Province of Zara

Fascist Italy, and other Axis powers, invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Zara held a force of 9,000 Italian army soldiers and was one of the starting points of the invasion. The force under the command of General Vittorio Ambrosio defeated easily the Royal Yugoslav Army in crisis and reached in a few days Sebenico and Spalato on April 15 (2 days before Yugoslavian surrender). Civilians were previously evacuated to Ancona and Pola. Occupying Mostar and Dubrovnik (Ragusa in Italian), on April 17 they met Italian troops that had started out from Italian Albania.

Within a few weeks, Benito Mussolini required the newly formed puppet-state, the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) to hand over almost all of Dalmatia (including Spalato/Split) to fascist Italy under the Rome Treaties. The city became the center of a new Italian administrative territorial entity, called Governorate of Dalmatia, that included the enlarged Province of Zara, the new Province of Spalato, and the new Province of Cattaro. Under Italian Fascist reign, at the end of 1941 the Slavic population was subjected to a policy of forced Italianization (related to the history of Venetian Dalmatia[3]). Many public works were done, like new hospitals and sewages. The Province of Zara in 1942 had a population of 211,900 inhabitants and an area of 3,179 km².

Italian Governorate of Dalmatia between April 1941 and September 1943.

An Italian postage stamp overprinted by the German occupation forces for Zara, 1943

After Mussolini was removed from power on 25 July 1943 and arrested, the government of Pietro Badoglio signed an armistice with the Allies on 3 September 1943, which was made public only on 8 September 1943, and the Italian army collapsed. However, just four days later on 12 September 1943, "Il Duce", was rescued by a German military raid from his secret prison on the Gran Sasso mountain, and formed the Nazi-puppet Italian Social Republic in the north of the country. The NDH proclaimed the Rome Treaties to be void and occupied Dalmatia with German support. The Germans entered Zara first, and on September 10 the German 114th Jäger Division took over.

The city was prevented from joining the NDH on the grounds that Zara itself was not subject to the conditions of the Rome Treaties. Despite this, the NDH's leader Ante Pavelić designated Zadar as the capital of Sidraga-Ravni Kotari (one of the counties of the NDH), although its administrator was prevented from entering the city by the Italian authorities of the city. Zara remained under the local administration of the Italian Social Republic. Zara was bombed by the Allies, with serious civilian casualties. Many died in the carpet bombings, and many landmarks and centuries old works of art were destroyed. A significant number of civilians fled the city.

In late October 1944 the German army and most of the Italian civilian administration abandoned the city.[4] On October 31, 1944, the Partisans seized the city, until then an official part of Mussolini's Italian Social Republic. At the start of World War II, Zadar had a population of 24,000 (nearly all Dalmatian Italians) but, by the end of 1944, this had decreased to 6,000.[4] Formally, the city remained under Italian sovereignty until September 15, 1947[5] (Paris Peace Treaty).

After World War II's end, the "Libero comune di Zara in esilio" (Free city of Zara in exile) was created by the exiled Italians of Zara, as a follow-up of the Province of Zara.

The Italian exodus from the city continued and in a few years was almost total. The last stroke to the Italian presence was made by the local administration in October 1953, when the last Italian schools were closed and the students forced to move, in one day, into Yugoslavian schools, putting an end to the Romance identity of the city. Today the Italian community counts only a few hundred people, gathered into a local community (Comunità degli Italiani di Zara).[6]

44.1000°N 15.2167°E / 44.1000; 15.2167