It is easy to forget which ruins are from which war as you wander about in the Julian Alps. Many trails have beginnings in one of the World Wars or in the events preceding or suceeding. Many mule tracks still hiked on built by either Italian or Austro-Hungarian military engineers. Vršic Pass became a main road only during the First War. The cost of hundreds of Russian prisoners of war dying during in its construction by some ten thousand POWs. The Julians were set to become Italy’s new “natural borders” with the east.
ITALIA IRREDENTA REALIZED IN SLOVENIA
World War One for Italy was to some in Italy, a final chapter for the Risorgimiento – the unification of all areas of native Italian speakers. One of the areas included were lands of the Soča/Isonzo River and its tributaries. As in the upper reaches of the south Tyrol and Istria to the south, the Italians made up a minority population in the newly acquired territories. But by the time of the Great War, the Risorgimiento had transformed into Italia irredenta. With this change came a call for “Natural borders”. These “natural borders” could include other non-Italian speakers, in order for Italy to be better defended.
Lands along the Soča became promised to Italy, with others, a reward for participating on the side of the Entente, a result of secret terms of the Treaty of London in 1915. With the end of the war, Serbia transformed into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Slovene areas assigned to Italy were contested by the newly expanded Kingdom of Serbia. Unlike further south in Dalmatia, Italian interests here persevered.
NEW LANDS, NEW BORDERS
In the upper Soča, Italian Supreme Commando decreed the need for a border on the highest peaks of the Julians. Natural borders from which they could better defend Italy from. Of course, sometimes, the best defense is a good offense. The Italian plan was to fortify the peaks to buy time to mobilize troops behind the mountain line for potential offensive action. Offense was more probable in the immediate post-WWI years than defense given the political nature of either of the two potential Italian aggressors, Yugoslavia or Austria.
From the time of the armistice between Italy and what was left of the Austro-Hungarian empire on 4 November 1918 until a final treaty was signed between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs. Croats and Slovenes – 12 November 1920, Italy occupied lands assigned to her by the Entente powers – France, United Kingdom and the Russian Empire – in the 1915 Treaty of London. These areas included the Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and most of the Dalmatian islands. The Austrian Littoral contained the city of Trieste, the Istrian peninsula, the Carso-Krst region and the entire Isonzo- Soča river valley from Vršic Pass to the Adriatic Sea.
In addition, Italian forces occupied the upper Canale valley centered around the German-Slovene town of Tarasp – Tarvisio, today. That valley annexed to Italy after the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye 10 September 1919. The treaty signed between the German Republic of Austria and the Allied Powers. Like Versailles with Germany and Trianon with Hungary, the treaty included a Convent of the League Nations. As a result, it was not ratified by the United States.
ONE TREATY LEADS TO ANOTHER
versAILLES
After WWI, huge changes revolved around failed and new governments and countries. Old borders were revised as “self-determination” became the rule of the day. Two of President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points were directed to the Italian-Slovene border: #9 called for “a readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.” #10 gave the “peoples of Austria-Hungary … the freest opportunity of autonomous development.”
The territorial awards from the Treaty of London were nullified by the Treaty of Versailles under pressure from President Wilson. He was not in favor of the Italian annexation of northern Dalmatia in light of the majority Slavic population. The border further north was not examined as closely. Here, the two points of the fourteen clashed with the earlier promises and the idea of “natural borders”.
RAPALLO
The following year, 12 November 1920 saw Italy and the Kingdom of Servs, Croats and Slovenes come to agreement for another treaty, the Treaty of Rapallo. Rapallo was an attempt to find a compromise between the two Adriatic neighbors. Italy held the upper hand with her army occupying areas she hoped to annex. The two powers had been wary allies during the war, fighting each other over Austrian war materiel at the end of war. With France and Great Britain supporting Italy, in addition, the Yugoslavs were hard-pressed to counter Italian wishes.
By treaty, the Italians were able to hold onto much of the gains London had given them: the entire former Austrian Littoral, except for the town of Kastav and the island of Krk. New natural borders to defend from. Dalmatia became part of Yugoslavia except for the city of Zadar and a couple of islands. The city of Rijeka-Fiume became an independent Free State.
