Why and How Italy Invented an Enemy Aliens Problem in the First World War

I. Introduction

In almost all countries – no matter whether nation states or empires – which took part in the First World War governments and parliaments devised and implemented measures directed against civilians whose only fault was that they were nationals of enemy origin. These people became the target of policies often presented as reprisal measures and justified by the need to preserve the integrity of the state and to guarantee its security. These policies curtailed individual freedom, civil liberties, and property rights, promoted a narrower notion of citizenship, favoured (or strengthened) the introduction of stronger controls on mobility and migration, and put enemy aliens outside the law or on its margins by recasting all of them – women, children, men of military age, old people – as potential spies and dangerous internal enemies. Especially, but not solely, in multinational empires, they were soon extended to aliens in general and internal ethnic and religious minorities.

Governments, parliaments and armies thus intervened in the lives of citizens and non-citizens, not only jeopardizing their rights and their freedom, but also accelerating the process of nationalization and homogenization of populations and economies. Even though suspension of habeas corpus, expulsion, repatriation, deportation of civilians from occupied territories, internment, and seizure and liquidation of properties had been experienced in past conflicts, ¹ the First World War was the first in which all these features coalesced to affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on an unprecedented scale. ²

Britain and the British Empire, France, Germany, the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, and, later on, the US and Brazil all adopted similar policies. ³ At least 450,000 enemy aliens were interned in Europe and approximately 50,000 to 100,000 in countries outside Europe. ⁴ Germany interned in concentration camps more than 100,000 enemy civilians, and France and Britain, around 40,000 each; in the Russian Empire 50,000 enemy aliens were interned and more than 250,000 were deported. ⁵ Meanwhile, economies from Russia to the United States were ‘nationalized’ by way of the confiscation and liquidation of landed property, firms, and patents.

Presented everywhere as indispensable acts of patriotism and self-defence, these measures were not, however, solidly grounded in international law. Although neither the Hague nor the Geneva Conventions had envisioned the issue of civilians of enemy nationalities, at the outbreak of the war most jurists agreed ‘that a belligerent ought not to detain enemy subjects, confiscate their property, or subject them to any disabilities, further than such as the protection of the national security and defense may require’. ⁶ Yet this agreement proved very fragile: after the first two weeks of war no country felt the obligation to respect it.

The change in the attitude toward foreigners and enemy foreigners in particular was in general enthusiastically supported by broad segments of the population and by the press, which launched xenophobic campaigns which eventually targeted almost any alien, including friendly or neutral ones.

Italy was apparently no exception. Concerns about security, spying, and sabotage, the necessity to act in accordance with allies, and the desire to reduce and neutralize the prominent role of Germany in the Italian economy encouraged the government immediately to address the issue of the enemy aliens living and working inside the Italian borders. ⁷ Yet, these aliens were less than a score of thousands, and their grip on the economy was very minor. This did not discourage the nationalist press and movements from launching, in parallel with official policies, a campaign of verbal hatred and violence. Once the former prime minister Giovanni Giolitti and the vast neutralist, pacifist, or indifferent and uninvolved majority of the country had been silenced, the public discourse came to be dominated by nationalists. After the 1915 ‘radiant May’, the voices opposing entry into the war were overwhelmed by a noisy and multifarious minority (nationalists, mainly students, irredentists, a few socialists and trade unionists, industrialists, but also Catholics, etc.) ⁸ that adopted radical language and violent methods, ⁹ and opposed the myth of the nation to the myth of internationalism. ¹⁰ As many Italian historians have stressed, the mobilization from above promoted by these groups was successful. ¹¹ The main target of the interventionists was and remained, for the entire war, neutralism and neutralists, such as Filippo Turati and the Socialist Party, part of the Catholic Church, and the followers of Giolitti, accused among other things of being an accomplice of German and foreign capital.

Germanophobia established itself as one of the main motives of a campaign which emphasized German atrocities and explained German brutality also in terms of ‘racial’ differences. ¹² The civilization versus barbarism discourse was already available, and Italian nationalists had only to further elaborate on it, adding specific ingredients such as the myth of Rome or the superiority achieved by way of imperialism. ¹³ However, while these campaigns certainly contributed to creating fertile ground for their legitimation, they were not directly responsible for the measures adopted by the government against enemy aliens and aliens in general. In fact, the government acted independently, and made few concessions to the requests of the interventionist and nationalist press, even censoring its shrillest outbursts.

The nationalist press thus often criticized the government measures as too lenient, demanded a more draconian approach, and fuelled anti-alien feelings with articles whose tones reached particularly virulent peaks during the neutrality period, on Italy’s entry into the war in May 1915, and again in 1917–18, especially after the defeat of the Italian army at Caporetto. On the other hand, contrary to expectations, none of the movements, political parties, and people opposing the war ever protested against such measures.

Notwithstanding the large bibliography on Italy in the First World War, these topics have to date received almost no attention at all. ¹⁴ Examining both state policies and nationalist rhetoric, I will try to bridge this gap, and propose to do so by analysing the Italian case in the larger comparative framework of the treatment of enemy nationals in wartime Europe, underlining differences and similarities. This is especially necessary because the enemy aliens issue raises questions pertaining to international law, human rights, humanitarianism, the status of foreigners, and the ambiguity between citizenship and ethnic belonging. It cannot therefore be understood within the context of a single nation or imperial state. The Italian case addressed in this article is thus meant to be a piece in the more complex puzzle that I try to reconstruct. ¹⁵

II. Preparing for War: Spying and German Kultur as Propaganda Issues

Italy entered the war against Austria-Hungary in May 1915, and that against Germany in August 1916. It thus had plenty of time to plan its policies toward enemy aliens so as to avoid the mistakes committed elsewhere. However, the belief that the war would finish in a few months, ¹⁶ the paucity of civilians of enemy nationality on its territory, and the uncertainty about which side to support made the issue less urgent and prevented the government from developing diplomatic initiatives aimed at reducing the hardships of the civilians of enemy nationality living in the peninsula, and of the Italians living in enemy countries. Hence, when the war broke out, Italy repeated what had been done elsewhere: it proclaimed a state of emergency, ¹⁷ imposed martial law in some areas of the country, suspended civil liberties, and treated enemy aliens as a dangerous group.

