Ethnic fighting ring of South Tyrol

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The Völkische Kampfring Südtirols ( VKS ) was a National Socialist organization in South Tyrol .

The organization was founded on June 18, 1933 by youth groups of the gymnastics associations dissolved by Italian fascism and the Alpine Club in the underground as the "South Tyrolean home front" on the Bolzano Haselburg and in 1934 renamed the "Völkischer Kampfring Südtirols". VKS leader was the tailor Peter Hofer from St. Michael near Castelrotto in 1935 , until then chairman of the Catholic journeyman youth. The VKS steward in the Reich government was SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz , head of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle .

The VKS included white-collar workers , farmers , tradespeople , craftsmen and workers . The average age in 1933/34 was less than 28 years. Many of its members came from the Alpine Association, which was dissolved by Italian fascism in the course of its Italianization policy . From the beginning, the VKS was organized according to the leadership principle , following the model of the NSDAP .

The VKS initially aimed at a return of South Tyrol to Austria as part of a Greater German solution (Austria as part of Germany). Through his support for and through National Socialist Germany, he nourished hopes in the South Tyrolean population for an early annexation to the Reich, which culminated immediately after the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland .

But when it became known on July 29, 1939 is that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in a deal to maintaining the Brenner border and the resettlement of the German-speaking population of South Tyrol, the Canal Valley and the enclaves of an under option for the German or Italian citizenship agreement disappointment spread across South Tyrol. At a meeting with the “German Association” in Bolzano's Marieninternat with Canon Michael Gamper , the VKS announced that it would not support resettlement from home under any circumstances. Soon afterwards, however, the VKS turned around and took the official line of its National Socialist supporters, the Hitler government. In doing so, he stood in opposition to Gamper and the Andreas Hofer Bund .

The VKS now carried out massive propaganda for the option of resettlement in the German Reich and achieved that 166,488 South Tyroleans, 86% of the German speakers, opted for German citizenship . Not quite half of these, around 75,000, emigrated to the Greater German Reich by 1943.

The official German immigration and return office (ADERSt), which was subordinate to the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity (RKFdV), transferred the entire care of the resettlers to the previously illegal VKS, which is now the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Optanten für Deutschland (AdO ) and organized the resettlement " home to the Reich ". The leader of the organization was still Peter Hofer. The VKS built an administrative structure for the South Tyrolean and Kanaltaler Optanten, which existed parallel to the Italian authorities and exercised control even in the most remote places.

The resettlement ended with the occupation of northern Italy by the Wehrmacht in 1943 and the formation of the Alpine Foreland operational zone . The German occupying power replaced the local Italian mayors with South Tyrolean Optanten, mostly former AdO and VKS members; VKS leader Peter Hofer became prefect of Bozen, but died on December 2, 1943 in Bozen in a bomb attack.

After the end of the war, the surviving former activists of the VKS were spared criminal prosecution and some of them moved into important social positions.

Prominent members

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gottfried Solderer (Ed.): The 20th Century in South Tyrol . Volume 2: Fascist ax and swastika 1920–1939 . Bozen: Raetia 2000. ISBN 88-7283-148-2 , pp. 278-279.
  2. ↑ Gerald Steinacher : Exclusion in the economy? Careers of South Tyrolean National Socialists after 1945. In: Hannes Obermair et al. (Hrsg.): Regional civil society in motion. Vienna-Bozen: Folio Verlag 2012. ISBN 978-3-85256-618-4 , pp. 272–285.

literature

  • Veronika Mittermair : From illegality to power: social characteristics of the Völkischer Kampfringes Südtirols and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Optanten. In: Zeitgeschichte 22, 1995, pp. 211–222.
  • Michael Wedekind: The National Socialist People's Group Organization in South Tyrol (1933-1945) , in: Giuseppe Ferrandi / Günther Pallaver (Ed.): The region of Trentino-South Tyrol in the 20th century. Volume I: Politics and Institutions, Museo Storico in Trento, Trient 2007, pp. 401–434.
  • Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945. The operational zones "Alpine Foreland" and "Adriatic Coastal Land" . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56650-4 . To the VKS pp. 133–135.
  • King Laurin's return . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1955, pp. 29 ( Online - Oct. 5, 1955 ).