Research on "CASTELROSSO 1941 BATTLES"

The following are excerpts translated from an essay written for the University of Genova by B. D'Ambrosio. The essay is related to the battles that happened in 1941 between Italian troops and English commandos for the control of the island of Castelrosso (actual Kastelorizo in southeastern Greece, just 3 km south of Turkey's western Anatolia).

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CASTELROSSO (NOW KASTELORIZO) 1941 BATTLES

Castelrosso was the easternmost island that the Kingdom of Italy had in the Mediterranean sea, located just south of Turkey and a few hundred miles north of Alexandria of Egypt. This strategical location was useful for military airplanes and ships, in order to control the north-eastern Mediterranean sea. For this reason the possession of the island was fought harshly by the Italians and the British during WW2.
The geographically close islands of Castelrosso (actual Kastelorizo in Greece) and Checova (now Kekova in Turkey) have been part of the Italian Dodecanese, but their political fates have been different in the years of Fascism. Both were the only Italian colonial possession in the nearby Middle East, being located south of Anatolia and far from the Aegean Sea (Castelrosso is located almost 120 km/70 miles east of Rhodes). But the first remained Italian, while the second was annexed to Turkey by Kemal Ataturk.
In practice they are what remained in the Italy of Lycia, an Anatolian region promised to Rome in the Treaty of Sevres after the victory in the Great War. The Italian Royal Navy ("Regia Marina") took possession from the French on 1 March 1921 of the island of Castelrosso/Kastelórizo (and the surrounding islands), which was thus integrated into the possessions of the Italian Aegean Islands (see the following map).

In 1922, 2742 Greek-Orthodox inhabitants lived there, as well as a few Italian officials.

After the Italian occupation of Castelrosso, Checova - which at that time was temporarily inhabited during the summer months for the collection of wood - was disputed between Italy and Turkey, while the Italian troops guarded it in the twenties of the nineteenth century. The Convention between the two states signed in Ankara in 1932 officially assigned it to Turkey. Instead Castelrosso - and the neighboring islands Ro and Stirongili - remained Italian, becoming part of the Italian Dodecanese.

In these negotiations Mussolini was able to impose himself on Kemal Ataturk, who wanted to repeat a total success as when he obtained the area of ​​Adrianople after the cancellation of the Treaty of Sevres.
Indeed, Checova was a flourishing island during the Roman empire (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ba2e/67dadfbd2e8df6375fe84dee521beffacbd1.pdf).

On the northern side of the island there are the partially submerged ruins of Dolchiste/ Dolikisthe, an ancient city destroyed by an earthquake during the second century AD Rebuilt and still flourishing during the Byzantine period, it was definitively abandoned due to Arab incursions. The island also called Caravola was guarded by Italian troops from 1921 until 1932.
Without Italy, the island of Castelrosso - like Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese - would now be Turkish like Imbros and Tenedos in the Aegean sea in front of the Dardanelles.

Castelrosso was enhanced by the Italian government as a naval base and port for seaplanes, reaching a discrete economic well-being in the thirties (see the video of the visit of the King of Italy in 1929 to Castelrosso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OhlL7sm38U).

Original TCI Map of the "Dodecaneso italiano" (called in Italian "ISOLE EGEE") in 1930, showing in the inlet -enlarged above in the essay- the islands of Castelrosso and Checova just south of the Turkish Anatolia and 120 km east of Rodi (actual greek Rhodes).

Furthermore, I want to remember that Italy strongly defended Castelrosso during the Second World War. For this reason,  I transcribe the following two essays about the battles that happened in 1941 for the island control: the first about the British conquest and the second about the Italian reconquest of this small island.

Even if there were only one hundred casualties ("nothing" by WW2 standards), these battles were strategically very important and demonstrated that the Italians were able to defeat some of the best Churchill's troops: the British commandos.

Even the Italian navy obtained a small success, because the British destroyer Jaguar was hit near the Castelrosso island and was forced to withdraw with some casualties:  While covering the commandos withdrawal, HMS Jaguar was attacked by Italian destroyer Crispi, which had fired twenty shells on British positions at Nifti Point, steaming from the south. The Italian destroyer fired two torpedoes which missed and Jaguar replied with her 4.7 in (120 mm) main armament. Jaguar received a 40 mm hit on her searchlight that made its gunfire ineffective and the British force was forced to disengage and withdraw to Alexandria.(read in Italian https://24grammata.com/castelrosso-fasti-e-declino-di-unisola-del-mediterraneo/).

Italian destroyer Crispi

Operation Abstention, the English occupation of the Island of Castelrosso
On February 25, 1941, a large British commando landed on the island of Castelrosso, a small strip of land about 3 kilometers away from the Turkish coasts and about 80 miles east of the island of Rhodes and part of the Italian Aegean Islands. often called "Italian Dodecanese". The "Abstention operation" aimed to conquer the island, to establish a base from which to begin the conquest of the Dodecanese and thus to contest the Italian air-naval supremacy in the area of ​​the Aegean and southwest coast of Turkey.
It should be emphasized that the idea of ​​a conquest of individual islands with small groups of special forces men was an idea conceived and carried out by Admiral Andrew Cunningham, while the British command and in particular Prime Minister Winston Churchill were rather skeptical, due to the risk of creating friction between Greece and Turkey.
Before continuing the narration of the invasion, here there are two words on the island and how it became part of the Italian possessions.:

In ancient times the island object of today's post was called "Megisti" (the largest) with reference to a group of adjacent islets. Its current name derives from the castle built by the Knights of San Giovanni who occupied the island in 1306 as a useful base before arriving in Rhodes. The Grand Masters of Rhodes considered it as a place in exile and sent the knights who violated the rules of the Order. In 1440 the island was sacked by the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the castle badly damaged and in 1522 the Ottomans occupied it permanently.
Although not situated in the Aegean but in the East Sea, Castelrosso is historically part of the Dodecanese or Dodecanese archipelago which literally means "twelve islands". In turn it constitutes the main island of a small group comprising the islands of Strongili and Ro, plus several islets: some (Agios Georgios, Psomi and Psoradia) ancient Greek territory and others (Bayrak, Besmi, Catal, Gurmenli, Guvercinli, Heybeli, Kovan, Kovanli, Okzuz, Sariada, Saribelen and Sican), almost all little more than rocks, now belonging to Turkey.
At the beginning of the 20th century, as we have seen, the islands had been in the possession of the Ottoman Empire for almost 400 years, when in 1912 the Kingdom of Italy waged war by attacking the Ottomans in Libya and precisely in the Dodecanese.

