Hitler Betrayed South Tyrol!

Besides a court verdict, a South Tyrolean answered this one. Count Fedrigotti, a leader of the South Tyrol Home Federation, and Member of the Andreas Hofer Federation, talked at the end of January of this year with National Socialist Reichstag Representative Hinkel about a speech by Father Innerkosler titled “Hitler’s Betrayal of South Tyrol,” given at a Reichsbanner mass meeting. He stated that the South Tyrol Home Federation refused to allow the South Tyrol question to be used for partisan political attacks against National Socialism. He showed Hinkel a telegram that he had received from Innsbruck as an answer to his request, in which the leaders of the South Tyrol Home Federation sharply rejected Innerkosler’s position in Berlin. The South Tyroleans knew that Germany’s foreign policy line had to follow the Berlin-Rome-London line, and that Hitler had to draw the appropriate conclusions for his behavior. They also had to recognize that Mussolini was the first to take sympathetic position against reparations. They only wanted to be sure that South Tyrol was not forgotten.

Hitler certainly has not forgotten the South Tyroleans. He himself was born and grew up in a border region. He is convinced, however, that the mission of the South Tyroleans is to build a bridge to Italy, and behavior consistent with that will be of more use to them than the German press agitation against Fascist Italy that exploits the South Tyroleans.