureaucratic structure which was not only larger but capable of dealing with a multitude of tasks through a functional division of labour.Footnote ³⁶

Once the emergency phase had passed, the committees lost much of their purpose and autonomy.Footnote ³⁷ Some committees were dissolved while others were turned over to patronati (municipal relief organisations created by the decree of 3 January 1918), thus entering the state's assistance structure. During the first months of 1918 only the most effective associations continued to exist. At the same time one can identify something of a ‘crusading spirit’ that entailed asserting social, moral and political authority over the assisted people. Indeed, members of the middle and upper-middle classes stirred up emotional participation, which was determined by the desire for security, order and social cohesion.Footnote ³⁸ Most committees were inspired and supported by women, who regarded this work as an opportunity to demonstrate their effective participation in the ‘nation at war’ and thus to advance the cause of ‘emancipation’. Even though the committee presidents were male, women often played an important role in the executive, in interpreting legislation, in arranging for the distribution of medicines and clothing, visiting the sick, taking care of women and children in hospitals and stations, and arranging schooling and leisure activities within the ‘colonies’ (schools, abandoned factories, public buildings or barracks where hundreds of refugees were accommodated). Aristocratic and upper-middle-class women committed themselves to traditional charitable works such as fund-raising, inspections and visits.

Women therefore played a role that, although represented as a natural extension of their family role, also entailed a new public presence that was legitimised by the national war effort; the war increased women's visibility and accelerated their professionalisation, for example in social work and public health.Footnote ³⁹ Middle-class women were particularly sensitive to the patriotic rhetoric. They participated in the local committees as a kind of political ‘militancy’ while working within a well-defined political and symbolic framework. The secretary of a civil assistance committee spoke in August 1918 of the ‘Love of one's country and fraternal charity towards those who suffered most in that unfortunate October. One's holy duty is to resist at all costs the enemy who is offending our country’.Footnote ⁴⁰

The government's intervention: light and shade

The defeat at Caporetto sanctioned government intervention in the system of refugee relief. The new government formed by Vittorio Emanuele Orlando faced the hard task of reorganising the country after the catastrophe and aiding the fugitives, which was now construed as a ‘national duty’. This reflected in part a campaign by refugee deputies from Veneto and Friuli, who set up a Parliamentary Committee of Veneto as the French had done when Germans invaded northern departments. On 18 November 1917 Orlando established a Refugee High Commissariat in order ‘to provide war refugees with moral and material assistance’ as well as to reconstruct the economy of the ‘invaded areas’.Footnote ⁴¹

The Commissariat was ratified by a circular on 10 January 1918, which acknowledged the juridical status of the ‘war refugees’, who were entitled to state assistance, and reorganised the relief provided by ‘prefects’ and committees. From a legal point of view, ‘refugees’ were those who had fled following the enemy invasion of October 1917, as well as the evacuated populations living near the front and the other groups of refugees who had already been living in Italy since 1915–16, namely the political refugees (fuoriusciti irredenti), evacuees from the war zone, repatriates and civilians who had escaped from the Austrian Strafexpedition in the Asiago Plateau (Vicenza). Assistance was also granted to all serving soldiers who came from the invaded territories.Footnote ⁴² The new provisions included a daily subsidy as well as household goods and food, based on the number of family members. The neediest refugees were also entitled to medicine and free medical care. Further provision was made for education, relocation and employment. The continuous subsidy represented a departure from established practice, since it was envisaged as a compensation for the moral and material damages caused by the war, and not as a mere means of survival. The 3 January decree regulated the local assistance system: the patronati in the municipalities where the refugees resided were responsible for paying the subsidies, assisting children and the elderly, arranging food supplies and employment. The aid agencies were not autonomous, since they depended on the prefects, who funded them and selected the staff. In this way, the authority of the prefects and the bureaucratic control structure were preserved within the state assistance system.

This programme of assistance brought about a considerable increase in public expenditure. The overall cost for the refugees in the 1918–19 financial year amounted to 435 million lire, equivalent to 1.5 per cent of the total national budget.Footnote ⁴³ In June 1918 the minister of the treasury, Francesco Saverio Nitti, attempted to cut the costs, but his proposal was withdrawn following protests by the refugees and the High Commissariat. His attempt demonstrated that during 1918 the refugees were no longer regarded as ‘heroes’ and ‘patriots’, but as a ‘burden’. Henceforth, in order to lessen the financial effort, employment was considered compulsory and became the main criterion for assessing entitlement to the subsidies, which after 13 September 1918 were given only to the poorest families.