In the archipelago, on April 26, Stampalia was conquered, on May 12 Scarpanto, Caso, Piscopi, Nisiro, Calino, Lero, Patmo, Coo, Simi and Calchi, on May 4, troops also landed in Rhodes which was completely occupied on May 16th.
On May 5, 1912, the first of a series of commanders of the Aegean occupation corps, General Giovanni Ameglio, took office. The inhabitants of the island asked General Ameglio, commander of the Italian occupation forces in Rhodes, for their island to be annexed to Italy. This was refused and on March 14, 1913, the local population imprisoned the Turkish governor and his Ottoman garrison and proclaimed a provisional government.
In August of the same year, the Greek government sent a provisional governor from Samos, strengthened by a certain number of gendarmes: however, they were expelled by the inhabitants on 20 October 1915. On 28 December the French navy occupied the island thanks to the cruiser Jeanne d'Arc, acting in official support for the local pro-French faction; blocking also a new attempt of landing on the same day of a Greek contingent of Euzoni, chosen soldiers of mountain infantry of the Greek army.The Turkish coastal batteries responded to the French occupation by bombing the island in 1917, managing to sink the British seaplane support vessel "HMS Ben-my-Chree". With the Treaty of Sèvres, the island was finally assigned to Italy, which wanted to expand its presence in the neighboring Dodecanese and on 1 March 1921, the "Regia Marina" (Italian Royal Navy) took possession of it from the French, integrating it into the possessions of the Italian Aegean Islands.
The relations between Italians and the local population were quite good, both because our family ensured protection from Turkey, and because the Italian presence did not create large taxes, except for the prohibition of painting houses with blue and white colors, which recalled the color of Greek flag. The teaching of the Italian language was accepted without problems.
The Italians immediately connected the island with wire, on the continent and in 1926 the "Palazzina della Delegazione" was built by the architect Florestano Di Fausto, in colonial style. Two years later, due to the poor economic conditions of the island, many inhabitants emigrated to Australia and the Americas, significantly reducing the population that, at the beginning of the century, had reached the figure of about 15,000 inhabitants.
At the beginning of the 1930s the resident population was about 3,000 people, most of whom lived on remittances, trade with Lebanon and coal production destined for Egypt, while half of the houses were uninhabited. Some elections took place in 1928, 1930, 1932 and 1934. In 1937 the mayor was replaced by a mayor appointed by the government.
The 1932 Convention between Italy and Turkey, which defined the maritime borders between the two powers, assigned all the small islands of the small archipelago around Castelrosso - except for Ro and Strongili - to Turkey. Checova was one of these islands.

During the 1930s Castelrosso constituted a landing point for French and Italian seaplanes. Between December 1933 and March 1934 there were popular protests caused by the tightening of customs taxation and the prohibition of indiscriminate cutting of the woods. All this caused another wave of emigration and in the 1936 census the population had further decreased to 2.236 inhabitants.
It is in this context that we arrive at the Second World War, during which the Italians used the bays of these islands for the incursions of the special units of the Regia Marina against the English naval base in Alessandria.
The British admiral Cunningham decided to attack Castelrosso in February 1941

British Commandos landing in Castelrosso

On February 24, 1941 the destroyers HMS Decoy and HMS Hereward left Suda Bay towards Castelrosso. On board they had the landing forces composed of 200 British "commando", who were joined by 24 men of the Royal Marines, on the HMS Ladybird gunboat.
The initial plan provided for the establishment of a 24-hour bridgehead at Punta Nifti, pending the arrival of the occupation corps composed of the Sherwood Foresters regiment, which until then had been stationed on the island of Cyprus , and that it should have arrived on the island with the armed yacht HMS Rosaura and escorted by the Australian cruisers HMAS Perth and by the HMS Bonaventure.

The Italian presence in Castelrosso consisted of a small and heterogeneous group of soldiers and some agents of the Guardia di Finanza under the radio station of the island.
Because of the darkness and the scarce knowledge of the island most of the lances went too far to land in the main port of the island where they came into contact with an Italian patrol.

Two Italian sailors were killed immediately and one seriously injured near the lookout station of Monte Vigla, but now the few and not well armed Italians for the defense of the island were aware of the operation and barricaded themselves first at Monte Vigla and then in Paleocastro, preparing for a strenuous defense by tenaciously rejecting the English attack.

Too much was the disproportion of forces in the field, the radio station was finally occupied by the English as well as the building of the Government Delegation at the entrance to the port and the customs building. In the action there were 6 dead, 7 wounded and 35 prisoners on the Italian side.

Before the radio station fell, the Italian operator was able to warn Rhodes about what had happened at the base and make the cryptographic codes useless so that they did not fall into enemy hands, so it was only a few hours later that he arrived on the island the Regia Aeronautica.

The CR42 "Falco" fighters followed by some Savoy-Marchetti SM81 bombers struck the port, the outpost and the hills of the small island on which the commandos were installed. The operation was also made possible by the support of the former mayor of the municipality, Ioannis Lakerdis, of Greek origin, who reported to the Italians where to attack the British.

A few days later the Italian response to the invasion of the island would develop.

Image from the "Domenica del Corriere" of March1941 showing the Italian troops attacking the British commandos who have occupied the island of Castelrosso some days before: the Italian reconquest of the island enraged Winston Churchill

The Italians reconquer the island of Castelrosso in the Dodecanese

The Italian reaction to the British operation was a case not unique but very rare in the history of italian participation in the Second World War, in which the Italian Armed Forces reacted with speed and determination, demonstrating great organizational skills.
Already on the very night of the British occupation of the small island, the torpedo boats Lince and Lupo, the destroyers Francesco Crispi and Quintino Sella departed from Rhodes, and shortly after midnight on the 25th the Lupo moored in the port of Castelrosso and began to disembark the troops , a work that must soon be interrupted due to the rapid deterioration of the state of the weather and the sea.
The day of the 26th and the night of the 26th on February 27th passed quietly and without incident. All the British commandos slept in Punta Nifti except for the sentries and surveillance patrols. Food supplies were becoming scarce and they were rather angry at the failure of the forces that were to come to detect them. There was some real possibility of a counterattack from the sea and the commandos were now demoralized. For food, they counted on a few bags of Italian biscuits that they had seized in Paleocastro. On the morning of 27 at 09.00, patrols of British commandos - located around the island to check the beaches and signal the approach of the long-awaited reinforcements that were to come to take over the contingent - sighted two Italian cruisers headed for the island . The arrival of Italian units in port caused panic among the British commandos.

