History of a Disputed Frontier. Allied Interest Politics and the Decision for the New Austrian-Italian Border at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919

From today’s perspective, the decision in favor of the Brenner frontier was a genuinely political one, based primarily on political-tactical considerations. It was made neither in Innsbruck or Bolzano, nor in Vienna or Rome, which is why the Austrian-Italian ‒ i.e. regional or national ‒ ingerence on the decision-making mechanisms remained manageable. The decision for the new Tyrolean border, which divided the country at the Brenner Pass and handed over a large German- and Ladin-speaking minority to the Italian state, was ultimately an expression of an American-dominated peace policy, which, with regard to the future Austrian-Italian borders, was guided by the overall constellation of interests immanent in a reorganization of the Alps-Adriatic region. In the context of this global peace per-spective, the South Tyrol problem was a marginal, negligible issue that weighed less heavily from the point of view of the victors ‒ and especially of the American president ‒ than the supposed overall interests being pursued in the context of bor-der demarcations in the Italian north and the realization of the Paris peace project as a whole.

Keywords: First World War, South Tyrol, Paris Peace Conference 1919, Woodrow Wilson, Austria, Italy

Oswald Überegger, Storia di un confine conteso. La politica di interessi alleata e la decisione sul nuovo confine austro-italiano alla conferenza di pace di Parigi nel 1919 in "MONDO CONTEMPORANEO" 1/2023, pp 31-53, DOI: 10.3280/MON2023-001002