Breaking the Treaty of London Italy occupied the Hungarian Harbour town Rijeka on the coast of Croatia during the last days of the war, ‘liberating’ it from the non-Italian enemy (à choix: Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Slovenia). Footage of the celebration of the ‘liberation’, a nightmare that would end only in 1945, shows a happy crowd, women with bunches of flowers, one general gives a speech and the other decorates soldiers. The town was renamed Fiume and soon became the site of a bizarre and frightening episode with poet Gabriele D’Annunzio as the violently narcissistic leader of violently nationalistic irregular troops. Fiume, the place and the name, today signifies the beginning of fascism in Italy.

Mariann Lewinsky