The Lince and Lupo had indeed returned together with the MAS 541 and 546, and had been joined by Crispi and Sella, and at dawn the two torpedo boats began to disembark the troops north of the port. In all, 250 soldiers and 88 sailors were landed, most of whom were from the 4th battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the 50th Infantry Division Regina under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Fanizza, who were to reconquer the island.
Soon the Italian troops took land by infiltrating along the streets and alleys that connect the center of the port to Paleocastro and towards the cemetery. They successfully attack by moving with tenacity and courage by rapidly advancing and regaining all positions, restoring the Italian possession of the island, capturing prisoners, weapons and ammunition (and an English flag).
An aerial bombardment also began which made the position of British troops even more difficult. At noon, the two English companies remained isolated, one at the cemetery and one at the landing place, there was no other choice but to retire by climbing the summit of the cliff overlooking Punta Nifti, known locally as Avlonia. Their armament was light and they did not have enough weapons and numerical strength to maintain control of the small coastal area where they had camped, so they decided to retire all together on the highest peak
Italian planes and warships surround the island targeting any British military that they saw in short range. After the landing and the bombing the Lynx, together with the Crispi and the Wolf, began to patrol the waters south of the island and at 2.53, there was an unsuccessful skirmish between the Crispi and the British destroyer Jaguar, which closed at 3.30 without results.

For the British commandos, when it was dark, the situation seemed almost desperate, but they decided to resist confiding that sooner or later the Royal Navy would finally arrive to help them. The Sherwood Foresters company that was supposed to take over the commandos finally left Alexandria at 08.00 am on the 27th on board the Decoy cruiser, arriving off the island just before midnight. The commandos managed to get themselves seen, lighting matches and flashlights.
The second wave of the British invasion force, commanded by Admiral Renouf, given the determination with which the Italian forces reconquered the island, is not landed and the convoy is ordered to retire and head towards Alexandria.

It is indeed decided to evacuate the commandos, despite some of the patrols left around the island had not yet been traced in the dark.
Someone was captured the next day by the Italians, while someone else tried to reach the mainland in Turkey by swimming. Some of these later succeeded in being repatriated, and others were reported missing. On the afternoon of March 1, 1941 the commandos recovered returned to Crete.
The failure of the Abstention operation had serious repercussions at every level. Undoubtedly, the failure of the operation certainly did not help in the campaign of persuasion of Turkey to go to war against the Axis powers, as well as the negative trend of the operations of the Italian Armed Forces between the end of 1940 and the beginning of 1940, they convinced Francisco Franco, caudillo of Spain not to attack the English bse of Gibraltar and not to enter the conflict alongside the Axis powers.
It was obvious that something had gone wrong precisely in the first major offensive in the Eastern Mediterranean, diminishing the expectations of success in Britain's future plans in the Mediterranean.
Cunningham, the architect of this operation, clarified in the statement dated February 28, 1941 that the raid was to be considered only as an isolated attempt.
On the same day, Churchill was informed of Cunningham's statement on the outcome of the operation and immediately sent a telegram to Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary in Cairo, saying:

"I am rather puzzled by something I have not yet been able to ascertain about what happened in Castelrosso. The report on Castelrosso does not explain exactly how many men have actually landed; where they landed; how much they have traveled; what they did; what prisoners they did; how many losses they have suffered; how it was possible that the enemy could have strengthened his presence from the sea when we were supposed to have maritime supremacy; what were the naval and military forces that strengthened the enemy; when and where they arrived; how was it possible that when the conquest of the island had already been announced, it was only then discovered that a large enemy warship had entered the port; if we have ever conquered the port and the defenses around it.
Anxiety has also increased due to numerous air attacks.
Was this predictable?
Where did it come from?
From the Italians or the Germans?
Please check these details.
For these reasons it is of vital importance to understand the entire sequence of this plan for you and our military. W.Churchill "

The answer given by Eden to Churchill is not available. The Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East replied on 7 March 1941 giving more information on the operation, but giving greater prominence to the results hoped for, rather than clearly saying that the enemy attack from the sea and the landing of a much higher force had forced him to retreat from the island.
Churchill was very puzzled by the scant information received and addressed this further letter to the Chief of Staff General Ismay:
"I have been told only of the mystifications about this operation and it is the task of the General Staff to shed more light. I want to know how it was possible that the navy allowed the landing of so many reinforcements, when in such an affair everything depends exclusively on the navy's ability to isolate the whole island. It is necessary to clarify this point to prevent this from happening again during more important operations. No one should worry our nation that supports us in any way and it is therefore essential that such situations should never happen again. W. Churchill "
Churchill's interrogations forced Cunningham to give further explanations about the operation and the reasons why the Navy failed to isolate the island and take over the Commandos.

Thus emerged all the divisions that existed between the Army and the Navy and it was clear how each one of them broke between them for this failure. The army pointed out that the proximity of the enemy air bases to Rhodes did not allow a large-scale defense of the island. On the other hand, the Navy replied that the Commandos' conduct in this operation had much to be desired.In his autobiography, Cunningham reports a letter he would later write to the First Lord of the Sea:
"The taking and abandonment of Castelrosso is a failed operation that gives no credit to anyone.

The Italians were incredibly enterprising and not only bombed the island, but struck the targets with precision and landed their troops from the cruisers.

Due to some unforeseen events, the army radio system did not work. These commandos were lightly armed and apparently could not be defended if seriously attacked. I had sent another 25 marines armed with machine guns aboard the Ladybird, but some madman then gave the order to re-embark them. The only thing we can say is that from this experience we have learned a lot and that we will not repeat the same mistakes. Cunningham "
These differences and these inconsistent visions of the incident inevitably led to an agreement settled between the various parties that took place on 12 March in Alexandria, Egypt. Even before the interrogation results were known, Churchill insisted on discovering the causes of this disaster:
"What other disciplinary measures should we take on this deplorable piece of wrong operations that happened after 18 months of experience in the war? W. Churchill "
With the questioning, new criticisms were raised about the navy's responsibilities for failing to isolate the island. However, the final results of the same have never been publicly disclosed as a British rule states that certain military information is not disclosed before at least 100 years have passed since the events and therefore these findings may be published no earlier than the year 2041.
A total of 14 Italian soldiers died in the four days of the operation while 52 were wounded. 12 Italians were taken prisoners and a large number of weapons and ammunition were confiscated. The radio station, the power plant, the building and the Governor's house were seriously damaged during the clashes.
On the British side, 5 were dead, 11 wounded and 27 were missing during the hasty evacuation. Of these 27 missing, 7 were never traced again.

As punishment for assistance given by some locals to the British commandos, the Italians arrested 29 local male citizens suspected of "activities against the state" and were deported first to Rhodes, then to Coo and finally to Brindisi to stand trial. Many of these never returned to the island. The exodus of the population from Castelrosso continued uninterrupted.

With the failure of the operation the British renounced for the whole duration of the conflict to claim the Aegean islands and the military situation in the area will remain calm until the tragic days of the armistice, when following the collapse of the Italian military apparatus the English occupied Castelrosso and the other islands of the Dodecanese.

