{ mutilation }

During the Treaty of London (1915), a secret pact between the Triple Entente and the Kingdom of Italy, Italy was also promised a share over the Mediterranean Ottoman region of Antalya and a share of the German colonies in Africa and Asia. After the WWI, however, the USA, France and the UK saw the Italian territorial demands as exaggerated, reestablishing them in the Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919). Although most of the territories stipulated in the previous treaty became Italian after WWI, the agreement of annexation of a large part of Dalmatia was revoked, which outraged Italian nationalists who considered Dalmatia to have strong Italian cultural roots since it was part of the Roman Empire and later of the Republic of Venice. [1] As the Italian demands were not fulfilled according to their agreements and expectations, Italian nationalists believed their victory in the war as a mutilated one.

This feeling of injustice led to the term Mutilated Victory (vittoria mutilata), coined by the nationalist writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, a keen supporter of the seizure of Dalmatia, which referred to Italians’ unconformity with the repartition of the territory set by the Paris Peace Conference after the WWI. This concept was then extensively used in Mussolini’s discourses which continued to strengthen Italian nationalism and irredentist rhetoric, becoming a key point in Italian Fascist propaganda. Hence, the word Mutilato, as opposed to invalido, to name this monument for the heroes of war, does not lack a significant connotation, and during the 1920s and 1930s almost 80 Casa del Mutilato were built across the whole of Italy.

– Fernanda Ruiz and Rado Ištok