Luca Castiglioni
The Italian administration of the Dodecanese (1912–1945) remains a contentious but marginalised subject in European colonial and subjecthood studies, while its ending is still being a sensitive topic in Greek and Turkish political framework: this time has been often dismissed either as a temporary foreign occupation delaying Greek unification or as an eccentric, quasi-colonial anomaly now used to speciously mitigate critiques of Italian colonialism. Reduced to a passive backdrop for fragmented narratives, the complex network of long-term survival strategies of local communities under stifling Italian rule – caught between both familial, regional and national identities – is often oversimplified or overlooked.
This paper focuses on the pivotal 1940–1945 period, when WWII upended the islands’ fragile and despotic balance of power. Wartime saw an unprecedented influx of Italians in the islands, straining the strict boundaries imposed between ruling elite and subject communities; the invasion of Greece and the following annexation of the Cyclades to Rhodes’ military command further undermined subject relations as national loyalty, displacement, dissent and growing famine rocked the establishment;colonial in-all-but- name structures of obedience fractured when Italian assimilation policies abruptly halted. German occupation subjugated local Italian rule, but didn’t depose it, creating a truly unique asymmetrical society defined by its struggles and contradictions.
This last phase shaped local narratives, charging the final moment of liberation with both human andpolitical meaning. Each community crafted its narrative of this time: the shared space and experience of the German occupation created separate but complementary narratives which influenced, skewed and intermixed celebrations of deliverance from fascism, Italian self absolution and Greek and Turkish irredentism, mixing into a very local and multifaceted memorial construct.
Using local and central Italian administrative and military records, German military archives, British reports, relief agency documents and local narratives this paper reconstructs the stratified complexity of these intertwined histories, challenging the myth of passive liberation, exposing instead a dynamic, often contradictory process where agency, resistance, and complicity blurred, revealing how the Dodecanese’s transition from Italian to Greek rule was less a resolution than a reconfiguration of unresolved colonial tensions.
Luca Castiglioni has centred his research on the history of the Dodecanese under Italian administration, resulting in multiple publications and extensive archival work in Italy, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.