Besides similarities, however, there also were significant differences. These did not concern attitudes toward enemy civilians, but rather the timing of the measures, the way in which they were implemented, and their impact upon foreign communities, as well as the rhetoric accompanying them.

Italy started to prepare for war months in advance. In March 1915 the Chamber of Deputies approved a bill against espionage disguised under the title of ‘Measures for the economic and military defence of the country’. ¹⁸ In the debate which preceded its approval, alongside liberal criticisms which emphasized the dangers which might derive from a law which granted too much power to the executive, ¹⁹ the propaganda arguments which the government and the nationalistic press would use during the war in order to deal with enemy aliens were already on full display. ²⁰ Foreigners were equated with spies and saboteurs, and many deputies vented their hostility against Germany, the Germans, and foreign control over the Italian economy, and stressed the role played by foreigners in building an extensive espionage network.

This bill was strengthened by a decree issued on 2 May 1915 which prevented foreigners from entering the country without a passport and a visa; required all aliens, both those in transit and those residing on Italian territory, to register; compelled employers to notify the hiring of foreigners; ordered landowners to communicate the sale of urban or rural estates to foreigners; and instructed hotels to declare the presence of aliens. ²¹

The emergency legislation was completed on 20 May, when the Chamber of Deputies passed (by 407 votes to 74) a single-article bill transferring both legislative and executive powers to the government, ²² which was thus empowered to do what it deemed necessary to ensure the security of the state. After the vote, parliamentary activity was interrupted for six months. It resumed in December, but only to support the decisions of the government and the war effort. The state of emergency was further strengthened by a decree suspending civil liberties and granting prefects almost unlimited powers. ²³ Moreover, art. 251 of the military penal code gave the army full power in regions at the front and occupied zones. Italy thus soon found itself in a new political situation: as in other moments of its short life, ²⁴ the liberal-democratic dynamic was substituted by a dual government–army ‘dictatorship’ whose poles were frequently at odds with each other.

On 24 May 1915, after the government secured the freedom to decide and act, Italy entered the conflict, and started fighting not only against enemy armies but also against enemy subjects who happened to be within Italian borders.

The war immediately and deeply affected also the lives of people living along the borders between Italy and Austria-Hungary, particularly those of Austro-Hungarian subjects of Italian nationality and of Italian citizens (the so-called  regnicoli or Reichsitalianer) living in the territory of the Habsburg Empire, who were far more numerous than the Austro-Hungarians and ethnic Austrians living in Italy. ²⁵ On both sides of the front people were forcibly removed, ²⁶ with some experiencing displacement, others internment. At least 30,000 Italian ‘nationals’ were expelled from Trieste, Gorizia, and Gradisca, ²⁷ while more than 12,000 ended up in internment camps. ²⁸

As in all belligerent countries, the provisions against enemy aliens were justified as retaliations. Austria-Hungary adopted a far harsher policy against Italians and ethnic Italians than against French and Britons, and this was notwithstanding the extensive internment of Austro-Hungarians in those two countries. ²⁹ In taking measures against Austro-Hungarians, and later extending them to the subjects of the Ottoman Empire and eventually Germany, ³⁰ Italy increased the likelihood of retaliation against the many Italian subjects living abroad. ³¹ This consequence, however, was not taken into consideration by the Italian government, which, oddly enough, decided instead not to extend the measures to Bulgarians out of fear of economic retaliation. As the minister Rosario Pasqualino-Vassallo pointed out in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies – demonstrating greater concern for Italy’s economic interests than for the welfare of its nationals abroad – Bulgarians in Italy were too few in number, and Italian interests in Bulgaria far more important. ³²

Also, nationalist public opinion, which pressed for draconian measures against the few enemy subjects living in the country, was relatively indifferent to the fate of the Italians abroad, ³³ which remained solely in the hands of humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross or the YMCA, or of those neutral countries to which Italy had entrusted its diplomatic interests. ³⁴ The lack of concern for Italy’s own prisoners of war which characterized the Italian government ³⁵ thus seems (but this subject needs further exploration) also to have marked its attitude toward the civilian prisoners abroad.

III. The Foreign Presence in Italy: Some Data

Aliens in Italy were very few in number, and enemy aliens even fewer. These tiny and scattered groups of foreigners could clearly do no harm to the ethnic homogeneity of a country which had experienced uninterrupted emigration since the 1870s. Unlike Britain, Germany, or France, Italy was not ‘threatened’ by immigrants coming from the south and from the east, nor by newcomers who might alter the ‘racial’ balance, as was the case in Canada or the US. Nor had Italy to deal with national minorities challenging the integrity of the state as in the Russian, Ottoman, or Austro-Hungarian empires.

Nationalists, however, used their press to issue insults and threats, and disseminate suspicion and fear as if there were enemy aliens in large numbers everywhere. Some articles described the flight of the Austrians and Germans from Florence, Milan, or Naples as an ‘uninterrupted exodus’, and urged the surveillance of neutral foreigners (e.g. Americans and Swiss); ³⁶ others proposed unlikely numbers (frequently withdrawn some days later) in order to maintain the tension high.