A congress of refugee committees in Florence in June 1918 discussed the crisis in assistance. The representatives demanded greater public recognition, more financial resources and the decentralisation of administration. They complained that the government's efforts were still ‘insufficient’ and random, and even ‘lacking’ in some places. Bureaucracy remained excessive. The work of the ‘prefects’ was criticised not only because of their discretionary power when dealing with funds and relocation, but also because of their increasingly oppressive attitude towards refugees.Footnote ⁴⁴ Against this background, refugees’ self-organisation and the setting up of co-operative stores may be interpreted as an attempt at self-preservation, since the ‘prefects’ tended to minimise the material problems suffered by the refugees. The prefects regarded public order as their priority, intervening only in case of conflicts between the refugees and their host communities. Such conflicts became more common during 1918, when food shortages and the strains of the war effort created a more hostile atmosphere in which refugees were often identified with the enemy (austriacanti and tedeschi).

Refugees and charitable institutions

Refugees asked for help and support from public and private institutions. Their letters to the lowest levels of the assistance system are an important indicator of how charities functioned and of the relationship between the state and its citizens.Footnote ⁴⁵ The first step of the bureaucratic procedure was for the refugee to be recognised through a certificate or an identification card. These letters show how bureaucratic the assistance system had become. They also reflect cursory knowledge of the legal system. The refugees’ ability to get help depended not only on their social status, but also on their ability to access information and to work out appropriate tactics, for example asking for subsidies from the charity committee, the prefect, the local deputy or the High Commissariat, at the various levels of the assistance system.

The refugees lived in conditions of social isolation and powerlessness. This emerges especially in the letters written by women when they asked for help: ‘But I am a refugee, therefore explain how I should go about it.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Refugees’ contact with private and state institutions was continuous, since without their support refugees were unable to get the necessary funds or goods. This relationship requires further analysis; if, on the one hand, refugees expressed satisfaction with the work done by the committees, then on the other hand many of them complained about their incompetence and inadequacy. Refugees criticised the ‘great confusion’ of the paperwork, the discretionary powers and the class-based policy of intervention and the attitude of the staff. The committees themselves admitted to a certain amount of discretionary power: in Pesaro, for example, the committee gave supplementary funds to well-off refugees. Relations with government offices were also difficult and hampered by the fact that, as one refugee wrote, the employees in the humanitarian aid offices came from public security forces, and refugees did not want to be considered as criminals or thieves, but simply as citizens who needed help. ‘Prefects’ and state officials were accused of being partial, of turning a deaf ear and of wasting money. Refugees complained about the lack of communication from state officials and the prejudice they demonstrated. Thus government became the target of considerable hostility.Footnote ⁴⁷

The voices of the refugees show how they claimed the right to assistance. They thus reveal the beginning of a new relationship with the state. This attitude emerged when they showed that laws were not being respected or that they were being interpreted in a partial fashion. Their letters and petitions were suffused by a moral claim that the state should be fully aware of its responsibilities. One finds such statements as ‘it is owed to me’ and ‘I too have the right to be granted assistance’, which not only expressed a need but also the assertion of a right that was denied or at least delayed.Footnote ⁴⁸

Soldiers from Veneto and Friuli denounced the poor living conditions of their refugee relatives and the hostility of the host communities; ‘They are treated like Austrians’, read one letter. The discomfort was felt especially by those who had prior experience of work abroad: inadequate assistance seemed to confirm their country's inability to find them work in their homeland, while at the same time it expected them to fight in the trenches. This kind of criticism showed how the relationship between assistance and citizenship was being examined: ‘Why can't I get this? Am I not Italian?’ The same point was made by a refugee from Friuli in Militello (Messina, Sicily): ‘Why have the other refugees in the northern areas been supplied? Aren't we in the same conditions and lacking everything in the same way? Don't we belong to same country? We think so.’ Others claimed equality: ‘I think I am Italian at least like any other Italian.’ Thus beyond the public debates the refugees’ letters from Veneto and Friuli underlined that they saw aid as a duty from the government, particularly because the border regions suffered more than the others. Refugees moved beyond their individual needs to a form of collective protest, seeing in the charitable institutions the damaged image of the state that should have granted them sufficient protection and assistance.Footnote ⁴⁹