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Abstract
Controversy rages around the question of Italians' reactions to the racial laws, introduced in 1938 and aimed against the Jews. Some have claimed that they were met with hostility, others that Italians were surprised and perplexed by the laws, and still others have argued that the laws were widely embraced. In the light of the documents cited in this essay it seems difficult to agree with those who assert a ‘lack of consensus’ among Italians when it came to the Fascist ‘racial’ laws. The documents presented and discussed here cast considerable doubt on the opinion shared by many historians that the greater part of the Italian people were more or less openly hostile to the racist and anti-Semitic campaign. The reality seems to have been very different.
Notes
1 The position of Italians in relation to the racial laws is thus discussed in 11 pages (of the 647 pages in the ‘revised and amplified’ 1988 edition used by us), and five classified reports are cited.
2 This is not the place to dwell upon the precise reasons that compose the background of our affirmation. Let me indicate the fact that often the intentions of the prefect (and even more often those of the ‘federal’ police) at the top of the state and Fascist hierarchical organization at the provincial level were to offer an image of reality that served the needs of local struggles for power in which rivalries and personalities influenced the individual protagonists, thereby not permitting, for purposes of historical analysis, a clear and credible reading of the facts without great attention to detail and countless distinctions.
3 This is reproduced in De Felice (Citation1981: 866 – 77).
4 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto b. 159, f. ‘varie anno 1938’. Report dated 21 July 1938.
5 Ibid., ‘Roma’, 20 July 1938.
6 Ibid., ‘Roma’, 3 August 1938.
7 Ibid., ‘Padova’, 7 August 1938.
8 Ibid. As Kertzer (Citation2001) notes, the Protocols are a glaring example of the role played by Catholic anti-Semitism in favoring the rise of Nazi and Fascist anti-Semitism. The Protocols' arguments are substantially the same ones used for decades in ecclesiastical publications, from official Vatican ones to parish bulletins. Cf. Kertzer (Citation2001: 280 – 4).
9 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto b. 159, f. ‘varie anno 1938’, ‘Padova’, 7 August 1938. For this aspect see also Israel and Nastasi (Citation1998).
10 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto b. 159, f. ‘varie anno 1938’, ‘Padova’, 7 August 1938.
11 Ibid., ‘Roma’, 9 August 1938.
12 Ibid., ‘Paterno di Pelago’, 9 August 1938.
13 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto b. 159, f. ‘varie anno 1938’, ‘Venezia’, 10 August 1938.
14 Ibid., ‘Milano’, 21 August 1938.
15 Ibid., ‘Commenti a Padova su situazione campagna di Razza’, Milano, 20 August 1938.
16 Ibid., ‘Milano’ 21 August 1938.
17 Ibid., 23 August 1938.
18 Ibid., 25 August 1938.
19 Ibid., ‘Milano’, 28 August 1938.
20 Ibid., ‘Venezia’, 22 August 1938.
21 Ibid., ‘Genova’, 24 August 1938.
22 Ibid., ‘Roma’, 24 August 1938.
23 Ibid., Genova’, 27 August 1938. Catholicism's traditional anti-Semitism had opened a breach in the collective Italian mentality through which Fascist propaganda inserted itself, finding a field already prepared and ready to welcome the regime's new coded messages. Nor should one forget that the entire racist campaign in Italy was a recent phenomenon. In fact, at the level of mass publication, it is in these months that we witness the very beginning of racial propaganda. See also Kertzer (Citation2001).
24 Ibid., ‘Venezia’, 28 August 1938.
25 Ibid., memorandum relating to the province of Terni, 29 August 1938.
26 Ibid., memorandum, 30 August 1938.
27 De Felice (Citation1981: 498). For a deeper exploration of this aspect, see, among others, Sarfatti (Citation2000: 101 – 230) and Collotti (Citation2003: 60 – 101).
28 ACS, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, Gabinetto b. 159. f. ‘varie anno 1938’, ‘Roma’ dated 1 September 1938.
29 Ibid., ‘Milano’, 3 September 1938.
30 Ibid., ‘Firenze’, 4 September 1938.
31 Ibid., ‘Firenze’, 19 October 1938.
32 Ibid., ‘Promemoria per il Duce’, 14 November 1938.
33 Ibid., 12 November 1938.
34 Ibid., ‘La difesa della razza nell'opinione pubblica Milanese. Impressioni’, ‘Milano’, 9 December 1938.