SIDESHOW IN THE SOUTH
Rijeka built up in the 19th century, the main port for the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary – Trieste being the main port for the Austrian half of the empire. Fiume-Rijeka had been occupied by Gabriele D’Annunzio with a couple thousand Italian volunteers. They had marched into the city 12 September 1919 angered by the proposed handover of the city to Yugoslavia in defiance of the Treaty of London.
D’Annunzio ignored Rapallo and declared war on Italy. That did not go so well. After a five-day fight and naval bombardment, he surrounded the city retiring to his Lake Garda home bribed by Mussolini to stay on the sidelines. Rijeka became split into an Italian half – Fiume – and a Yugoslav half – Sušak – in 1924.
REPERCUSSIONS
Rapallo left a half million Slavs inside Italy with a good quarter of Slovenia annexed. The few Italians remaining in Yugoslav areas gained guaranteed rights by treaty. Slovenes and Croats living in newly annexed Italian regions received verbal, but no written guarantees. Those verbal guarantees meant nothing shortly after the Italian officials responsible for the treaty lost power with the ascension to power of Mussolini and the Fascist party in 1922.
The coming of the Fascists was in part because of Rapallo. By not gaining everything “guaranteed” by the Treaty of London, the victory, for which a great price paid, became the “Mutilated Victory”, a cause pushed forward by D’Annunzio and the Italian right, embraced by Mussolini and his party.
The upper Soča had been behind the main front during WWI. With the new acquisition of territory after the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo, the Italian army went to work building a new set of border fortifications. Most of their efforts developed further south, but even here in the highest mountains, the results are still visible today.
MONTE TRICORNO OR TRIGLAV?
In the Julian Mountains, even as the politicians bickered, the Italian army already had acted. Italian politicians had been pushing for a border on the watershed between waters flowing east to the Black Sea and south and west into the Adriatic. It became apparent the summit of Triglav by that definition would belong to Yugoslavia. Because of the magnificent observation point towards the Ljubljana basin and because of the propagandistic value, Italian command decided the peak needed to be Italian. A small wooden hut went up in September 1919 at the west base – 2557meter elevation – of the summit block of Triglav – Monte Tricorno, to the Italians – as a base for one officer and seven soldiers to work out of. The hut supported by a trail up from Dolič pass. Boots on the ground made Italian claims more difficult to push aside.
With the summer of 1920, an Italian Commission, created to propose a new border for the politicians at Rapallo, acted. They offered two proposals both giving the summit and various areas to Italy. When Rapallo was signed in November, the exact border around Triglav had not yet been determined. A post-treaty special commission made of Italian and Yugoslav members given responsibility to decide.
playing to emotions
It would be another four years before the border finally in place. In the meantime, summiteers from both sides climbed Triglav to put their country’s point forward. The climbs well reported in national newspapers arousing opinion on both sides. The summit hut underwent multiple coatings of paint as each side painted their tricolors to the hut. Guns were brought up and even a few shots rang out. A pair of machine guns even brought up on a 1923 summit trip by an Italian group. Italy was under Fascist control by this time meaning the rhetoric only increased.
Cooler heads prevailed. The summit became ceded to Italy after a recalcitrant Yugoslav colonel was removed from the border commission. Triglav became part of Italy in 1924 with the theory of ‘natural borders’ taking another step forward. The summit hut was repainted in its original gray – it would be repainted red during the Tito years.
ITALY BEGINS TO ADAPT TO HER NEW BORDERS
For Italy, defensive arrangements began soon after the formal annexation of 1921. With exact borders not yet determined, the Guardia di Finanza set themselves up. Construction of military routes began as early as 1924. Not much later, the establishment of the Vallo Alpino Orientale started in 1931. The Eastern Alpine Wall brough many new defensive positions along the new natural borders. To man these positions, the Guardia alla Frontiera became established in 1934, a part of the army. The GAF was responsible for manning the Alpine Wall from France through Yugoslavia.
The GAF in 1940 had over 21,000 men deployed along the alpine border of Italy – France, Switzerland, Austria and Yugoslavia. In the eastern regions, most fortifications had only machine guns as opposed to artillery used on the French front. That number of men more than doubled by the time Italy entered into WWII. There were 27 sectors along the borders including sector XXI Alto Isonzo and sector XVII Tarvisio.