According to the 1911 census, foreign nationals in Italy numbered 79,756 (0.22 per cent of the country’s total population). ³⁷ About 46 per cent of them were concentrated in seven cities: Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. The largest community was the French with 15,006 individuals, followed by the Austro-Hungarian (11,911), the Swiss (11,121), and the German (10,715). Citizens of the four countries against which Italy fought after May 1915 and August 1916 thus represented only a fraction of the entire foreign population (23,894 people, 30 per cent of the total), and this number dropped when war broke out and German, Austro-Hungarian, and, later, Ottoman and Bulgarian males aged 18 to 45 left Italy to enlist in their own armies. ³⁸ Neutrality prevented Italy from sealing its borders, and it was thus left with a population of alleged enemy aliens consisting of approximately 15,000 women, children, and old people. ³⁹ The demographer Francesco Colletti, who used census data to challenge the false information spread by Il Popolo d’Italia on the number of enemy aliens, nevertheless supported sequestrations and confiscations by stressing that the problem was not the quantity of aliens but their quality. By quality he meant that there were still enemy aliens who owned large assets. ⁴⁰

Before the war the presence of foreigners in urban centres went almost unnoticed, and even though there was a larger percentage of Protestants and Jews among them than in the entire population, ⁴¹ this did not cause ethnic or religious conflicts. Italian cities were not segregated, and there were no designated areas where foreigners lived; nor were foreigners concentrated in specific sectors or activities. There was a slightly higher incidence of them in commercial and industrial activities, which not only was tolerated but resulted, in cities such as Milan, Turin or Genoa, in intense cooperation and competition with local business. In other parts of Italy, such as Naples, foreigners, especially Protestant foreigners of German and Swiss origins, lived in a world apart, a sort of parallel society which never merged, but did not clash, with the local population. Aliens, especially those who had lived in Italy for many decades, were not fully assimilated, but they were nevertheless accepted and integrated. ⁴² Intermarriage, commercial and industrial partnerships, sociability, and even politics, both at local and national level, contributed in various ways to this process, which was very rarely completed by naturalization because many foreigners did not deem it useful to have an Italian passport, and because acquiring Italian citizenship was made extremely complex and difficult by the civil code and then by the citizenship law. ⁴³ Alongside businessmen, small entrepreneurs, bankers, and so on, Italian cities welcomed also intellectuals, artists, and rentiers who visited the main stations of the grand tour and, fascinated by beauty, antiquities, and decadence, and looking for exotica and wilderness, often chose to settle. ⁴⁴ But the relationships between these foreigners and Italians were even rarer. The many differences of mentality, attitude, and manners between Italians and foreign artists and intellectuals, mainly coming from northern Europe, meant the latter were living in a world apart in which ‘the Italians were regarded as picturesque components in a dream landscape’. ⁴⁵

The war changed everything for both enemy and friendly aliens. In the climate of hysteria fuelled by the war, anything different – accent, dress, manners – became suspect. Ignorance and misunderstanding sometimes led to arrest, imprisonment, expulsion, and confiscation of property. American citizens with surnames which sounded German were reported and arrested, while the Swiss Vatican guards and some religious congregations were investigated after being accused of hiding German officials. ⁴⁶

Origin frequently outweighed citizenship. A good example of this climate is provided by the parliamentary debate opened by the question tabled by the deputy Giovanni Antonio Colonna di Cesarò on 9 December 1915. Concerned about the possible use of Swiss citizenship to disguise German and Austrian subjects, Colonna di Cesarò asked the Italian government whether it was not dangerous to recognize and trust citizens of this kind. ⁴⁷ Some months later the deputy Brandolino Brandolini went further by stating that ‘All the Germans among us are also Swiss, thanks to the famous 1903 law which entitles everyone who applies to acquire Swiss citizenship even without requiring expatriation from the country of origin or proof of having completed military service.’ ⁴⁸ Thus, the Swiss and the German citizenship laws, which were not particularly different from the Italian one ⁴⁹ and which stemmed from the same principles and values, were blamed alongside economic penetration as the secret weapons devised to pass through enemy lines, win the war, and establish German hegemony forever.

IV. From Germanophilia to Germanophobia

Cultural and economic nationalism entered the public discourse in Italy well before the war. The primacy of Italy and the defence of ‘Italianness’ against all things alien had been at the centre of the discourse of the nationalist press and associations for at least a decade, with campaigns against the use of foreign words in shop signs, the hiring of Swiss nannies, or the ‘German occupation’ of the Lake Garda region. ⁵⁰ When the war broke out in Europe, Italy remained neutral, but the political battle between neutralists and interventionists soon reached a climax while spy fever and Germanophobia spread throughout the country. ⁵¹ From at least January 1915, newspapers such as L’Idea Nazionale published reports on suspects, potential spies, and arrests and expulsions of German nationals, ⁵² and a soft boycott of foreign goods started in March. ⁵³ The bill on espionage passed by the parliament in March was the first response to this hysteria, and at the same time it confirmed all the apprehensions and misgivings of the public. After 24 May nationalistic arguments fuelled the crusade against foreigners of enemy origin and became the main support for the policy against enemy civilians.

While concrete measures focused on the Austro-Hungarians and, after October, also on the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, the press campaign concentrated primarily on Germans. Even though the war was first waged solely against Austria-Hungary and along its frontiers, Germans and Germany were considered the real ideological enemies from the outset. The problem of the eastern border and of irredentism of course played a major role in the political debate, in the final decision on entry into the war, and in the choice of allies, ⁵⁴ but – paradoxically – the Austrian enemy did not occupy a distinct place in the nationalist and interventionist discourse. For instance, the three options envisaged by the ‘Manifesto’ published by Lacerba, one of the literary journals which participated in the interventionist campaign, were the following: ‘1. – Either war against the Germans or civil war. 2. – Either war against the Germans or revolution. 3. – Either war against the Germans or the republic.’ ⁵⁵ In fact, in the Italian collective perception, if such a thing existed, Austrians belonged to the same human type and category as Germans: ⁵⁶ the heart of the Habsburg Empire was considered German because of the dynasty, the elite, and the high ranks of the army, and nationalists thus conceived the empire as just another tool of German domination. ⁵⁷

The main enemies – long before Italy declared war on Germany, which occurred only in August 1916, and throughout the entire conflict – thus were and remained Germany and the Germans. The word ‘German’ rapidly became a synecdoche for enemies of all kinds and a synonym for ‘enemy’. The suspects, the alleged spies, the foreigners who happened to be seen close to ‘sensitive’ targets such as railway stations, harbours, tramways, or historical and artistic monuments were all taken to be Germans. Enemies were thus ethnically and not nationally defined: the press and the nationalists did not distinguish between Germans and Austrians, or between Germans and neutral German-speaking Swiss.

