Eighty years ago this week decolonization flounders but Realpolitik rules

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The foreign ministers of the victor powers decided that Italy should retain South Tirol which it had been awarded in 1915 as a reward for joining the Entente powers fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War. It had been formally annexed in 1920. The region had never belonged to any Italian political entity before, had no Italian culture and spoke German or Ladin; the Fascist government had imposed italianization. The Italian name by which the area is known, Alto Adige, is an invention although the new administrative unit includes the historically Italian Trentino region to the south. By all the principles of the Atlantic Charter it should have been returned to Austria but Italy switched sides to join the allies in 1943 as the monarchy's only way to survive, but the Austrian state had vanished in 1938 and was being reconstructed according to the wishes of the victor powers. Italy was once again being rewarded for an unprincipled diplomatic choice. Protests in the British Parliament were ignored. 

Britain and the US devised a scheme to partition Palestine as a basis for discussion. Britain would retain some 45% of the area under direct British rule and the remainder would be divided between Arabs and Jews  with the Jews having the smaller area. Britain would ultimately allocate its area to one side or the other.

Jinnah's Muslim League withdrew its consent granted in June  to the "Long Term Plan" for the sub-continent devised by the British Cabinet Mission which would have created a federal structure with a number of provinces allocated to three "groups": two Moslem majority and one Hindu. Nehru had already come out against the grouping proposal.

 

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