Local Dimensions of the Second World War in Southeastern Europe

Xavier Bougarel,Hannes Grandits,Marija Vulesica

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429798771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book deals with the Second World War in Southeastern Europe from the perspective of conditions on the ground during the conflict. The focus is on the reshaping of ethnic and religious groups in wartime, on the "top-down" and "bottom-up" dynamics of mass violence, and on the local dimensions of the Holocaust. The approach breaks with the national narratives and "top-down" political and military histories that continue to be the predominant paradigms for the Second World War in this part of Europe.

Part I

Group-making as a process

1 Heirs of the Roman Empire?

Aromanians and the fascist occupation of Greece (1941–1943)

Paolo Fonzi

Apostolos T.¹ was a member of the Aromanian linguistic minority.² Aromanians speak a language close to Romanian and live scattered throughout the Balkans, with a greater number on the slopes of Mount Pindus in Greece. In 1942, when Apostolos was 17 years old, the Italian army had occupied Greece. The then Commander in Chief of the Italian troops in Greece, General Carlo Geloso, ordered the Italian local commands to enlist members of ethnic minorities as auxiliary forces of the Italian Carabinieri. Armed with Italian weapons, wearing Italian uniforms and commanded by Italian officers, they were employed in anti-partisan warfare. At a young age, Apostolos was wounded in a battle between the partisans and the occupying forces in July 1943. Shortly thereafter, in September of that year, following the armistice between Italy and the Allies, most Italian troops in the Balkans were disarmed by the Germans and many of them were deported to German camps.³ Apostolos’s superior, the commander of the 8th mobilized battalion of Carabinieri, knew that without Italian protection a dire fate awaited Apostolos. In the aftermath of the armistice, he kept Apostolos in hiding at the Italian headquarters. From there, the young man was deported to Germany, along with the Italian troops, where he was interned and employed as a forced laborer. When the Americans liberated his camp, Apostolos had no other choice but to follow his Italian fellows who were being repatriated. Thus, as a complete stranger, he settled in Italy, finding employment as the chauffeur of an Italian army general.

Apostolos’s life history embodies many of the historical events of his time. From the summer of 1941 to September 1943, the Italian forces obtained collaboration from three ethnic minorities in the occupied areas of Greece, namely from Aromanians in Epirus, Thessaly and Western Macedonia, from Albanian-speaking Chams in Northern Epirus and from Slavophones in Western Macedonia. If before the war and the occupation ethnic divides and conflicts rived Greek society, after the liberation Greece grew even more polarized and peaceful daily cohabitation became almost impossible.

Research on this topic is fairly unsatisfying. Although a series of studies have appeared on Chams⁴ and Slavophones,⁵ the case of the Aromanians has been only poorly researched. Moreover, the existing literature on the collaboration of minorities is often heavily burdened by nationalist biases.⁶ Thus, for example, collaboration is usually interpreted through essentialist lenses and not as a historically specific fact. Ethnic identity is mostly perceived as univocally determining social and political behavior. Hence, collaboration is not described as a “process” influenced by social and political factors, but rather as a foregone conclusion. Apparently contradicting this interpretation, but with the same understanding of ethnicity, many authors attribute collaboration of ethnic minorities to the corrupting influence of external powers. In much scientific and pseudo-scientific literature, members of ethnic minorities are portrayed as nationally-minded Greeks misled by foreign propaganda.⁷ As a consequence, intentions and agency on both sides of this cooperation remain unexplored.⁸ Likewise, the history preceding the occupation, i.e. the unfolding of ethnic violence in the interwar period, is seldom taken into account.

The purpose of this contribution is to shed light on the intentions and agency of the protagonists of the cooperation between members of the Aromanian minorities and Italian authorities by examining its development between the inception of the Italian occupation and the first months of 1943. This history did not unfold as a straightforward and foreclosed process, but had rather sudden and unexpected turns. Therefore, it shows us that ethnicity has to be regarded as dynamic, processual and tightly embedded in social and economic dynamics. Moreover, it reminds us that focusing exclusively on the agendas of political elites cannot fully account for the motivations that led the actors to join one of the conflicting sides.

Aromanians and the rise of nationalism

Accounting for the number of Aromanians living in Greece during the Second World War is extremely difficult as figures are often distorted by different nationalist agendas. For example, the Greek census of 1928 registered only 19,000 Aromanians, whereas several estimates of different provenances agree on a number between 150,000 and 200,000 individuals.⁹ Up to the end of Second World War, most Aromanians based their living on nomadic pastoralism, although sedentarization had threatened this way of life since early on. Nevertheless, their nomadic economy survived until the Second World War, being radically undermined by the sealing of the borders between Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia following the onset of the Cold War.¹⁰ In addition to this pastoral substratum, throughout the centuries some Aromanians have developed modern commercial skills, giving birth to a strongly urbanized merchant class and to a cultural elite.