The serious mistakes made will be repeated on the night between 13 and 14 February 1942 during the "Daffodil operation", when the attempt to conquer Tobruk garrisoned by the forces of the "San Marco" battalion resulted in a disaster, with 779 dead and 576 wounded among the English commandos.

After the war an almost absolute silence fell on this Italian "victory" in Castelrosso. British historians even hardly mention it in their books. 

Research on "ITALIANS IN ALTO ADIGE"

In recent years there has been an Austrian campaign aimed at erase all that is Italian related in the alpine region of Italy, that is officially called "ALTO ADIGE" since the end of WW1.

This territory is called in German language: "Südtirol". And has suffered terrorism attacks from neonazi organizations linked to the Tyrolean (German)  speaking population of the area.

In order to balance the "falsifications" created in this campaign, I want to write this essay (divided in two sections) detailing the History of the Italians in this "Alto Adige", according to books and essays written in the last decades by serious Italian authors (like M.Vigna in his http://www.historiaregni.it/la-germanizzazione-forzata-dellalto-adige/?unapproved=5108&moderation-hash=0e0ca81d803b282b9cbf073c13a0dcdc ).

The "Vetta d'Italia" top mountain of Italy in Alto Adige, with the Italian flag when conquered in 1918 at the end of WW1

Section 1) HISTORY OF THE ITALIANS IN ALTO ADIGE UNTIL WW1

In 15 BC, the Romans under Drusus and Tiberius occupied the Alpine territory, going as far as the banks of the Danube. The northern part of Alto Adige was divided between the two provinces of Rezia (Raetia) and Norico (Noricum), while the southern part that included the Val d'Adige (Adige Valley) up to Merano was included in the "Regio X Venetia et Histria". The largest settlement known to date was Sebatum (actual San Lorenzo di Sebato), an important road junction.

Old map showing the Alto Adige area (inside "Rhaetia") during the Roman republic

The Roman period lasted for five centuries and left deep traces in the region that was completely Latinized. The indigenous peoples, such as Isarci, breuni, venosti, developed a neo-Latin dialect, in which the Rhaeto-Romanic substratum prevailed. Today the "Ladin" dialects are part of this linguistic group, as well as "Romansh" and "Friulian".

After the year AD 400, Christianity spread in late Roman times, increasingly influencing public and private life. The episcopal see of Sabiona, near today's Chiusa, played an important role in the Christianization of the territory.

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, the region was included in the Kingdom of Odoacer and later in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths (493-553 AD). Immediately after the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in 559 AD it was the turn of the Lombards, who annexed the region to their kingdom. Bolzano and part of Alto Adige (from Maia-Merano to Sabiona) became part of the longboard "Duchy of Trento", together with Trentino. The German Baiuvari (later called "Bavarians") and the Franks tried several times to penetrate into Alto Adige's Val Venosta and Val Pusteria, the latter favored by the Longobard allies, who continued to control the entire territory of the Duchy of Trento.

Map of northern Roman Italy showing the area of Bolzano (called in the Roman empire centuries: "Pons Drusi") inside the "Regio X Venetia et Histria".

At the beginning of the eighth century, the Meranese basin was also occupied by the Bavarians. However, the Germanization of South Tyrol was a very slow process, and saw the progressive retreat of the Rhaeto-Romance culture populations (the ancestors of the current Ladins), a phenomenon that lasted many centuries until our days.
In 774 AD Charlemagne defeated the Lombards in Pavia and conquered the Lombard kingdom of Italy. A few years later, in 788 AD, the Baiuvari were also conquered. The territory of Alto Adige therefore passed under the Carolingian Empire. The territory of today's Alto Adige after the fall of the Roman Empire was totally included in the region of Rhaeto-romance languages, which extended uninterruptedly from the current Swiss "Canton Grigioni" to Friuli/Venezia Giulia in northeastern Italy (see following map). In the following centuries these latinised Alpine populations (now called "Ladins"), fragmented and lacking in common political and social structures, remained subject to strong demographic, cultural and linguistic pressures by the circumalpine populations.
Indeed from the seventh century Germanic languages ​​slowly penetrated the region of actual Alto Adige, starting from the Val Pusteria and from the Meranese area to the other valleys. In the 12th-13th centuries, penetration was general, as evidenced by historical documents and existing microtoponomy, but Neo-Romanesque layers persisted in some areas, such as the upper Val Venosta still in the 17th century, and in the Ladin valleys east of Bolzano up to the present day. The prevalence of the German language did not exclude continuous contacts and presence of persons and small groups of Romance and Italian language. However in Alto Adige throughout all the Middle Ages the linguistic background remained mainly neolatin. Only in the late Middle Ages, and especially after Ottone I annexed the region to the Empire, did the German linguistic element begin to stand side by side with the Ladin one, and only in the modern age, from the 15th century onwards, began to predominate (but in the area of Bolzano & surroundings always the neolatins -Italians & Ladins- remained the majority, even if by a small percentage amount)
Until the eighteenth century this process of changing the language of the popular strata (the vast majority of the population) was a spontaneous cultural assimilation, unrelated to still non-existent implications of a nationalistic nature. Later, and especially in the nineteenth century, Germanization was imposed at the political level by the Hapsburg authorities of the Austrian empire. The result was that today in Alto Adige today Ladin linguistic minorities survive only in Val Gardena, in the "Dolomiti" territories around Marebbe (ancient "Marubium") and in Val Badia. Additionally we have to pinpoint that the other romance group in Alto Adige, the Italians, (initially coming mostly from Veneto & Lombardy and mixing/assimilating the autochthonous Ladins) are present since the Renaissance in the area of Bolzano, where now there it is a huge majority of Italian speaking inhabitants since WW1.

Map showing that Alto Adige & Bolzano are in the middle of the "Ladin Arch", that in the early medieval times stretched from central Switzerland to the Julian Alps

