Language:
German
Year of publication:
2005
Titel der Quelle:
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
53,2 (2005) 165-201
Keywords:
Mussolini, Benito,
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
Questions long-held beliefs that Italian fascism was not basically antisemitic. Indeed, Jews were among the founding members of the movement, held high office in its early days, and enjoyed the confidence of the Duce. But Italy carried out racist wars in Africa, radical fascists and their publications were antisemitic, and Mussolini became more and more ambivalent already in the early 1920s. In 1936, he sponsored a manifesto upholding the purity of the Aryan race and the exclusion of the racially inferior. The 1938 racial laws were in some respects more restrictive than the Nuremberg Laws and were constantly supplemented by even stricter regulations, national and local. Jews lost their livelihoods; foreign Jews, as well as Italian Jews deemed dangerous to the regime, were interned. However, these persecutions never extended to murder, and the persecution of the Jews was never Mussolini's central purpose. Only a minority of the population approved the antisemitic measures; others remained silent out of fear or because they profited from the Jews' losses. During the German occupation, the fascists collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up Jews for deportation to the death camps.
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