As many suggested at the time, Germany represented the dark, unknown, anonymous side of modernity; but above all Germany constituted a threat because of its power, efficiency, and organizational capacity. ⁵⁸ What had been a model to imitate in the decade before the war was now to be despised. On the home front the war was presented from the outset as a clash of civilizations, a battle against German Kultur and the economic hegemony pursued by Germany on financial markets and in industry, trade, and utilities such as electricity or transport, in order to gain total control of the world, as many commentators wrote. ⁵⁹ This view was widely shared among industrialists such as the Perrone brothers of Ansaldo (one of the main industrial concerns in Italy), who actively promoted the ‘Italianization’ of the banking system and founded in 1914 the Banca Italiana di Sconto, an institute which played a crucial role in the ‘Italianization’ of banks and large industry during the war. ⁶⁰ They saw the war as an opportunity to help Italy achieve economic independence, and the German economic presence in Italy as the main obstacle against freeing the country from the hegemony exercised by Germany in culture ⁶¹ – Italian academe was perceived as a ‘German colony’ – as well as in capital, entrepreneurial and organizational skills, and even pharmaceuticals. ⁶²

The fight against the influence of the Germans and Germany on the Italian economy thus soon became a distinctive feature of the Italian discourse against enemy aliens: for many interventionists, fighting against Germany meant fighting against an economic giant exploiting and suffocating the country.

The main target of nationalistic hatred, and of interventionist industrialists and bankers, was the Banca Commerciale Italiana. This was, alongside the Credito Italiano, the largest financial concern in Italy and had been founded with German capital in 1894. In 1915, however, the bank was no longer in German hands, even though it was still managed in German fashion. ⁶³ This did not discourage journalists and intellectuals, such as Giovanni Preziosi or Maffeo Pantaleoni, from writing articles presenting Germany as a huge octopus extending its tentacles into all the vital cells of Italian economy and society after successfully penetrating Belgium or Brazil. ⁶⁴

Even liberals such as Francesco Saverio Nitti complained in 1915 about the long-standing presence of foreign capital and foreign human resources in the Italian economy, and in particular about Italy’s dependence on such capital. Industrialists, commentators, and politicians thought that the war was an excellent opportunity to ‘nationalize’ the entire economy, bringing the utility companies, the insurance societies, and above all the banks under Italian ownership. In a letter addressed to the home secretary, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, on 27 September 1916, Giuseppe Canepa, the minister of industry and trade, proposed profiting from the war in order to make a bold move toward the Italianization and municipalization of all the utility companies in foreign hands. Such arguments were of course very popular also among socialists throughout Europe, who saw the nationalization of economies as a step forward in the building of socialism. ⁶⁵

As in the case of the Banca Commerciale, the alarm about German capital in the Italian economy was often based on myths. The discourse on German dominance of the Italian economy was inflated as part of a propaganda strategy aimed at defeating the neutralist front, and in particular Giovanni Giolitti, who long remained the nationalists’ main foe. As a matter of fact, and according to the data published by Francesco Saverio Nitti in 1915, foreign investment in Italy was much lower than it had been in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. With 19 million lire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a very small presence in the Italian economy, while German investments amounted to 40 million, far less than Belgian and French direct investments. ⁶⁶ Imports and direct investments from Germany and Switzerland were still high in the electricity sector and in the chemicals industry. ⁶⁷

Notwithstanding such evidence, the anti-German discourse created unexpected allies: the nationalist Giovanni Preziosi, who was to become one of the main Italian anti-Semitic writers during Fascism, the former liberal economist Maffeo Pantaleoni (who also turned to anti-Semitism), the independent socialist and historian Ettore Ciccotti, the Waldensian and ‘populist’ poet and writer Piero Jahier, and the Latinist Ettore Romagnoli ⁶⁸ found themselves using the same language, sharing the same thoughts, and attacking the same targets.

Between 1914 and 1919 more than 100 pamphlets whose main theme was anti-Germanism were published. ⁶⁹ Their titles speak for themselves: L’infezione germanica (The German infectious disease), L’invasione tedesca in Italia (The German invasion of Italy), L’artiglio tedesco (The German claw), Guerra senza sangue (War without blood), Il germanesimo senza maschera (Germanism without a mask), La Germania alla conquista dell’Italia (Germany conquering Italy), and so on. ⁷⁰ Newspapers and magazines such as Il Popolo d’Italia, L’Idea Nazionale, Il Fronte Interno, or La Domenica del Corriere spearheaded an incessant campaign which echoed themes to be found in campaigns against enemy aliens throughout the world.

The speech delivered by the deputy Ettore Ciccotti, an independent socialist, in the Chamber of Deputies on 13 March 1915, during the debate on the bill ‘Measures for the economic and military defence of the country’, represents a good synthesis of the anti-German feelings and perception. Ciccotti supported the bill, but worried about its application. Italy, he said, had been for decades penetrated by foreigners attracted by the hope that they could help the Italian economy grow. They were everywhere, and had a profound knowledge of the Italian territory. The Baedekers, the famous travel guides, and the books of the geographer Theobald Fischer provided, according to Ciccotti, undisputable proof of the Germans’ thorough knowledge of the peninsula, which they could now use to construct an espionage network. With a large degree of pathos, Ciccotti denounced the fact that foreign capital (and German capital in particular) dominated the Italian economic system, its savings, factories, military industries, and naval companies, deeply influencing the press, politics, and moral life.

