South Tyrol
After the First World War, despite the fact that its inhabitants were almost entirely German-speaking, South Tyrol was assigned, against its will, to the Kingdom of Italy by the Treaty of Saint-Germain. The name was officially changed to Alto Adige. This happened on the basis of the wishes of the Italian irredentists, who considered the Alto Adige as a geographical territory of Italy. When Benito Mussolini's Fascist party came to power in 1922, a period of oppression and marginalisation of the German- and Ladin-speaking minorities began. German was replaced by Italian in the public sphere, the German language was banned from public life and schools. The fascist government favoured instead the industrialisation of the province to attract Italian immigrants and to further carry out its Italianisation politics.