UPPER ISONZO VALLEY
Sector XXI was headquartered from Tolmin with three subsectors reporting. 21a was responsible for the highest region of the Isonzo valley. The subsector had its headquarters in the village of Trenta – Caserna Guardia alla Frontera Cantore. The army headquarters building in Trenta today used as a Triglav National Park administrative building.
Roads and mule supply tracks were established to the upper parts of the border along with supply lifts. The wooden hut at Morbegno soon became obsolete. A newer, more substantial barracks erected a little to the west – Victor Emmanuele III barracks. To supply the new base at the base of Triglav, a mule track built. At the midway point for a military cableway leading to the new barracks, Rifugio Gemona went up in 1926. Rifugio Cozzi, built in 1930 up higher at Dolič pass to further supply the new barracks.
On the other side of Kanjavec, Rifugio Alba went up at the end of anoither supply mule track. The position here and on Triglav gained further support by later artillery positions further to the west. Further to the northwest, a series of four forts and a barracks were built just below Vršic Pass. The history of Vršic Pass, fairly well known from WWI, with the road built by 10,000 Russian POWs. That road replaced another over Predil Pass interdicted by gunfire from Italian artillery. The four Italian forts remain obscured with time, but still can be found.
LATE ARTILLERY ENTRY
Another late addition to the Alpine Wall in this region was the positions atop Mangart to the west. In 1938, a road built by 500 Italian soldiers up from Predil Pass to the base of the summit block of Mangart developed. From here, artillery could reign supreme on the upper reaches of the Sava Valley – Kranska Gora. That road exists today with upgrades and five less tunnels – though the road (€5) remains narrow and very windy.
THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
The next major fort system in sector XXI centered on Bogatin. Bogatin is the mountain famous for holding the treasure of Zlatorog, the Goldenhorn. A magical ibex, Zlatorog held the key to a treasure of untold wealth deep within the mountain.
During WWI, many important mule tracks led up from Lake Bohinj to supply the Austro-Hungarian army fighting further west on the slopes of Krn and Mrzli vrh. In light of that desperate defense, the Italians developed a forward plug in the form of four small forts built into the mountain walls around the Bogatin pass – Bogtinski sedlo – and further to the south in the Polog valley of the Tolminka River not far below the church at Javorca dedicated to men of the 3rd Mountain Brigade of the Austro-Hungarian army who fell in the fighting between 1 March and 1 November 1916.
The natural borders from here moved east along the magnificent Bohinj ridge before dropping south out of the Julian Alps. To the northwest lie many bunkers built in front of Tarvisio looking down the Sava River and in the Karavanke north to Austria with another band of bunkers further west near the old Austrian forts around Malborghetto. Another group of eight forts developed just east of Kal-Koritnica deep in the Soča gorge. These forts, second line forts to further halt enemy incursions.
A NEW WAR
The forts barely featured during WWII. Yugoslavia quickly fell in the spring of 1941 to an onslaught of Axis powers totally surrounding her. There was some fighting around Rateče near Tarvisio in the uppermost part of the Sava Valley, but the main Italian push drove further south directly towards Ljubljana. By that time, Zagreb had fallen to German panzers and Croatian Ustaše separatists captured the headquarters staff of the 7th Army responsible for defense of the Slovenia-Croatia boundaries. Due to the nature of the politics of the moment, the 7th, like much of the Royal Yugoslav Army, had only been in early stages of mobilization. The 7th Army commander Dušan Trifunović died in a German POW camp the next year. Yugoslavia unconditionally surrendered 18 April, twelve days after the invasion began. A new chapter of natural borders opened.
The April invasion was but the opening chapter in a long and bloody saga that would only end in 1945. Josip Broz, son of a Croat-Slovene couple and formerly the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian army would remake Yugoslavia known better by the name of Tito.
FORGOTTEN LEGACY
With the end of WWII, most of the gains of the Great War fell away from Italy here in Yugoslavia, natural borders redesigned once again. Some of the land in the lower Isonzo valley remained where definite Italian majorities lived. The city of Gorizia became split in half, a smaller version of Berlin divided between East and West. The split remains but the walls have come down.
Many of the interwar forts by treaty – 1947 – were demolished, but their ruins remain in many cases. Some of the forts in the Tarvisio region gained new purpose during the Cold War, but even they became abandoned as history moved on. Bleak reminders of another time and another mind set.
The website to check for the complete story on the Rapallo border is here. The website is in Slovene, though Google translate does an ok job.