Besides irredentism, completion of the unification of the country, and the greater role of Italy among the European powers, the foreign economic presence became one of the main issues in the campaign for the country’s entry into the war. Because of its capacity to strike emotional chords, it remained one of the main arguments used by nationalists to fuel patriotism in a country which was still at least partially reluctant to engage in war. ⁷¹

Newspapers urged their readers to be watchful and to report any suspicious behaviour to the police. On 26 May 1915 the newspaper L’Idea Nazionale launched a column entitled ‘Against espionage’ which encouraged informants. For almost a month, newspapers published daily reports and rumours concerning socialists, neutralists, and of course aliens – not just enemy ones. The readers of L’Idea Nazionale were obsessed with all things foreign. They proposed, for instance, a boycott of foreign beer or of German music played in churches, and suggested the Italianization of the surnames of Italian subjects who happened to have a foreign one. They saw spies everywhere, even disguised as monks, priests, or nuns. ⁷² Gender played no role: women were considered just as dangerous as men. There were campaigns against ‘German wives’, ⁷³ newspapers received a constant flow of information about nannies and housekeepers suspected of planning acts of sabotage, ⁷⁴ and readers discovered potentially subversive activities in shop signs such as ‘Coiffeurs des dames’. ⁷⁵ Anti-Germanism was also one of the main features of women’s periodicals and associations. ⁷⁶ Espionage was of course also the concern of government and the police, who received anonymous letters, collected information, and created files on hundreds of citizens and aliens. ⁷⁷

The war thus destroyed the political alliance and the long-lasting relationships of friendship, cooperation, admiration, and cultural transfers between the two countries. The special, and sometimes controversial, relations linking Italian intellectuals to German ones were disrupted, and many Italian intellectuals, politicians, and journalists rapidly switched from Germanophilia to Germanophobia. ⁷⁸ However, the war was unable to cut all the intellectual flows between the two countries. Their very intensity made it difficult to erase everything German from Italian culture. Numerous Italian students had attended classes in German universities, promoting a Wissenstransfer which brought to Italy German advances in the social sciences, classics, Roman law, biology, and so on. Historical studies were largely influenced by German scholars and methodology, German literature and German philosophy were received with interest, and Germany had indeed provided a template for the shaping of the Italian school and university system. ⁷⁹

In fact, only part of the Italian intellectual elite turned against Germany and its culture, but any attempt to defend them was crushed. On 6 December 1914 the Pro Italia Nostra association published the first of 24 issues of the weekly Italia Nostra, a journal defending Italian neutrality, which maintained that, in order to pursue its interests, Italy should not break its alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. The weekly’s collaborators were mainly academics and ‘Germanophiles’ – Benedetto Croce, Cesare De Lollis, Domenico Gnoli, Arturo Carlo Jemolo, Luigi Salvatorelli, Giorgio Pasquali, Mario Vinciguerra, and others – who emphasized their admiration for German civilization; ⁸⁰ praised the superiority of discipline, order, community, and nation over liberalism; ⁸¹ defended the Tripartite Pact; ⁸² displayed strong anti-French and anti-British feelings; ⁸³ and caricatured the anti-German campaign and the spy fever in particular. ⁸⁴

The pro-German attitude of neutralists, and of part of the Italian intellectual elite, was easily defeated by the louder campaign conducted by nationalists. University students were among the most active fighters against German Kultur, and, as elsewhere, the attack extended to German music. Italy’s foremost conductor, Arturo Toscanini, was interrupted while performing Wagner, ⁸⁵ and newspapers demanded that concert programmes be purged of alien music. Anti-Semitism too entered the campaign. ⁸⁶

In spite of its aggressive and threatening tones, Italian nationalism failed to mobilize the population. Verbal vehemence only rarely gave way to mayhem, rioting, or bloodshed. And nothing comparable to the London riots, or the Moscow ones, ever took place. ⁸⁷ In May 1915 in cities such as Milan, Rome, Venice, and Genoa, as well as in small towns such as Molfetta or Massa Carrara, people smashed shop windows, pillaged the houses of alleged enemy aliens,and attempted to assail German or Austro-Hungarian consulates, tearing down their insignia and beating up alleged Germans. ⁸⁸ But these episodes induced the government to reinforce control. On 10 May 1915 a letter to the prefects asked them to monitor the situation so as to prevent demonstrations and brutality against the aliens living in Italy. ⁸⁹

V. Measures Taken

Between May 1915 and December 1918 the government issued more than 30 decrees affecting the lives of enemy aliens. These decrees dealt with issues such as citizenship, the right to reside and move in Italy, internment, intellectual property, and the rights to trade, do business, own, sell, and acquire properties, bring suits to court, assemble, speak, receive post, and so on. As in all belligerent countries, the measures thus simultaneously affected personal freedom, civil liberties, and property rights.

Measures such as those on property and trade were intended for enemy aliens only; others, like internment, ended up being applied to all ‘dangerous’ people; yet others – the provisions on citizenship ⁹⁰ and those on compulsory registration and on teachers and university professors ⁹¹ – targeted aliens in general, regardless of their nationality.

In dealing with the enemy aliens problem the Italian government acted under two kinds of pressure which combined to encourage the adoption of behaviours very similar to those of the other belligerents. The first pressure, exerted by nationalists, was of internal origin. The second instead came from both allies and enemies. Italy had to comply with the behaviour of the allies on matters such as trade with the enemy, espionage, or the blockade (this pressure grew even stronger after the Paris Conference of June 1916). On the other hand, Italy had to respond to the enemy countries’ initiatives: many measures could thus be taken, and justified, out of retaliation and reprisal. ⁹²

Notwithstanding these pressures, at the beginning of the war Italy tried a different approach. On 21 May 1915, three days before entering the war against the Habsburg Empire, the government signed the Bollati–Jagow agreement of mutual guarantee with Germany concerning ‘the treatment of the subjects of the other party who should be found on its territory in the event of war’. The pact bore witness to the special relationships existing between the two countries. It bound them to respect the persons and the properties of the subjects of the two nations on the territory of the other. It also recognized the right to departure, but allowed the subjects of the other country to continue their residence without molestation. The agreement also envisaged the possibility of requiring enemy subjects to reside in designated localities, but in general put the citizens of the two countries on the same footing as citizens of neutral countries. ⁹³ While many German males continued to leave Italy in order to enlist in the army, many other Germans, especially women and elderly people, chose to stay, confident that they were safe or because they had nowhere else to go.

