The Legitimising Strategies of the Nazi Administration in Northern Italy: Propaganda in the Adriatisches Küstenland

Abstract

The Nazi occupation of northern Italy led to the creation of the Adriatisches Küstenland operations zone, a Nazi civil administration led by Gauleiter Friedrich Rainer. Although this was supposedly a temporary measure, the article argues that the intention was to separate the zone from the Italian state and incorporate it into an economic and political sphere directly controlled by the Reich. The article explores the legitimising strategies exploited by the Nazi civil administration and its organs of propaganda, which focused on the political, social and economical failures of the Italian Fascist government. Rainer strove hard to find ways of encouraging each of the zone's diverse ethnic and social groups to look to the Reich – and hence to the local Nazi administration – as the promoter of its national destiny, the guarantor of its socio-political security and the harbinger of its economic prosperity, safeguarding this against the social revolution advocated by the strong local communist Resistance. Rainer's administration, in trying to eradicate the region's Italian roots, established a new ethnic hierarchy, which favoured Slovenes over Italian nationals.