Violence Was Also Caused by Women. Their Role in Secret and Security Services and Paramilitary Circles in the Northern Adriatic During the Second World War and the First Post-War Period

Women have not only been victims of violence, they have perpetrated it. This includes female collaborators of secret and security services and paramilitary circles. Indeed, such activities had often been linked to violence, both directly and, above all, indirectly. The purpose of covert actions in war or periods of high tension was often related to obtaining and transmitting secret information, which was then used by armed forces to fight enemies. Women were also in charge of secret communications, training of new recruits, keeping records of enemies and in deceiving the enemy. Finally, in some cases they have been the protagonists of indirect acts of violence. The aim of the paper is to draw attention to the much under-studied topic of women, using the example of their clandestine activities in in the Northern Adriatic (or the Primorska area and Istria) during the years of the Second World War and the early post-war period. In a comparative sense, some examples of women working in opposing fields at the time will be presented.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gorazd Bajc (Trieste, 1972), Full Professor of European History and History of the Balkans at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor where he is also the Vice‐dean for Science and Research. His main fields of research and teaching are the history of international relations, of intelligence services, of anti-fascism, of Slovenian‐Italian relations, of the Slovene minority in Italy, and of the violence against women in Venezia Giulia. He has done research in the archives of London, College Park MD (US), Rome, Prague, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Trieste, Udine and Koper. He is member of the board of editors (since 2005) and editor (since 2014) of the high impact scientific journal Acta Histriae and editor (since 2014) of the high impact scientific journal Annales – Series Historia et Sociologia. In 2017 the European Commission awarded him the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Seal of Excellence.