governorship. With the Treaty of Versailles (10 January 1920) Italian claims on Dalmatia contained in the Treaty of London are nullified, but later on the agreements between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes set in the Treaty of Rapallo (12 November 1920) gave Zadar with other small local territories to Italy. The Zadar enclave, a total of 104 km�, included the city of Zadar, the municipalities of Bokanjac, Arbanasi, Crno, part of Diklo (a total of 51 km. of territory and 17,065 inhabitants) and the islands of Lastovo and Palagru�a (53 km�, 1,710 inhabitants). The territory was organized into a small Italian province.
World War II
Germany, with limited Italian assistance, invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. Zadar held a force of 9,000 that after limited fighting reached �ibenik and Split on April 15, a mere 2 days before surrender, with civilians having previously been evacuated to Ancona and Pula. Occupying Mostar and Dubrovnik, on April 17 they met invading troops that had started out from Italian-occupied Albania. On April 17 the Yugoslav government surrendered, faced with the Wehrmacht's overwhelming superiority.
Within a few weeks, Benito Mussolini required the newly formed Nazi puppet-state, the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) to hand over almost all of Dalmatia (including Split) to fascist Italy under the Treaty of Rome.
The city became the centre of a new Italian territorial entity, called Governorship of Dalmatia, including the provinces of Zadar, Split and Kotor.
Under fascist reign the Slavic population was subjected to a policy of forced assimilation. This created immense resentment among the Yugoslav people and the Yugoslav Partisan movement (which was already successfully spreading in the rest of Yugoslavia) did not take root here since more than 70% of population of Zara was Italian.
After Mussolini was removed from power on 25 July 1943 and
