After the First World War, the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was followed by moments of confusion related to the definition of the new order of the Danube-Balkan area of Europe. The establishment of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes led to geographical and socio-cultural problems; therefore, Dalmatia is an interesting case study. Militarily occupied in its central-northern area by Italy on the basis of the London Pact (1915), Dalmatia soon became a battleground between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of SHS, fragmenting externally as well as internally between adherents to the Yugoslavian structure and those opting for the Italian proposal. Article VII of the Rapallo Treaty of 12 November 1920 established the possibility for minorities living in Yugoslavian territory to take Italian citizenship. This was not an easy choice.
The proposed essay starts from this complex framework as a starting point to illustrate and understand the drama experienced by the Italian communities of Dalmatia in the interwar period. The treaty of Rapallo itself that for the liberal government represented the end of the disputes and the hope for a rapprochement of the communities, for the Italians of Yugoslav Dalmatia it was instead the beginning of abandonment and the end of irredentism. The 1921 agreements of Split gave way to the liberation of the occupied Yugoslav territory, with the consequent exodus of part of the Italian communities settled there. The essay will shed light on the difficult position in which the Italian Dalmatian political leaders found themselves and how they reacted to the coming of Mussolini with the ratification of the Santa Margherita agreements (1923), the treaties of Rome (1924) and the conventions of Neptune (1925), crossing the micro-history of the Italian communities of Dalmatia with the history of fascist Italy up to the tragic involvement in the Second World War.
