Province of Spalato

The puppet Independent State of Croatia ceded by the Treaties of Rome of 18 May 1941, extensive Adriatic coastal areas to the Fascist Kingdom of Italy.

Italy placed Ustasha leader Ante Pavelić as the head of Croatian puppet State after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the April War 1941.

The Italians started immediately a process of improvement in the underdeveloped area, creating needed infrastructures from hospitals to schools and sewages.

The reclamation of 76,000 hectares of land and an agrarian reform were even started (for the Italian one it will be necessary to wait for 1950) which in the spring of 1942 had already registered the requests of 22,000 Slavic peasants for access to the benefits provided by law.

Fabrizio Gregorutti Under orders of Mussolini, it was also started in July 1941 a process of forced Italianization (related to the history of Venetian Dalmatia[4]).

Map of the province of Spalato
Governorate of Dalmatia
Italian destroyer in the 1942 Spalato port
Original Map of the province of Spalato without the islands. Later the area around Sebenico was united to the Province of Zara