Rumor and Wartime Migration: Informal Communication, Propaganda, and the 1939 “Option” in South Tyrol

Nazi-instigated cases of forced displacement, flight, and deportation have received considerable historiographical attention. Much of this literature, however, has restricted itself either to an investigation of Nazi Germany's policies of ethnic cleansing, "Germanization," and the Holocaust "from above," or to individual experiences of wartime displacement "from below." This article draws on the history of communication to interrogate the dynamic interplay between the "from above" implementation of National Socialist policies and "from below" experiences, manipulations, and interpretations thereof. Focusing on informal communication—especially rumor—the article explores one of Nazi Germany's first relocation schemes: the 1939 "Option" in South Tyrol. The Option forced South Tyrol's approximately 220,000 ethnic Germans to decide either to acquire German citizenship and emigrate to the Reich or to maintain their Italian citizenship and relinquish themselves to ongoing Italianization efforts. Using archival, press, and oral history sources, the article recreates the complex communicative environment in which South Tyroleans made their choice. Characterized by an absence of verifiable information "from above," heated unofficial propaganda campaigns by states and activists, and fraught negotiations of identity and belonging "from below," the Option became a fertile ground for rumors, which both reflected and helped shape social realities, becoming a driving force of migration. As the article proposes, interrogating informal communicative practices like rumors enables a concerted exploration of migrant experience, knowledge, and agency, while revealing how migrants themselves understood and acted upon historic dynamics from the smallest to the largest of scales.