The foibe massacres (; ; ), or simply the foibe, refers to mass killings and deportations both during and immediately after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the then-Italian territories of Julian March (Karst Region and Istria), Kvarner and Dalmatia, against the local ethnic Italian population (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians), and local ethnic Slavs and Istro-Romanians according to some historians due to collaboration with axis forces or political affiliation and according to other historians for ethnic targeted aims.
There is academic consensus that these attacks were reprisal killings, after decades of fascist repression, forced Italianization and Italian war crimes against Yugoslavs. In addition, some historians also describe them as state terrorism and ethnic cleansing against Italians, including Italian anti-fascist militias and civilians. Other historians dispute this, stating that Italians were not targeted for their ethnicity, that the majority of victims were members of fascist military and police forces, and that many more Slavic collaborators were killed in postwar reprisals. Among the victims were those opposed to the Yugoslav annexation of territories, killed as a preventive purge of real, potential or presumed opponents of Titoism, native anti-fascist autonomists — including the leadership of Italian anti-fascist partisan organizations, opposed to Yugoslav annexation, and the leaders of Fiume's Autonomist Party, like Mario Blasich and Nevio Skull, who supported local independence from both Italy and Yugoslavia — for example the purge in the city of Fiume, where at least 650 were killed during and after the war by Yugoslav units, the great majority tried for war crimes before military courts.
The estimated number of people killed in the foibe is disputed, varying from hundreds to thousands, according to some sources 11,000 or 20,000. The Italian historian Raoul Pupo estimates 3,000 to 4,000 total victims, across all areas of former Yugoslavia and Italy from 1943 to 1945, Pupo further states that the figure of 10,000 to 12,000 must also include those killed or missing in combat at the end of the war, and describes victim numbers in the range of 20,000 to 30,000 as "pure propaganda". He places the events in the broader context of "the collapse of a structure of power and oppression: that of the fascist state in 1943, that of the Nazi-fascist state of the Adriatic coast in 1945."
The term refers to some victims who were thrown alive into foibe (from Italian: ), or into deep natural sinkholes characteristic of the karst regions. In a wider or symbolic sense, some authors used the term to apply to all disappearances or killings of Italian people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. Others included deaths resulting from the forced deportation of Italians, or those who died while trying to flee from these contested lands.
The foibe massacres were followed by the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus, which was the post-World War II exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians (Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians) from the Yugoslav territory of Istria, Kvarner, the Julian March, lost by Italy after the Treaty of Paris (1947), as well as Dalmatia, towards Italy, and in smaller numbers, towards the Americas, Australia and South Africa. According to various sources, the exodus is estimated to have amounted to between 230,000 and 350,000 Italians. A joint Italian-Slovene commission noted that the majority of the exodus happened in the early 1950s, when it was clear these parts would become permanently Yugoslav, and that the exodus had multiple causes, including war-caused economic hardship and general repressive policies in the immediate postwar years.
The events were part of larger reprisals in which tens-of-thousands of Slavic collaborators of Axis forces were killed in the aftermath of WWII, following a brutal war in which some 800,000 Yugoslavs, the vast majority civilians, were killed by Axis occupation forces and collaborators, with Italian forces committing war crimes. Historians put the events in the context of broader postwar violence in Europe, including in Italy, where the Italian resistance and others killed an estimated 12,000 to 26,000 Italians, usually in extra-judicial executions, the great majority in Northern Italy, just in April and May 1945, while some 12 to 14.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe, with a death toll of 500,000 to 2.5 million.