No similar treaty having been signed with Austria-Hungary, when the war started Italy adopted stringent measures against citizens of the Habsburg Empire. On 24 May the government forbade trade between the two countries. A month later another decree prevented Austro-Hungarian citizens from selling real estate owned in Italy. ⁹⁴ In November 1915 and in January 1916 these decrees were extended to the citizens of the Ottoman Empire, but only to those of Turkish nationality. ⁹⁵ The decree did not clarify which Ottoman minorities were exempted, but clearly Jews, Christians, and those who sympathized with the Entente were intended. ⁹⁶ The provisions were then applied to those Turkish nationals living or owning properties in Libya, Italy’s recently acquired colony. ⁹⁷

As far as Germans were concerned, they should have been protected by the Bollati–Jagow convention, but the agreement very soon became a ‘scrap of paper’. ⁹⁸ According to some international law scholars and to the Bar of Milan, ⁹⁹ Germany ignored the agreement and applied to the Italians residing on its territory (even occupied territory such as Belgium) the same measures implemented at the beginning of the war against British, French, and Russian subjects, even though Italians were not yet technically enemies. Furthermore, German banks refused to make payments to Italian creditors, and the German administration refused to pay the pensions due to the Italians entitled to them, thus violating the international convention of 1913.

As a consequence, Italy decided to place ‘Germans and Austro-Hungarians on the same footing’. ¹⁰⁰ As far as enemy aliens and trade were concerned, the war with Germany thus started well before its official declaration (28 August 1916). In January 1916 the removal began of Germans from towns and cities close to the coasts or to the war area. In February the government extended the prohibition on imports from Austria-Hungary to all manufactured goods from the Second Reich. On 18 July 1916 another decree declared the repeal of all the sales, conveyances, and transfers of goods, estates, shares, and properties involving enemy subjects and their allies. It also envisaged a prohibition on bringing suits in the courts of Italy, suspending all ongoing trials. This measure completed those already taken against the Austro-Hungarians in May 1915. The state of emergency was thus strengthened by ‘neutralizing’ the judiciary. The decisions taken by the government or the army could not be questioned by the independent power of the courts even when those decisions were in patent violation of individual rights or international law. ¹⁰¹

As regards personal liberty, the government and military authorities resorted, at least until January 1918, to the provisions already contained in the legislation of liberal Italy – compulsory repatriation and forced residence (domicilio coatto) – which gave military and police officials broad discretionary power in deciding who should be subjected to them. ¹⁰² Art. 16 of DL 634 (2 May 1915) reinforced the power of the prefects to remove aliens (not only enemies) from cities and sites considered of strategic interest for the state’s defence. Aliens and enemy aliens, in particular those from the occupied territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, together with hundreds of Italians (mainly anarchists, socialists, ‘austriacanti’) were compelled to take residence in designated villages or towns, mainly in central and southern Italy, and on some islands, Sardinia especially.

‘Dangerous’ Italians, and aliens who were not able to secure a permit of repatriation or an exemption for themselves and their families, were thus confined and submitted to police control, on the one hand, and to the informal monitoring of the nationalistic associations, on the other. ¹⁰³ Internees were free to move in the designated areas, and free to find suitable accommodation if they had sufficient means; otherwise they depended on state subsidies and on makeshift lodgings (schools, barracks, etc.).

The Italian army and political authorities did not create a system of concentration camps comparable to those of the allies. ¹⁰⁴ On the one hand, this made it impossible for the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the agency for civilian internees led by Frédéric Ferrière, to report regularly on the treatment of interned civilians in Italy; ¹⁰⁵ on the other, it confirms the conviction, already widespread among coeval witnesses and scholars, that the system was milder in comparison with that in other belligerent countries. The international lawyer Ioannes Spiropulos, for example, who in 1922 published one of the first comparative studies on the subject, wrote that Italy ‘did not act with the same strength that France used, leaving many German subjects free’. ¹⁰⁶

The defeat at Caporetto marked a major shift in how the Italian government handled the war, and in the policy of internment. Even though the government did not declare the wholesale internment of enemy aliens, the decree issued on 18 January 1918 made clear that enemy aliens could reside solely in the areas designated by the police (art. 1). It then reduced the possible exemptions (arts. 2–3), threatened the suspension of the validity of citizenship for those who had acquired Italian nationality in the previous ten years (art. 4), and extended the prohibition on suing in court to all enemy aliens.

After the failure of the German-Italian agreement, but in particular after the Paris Conference of June 1916, Italy thus abandoned its initially cautious policy, and imitated both allies and enemies in issuing laws and acts which authorized stronger control over enemy aliens, and dealt in particular with their business and economic activities. The bulk of the measures adopted in 1916, completed in 1917 by those on intellectual property ¹⁰⁷ and by those of January 1918, were intended to regulate economic relationships during war. In August 1916 two subsequent decrees established that firms, industries, shops, and every company in which there was an enemy alien interest were to be put under Italian administrative control or sequestration and eventually also liquidated; most belligerent countries had similar measures in place. The decrees also curtailed the rights to trade, to do business, to own properties, shares, and so on, or to bring suits to court. These measures, which became increasingly stricter as time passed, ¹⁰⁸ were unevenly applied (local authorities were sometimes highly zealous in hunting down enemy aliens, and sometimes indifferent and careless); yet they contributed to the growth of state intervention in the economy and the creation of an ad hoc bureaucracy engaged in implementing the various decrees. ¹⁰⁹

VI. Implementing the Enemy Aliens Policy: Internment and Displacement

The nationalist press and public opinion constantly criticized these measures as being too little, too late. The policy of internment, for example, provoked numerous criticisms. Nationalists pressed for the imprisonment, the wholesale internment, and eventually the expulsion of enemy aliens. ¹¹⁰ They denounced the system of forced residence as being one of privilege instead of punishment, ¹¹¹ and they called for the purging of voluntary societies, academies, and learned societies, the ‘Italianization’ of hotels, and the revision of naturalizations. ¹¹²

