ITALY: The Trieste Crisis (May 1945)

David Wingeate Pike writes:? Sixty years ago this week, the war in Italy, like the war in Germany, was in its final days, but in Italy there was a final surprise. The close of the Italian campaign brought the only moment of internal hostility that the Allies encountered at any time or place in the war. In Rome, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, as Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean, charged Marshal Tito with the apparent intention of establishing claims in north-eastern Italy and southern Austria by force of arms, claims which he called “all too reminiscent of Hitler, Mussolini and Japan.” Efforts to come to a friendly agreement, he added, had failed.

The result was the race for Trieste. The city had gone through a terror unique in Italy. Its ruler was SS-Gruppenf?Otto Globocnik, who had earlier founded the extermination camps of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka and Majdanek, with command of all camps in Poland from 1941 to 1943. After serving briefly as Gauleiter of Vienna he had been posted to Trieste, where to the very end he ran the prison of Risiera di San Sabba, the only SS camp ever set up on Italian soil. He was thus already a major war criminal when on May 1, 1945 he was given command of the German armies converging on Trieste in retreat from Italy and Yugoslavia.

For Allied strategy, Trieste represented the last major Italian city still held by the Germans, and for military supply reasons was needed for the planned advance into Austria. What was not planned was the encounter with
Tito.

Under Alexander’s direction, Lt.-Gen. Mark Clark, commanding 15th Army Group, deployed two divisions (the US 91st Infantry and the British 56th Infantry) in the race to the Adriatic port. A New Zealand vanguard under
the legendary Sir Bernard Freyberg, V.C. advanced 222 km in the same period that the Yugoslav IX Army Corps covered a mere 40 km, but the Yugoslavs beat Freyberg by a day. Nevertheless, had the New Zealanders not arrived, Tito’s forces would have liberated Trieste by themselves and would have had considerable legitimacy in claiming that they had achieved this feat without any Western assistance.

The city which had just emerged from the terror of Globocnik was now exposed to the terror of the Partisans. The Yugoslav secret police, assisted by many of the Slovene residents of Trieste, went out in search of their enemies. A British-American report long kept secret provided detailed accounts of the atrocities known as the massacres in the foibe, or fissures. Stalin’s policy at the time was to support Tito’s claim to a Yugoslav Trieste, but not all communists saw it that way: the Italian communists favored an Italian Trieste and were thus included in the massacres.

The Trieste crisis of May 1945 represented one more messy ending to a very messy war. There was a lack of clarity in the demarcation line between Yugoslav and Anglo-American forces. Once the New Zealanders crossed the river Isonzo, they had to move with caution. Their first encounter with the Yugoslavs came at Monfalcone, some 30 kilometers to the west of Trieste, where the Yugoslavs tried to delay their advance, presumably on the
assumption that in the interim they could complete the capture and surrender of the German forces. The New Zealanders were delayed, but they very quickly pressed on with their advance, and on their arrival in the city on May 2 they could share in the liberation. In fact a considerable portion of the German garrison would surrender to the New Zealanders in preference to surrendering to the Yugoslavs. The New Zealanders expected that this would be a last moment of glory in a rather dogged campaign, a chance to relax before heading home. Instead they had been thrust into a new sort of international hotspot.

No where else did an Anglo-American army and a Soviet or Yugoslav army arrive simultaneously in a city where there was a contest on nationalistic lines, and where no clear demarcation lines had been drawn in advance. The
Yugoslav attempt to occupy and control Trieste was soon seen in terms of a more general fear that the twilight of one totalitarianism was prelude to the dawning of another. In the week that the war ended, Trieste was the only place anywhere whose immediate fate raised the prospect of an inter-Allied military confrontation. The dispute between Yugoslavia and the Western Allied Powers, concerning control of the city, reflected underlying
ideological tensions within the Allied coalition.

By May 3, 1945, Trieste found itself under a very unusual dual occupation.? New Zealand forces held most of the key points in the city, while Tito’s men controlled the rest. Each of these two forces were charged by their
superiors with the responsibility for establishing military government in the city.

This as much as anything launched the Truman administration on the road to containment, and its response to the crisis was on the basis of a tacit spheres-of-influence approach. In this policy Truman enjoyed the full backing of Churchill, who on May 13 contacted Peter Frazer, the New Zealand Prime Minister, to inform him of Anglo-American intentions to stand firm against Tito. At the time, Frazer was in San Francisco, fighting for the rights of small nations within the United Nations Organization. The need to find ways of reassuring postwar peace and stability was very much on his mind. In his message to Frazer, Churchill emphasized Truman’s recognition of the vast importance, as he put it, “of stopping land grabbing and encroachment by some of our Allies at this juncture.” And he added, “I feel we are safe as well as right in closing ranks with the United States upon this matter. It may well lead to a showdown with Russia on questions such as the independence and sovereignty of Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.”

Churchill was clearly ready to make the Trieste case a precedent, and it made a great impression on Frazer. He probably had never heard of Trieste before, but for him it seemed a clear-cut issue of principle. In replying
to Churchill, he expressed full agreement, and offered immediately the use of the New Zealand Division, if necessary, to fight Yugoslavs for the control of Trieste. He did caution that any action taken would have to accord with the principles for which the United Nations had fought, but agreed that if the attempt at compromise had failed, it had failed through the obstinate and definitely aggressive attitude of the government of Yugoslavia. He also sought from Churchill a guarantee that he could give to his Cabinet, to the effect that any action that would be taken would be confined to resistance against aggression and would not entail interference in Yugoslav affairs.

The Anglo-American Allies proceeded to issue an ultimatum to Tito promising a show of force on May 21 in the event that the problem was not resolved.? Tito backed down and a compromise was reached: the Allies were allowed to establish an Allied military government in Trieste, and Tito’s forces were allowed to maintain military administration over most of the rest of the territory.

RH:? Subsequent to this, David was stationed in Trieste; he may wish to tell us something of his experiences there.? The Istria Peninsula, and the town of Fiume, had been a bone of contention between Italy and Yugoslavia since World War I. The Treaty of Rapallo (1920) created an independent Free State of Fiume and ceded Dalmatia (except for the city of Zara) to Yugoslavia. The story of the violence? this involved is largely forgotten in the West.? Can someone report on the present state of? local emotions over this issue??? Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Slovenia controls a tiny strip of coast just south of? Trieste.? The rest is controlled by Croatia,? History textbooks must contain three or four conflicting versions of these events.

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