The Hard Way

Almost forgotten in the ballyhoo about home-yearning German minorities in Eastern Europe is the fact that Allies Italy and Germany also have between them a little minority problem of their own. Living just south of the Brenner Pass, in what Austrians call the South Tyrol and the Italians insist upon referring to as the Upper Adige, are some 200,000 German-speaking people who, by the Treaty of St. Germain signed in 1919, were transferred from Austrian to Italian sovereignty. Last week the Fascists and the Nazis, having long soft-pedaled this delicate situation, decided to solve it for once and for all. The method they chose was the hard way--a transfer of the population, not the territory, back to Greater Germany.

Although Italy promised many times after the War to respect the language, customs and education of the Germans she was acquiring, scarcely had Fascism begun to operate in Italy before the South Tyrolese became one of the worst treated minorities in Europe. In an effort to Italianize the district, German schools were forbidden, German newspapers outlawed, German place names changed (Bozen, for instance, became Bolzano), even German surnames on tombstones were effaced.

Little Austria could scarcely afford to make effective protest, but the German Republic many times pointed out that Italy was not living up to her sworn obligations. When Adolf Hitler came to power the South Tyrolese hoped that this exponent of "One People, One State, One Leader" would soon look into their case. The Fuehrer soon showed, however, that he would not allow the plight of a mere 200,000 Germans to interfere with the destiny of some 80,000,000. At Rome, in May 1938, the Fuehrer declared before Il Duce that the present Italian-German frontiers were inviolable.

Forsaken or not, the stubborn Tyrolese still resisted Italianization, and Benito Mussolini must have reluctantly concluded that these Germans would always be Germans. As for the Fuehrer, he was short of labor at home, particularly of farm labor, and would welcome the agricultural Tyrolese back. Last week the following joint agreement on the South Tyrol problem was suddenly sprung:

>> Some 8,000 Germans (as distinguished from Tyrolese) in the district were allowed three months to get back to the Reich.

>>A year was allowed for those South Tyrolese without property to move back to Germany.

>> Two years was given to those who had property to liquidate.

>> Tyrolese could declare for Italian citizenship, but those who did so were likely to be scattered throughout Italy and not allowed to remain in the Upper Adige.

On the heels of this solution came an Italian order for all other foreigners, tourist or resident, to clear out of Bolzano Province immediately. Hardest hit by this precipitate measure were about 300 Swiss, many of whom operate the resort hotels in the district.

Correspondents were at a loss to know why the Italians, just at the height of the tourist season, had deprived themselves of badly needed foreign exchange. The Italian explanations were not much help. First, it was announced that foreigners were ordered out because of widespread "espionage" in the South Tyrol. Next, they had to go for "military" reasons.

But the best guess for the immediate expulsion seemed to be that there were going to be some ugly events in the South Tyrol when the actual transfer begins. Ousted vacationists reported that 26 Tyrolese peasants, four Blackshirts had been killed in the last two months. The Tyrolese peasant is strongly attached to his land. Still revered in the district is one Andreas Hofer, an innkeeper, who in 1809 organized the peasants to resist Bavarian soldiers sent down by Napoleon Bonaparte to conquer the country. Neither Italy nor Germany wants foreign spectators around to witness such heart-rending scenes.

Only slight mention was made of the "solution" in Rome or Berlin, and in neither place was much pride exhibited on how the delicate problem had finally been solved. With the Third Reich now accepting the method of popular transfer, all sorts of things might happen. Belgium might suggest, for instance, that 50,000 troublesome Germans living in Eupen and Malmedy be repatriated. Better still, Poland might suggest that as a solution to the Danzig question some 400.000 Germans living in the Free City simply return to the Reich.

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