Italian colonists in the Dodecanese the Leros town of Lakki (founded by the Italians as "Portolago"), which remains a prime example of Italian Rationalism. From 1923 to 1936, governor Mario Lago was able to integrate the Greek, Turkish and Ladino Jewish communities of the island of Rhodes with the Italian colonists. Lago's term of office constituted what might in retrospective be called the "Golden Period" of the Italian Dodecanese, with the economy booming and a relatively harmonious society. In the 1936 Italian census of the Dodecanese islands, the total population was 129,135, of which 7,015 were Italians. Nearly 80% of the Italian colonists lived in
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