Italian colonists in the Dodecanese the island of Rhodes. Approximately 40,000 Italian soldiers and sailors were on military duty in the Dodecanese islands in 1940. The appointment of Fascist quadrumvir Cesare Maria De Vecchi as governor of the Italian Aegean Islands in 1936 marked a turning point. De Vecchi promoted a more vigorous and forceful program of Italianization, which was only interrupted by Italy's entry in World War II in 1940. Indeed, he promoted the possible unification of the islands to Italy as part of the fascist ideal of an Imperial Italy. During World War II, Italy joined the Axis Powers, and used the Dodecanese
Greek scholars in the Renaissance Greek scholars in the Renaissance The migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Dark Ages in the West. Their main role within Renaissance humanism was the teaching of the Greek language to their