Belgrade is identified as a destination in Amerigo Dumini’s travels during his attempt to sell a huge consignment of Austro-Hungarian surplus arms. The account places the city within a wider postwar landscape of arms dealing and conflict, rather than describing a separate political or military episode there.

Setting and Context

The narrative locates Belgrade at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube. It presents the city as one destination among the war-scarred regions of Europe that Dumini visited in the spring and summer, when he was trying to find buyers for weapons he had obtained an option to purchase from the war ministry.

Dumini’s Visits

Traveling under the assumed name Gino Bianchi, Dumini made what the account calls tourist visits to Belgrade and other regions. During these journeys he sent affectionate postcards to Cesarino Rossi in Italy. The account does not describe a specific meeting or transaction in Belgrade; the city’s documented role is as one stop in the search for a market for the arms.

Connection to the Arms Scheme

Dumini had first tried to sell the consignment in Greece, but the cargo ship was turned away from Piraeus. He then sought opportunities elsewhere, including in Belgrade. Yugoslavia was still considered an enemy country by Italy because of the dispute over Fiume, so Dumini used a fictitious company based in Marseilles to get around the prohibition on arming an enemy. The account thus connects Belgrade to the scheme’s intended market and political risks without claiming that the weapons were delivered there.

Narrative Significance

Belgrade’s brief appearance places Dumini’s private profiteering within a wider circulation of surplus weapons left by earlier battles. The narrative describes Europe’s tragic regions as places where war was as endemic as hunger in certain African regions, and closes the episode by stressing the seemingly perpetual work of disposing of military surpluses. Belgrade is therefore part of a route through a continent still shaped by war, rather than a setting for a self-contained scene.