Furthermore, we have to pinpoint that the process of germanization & de-italianization in Alto Adige -since the early Middle Ages- is well documented in the Italian "Treccani" (the equivalent in Italian language of the British encyclopedia) , where it is possible to read that : ".....Centuries and centuries the Roman imprint lasted in Alto Adige. It still survives, in the east valleys of the Isarco, Ladin; it only died out late, much later than is commonly believed, in the valleys of Val d'Isarco, which is a step from Bolzano to the Brenner Pass and in the upper Venosta, where the suppression of the Ladin was caused by political measures taken in 1609 ( see H. Wieser, in Forschungen und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte Tirols, IV [1907]). And the conservation of the ancient Romanic population is now proven, in compact masses, well into the Middle Ages, and at some marginal point of the current Ladinia, still in the first two centuries of the modern age. Instead the germanization of a huge part of the Pusteria was very ancient and went back to the time of the struggles of Tassilone, duke of Bavaria, against the Slavs, to prevent their penetration through the Dobbiaco pass into the Rienza basin. The investigation of the names of the farmhouses in the Venosta-Bolzano-Chiusa section allows us to establish that in this territory the Germanization, in the middle of the century XIV, it was still little advanced in the districts of Silandro, Ortisei and Chiusa, while it was, already at this time, more accentuated in the wine-growing area between Bolzano and Merano. In the following century, the Ladin national conditions deteriorated throughout this area, except for the plateau of Castelrotto and the valleys of Tires, Èores and Gudón that flank the Ladin Gardena (see Carlo Battisti, "Prolegomeni studying German penetration nell'Alto Adige", in the Archive for Alto Adige/South Tyrol, XX, 285-300)……. ……….In May 1027, the two episcopal lordships of Trent and Bressanone were legally established, destined to last uninterruptedly for eight centuries until 1803, in a state of vassalage by the Empire, like the others of the kingdom of Italy (of which, however, the episcopal principality of Bressanone never took part)…. ...The border of the Tridentine principality now exceeded that of the Municipium Tridentinum, because it included in fact and by right the entire Val Venosta, which at the time was in possession of the counts of Appiano and Tyrol. At NE. it reached the mountain of Lusia, so that the course of the Avisio remains cut in Moéna: this demarcation, although devoid of a geographical reason, corresponded to that between the Ladin territory (Fassa) and Trentino (Fiemme). In 1091 the territory of the bishopric of Bressanone which, beyond the watershed, also included the two counties of the upper and middle valley of the Inn up to the Zill (that is, the old Roman border of Rezia), increased following the donation of Henry IV of the entire county of Pusteria, almost to the pass of Dobbiaco which remained the territory of the bishops of Freising. In this age, as in the preceding and the following two centuries, a Tyrolean political unit was therefore not admissible. This legal condition continued until the contemporary age. The feudal power of the Counts of Tarasp (Alta Venosta) formed in the middle of the two ecclesiastical principalities, originating from an ancient Milanese family and supplied with fiefs also in the bishopric of Chur; of the counts of Appiano (Appiano and Bolzano) invested in the bishopric of Bressanone in the county of the upper valley of the Inn, of the high Sarentina and of Moreto (Vipiteno) and subsequently, with marriages and alliances, masters of the counties of Mazia and of Ultimo; and the counts of Tyrol, originating from Leurburg (Bregenz). But these feudatarîs were not, by right, if not vassals of the two bishop princes...…. ...…..Between the Alto adige Counts, those of the Tyrol assumed with shrewd policy a lot of importance. Their feuds, already at the beginning of the XIII century, extended in the Cisalpine part to the entire course of the Adige, from the sources to the confluence of the Isarco. And when the Habsburgs (1364) took over the counts of Tyrol, they continued to be, by right, vassals of Trent and Bressanone, compared to their feudal possessions in the two bishoprics. The history of the unequal struggles between the bishops, ancient lords, and the bully Tyrolean counts and dukes of Austria, is therefore the most agitated that they could conceive, given the importance of this area which is the shortest and most convenient way from Germany to Italy. In the 1300s and 1400s, the Habsburgs began to enter the country. Between these and the Wittelsbach of Bavaria the struggle for dominance over the Tyrol (1327-1335) followed (1336-1342) with the Luxembourg, which ended with the confirmation of Charles IV (1364) of the donation of Margaret Maultasch. The opposition of the bishops of Trent and Brixen is of no importance; In 1462, the bishop of Trent George II was forced to cede the entire jurisdiction of Bolzano to Duke Sigismondo; two years earlier, he had agreed to acknowledge that, during the vacancy, the Count of Tyrol should be recognized as ruler of the County of Trento. With this granting of sovereign rights, the bishop prince of Trento in fact renounced the further struggle for his own independence. But at the same time, the wars over which the dominion of the Scaligeri, Carraresi, and Venetians took shape in the mountains made their repercussions in the country. The signs of S. Marco faced the Pusteria. Venice was then at the apogee of its power; the charm of its name operated, from valley to valley, over the entire Atesina region which, for every civil activity, depended on the glorious "Dominant Republic". When the republic reached its borders above Rovereto and d'Ampezzo, it evidently aimed at the lordship of Trento and Bolzano; but the tenacious Venetian effort was lost in the historic day of Calliano (9 August 1487). The route of the Sanseverino in front of Trento marked the end of the Venetian expansion in the Val d'Adige: since then the Habsburgs had a free hand, and took advantage of the anxieties of Venice to sit in the Alps..... …..And yet, however, the Genoese, Lombards, and Florentines frequented Alto Adige, where they had trades and exchanges. The Italian language was in current use. The mints of Merano and Bressanone minted coins which also belong to the Italian numismatic territory. Badia, Marebbe, Gardena, the valleys of the Dolomite territory, had municipal statutes, forests, rules, noble families, clergy, of visible Italian imprint. The lists of the priests of South Tyrol prove this. The statutes of Bolzano and Bressanone were inspired by the statutes of Trento, of a purely Italian type. The Val Venosta maintained its ancient relations with the county of Bormio in Valtellina, with the Ladin Monastery that leads to the Adige and the nearby Ladin Engadine. The Via Bormio-Monastero-Venosta-Resia-Inn had great importance from the pre-Roman period to the last centuries. The Val Pusteria maintained continuous commercial relations and contacts with Venice and the neighboring lands of San Marco: cattle and timber constituted the two main branches of local commerce, and Dobbiaco and Brunico developed, at the time of the splendor of Venice, to remarkable export centers. If in the upper Pusteria the Italian element had a notable increase especially between 1267 and 1500, at the time of the domination of the Carinthian branch of the counts of Gorizia. Even before, in the sec. XII, important hydraulic works were carried out by Italians. The memory of Italians residing in Dobbiaco and Brunico is still documented in the century. XVIII (see H. J. Bidermann, Die Nationalitäten in Tirol, Stuttgart 1886, p. 20). But even more intense were the contacts and commercial relations with Venice in the Ladin valleys that, through Livinallongo, led to the lands of the Serenissima. The great Brenner trade route continued to maintain its enormous value; and even here, even in the early centuries of the modern age, there was a huge number of Venetian merchants. Duke Sigismondo built the new "Via d'Italia" to replace the previous one which was no longer possible, in 1520 (today's carriage back to 1772). Italian settlements in the upper Isarco (Eisack in german), where the historian Hormann (Über den tirolischen Volkscharakter, in the Zeitschrift des deutschen und österr. Alpenvereins, XXX) also finds a mixed somatic type, were the reason probably for the existence in Vipiteno until the last centuries of a popular Latin school. The longer we descend along the Isarco, the greater the Italian cultural and commercial environment becomes. In Bressanone (as in Vipiteno and Bolzano) already in the last centuries of the Middle Ages a discreet nucleus of Italian merchants was traceable; during the Renaissance the bishop's curia attracted numerous Italians; the cathedral rulers, in the sec. XVI, in order to limit the infiltration of Latin elements among the clergy of the diocese, were forced to establish protective rules for his German character (see H. J. Bidermann, Die Nationalitäten in Tirol, p. 22). Also in Chiusa was established in 1208 Ciano Centomile, agent of Florentine merchants who also owned farms there. In Merano, from the sec. XIII onwards, there were numerous Italian workers at the mint and money changers, remembered in good numbers from 1296 to 1361. In Egna, where, throughout the fourteenth century, there were numerous trading houses ad consuetudinem domorum mercatus Tridenti. And in Salorno, Cortaccia and Tomeno, already in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, many landed possessions belonged to Trentini or to other Italians. The great emporium of Venetian and Tridentine trade was Bolzano. A City, which in 1267 Corradino di Svevia considered as belonging to Italy (Annales Placentini Gibellini, in Monum. Germ. Hist., Script., XVIII, Hannover 1863, p. 524: "... iam de Theotonice partibus in Ytaliam venimus et apud Bolzanum prope Veronam sumus ... see Regesta Imperii, V, 11, No. 4837) that -due to the continuous influx of Italian business people- still had a predominantly Italian character in the mid-fifteenth century. In 1488, the archduke Sigismund was forced to protect the German element in Bolzano with a privilege which excluded the Italians from the municipal council, which led, together with other similar sixteenth-century decrees, to a greater Germanization of Bolzano, without obtaining the intent on ever absorbing the notable Italian minority. All the conventional language of commerce was completely Italian, starting with the names of the offices and offices themselves owned of Italian merchants. The Counter-Reformation movement, headed by the bishops of Trent, formed a place in Bolzano to defend the Roman world and Catholicism. Near the end of the century XVIII, Bolzano could be considered more Italian than German. From Bolzano down to the timber area (Terlano-Egna) and, from here on, the raft navigation on the Adige, the transport by landand the cultivation of rice and silk, were in the XV-XVIII centuries almost exclusively an Italian monopoly. Agricultural immigration from the two side valleys of Fiemme and Non caused the formation of majorities or significant Italian minorities in the section around Bolzano and up to the Salorno "straits"... …..In the short time of the Napoleonic wars, the Alto Adige saw an ephemeral Austrian domination, a brief Bavarian domination and the "hoferian" revolt. The second and third coalition wars ended with the French occupation. The Peace of Presburgo (1805), which followed the secularization of the episcopal principalities of Trento and Bressanone two years later, partially annexed the region to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. The Napoleonic border reached the Chiusa in Val d'Isarco and the Val d'Adige almost to Merano; the high Atesian valleys had instead been left to Bavaria. The "Alto Adige department", after the episode of the Hoferian revolt, had a period of peace, order, prosperity and splendor. This union left deep traditions of national life and fruitful memories in the country. Indeed in a few years, in Bolzano and in the surrounding valleys, what was Italian in character was accentuated. After the battle of Leipzig (1813) and following a treaty with Bavaria (1814), Alto Adige still divided the fate of much of northern Italy. But having it and the Trentino ceased to constitute autonomous principalities, they fell into direct and absolute Austrian dominion. The evolution of economic life on this side of the Brenner had, however, accentuated the sentiment of the unity of the Trentino-Alto Adige region, which in 1861 the Bolzano-born Carlo de Zallinger, vice captain of the Tyrolean diet, could claim that "the two regions separated by the Brenner are entirely different in culture, development and everything else; that the interests of southern German Tyrol (Alto Adige) are identical to those of the Italian Tyrol (Trentino).... …….Only until the year 1866, Venice "Tridentina" (the area of actual Trentino-Alto Adige) remained politically united in some ways to the other areas of the Italian peninsula. Since then the work of Germanization has developed intensely, with the concordant work of the imperial government of Vienna, of the provincial government of Innsbruck and of the Pangermanist associations. They had a "free hand" in the Alto Adige region, these Germanic propaganda associations born and raised after the victories of the 1870s, which became increasingly bold due to the increase in German wealth. The condition of the Italians of Alto Adige, abandoned without any protection, neither civil nor religious, and without intellectual comfort, deteriorated. There was also a lack of self-awareness and trust in the solidarity of the Italian nation (that was recently united in the newborn Kingdom of Italy). But in 1906, with the founding of the "Archive for Alto Adige" ("Archivio per l'Alto Adige"), Italian studies were started on this vast region which, although belonging -without possible dispute- to geographical Italy, had remained, until then, almost completely excluded from research and studies related to the history and nature of the peninsula....."

