Abstract

This paper aims to retrace the treatment of property belonging to German citizens who were considered enemy aliens in the new territories (South Tyrol and northeastern regions) annexed by Italy in the aftermath of the First World War. The goal is to underline the relevance of the economic persecution in terms of national redefinition and the claim of Italian sovereignty in the two borderlands. Adopting a comparative approach, the article investigates how the local political and economic conditions led to different results regarding the exclusion or inclusion of German communities. While in the northeastern territories Italy allowed Germans to be naturalized and thus to save their goods, German nationals in the South Tyrol were denied Italian citizenship and persecuted with violent and legal methods