From the Adriatic to the Black Sea: The Italian economic and military expansion endeavour in the Balkan-Danube area

Abstract

During the years that followed the end of the Great War, the Adriatic area found itself in a period of deep economic crisis due to the emptiness caused by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The ancient Habsburg harbours, which had recently turned Italian, had lost their natural positions of Mitteleuropean economic outlets toward the Mediterranean due to the new political order of Central-Eastern Europe. Rome, then, attempted a series of economic manoeuvres aimed at improving Italian trade in the Julian harbours, first of all the port of Trieste, and at encouraging Italian entrepreneurial penetration in the Balkans. Resolved in a failure, the desire for commercial boost toward the oriental Adriatic shore coincided with the Dalmatian Irredentism and became a topic for claiming the 1941 military intervention across the Balkan peninsula. Italian geopoliticians, who had just developed the geopolitical discipline in Italy, made the Adriatic-Balkan area one of their most discussed topics. The fascist geopolitical project aimed at creating an economic aisle between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, in order to bypass the Turkish straits and become completion and outlet toward the Mediterranean of the Nazi Baltic-Mitteleuropean space in the north. Rome attempted the agreement with the other Danubian States, which subscribed the Tripartite Pact, in order to create a kind of economic cooperation area under the Italian lead. Therefore, the eastern Italian geopolitical border would have been traced farther from national limes. Rome would have projected his own interests as far as the Danubian right riverside, sharing with Berlin the southern part of that area consisting of territories historically comprehended (and contented) between German and Russian spheres of interest, which the Reich intended to reorganise after the alleged Soviet Union defeat. These Countries, framed by the Baltic, Mediterranean and Black See shores, found themselves entangled once more by geopolitical ties enforced by the interests of foreign Countries. However, these projects remained restricted to paper: the invasion of Yugoslavia turned into a failure and exposed Italy's military weakness; Rome proved to have no authority about the New Order organisation. Italy could dream up about its power only among magazines pages.