Dodecanese of Italianization, hoping to make Rhodes a modern transportation hub that would serve as a focal point for the spread of Italian culture in the Levant. The islands were overwhelmingly Greek-speaking, with a Turkish-speaking minority and an even smaller Ladino-speaking Jewish minority. Immigrant Italian speakers were a marginal language community. The Fascist program, in its many attempts to modernize the islands, eradicated malaria, and constructed hospitals, aqueducts, a power plant to provide Rhodes' capital with electric lighting, and established the Dodecanese Cadastre. The main castle of the Knights of St. John was also rebuilt. The concrete-dominated Fascist architectural style detracted
Dodecanese Regiment that no operation in the Dodecanese had been planned or was possible. The GHQ was firmly convinced that the liberation of the Dodecanese would be a postwar procedure depending on the outcome of the Albanian Front. After a short but intensive training, the Dodecanese Regiment received the war flag on January 12, 1941. It was the only adequately trained, fully manned, staffed and equipped regiment available as a reserve, and therefore it became the core of the newly formed 20th Infantry Division, which soon was to include the also newly formed but thinly manned 35th and 80th Regiments, comprising low