Scholarship and Politics, Reshaping South-Central Europe

The project investigates population science and population policy in Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. By taking a comparative approach, it explores theoretical foundations and undercurrents of population policy and the influence they had on policymaking. It studies the implementation of these concepts and strategies in political settings, as well as the concrete impact they had on the population as a subject of government. By investigating the interface between policymakers, scholars brought in as policy consultants, and administrative technocrats, as well as by shedding light on the interests and intentions of each of the protagonists involved, the research addresses the crucial issue of developing and providing expert knowledge for political use. The project is meant to be a case study of the relationship between scholarly communities and politicians as "resources for each other" (M. Ash). It, therefore, contributes to 20th-century history of the humanities and social sciences in Italy and Germany. The project will also permit investigation into similarities, differences, and specific characteristics of both Fascist and Nazi techniques of social engineering. In particular, the project focuses on Italian and German expansion, occupation, and resettlement programs in South-Central Europe (Slovenia, Dalmatia, and Northern Italy) - arenas of ethnopolitics and expansion of both powers - between 1939 and 1945. The project deals with current research agendas on Fascism (role and force of racism; Italy as an occupying power during the Second World War; theoretical backgrounds of Italian ethnopolitics and social engineering) and National Socialism (role of social sciences and humanities in providing knowledge usable for Nazi policymakers and Nazi rule over Europe). The German case study (for which some preliminary work has already been done) provides a framework of analysis that will predominantly highlight the role played by Austrian scholarship and National Socialism. The research project will deal successively with the Italian and German cases and, finally, perform a comparative analysis. In different stages, it will study the scholarly community among social sciences and humanities of the 1930s and early 1940s, the administrative and political technocrats concerned with spatial reorganization and population policy, and the concrete interventions for socio-ethnic reorganization in South- Central Europe. The project`s findings will be presented in a comprehensive and cohesive monograph.

Who developed and provided the knowledge for executing forced socio-ethnic and spatial reorganization of Axis occupied Europe during the Second World War? Who were the experts behind ethno-political interventions, such as denationalization policies, population transfers, resettlement projects, genocide and the subsequent reorganization of socio-ethnic structures? Who supplied guiding principles, designs and underlying concepts?As far as ethno-political intervention in German-dominated Western and, especially, Eastern Europe is concerned, this issue, in recent years, has gained broader attention. Aggressive population policies implemented in ethnically heterogeneous South-Central Europe, however, have widely been neglected, although the Alpine-Adriatic region became the arena of expansion and ethno-politics of both Germany and Italy, thus offering the possibility to analyse, from a comparative perspective, Nazi and Fascist social engineering alike. Whereas Italys intervention in Slovenia (Lower Carniola) since the war on Yugoslavia in 1941 was decided spontaneously and hasty in order to prevent Germany from realizing geostrategic designs to the detriment of its ally, German expansion to Slovenia basically followed a pre-established plan of annexation, social and racial selection, population transfers, resettlements and denationalization, which had been elaborated, and advocated, by Austrian (mostly Styrian and Carinthian) scholarly and nationalistic elites. The Fascist leaderships guidelines for Italys occupation of Slovenia remained sketchy and cursory and ethno-political interventions mostly limited to the cultural sphere, as Rome showed little interest in the region. Social, racial and humanities scientists, networked around interdisciplinary institutions took over political advisory activities and leading positions in planning and even executing social and ethnic reorganization. Previous socio-demographic and statistical research on the population of Lower Styria explains, at least partially, why these interventions, with impact also on Croatia and occupied Serbia, achieved higher effectiveness in Eastern Slovenia than in Upper Carniola. Nazi social planning with regard to new settlement areas in Eastern Europe and Fascist planning concerning South Tyrol differed significantly, even though scientific elites and ethno-political bureaucracies were commonly involved in both cases. It appears that in the present case, Fascist Italy, unlike Nazi Germany with its racial engineering, left socio-economic and demographic planning mostly in the hands of long-time agriculture experts who could draw on the results of earlier geo-anthropological and sociological research as well as on previous social planning. Although working towards the regimes Italianization policy, these experts were mainly focussing on overcoming persisting problems in the agrarian socio-economic structure of the bordering Italian provinces with their traditionally high rates of emigration, considered to be a national-biological issue with impact on the nations strength. Summing up, it appears that theoretical foundations played a lesser role in Fascist population management and socio-ethnic reorganization in South-Central Europe than in the case of Nazi Germany.