Map showing the borders of the area around Bolzano, that was united in 1810 to the Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy because mostly Italian speaking. The orange line north of Gargazzone was the border with the german speaking Tyrol, while the green line south of Salorno was the one with the Italian speaking Trentino

Indeed the name "Alto Adige" was introduced in use by Ettore Tolomei, in 1906, and since then has commonly been used in Italy to designate the upper section of the Adige basin, upstream of the Straits of Salorno, up to the geographical limit of Italy in the Alps. However the first to create this name were the French during the Napoleon conquest of northern Italy in the late 1790s: The DEPARTMENT OF ALTO ADIGE (Italian and official Dipartimento dell'Alto Adige, French: département du Haut-Adige, translated into English Department of Upper Adige) was a northern department of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.

The name had been used for a district of the Napoleonic "Cisalpine Republic". Its name, in typical Napoleonic fashion of naming departments after geographic features, derived from the river Adige (Etsch in german) which flowed through it.

The "Department of Alto Adige" (in green) of the Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy

Section 2) THE FORCED GERMANIZATION OF ALTO ADIGE SINCE THE RENAISSANCE UNTIL OUR DAYS

The beginning of the germanization of Alto Adige was when the Baiuvarians (actual Bavarians) invaded the region and were able to dominate it only after a strong defense by the romance population (the autochthonous "Ladins"), who were under the leadership of their Bishop Ingenuino of Sabiona near Chiusa (http://www.santiebeati.it/Detailed/39615.html).

The Baiuvarians were the first real Germans who did settlements in Alto Adige (after the Ostrogots and Longobards, who quickly went away from the just conquered Alpine regions in the decades when the Roman empire fell), but they were a not huge group of warriors with their families who only ruled the area and dominated the local population of Ladins (reduced to a kind of slavery & serfdom).

The situation did not change with the Franks of Charlemagne, who defeated the Baiuvarians in the IX century. So, until the 1000 AD the presence of Germans was very limited in Alto Adige (and concentrated in the northern areas of Val d'Isarco & Val Pusteria to the north of Chiusa).

