Trieste was liberated last week. But the heady thrill of liberation was quickly followed by an international hangover conflicting Yugoslav and Italian claims to the city, which is predominantly Italian but situated in a Slav area.
Into Trieste, as the Germans retreated, crowded Marshal Tito's Yugoslav partisans, Italian Communist partisans, Italian non-Communist partisans and (to the surprise of most people who had all but forgotten them) General Draja Mihailovich's Chetniks. Yugoslavs and Italians at once asserted squatters' rights.
Before the partisans could come to blows, the British Eighth Army's crack New Zealand division dashed in and occupied Trieste's strategic waterfront. So long...
