Andreas Hofer Bund (South Tyrol)
Andreas-Hofer-Bund (AHB) is the name of a South Tyrolean resistance group during the Second World War . In her name she refers to the anti-Napoleonic freedom fighter from Tyrol , Andreas Hofer .
Foundation and organization
The Andreas-Hofer-Bund was formed after the German-Italian resettlement agreement for South Tyrol (so-called option ) was concluded in 1939. While the National Socialist Völkische Kampfring Südtirols (VKS) supported the resettlement of South Tyroleans into the German Reich and helped organize the logistical organization, the AHB opposed it the South Tyrolean politics of the fascists and the National Socialists (see axis Rome-Berlin ) by calling on the South Tyroleans not to leave their homeland (so-called Dableiber ).
When the German Wehrmacht marched into northern Italy in 1943, the persecution of members of the Andreas Hofer Association intensified. As early as autumn 1943, the active core of the AHB consisted of only about 30 people. The Dableiber's most important figure of integration , the clergyman Michael Gamper , was able to get to safety in a monastery near Florence ; Friedl Volgger and Josef Mayr-Nusser were deported to concentration camps by the National Socialists . Hans Egarter , who had taken over the management of the AHB in the last years of the war, maintained contacts with the French and British military intelligence in Switzerland from 1944. When the Allies marched in in the spring of 1945, he was, along with AHB member Erich Amonn, the most important contact between the South Tyroleans and the new rulers.
Ideological positioning
The most important leaders of the Andreas Hofer Association (Friedl Volgger, Hans Egarter, Michael Gamper) came from the Catholic Church . The AHB was also able to gather some bourgeois resistance around the Bozen merchant Erich Amonn . The unifying moment of the group was on the one hand the rejection of Italian rule over South Tyrol since the end of the First World War . In contrast to the Völkischer Kampfring Südtirols (VKS), the members of the AHB were convinced that the state reintegration of South Tyrol into Austria could not be achieved with the help of the National Socialists , but through open resistance against the Hitler regime. In 1945 Hans Egarter wrote about the goals of the organization:
“'The task of the Andreas Hofer Association was to work against fascism and Nazism and to contribute to their destruction. The members of the group wanted to show the world that there are men in South Tyrol who have nothing in common with the Nazi criminals and who, through their work against Nazism and fascism, showed that they followed their words with deeds and that they were ready to to make the heaviest sacrifices to achieve their goal. '"
Political importance
The Andreas Hofer Bund was only able to organize a small minority of South Tyroleans through its propaganda activities. Even after the end of the war, the AHB was not able to push through the reintegration of South Tyrol into an independent Austria against the interests of the Italian anti-fascists of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN). The resistance of the AHB against fascism and National Socialism and the active cooperation with the Allies created the essential prerequisite for the South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP), founded on May 8, 1945, by the Republic of Italy as the legal political representative of the German- and Ladin-speaking South Tyroleans was recognized.
literature
- Gottfried Solderer (Ed.): The 20th century in South Tyrol. Autonomy and awakening (1960–1979). Edition Rætia, Bozen 2002, ISBN 88-7283-183-0 .
- Gerald Steinacher : South Tyrol and the secret services 1943–1945 . Innsbruck research on contemporary history 15th Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck-Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-7065-1346-3 .
- Gerald Steinacher (Ed.): South Tyrol in the Third Reich. National Socialist rule in northern Italy 1943–1945. Italian: L´Alto Adige nel Terzo Reich. L'occupazione nazista nell'Italia settentrionale 1943–1945. Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck-Vienna-Bozen 2003, ISBN 3-7065-1914-3 . (Contributions partly in German, partly in Italian)
- Leopold Steurer , Martha Verdorfer, Walter Pichler: Persecuted, ostracized, forgotten. Biographical memories of the resistance against National Socialism and war. South Tyrol 1943–1945. Edition swooping flights, Bozen 1993, ISBN 3-900949-02-6 .