At the time it was annexed (after ww1) it was about 99% German, 1% Ladinian and 0% Italian (obviously, since it never was affiliated with Italy), so they had to try really hard to change that. To do that, they created Italian names for all places (ironically English-speaking people typically use the Italian names nowadays that haven’t even existed before), made the native language illegal, made the native culture partly illegal, taught alternative history in school (saying it always was that way and it just was a missing part of Italy despite having been Tyrol for over a thousand years), deporting the native population to Germany, etc. Fascism doing fascism things.
After Italian fascism ended in 1945 it got better, but it took until the 70s for South Tyrol to gain autonomy in most regards and for the native population to gain back their rights. And that also only happened because of a lot of protesting (going as far as blowing things up).
The result of all: Still >70% German, a few % Ladinian, rest Italian. But it would’ve been different if they hadn’t had as much support (from North Tyrol for example) and if it wasn’t mountainous (that really helps with doing things secretly that have been made illegal.
Now that less and less people still are here who have experienced fascist oppression it’s our task to ensure that it isn’t forgotten, forgetting fascism’s crimes is the first step towards the return of fascism. Right-wing populist parties are becoming stronger again all over Europe right now, and a few of them have been downplaying fascist crimes already - which wouldn’t even be possible if everyone was well informed.
(Btw it already was a widely controversial topic back then - on one side the UK had promised Italy that they’d get South Tyrol (among other areas, some that they also got and some that they didn’t get because of mainly USA’s concerns) if they joined their side in the war, on the other the USA for example saw the problems that’d be coming with annexing a culturally and historically 100% different region (and trying to replace the native culture) and was firmly against it)
Ah I see. So kinda similar to what happened to Gorica and the surroundings of Trst hut even worse because there weren’t many Italians in Tyrol in the first place.
Those two were always mixed. Majorly German but still mixed. Most importantly they never were their own culture, just part of a bigger culture. And they weren’t cultural core regions.
North Tyrol and South Tyrol, even when ignoring their well over a thousand year old ties with Austria and going back to a time before Austria existed, have always been one culture, united. I guess you could compare it to taking Latium (the region around Rome), splitting it in two parts, choosing one part and making it let’s say French, forcing everyone there to be French, trying to replace local culture, cuisine, language, clothes, festivities etc. with their French equivalent, telling people that it has always been French, etc. Not sure if North Latium and South Latium are as close culturally as North Tyrol and South Tyrol, but I suppose so and at least they’re an Italian cultural core region and have been for ages so at least in that regard they’re comparable.
(Except the people there would have a harder time resisting since they can’t hide as easily as in the mountains, so chances for success would be higher.)
And that’s not even considering that the cultural gap between Tyrol (typical Alpine culture) and Italy is much bigger than between for example the Provence and Latium (both maritime).
What did they do to south tyrol?
At the time it was annexed (after ww1) it was about 99% German, 1% Ladinian and 0% Italian (obviously, since it never was affiliated with Italy), so they had to try really hard to change that. To do that, they created Italian names for all places (ironically English-speaking people typically use the Italian names nowadays that haven’t even existed before), made the native language illegal, made the native culture partly illegal, taught alternative history in school (saying it always was that way and it just was a missing part of Italy despite having been Tyrol for over a thousand years), deporting the native population to Germany, etc. Fascism doing fascism things.
After Italian fascism ended in 1945 it got better, but it took until the 70s for South Tyrol to gain autonomy in most regards and for the native population to gain back their rights. And that also only happened because of a lot of protesting (going as far as blowing things up).
The result of all: Still >70% German, a few % Ladinian, rest Italian. But it would’ve been different if they hadn’t had as much support (from North Tyrol for example) and if it wasn’t mountainous (that really helps with doing things secretly that have been made illegal.
Now that less and less people still are here who have experienced fascist oppression it’s our task to ensure that it isn’t forgotten, forgetting fascism’s crimes is the first step towards the return of fascism. Right-wing populist parties are becoming stronger again all over Europe right now, and a few of them have been downplaying fascist crimes already - which wouldn’t even be possible if everyone was well informed.
(Btw it already was a widely controversial topic back then - on one side the UK had promised Italy that they’d get South Tyrol (among other areas, some that they also got and some that they didn’t get because of mainly USA’s concerns) if they joined their side in the war, on the other the USA for example saw the problems that’d be coming with annexing a culturally and historically 100% different region (and trying to replace the native culture) and was firmly against it)
Ah I see. So kinda similar to what happened to Gorica and the surroundings of Trst hut even worse because there weren’t many Italians in Tyrol in the first place.
Those two were always mixed. Majorly German but still mixed. Most importantly they never were their own culture, just part of a bigger culture. And they weren’t cultural core regions.
North Tyrol and South Tyrol, even when ignoring their well over a thousand year old ties with Austria and going back to a time before Austria existed, have always been one culture, united. I guess you could compare it to taking Latium (the region around Rome), splitting it in two parts, choosing one part and making it let’s say French, forcing everyone there to be French, trying to replace local culture, cuisine, language, clothes, festivities etc. with their French equivalent, telling people that it has always been French, etc. Not sure if North Latium and South Latium are as close culturally as North Tyrol and South Tyrol, but I suppose so and at least they’re an Italian cultural core region and have been for ages so at least in that regard they’re comparable.
(Except the people there would have a harder time resisting since they can’t hide as easily as in the mountains, so chances for success would be higher.)
And that’s not even considering that the cultural gap between Tyrol (typical Alpine culture) and Italy is much bigger than between for example the Provence and Latium (both maritime).