Why where eastern countries like the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia rife with deportations and ethnic clensing post war, but not western europe?
What I always miss in the discussions about the deportations of Italians after WWII in Yugoslavia is that the Fascist regime did a lot of cleansing after WW I. The population situation of 1945 was not ‘natural’, but a result of extensive cleansing; you should go back to the Austrian situation in 1918
Even before Mussolini Istria and environs was a training ground for fascist thugs. See the seizure of Fiume by d’Annunzio in 1919 or the burning of Slovenian schools and culture centre in 1920. Many people were killed, expelled, the Slovenian and Croat languages were completely suppressed and forbidden.
Of course thus is no justification for what happened in 1945, but the situation is so often portrated one-sided.
In this thread there are several extensive analyses of Habsburg and Yugoslav history, but the genocide by Italy in the Interbellum is not even mentioned. The way your question is posed proves that a lot misconceptions exist about a supposed duality: genocidal Eastern Europeans vs tolerant Westerners.
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