The government policy on economic issues sparked the strongest anger and disapproval. The press and the many associations created to support the war effort condemned the government’s timidity in pursuing the sequestration of enemy property. ¹¹³ The decrees on industrial patents, for example, raised the suspicion on both the left and the right of the political spectrum that the government did not want to reduce the German grip on the Italian economy and that the anti-German discourse was only a rhetorical device. ¹¹⁴ The behaviour of the government and the army was the target of endless complaints at the second congress for anti-German action held in Milan in May 1918. ¹¹⁵

Notwithstanding this criticism, the government, the peripheral bureaucracy, and the military commands worked intensively from the beginning of the war (and even before it officially broke out) in various directions. First of all the army decided on the evacuation of entire villages in areas close to the front and the displacement of tens of thousands of people. ¹¹⁶ It then promoted the removal from war and occupied zones of Austro-Hungarians and Germans. While the army operated in the war zone and behind the lines, the government ran the policy of internment in the rest of the country. In June 1915 it decided to send all Austro-Hungarian males aged between 18 and 50 to designated areas in Sardinia in retaliation against a similar measure adopted by the Austro-Hungarian government. ¹¹⁷

Government, prefects, and military officials adopted a discretionary and flexible policy on the issue of internment which enabled them to include not only enemy aliens but also friendly aliens, and above all ‘internal enemies’. Many (numbers are extremely difficult to ascertain) were forced to leave their homes by a rumour or a faint suspicion. Internment in Italy meant the removal of civilians from their homes and their forced residence either in an area designated by the police or the army, if dependent on state financial support, or in a place of ‘choice’ if the internee had sufficient means to provide for his or her personal needs and those of his or her family. ¹¹⁸ In a long and famous speech to the Chamber of Deputies delivered on 6 June 1916, Filippo Turati, the secretary of the Socialist Party, made a passionate plea for the liberation and return to their homes of internees. ¹¹⁹ He told various stories showing that internment had been used not as a measure of defence, but either to settle accounts with socialists, anarchists, or pacifists, or for very trivial reasons such as having an ebullient temperament, German friends, or a German-sounding surname (even by homonymy), being born accidentally in an enemy country or having recently returned from it (which happened to many seasonal migrants but also to many irredentists who fled the empire to join the Italian army), or even for having slapped the face of the son of the village mayor. Having a son in the army proved to be a useless guarantee, as Turati underlined by citing the example of a father with three such sons. In the case of enemy aliens, a son or more than one son in the army did not reduce suspicion as, for instance, proved by the case of Erwin Suckert, the father of Curzio Malaparte, who was interned in Benevento even though two of his seven sons served as volunteers in the Italian army. ¹²⁰ Turati, who invoked the rule of law and respect for civil rights and liberties, did not say a single word on the issue of enemy aliens and on their treatment as a collective category, not as individuals who should be pursued for their own actions.

By 5 August 1915, according to a confidential letter, the Supreme Military Command had already revised 3,000 internment proceedings. ¹²¹ And the number had risen to 3,270 by May 1916, according to Antonio Salandra, the prime minister and home secretary, in his reply to Turati’s accusation in the Chamber of Deputies. ¹²² Sara and Giorgio Milocco, who have studied the internment of people from the unredeemed territories, speak of 5,000 internments, while Petra Svoljšak, who has focused on the Austro-Hungarians interned in Sardinia, proposes the following figures: 1,172 in 1915, rising to 1,773 in May 1917, and then 2,226 at the end of the same year. ¹²³ Germans and Austro-Hungarians were scattered throughout the peninsula from Florence or Siena to Benevento or Avellino, ¹²⁴ as happened for example to 42 Germans living and working in Naples and belonging to the local evangelische Gemeinde who were interned, after the defeat at Caporetto, in Benevento. ¹²⁵

VII. Implementing the Enemy Aliens Policy: The Economic Sphere

The ‘Italianization’ of the economy, and in particular of banks and industry, represented the main concern of both the government and nationalists. This ‘Italianization’ was carried out in two different ways. The first affected large industry and utility companies, where German and in general foreign direct investments were strong. The second hit small and medium firms, shops, hotels, and so on, mainly family run, owned by Germans, Austrians, and even Swiss settled in Italy for many decades.

Owing to the pressure exercised on industrial concerns by banks, and the aggressive policy of new institutes like the Banca Italiana di Sconto, founded with the crucial contribution of French capital, there was a general withdrawal of foreign capital. The shares and assets of the electricity industry passed into Italian hands. ¹²⁶ The same happened to other large firms operating in textiles (the Cotonifici Riuniti di Salerno), ¹²⁷ the engineering industry (the Esslingen Machinen Fabrik-Officine di Saronno), ¹²⁸ or in steel manufacture (the Tubi Mannesmann in Dalmine). ¹²⁹

The various measures analysed in the previous paragraphs were also intended to halt the business activities of enemy aliens living and working in Italy. Prefects and local officials conducted inquiries prompted by the many anonymous letters informing on spying and illegal activities by firms and individuals, and investigated what they thought might be the simulated sale of firms, feigned or temporary transfers of commercial or industrial activities from Germans to Swiss or Italians, contraband, and illegal money transfers.

The seizure of assets and firms became more intense after the issue of the two already-mentioned decrees in the summer of 1916. By September 1917, 327 firms had been temporarily transferred to Italian administrators, who managed them under state control (sindacato), and 32 others had been placed under sequestration. The majority of firms seized were in Milan, Rome, Naples, and Genoa, but even smaller cities such as Bologna, Florence, or Catania were affected. Only very few of these firms belonged to Austrian or Hungarian subjects; they were mainly owned by German citizens frequently born in Italy and belonging to the second or third generation of a wave of elite migrants who had arrived in the first half of the nineteenth century from central Europe. Firms of all kinds, no matter what their size and assets, were subject to the sweeping anti-alien campaign, which in some cases also involved citizens of neutral countries, such as Swiss subjects, who suffered because their names sounded German, because of their language, or because they were partners of German businessmen. Small shops, guest houses, large hotels, import/export firms, utility companies, and manufacturing industries all suffered the same fate.