The following is the translation in english language of the essay written by Marco Vigna about the germanization of the autochthonous neolatin population that has happened in all Alto Adige until our days, mainly since the early Renaissance years:

G E R M A N I Z A T I O N  OF  A L T O  A D I G E

AFTER THE 1000 AD
It was with the Ottonian dynasty that there was a first real impulse to Germanization in depth in the upper basin of the Adige, with a process that is however very slow and "spotty", which begins around the year 1000 AD.
A particularly serious event in this Germanization was the decision of Emperor Conrad II (1024-1033) to grant territorial powers to the bishops of Bressanone and Trento. This decision in fact broke the traditional, ancient administrative unit of north-eastern Italy, which rested on a cultural continuum dating back to prehistoric times or at least the Roman era. The expression "Triveneto" sometimes still used today in fact follows approximately this earlier cultural unit.
The nobility and clergy of the French Alps were the main driving forces of this Germanization, which was now no longer superficial and limited (in most cases) to the dominant class as it was in the past, but extended to all social classes. The German emperors by granting lands and fiefs to their faithful facilitated the transplantation of entire Germanic communities into the Alto Adige territory, which, however small, were "organic" and included soldiers, ecclesiastics, artisans, merchants, peasants.
The government of the region formally belonged to the episcopal principality of Trent, which existed until 1802 and was usually represented by Italian bishops and residents in an Italian city in the heart of an Italian region. However, in fact a gradual usurpation of his rights in Alto Adige had come about by the counts of the Tyrol starting from the XII century, whose Land however was, on a strictly legal level, existing only and exclusively to the north of the Brenner. In fact, the German count of the Tyrol remained for long centuries, on a formal level, a simple advocatus of the legitimate prince of the territory, or the bishop of Trent, although in fact most of the latter's prerogatives over Alto Adige were progressively usurped. THE XIV CENTURY (the "TRECENTO")
The fourteenth century was a crucial century in the Germanization of Alto Adige. Indeed Dante at the beginning of the century, also due to the influence of the definition of Italy in Roman administrative geography, established the boundaries of the Italian nation near Nice to the west, on the Carnaro to the east ("Yes, like Pola, near Carnaro, which Italy closes and its terms wet"), on the Brenner to the north ("On the top of Italy lies a beautiful lake, at the foot of the Alps which ends Lamagna over Tiralli, which is called Benaco"). Therefore, Germany began for the Poet to the north of "Tiralli", the village from which came the name "Tyrol" (the german word for Alto Adige) , which was therefore included in the Italian area.
The epidemic of the "Black Plague" which hit Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century (beginning in 1348) in a very harsh way led to the collapse of the population in Alto Adige, which was partly filled with the influx of German settlers from the northern regions of Germany (in which the disease had less rage).
In addition, in 1364 the Habsburgs replaced the Counts of Tyrol in the region rule, intensifying the Germanization process through their feudal lords and their ecclesiastics, who, owners of huge estates in Alto Adige, transplanted German colonists. Furthermore, the Habsburg domination facilitated the immigration of merchants from Germany into the small urban centers south of the Brenner (like Bressanone and Vipiteno).

THE XV CENTURY (the "QUATTROCENTO") AND MAXIMILIAN 1 OF HABSBURG
Maximilian I (1459-1519) established the seat of his court in Innsbruck, in the land of historic Tyrol (at least south of the Brenner there was at least formally the ecclesiastical principality of Trentino, which included all the current Trentino-Alto Adige). It was under his sovereignty that there was a transition from an Italian majority in Alto Adige to a German one.
This is what one of the most important scholars of the Alto Adige's history, Carlo Battisti (a writer of many and monumental studies on the region, on the Ladins, etc.), maintained. He indeed argued that only at the end of the fifteenth century the Germanic population became prevalent compared to the Italian one (Trentino people and Ladins) in the Adige valley. For him, the Alto Adige area and Bolzano itself remained in the mid-fifteenth century with a strong Italian presence. At the end of the reign of Maximilian I, the territories of Ora, Fiè, Tires, Laion and Val d’Ega appeared definitely Germanized, but they were still in the recent past (before Maximilian) a Ladin settlement.
The administrative measures and the juridical norms in force under this emperor contributed to the regression of the Italian element in the region. The territory of Ladinia was divided into a series of "Judgments", administrative units that followed the earlier communities: Judgment of Gudon; Judgment of Selva; Judgment of Ciastel; Judgment of Mareo-Badia; Judgment of Tor; Judgment of Fodom; Judgment of Fassa; Judgment of Fiemme; Judgment of Ampezzo. The official language used in the "judgments" was German, so that the toponymy was also reported in that language and, frequently, the onomastics itself was distorted and Germanized.

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION
After the period of Maximilian I, during which an intense Germanization had taken place and for the first time the Germanic group had exceeded numerically the romance-speaking one in Alto Adige, the latter resumed growing, almost balancing the German one. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the Ladin was still spoken in the "judgment" of Castelrotto, in the Val di Fiemme, Val di Non, Val Pusteria, Neva Ladina, Zoldo, Agordo ..., while this language was as strong in Val Venosta as it is today in Val Gardena. In the 16th-17th centuries there still existed a territorial continuity between the Ladin areas of Alto Adige and the romance areas of Switzerland, especially through the upper Val Venosta and its links with the Swiss valleys of the Monastery and the Engadine, whose language was practically the same at the time. This contiguity was broken by imperial policies. The Habsburg empire, that is, the hereditary possessions of the house of Austria (distinct from the German Reich in the strict sense) was at the time, as it always remained, very differentiated and multi-ethnic within itself. One of the tools used to try to establish some cultural unity of Hapsburg's domains, which was not at all pre-existing, was a policy aimed at forced conversion to Catholicism. The Hapsburg possessions appeared before the Trent war years, which were very diversified, even religiously, and the Protestant presence was very strong even in the region from which it then disappeared completely. The same Austrian and Hungarian aristocracies appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century to a large extent adhering to the Reformation of the Protestants. It was in the interest of both the imperial government and the Austrian Catholic church to promote a progressive elimination of the Protestant elements.
This guideline, consistently and decisively practiced throughout the "iron age" of the religious wars, also involved the Ladins of all Tyrol. These were all Catholics, but they bordered directly and were difficult to distinguish at the time from the Swiss Romans, inhabitants of the valleys of the Monastery and of the Val Engadine, who had instead converted to Protestantism. The fear of an infiltration of the Reformation in Alto Adige, through the cultural continuity of the Rhaeto-romanic area led to a policy of Germanization of the imperial territories bordering the Swiss Confederation.

