“The Lesser of Two Evils”: Milan Stojadinović, Albania and Yugoslav-Italian Relations, 1935-1939

Abstract

From the outset of her existence, Italy was the bête noire of the successor state of Yugoslavia created on the ruins of Austria-Hungary after the Great War. A historical claim on Dalmatia populated by Yugoslavs remained a watchword of Italian nationalists despite the territorial settlement reached between the two countries in Rapallo in 1920 and Rome’s acquisition of the town of Fiume in 1924 as part of the Italo-Yugoslav treaty of friendship in 1924 (Pact of Rome). The Italians based their territorial ambitions on what the Entente Powers had granted them on the eastern coast of the Adriatic by the 1915 Treaty of London, but had not fully materialized at the end of the war. Moreover, for Italy, the very existence of Yugoslavia was an obstacle for its grandiose plans for political domination in the Balkans and the Danube region. The animosity towards Belgrade was made more pronounced on account of Yugoslavia’s friendly relations with France and membership of the anti-Hungarian Little Entente, together with Czechoslovakia and Romania, which Rome perceived as an instrument of French security system in post-war Europe. For that reason, Yugoslavia became central to Mussolini’s rivalry with France over predominance in South-Eastern Europe, which made her importance in international relations far exceed her economic and military capabilities