Dominique Kirchner Reill. The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire.

We are all at times guilty of thoughtlessly ignoring subtitles when discussing or recommending books. Overlooking the subtitle in Dominique Kirchner Reill’s fascinating study The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire is particularly ill-advised, as it provides an excellent preview of the interpretive key by which she unlocks the forgotten lessons of the Fiume Crisis of 1919–20. Reill rediscovers the submerged local history of Fiume (today’s Rijeka, located in Croatia), which was, in part, bullhorned into obscurity by the larger-than-life soldier-poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio and his legionnaires’ dramatic takeover of Fiume in 1919 during the postwar diplomatic struggle between Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and US President Woodrow Wilson, and his subsequent self-proclaimed annexation of Fiume to a reluctant Italy, reverberated around the world. In most histories of the interwar era, D’Annunzio’s short-lived dictatorship of Fiume remains a critical precursor to Mussolini’s Fascist...