It is beyond the scope of this contribution to examine in depth the still ongoing discussion about the origins of the Aromanians as a distinct ethnic group. The diverging opinions expressed on this topic are less interesting per se—the idea of the origin of an ethnic group being highly questionable in itself—but they do account for different nationalistic agendas. One view, mostly embraced by Romanian authors, traces their origin as a people distinct from the Daco-Romanians to a migration from the northern part of the Balkan peninsula, a region coinciding approximately with today’s Romania.¹¹ A second one sees the origins of the Aromanians in the encounter between the Roman colonizers with a substratum of Tracian-Illirian culture, holding that the Daco-Romanian and the Aromanian cultures developed independently as a consequence of Roman expansion. A third view, mostly supported by Greek authors, affirms that Aromanian people are the product of the Latinization of Greek people during the Roman rule.¹² The dispute shows adamantly how, from the second part of the 19th century to the present day, the Aromanian ethnic identity has been captured by the magnetic fields of two different nationalistic discourses, namely Romanian and Greek. Using a modified version of Roger Brubaker’s conceptual frame, it has been affirmed that the Aromanian question during the 19th century resulted from the interaction between an emerging Aromanian ethnic minority nationalism and two opposing external homeland nationalisms acting as nationalizing nationalisms towards their co-nationals.¹³

In the 19th century, Aromanian communities living in the Ottoman Empire increasingly developed a separate ethnic identity, opposing attempts of Hellenization carried out by the Greek insurgent nationalism. Among other reasons, the opposition to Hellenization derived from the threat brought to nomadic pastoralism by the proliferation of, and shifts in, borders that occurred in the 19th century. The need to keep a peculiar and autonomous way of life, and Romania’s intervention in their favor, led the Aromanians to obtain the status of millet (autonomous religious community) from the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in 1905, implying the use of their language in religious matters and the freedom to elect mayors.¹⁴ After many Aromanians took part in the Greek national movement of 1821, from the second half of the 19th century Aromanian ethnic identity split into a “romanophile” current, supporting a strong tie with Romania, and a so-called “graecomane” faction, advocating full integration with Greek society.

Clear-cut categories derived from the history of nationalism, however, cannot fully grasp the logic governing the story of the Aromanians throughout the centuries. More useful is what anthropologist Muriel D. Schein¹⁵ has written about this highly adaptive people. In her vocabulary, drawn from an ecologic model of social relations, Schein holds that over the centuries Aromanians have developed a “generalized adaptation” to the environment. In competition over scarce resources, early on Aromanians found themselves at disadvantage vis-à-vis both sedentary villagers and other Greek nomadic shepherds. In response to this challenge, they developed ethnicity as a powerful means to access resources, over-regional networks and access to sources of power. Not surprisingly, Aromanians have been characterized as the “chameleons of the Balkans,”¹⁶ as they have always kept a sense of collective identity but have simultaneously adapted to the national context they live in.

Italy and the Aromanian issue in the interwar period

Italy did not take over the role of an external national “homeland” for the Aromanians, never challenging Romania’s primacy in this field. This is surprising considering that on many occasions Aromanian elites sought support from Italy, and that the widespread belief that the Aromanians were the offspring of the expanding Roman empire made them the perfect underpin for Italy’s imperialist aspirations in the Mediterranean. Significantly in 1917, in the course of military operations on the Balkan front when the Italian army occupied northern Greece, efforts were made to establish a closer Aromanian-Italian alliance. Aromanian notables addressed the occupying powers seeking their protection to establish an autonomous administrative entity, and promoted the formation of an Aromanian Legion to fight alongside the Italian army. Despite the endorsement of several Italian politicians and military leaders, the proposal was dropped by the Italian government for still unclear reasons.¹⁷ Likewise, although there is only sparse information about the Italian attitude towards the Aromanians in the interwar period, the fascist government seems to have never deployed a consistent policy aimed at mobilizing them in support of the Italian penetration in the Balkans.¹⁸

Signing the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, Greece committed itself to protecting the status of the Aromanian culture allowing schools and churches sponsored by Romania. However, no scientific study has investigated to what extent this principle was put into practice. In the interwar years many Aromanians emigrated to Romania, also spurred by increasing difficulties in maintaining their pastoral way of life after much grazing land was used to settle Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Also, the coming to power of Ioannis Metaxas in 1936 meant an increase in repression for the Aromanians, as for all the minorities living in Greece. The 4th August regime took measures to force the nomadic shepherds to settle down¹⁹ and banned the use of languages other than Greek from public communication.²⁰

The outbreak of the Greek-Italian war in October 1940 further exacerbated ethnic divides within Greek society, leading to the internment of members of several ethnic minorities. Like members of other ethnic minorities, Aromanians were perceived as internal enemies, partly as a consequence of the support offered by many of them to the Italian cause.²¹ Hence, a number of Aromanians were interned near Corinth.²²

Appeals to intervene in protection of the Aromanians were directed to Italy from different regions of the Balkans after the occupation of Albania in April 1939.²³ They strongly intensified in the wake of the Greek-Italian war when the Iron Guard was in power in Romania. A large Aromanian community existed in this country, where, especially those members who had recently immigrated to Romania to resettle in Southern Dobruja, were overwhelmingly supportive of the Iron Guard.²⁴ They unleashed a propaganda campaign portraying the Italian-Greek conflict as a war for the liberation of the Latin people from the Greek yoke. In November 1940, the Italian Consul in Bucharest, Pellegrino Ghigi, forwarded a proposal made by Aromanian associations in Romania to form a military unit of Aromanians to be sent to the Greek front in support of the Italian troops. Though only small number of people were expected to enlist,²⁵ Ghigi believed that the presence of Aromanians in the Italian army would have considerable impact on the Aromanians in Greece, jeopardizing the Greek internal front. Despite Ghigi’s endorsement, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Galeazzo Ciano re...