Sequestration/confiscation and liquidation also applied to the private property of cultural and religious institutions (the German school in Rome, the Austrian Historical Institute, the Hungarian Historical Institute in Rome, etc.), the properties of embassies such as the Palazzo Caffarelli and the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, or private residences such as the villa on Lake Garda belonging to the German art historian Henry Thode (today the Vittoriale degli Italiani, D’Annunzio’s post-war residence). Not all the properties and business of enemy aliens were placed under sequestration, however. In fact, the percentage of the assets seized was relatively small. The committee on enemy alien businesses, created at the Ministry for Industry, Trade, and Labour, conducted a census on all the properties of enemy aliens in Italy. According to this survey ¹³⁰ there were 4,201 German, 1,503 Austro-Hungarian, 30 Turkish, and 22 Bulgarian owners. The value of their property amounted to 476,780,00 lire. Sequestration and confiscation depended largely on the zeal of local civil servants and police officials.

Enemy aliens of course tried to save their assets by transferring them to friends, relatives, or neutral subjects. They organized fictitious sales or sought recommendations in order to avoid confiscation, and they wrote letters stating their loyalty to Italy and expressing their willingness to become Italian by renouncing their nationality, and taking out naturalization papers. ¹³¹

VIII. Concluding Remarks

Security, ethnic homogeneity, and political and economic nationalism were the factors affecting the management of the enemy aliens issue in all the warring countries. Although the factors were the same, their combination differed, giving rise in each of the belligerent countries to specific discourses, measures, and consequences. Each country experienced a different level of involvement and violence. Some took measures which were consistent with international law and liberalism; others profited from the ‘state of exception’ created by the war to bypass the rule of law, strengthen the role of governments, and at the same time weaken that of parliaments. ¹³²

Even so, it is possible to find a common pattern based on common measures and provisions, and on a common discourse. Arguments against enemy aliens, Germans or Britons, French, Russians or Austrians, were based on the same topics, patterns, and ideas, confirming the strength of the nationalistic discourse firmly rooted in nineteenth-century usages. ‘Barbarians’ were to be found on both sides, and the clash of civilizations was a strong metaphor used against the enemy in Russia, as in Germany, Britain, Austria, or Italy.

Italy entered the war later, but joined its allies and enemies on both the battle and the home front, sharing some of their attitudes and behaviours. Even though, owing to the scarcity of foreigners and the lack of ethnic conflicts, the urge to address the issue of enemy aliens was not particularly acute, in Italy, too, enemy aliens – no matter what their reasons for being in the country or the duration of their residence – thus suffered from legal measures designed to prevent them from spying, spreading false information, sending money to their homeland, continuing their business activities, and so on, and from popular condemnation and contempt. The loudness and violence of the press campaign were similar to those in other belligerent countries. Italy confined many civilians but did not establish a system of concentration camps comparable with the harsher one created a few years before in order to deal with POWs during the Libyan War, ¹³³ nor with those of its allies; ¹³⁴ however, the measures adopted by the government were applied very unevenly, with some enemy civilians allowed to remain in the country almost undisturbed, and some neutral or friendly aliens experiencing vexations and the harshness of provisions not intended for them.

But Italy also had its own peculiarities: cultural and above all economic nationalism was by far the most important issue at stake. Security and economic independence eventually became the two main arguments evoked to support and justify measures and to please nationalist public opinion and Italy’s allies, and they were frequently applied with scant conviction and energy. Vexations and violations and reductions of civil liberties were part of the everyday routine of the country at war, but compared with other belligerents, the same language and the same policies resulted in less severe consequences for enemy aliens and aliens in general. Official policies and public opinion campaigns, even though frequently at odds, shared the aim of the ‘Italianization’ of both the economy and culture, these being, in the eyes of many, important prerequisites for firmly establishing Italy among the main world powers.

After the treaties of Saint-Germain (10 September 1919) and Rapallo (12 November 1920) were signed, many Germans and Austrians returned to Italy in the hope of recovering some of their assets. For many of them the return was unsuccessful, however, and they left Italy again, sometimes for new migration destinations. ¹³⁵

These treaties also established new borders. In particular, the annexation to Italy of the north-eastern provinces brought into the country new territories and peoples, for the first time complicating the ‘ethno-linguistic’ structure of the Italian population. In pre-war territories, instead, the process of homogenization took another step forward: according to the 1921 census, only 52,791 aliens lived there, one-third less than in 1911. ¹³⁶ The national groups most affected were of course those belonging to the former enemy nations. In comparison with 1911, 65 per cent of Germans and 50 per cent of Turks had gone. ¹³⁷ Austrians followed a different pattern: they almost disappeared in the old Italian provinces, falling by almost 80 per cent; probably, however, many relocated to the newly acquired provinces, joining the non-Italian citizens (46,000 people, mainly composed of former Habsburg citizens). Swiss subjects, notwithstanding the many attacks and vexations suffered during the war upon being mistaken for Germans, decreased ‘only’ by 23 per cent.

In the newly annexed provinces Italy now had to deal with a population of former enemy aliens from the collapsed Habsburg Empire transformed overnight into Italian citizens by the two treaties of Saint-Germain and Rapallo and then by the decree on citizenship options (30 December 1920). Instead of according them at least cultural minority rights, first local authorities and then the central government implemented a policy of rapid and compulsory integration. Immediately after the war, and increasingly under Fascism, 200,000 German-speaking new citizens in South Tyrol, 400,000 Slovenes, and 100,000 Croatians ¹³⁸ to whom the international minority protection established by the various peace treaties did not apply – as a great power Italy was exempted from the provisions of the 1919 Minorities Treaty ¹³⁹ – underwent a process of violent denationalization and forced Italianization. ¹⁴⁰ The outcomes of this process were inconsistent and counterproductive, ¹⁴¹ but the policies were in tune with the new general European trend tremendously accelerated by the war, which linked the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion to the Schmittian opposition between friend and enemy.