THE XVIII CENTURY ("SETTECENTO") AND MARIA TERESA OF HABSBURG
Entire Alto Adige valleys, still Ladin populated valleys, and most of the Val Venosta, which remained using the Romance language until the beginning of the eighteenth century, were Germanized by force during the Teresian reign. First, the authorities imposed a series of repressive measures, which required the exclusive use of German in a number of areas: in public meetings; in church sermons, in confessions and in general in pastoral activity, etc. Secondly, discriminatory measures were promoted against those who used Ladin in their domestic and family life, limiting their civil rights, such as the possibility of exercising certain professions or even contracting marriages. Thirdly, many characteristic customs of the Ladins were forbidden, always in order to make them lose their identity. Fourthly, the empress Maria Theresa personally issued a "secret decree", which imposed the Germanization of the Ladin surnames of Alto Adige, using the clergy to do this, usually imposed as only German-speaking to the population, and faithful to the empire (Carlo Battisti, "Language and dialects in the Trentino", published in Pro cultura, I, pp. 178-205; Idem, "On the High Atesian Germanization, in Critical Review, XXX, Naples, 1921, pp. 249-264). Even today there are very many Ladinian surnames Germanized in this way, through the addition of a final -er (as happened for Elemunt who became Elemunter, or Melaun, who became Melauner), or through their German translation (for example, making Costalungia a Kastlunger , Granruac a Großrubatscher etc.).
Most of the Val Venosta was thus Germanized under the rule of the "enlightened" sovereigns Maria Teresa and Giuseppe II, considered the most tolerant and open sovereigns of the house in Austria. The Ladins who had managed to resist this Germanizing pressure were gradually assimilated during the nineteenth century, so that very few Roman groups remained in Val Venosta at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An enthusiastic supporter of the Germanization of the Ladins and the Romans in the Teresian era was Mathias Lang, abbot of the convent of Santa Maria in the upper Val Venosta.
Similar Germanising behaviors were common to the government activity of Maria Teresa, who was responsible for initiatives similar to those described above, or even worse, in different parts of her empire, such as Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The empress also issued an edict in which she authorized the kidnapping of children who were children of gypsy families, in order to grow them in a German environment and thus make them of Austrian culture: the cases of this shameful behavior thus authorized were many thousands. Sadly they are "forgotten" by the historians of the "enlightened" Maria Theresa.....

THE "RISORGIMENTO" YEARS AND FRANCIS JOSEPH OF HABSBURG
The situation did not change, indeed it got worse, in the period between the Restoration and the First World War (1815-1918). Already the historian Giuseppe Frapporti in "The history and condition of Trentino in the ancient and the Middle Ages (Trento 1840)" highlighted the intrusive and overwhelming character and the forced Germanization of the inhabitants of the county of Trentino (which included until 1803 the entire current Trentino-Alto Adige), operated by the Austrian political authorities. He also emphasized the systematic distortion of toponymy and onomasticity and the continuity of this activity over the centuries.
Theoretically the Austrian constitution of 1867 foresaw cultural protections for the populations of the empire, including those different from the two dominant but clearly minority groups, the Austrians and the Magyars. In fact, there were privileged ethnic groups and other discriminated, more or less heavily. The Ladins, very few in number, very poor on average and totally marginalized on the political level, did not get any recognition.
They were instrumentally kept separate -by the Austrian authorities- from the Italians, despite their language being and belonging to the Italo-Romance linguistic group (not unlike, for example, from the Piedmontese, the Umbro or the Sicilian), with the precise intent to divide or even put the Ladins and the Trentini against each other.
The Ladin population did not have to suffer only from forced acculturation by the Austrian authorities, but also from the work of Pangermanist associations, very active throughout the Habsburg “Tyrol” and which aroused the concern and outrage of the Trentino People's Party (of the bishop of Trento and Alcide De Gasperi).
The Austrian school policy severely damaged the Ladin community. His language was not included in school teaching programs and the Habsburgs tried to remove from school what little Italian was taught. In fact, the schools of Ladinia saw German being used almost exclusively, with differences depending on the place (Val Badia, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa, etc.). However, many attempts were made to impose a complete scholastic Germanization. Simplifying for brevity, we can say that the schools taught mainly in German, that the Italian was taught for a few hours a week and was often optional, while the Ladino was not used at all. The situation worsened further during the First World War, when the military authorities took the pretext of the war to plan the full Germanization of the whole Trentino-Alto Adige and undertake it with brutality. The Ladins were also affected and all the schools of Val Badia, Val di Fassa and Val Gardena were Germanized. At the same time, the toponymy was also Germanized. Only the defeat of Austria in WW1 prevented the plan of total bermanization of Trentino and Alto Adige from being completed.

CONCLUSION
In the past the Rhaeto-Romanic linguistic group occupied an area that included (using the current geographical terminology) the Grisons, South Tyrol, Friuli, the eastern Alps, Austria. Today, instead, it includes only the very small Romansh-speaking community in the Grisons, the still smaller Ladin “island” on this side of the Alps, and the Friulians. It should be noted that the progressive disappearance of Rhaeto-Romance has taken place due to exterminations and forced assimilations carried out by Germanic linguistic groups and to a lesser extent Slavs. In fact, all of present-day Austria, the eastern Alps, and a large part of the central Swiss Alps were Rhaeto-Romanic before the arrival of these invaders; except for the very small Romansh community in Switzerland, the Rhaeto-Romans have become extinct. Alto Adige was also a full romance speaking area, while today the Ladins survive only in a very small area (Badia, Gardena, Fassa, Livinallongo, Ampezzano) and are reduced to a few tens of thousands of people. The only area in which the Rhaeto-Romantics did not experience significant reductions is, not by chance, that of Friuli, which although bordering on the Germanic and Slavic world has remained for the most part undamaged by the phenomena of Germanization and Slavicization which have engulfed most of the once a large region. It is significant that today among the approximately 770 thousand Rhaeto-Romanes existing 700 thousand live in Friuli, while the Ladins and the Romans are approximately 30 and 40 thousand respectively. This true genocide, cultural (but also partly physical, in the phase of the invasions of the early Middle Ages), saw the areas of Rhaeto-Romanic populations progressively eroded as from a tide.

Map of the Istituto geografico De Agostini showing the Alto Adige divided from the Trentino in the south by a green line. Additionally there are: 1) an orange line limiting the Bolzano area united to the Kingdom of Italy (1810-1814); 2) a yellow line limiting the ecclesiastical territory; 3) a violet line limiting to the north the areas that were originally populated by the romance people (ladins, and later Italians mostly from northern Italy). To the north of the violet line the population was mostly German speaking  since before the year 1000 AD (and the autochthonous Ladins were Germanized mainly by Bavarians settlers). It is noteworthy to pinpoint that north of the violet line the population has more than 20% of blonde hairs and south of this line the haplogroup "R1b-U152" (typical of the ancient Romans) is present in more than one third of the population (like in northern Italy).