Page 111 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 111
Trieste 1948–1952: A Contended Port City and the Marshall Plan
The real novelty in Trieste was the sense of urgency connected with
the unstable local social and political situation, and the insecure interna-
tional collocation of the city. The roots of these instabilities were deeply
grounded in the final years of the Second World War.
From 1944, it was clear that Germany would lose the war, and that
its socio-economic system, devastated by the aerial bombings, would be
in need of almost everything. The best chance to regenerate the economy
of the countries in central Europe was therefore to strengthen the tradi-
tional, southern routes of communication: the Adriatic and the Danube.
Dated April 1945, there is a Trieste port map over which someone has
highlighted some areas for the location of future English and American
infrastructures (quarters for troops, warehouses, areas of service, etc.).3
In the annexed document, the main purpose for those installations was
identified as the managing of supplies and supports for combat troops in
Austria and southern Germany.
Also for the Slovenians, the control of the Trieste port had, from the
beginning, some important political implications: including Trieste in-
side the new Yugoslavia would have produced the conditions for the con-
trol of the entire old Italian Eastern frontier. In this sense, the best guar-
antee that in the postwar period the Trieste economic system would be
in Yugoslav hands was given by the control of the territory obtained by
the partisan troops who arrived first in the city, before it was controlled
by the United States’ and Great Britain’s armies. The city’s conquest was
considered proper compensation for the violence of Fascism and for the
Italian aggression against Yugoslavia in 1941. It was said that ‘To our ene-
mies it should not remain the booty of the violence. We should obtain the
satisfaction that the violence is punished and in the meantime the test
that the imperialist oppression not lead to some durable result.’4
In the end, an Allied Military Government ruled Trieste, in an in-
creasingly bitter confrontation siding the USA and the UK with Italy, and
Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union, at least until 1948, the first year of the
Marshall Plan (Cox 1977; Valdevit 1996).
During the first months after the end of the war, the AMG tried to
manage the emergency and avoided pledging itself to longer-term pro-
3 ‘Port of Trieste oct. 1944-dec. 1945’, in: ACS, ACC, roll 25e, box 1011, subindicator
10000/109/1011.
4 Cf. the speech by Lojze Ude, Nekaj načelnih pripomb k vprašanju o mejah: Troha 2003,
footnote 52.
111
The real novelty in Trieste was the sense of urgency connected with
the unstable local social and political situation, and the insecure interna-
tional collocation of the city. The roots of these instabilities were deeply
grounded in the final years of the Second World War.
From 1944, it was clear that Germany would lose the war, and that
its socio-economic system, devastated by the aerial bombings, would be
in need of almost everything. The best chance to regenerate the economy
of the countries in central Europe was therefore to strengthen the tradi-
tional, southern routes of communication: the Adriatic and the Danube.
Dated April 1945, there is a Trieste port map over which someone has
highlighted some areas for the location of future English and American
infrastructures (quarters for troops, warehouses, areas of service, etc.).3
In the annexed document, the main purpose for those installations was
identified as the managing of supplies and supports for combat troops in
Austria and southern Germany.
Also for the Slovenians, the control of the Trieste port had, from the
beginning, some important political implications: including Trieste in-
side the new Yugoslavia would have produced the conditions for the con-
trol of the entire old Italian Eastern frontier. In this sense, the best guar-
antee that in the postwar period the Trieste economic system would be
in Yugoslav hands was given by the control of the territory obtained by
the partisan troops who arrived first in the city, before it was controlled
by the United States’ and Great Britain’s armies. The city’s conquest was
considered proper compensation for the violence of Fascism and for the
Italian aggression against Yugoslavia in 1941. It was said that ‘To our ene-
mies it should not remain the booty of the violence. We should obtain the
satisfaction that the violence is punished and in the meantime the test
that the imperialist oppression not lead to some durable result.’4
In the end, an Allied Military Government ruled Trieste, in an in-
creasingly bitter confrontation siding the USA and the UK with Italy, and
Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union, at least until 1948, the first year of the
Marshall Plan (Cox 1977; Valdevit 1996).
During the first months after the end of the war, the AMG tried to
manage the emergency and avoided pledging itself to longer-term pro-
3 ‘Port of Trieste oct. 1944-dec. 1945’, in: ACS, ACC, roll 25e, box 1011, subindicator
10000/109/1011.
4 Cf. the speech by Lojze Ude, Nekaj načelnih pripomb k vprašanju o mejah: Troha 2003,
footnote 52.
111
