Italian racial laws

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Front page of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on 11 November 1938: "Le leggi per la difesa della razza approvate dal Consiglio dei ministri" (English: "The laws for the defense of race approved by the Council of Ministers").

The Italian racial laws, otherwise referred to as the Racial Laws (Italian: Leggi Razziali), were a series of laws promulgated by the government of Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy from 1938 to 1944 in order to enforce racial discrimination and segregation in the Kingdom of Italy. The main victims of the Racial Laws were Italian Jews and the African inhabitants of the Italian Empire.[1][2][3]

In the aftermath of Mussolini's fall from power and the invasion of Italy by Germany, the Badoglio government suppressed the laws in January 1944. In northern Italy, they remained in force and were made more severe in the territories ruled by the Italian Social Republic until the end of the Second World War.[2]

History

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The signatures of Victor Emmanuel III, Mussolini, Justice Minister Arrigo Solmi and others on the Regio Decreto 17 Novembre 1938, Nr. 1728.

The first and most important of the Racial Laws (Leggi Razziali) was the Regio Decreto 17 Novembre 1938, Nr. 1728. It restricted the civil rights of

Africans" and not as natives, as was the case with the other African peoples subjected to the colonial rule of the Italian Empire.[3]

The promulgation of the Racial Laws was preceded by a long press campaign and publication of the "Manifesto of Race" earlier in 1938, a purportedly-scientific report signed by scientists and supporters of the National Fascist Party (PNF); among the 180 signers of the "Manifesto of Race" were two medical doctors (S. Visco and N. Fende), an anthropologist (L. Cipriani), a zoologist (E. Zavattari), and a statistician (F. Savorgnan).[4] The "Manifesto of Race", published in July 1938, declared the Italians to be descendants of the Aryan race.[1] It targeted races that were seen as inferior (i.e. not of Aryan descent). In particular, Jews were banned from many professions.[1] Under the Racial Laws, sexual relations and marriages between Italians, Jews, and Africans were forbidden.[1] Jews were banned from positions in banking, government, and education, as well as having their properties confiscated.[5][6]

The final decision about the Racial Laws was made during the meeting of the

Europeans and non-Europeans.[8]

Antisemitic cartoon published in the Fascist periodical La Difesa della Razza, after the promulgation of the Racial Laws (15 November 1938).

While some scholars argue that this was an attempt by Mussolini to curry favour with

post-Tridentine Catholic Church, which remained a powerful cultural force in Mussolini's Fascist regime,[10] representing a uniquely Italian flavour of antisemitism[11] in which Jews were seen as an obstacle to the Fascist transformation of Italian society due to being bound to what Mussolini saw as decadent liberal democracies.[12]

Badoglio government abolished the Racial Laws in the Kingdom of Italy through two royal law decrees passed in January 1944. They remained enforced and were made more severe in the territories ruled by the Italian Social Republic (1943–1945) until the end of the Second World War.[2]

Criticism and unpopularity

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Leading members of the National Fascist Party (PNF), such as Dino Grandi and Italo Balbo, reportedly opposed the Racial Laws,[14] and the laws were unpopular with most Italian citizens; the Jews were a small minority in Italy and had integrated deeply into Italian society and culture over the course of several centuries.

Most Jews in Italy were either descendants of the ancient

German-speaking countries and other regions of Northern, Northwestern, and Eastern Europe
, where Jews had more presence and lived in large numbers for a long period of time.

During the

William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
suggests that Mussolini enacted the Racial Laws in order to appease his German allies, rather than to satisfy any genuine antisemitic sentiment among the Italian people.

Indeed, prior to 1938 and the Pact of Steel alliance, Mussolini and many notable Italian Fascists had been highly critical of

ideology of Nazi Germany. Many early supporters of Italian fascism, including Mussolini's mistress, the writer and socialite Margherita Sarfatti, were in fact middle-class or upper middle-class Italian Jews. Nordicism and biological racism were often considered incompatible with the early ideology of Italian fascism; Nordicism inherently subordinated the Italians themselves and other Mediterranean peoples beneath the Germans and Northwestern Europeans in its proposed racial hierarchy, and early Italian Fascists, including Mussolini, viewed race as a cultural and political invention rather than a biological reality.[citation needed
]

In 1929, Mussolini noted that Italian Jews had been a demographically small yet culturally integral part of Italian society since Ancient Rome. His views on Italian Jews were consistent with his early

Mediterranean cultures, including the Jewish culture, shared a common bond. He further argued that Italian Jews had truly become "Italians" or natives to Italy after living for such a long period in the Italian Peninsula.[15][16] However, Mussolini's views on race were often contradictory and quick to change when necessary, and as Fascist Italy became increasingly subordinate to Nazi Germany's interests, Mussolini began adopting openly racial theories borrowed from or based on Nazi racial policies, leading to the introduction of the antisemitic Racial Laws.[16]

Historian Federico Chabod argued that the introduction of the Nordicist-influenced Racial Laws was a large factor in the decrease of public support among Italians for Fascist Italy, and many Italians viewed the Racial Laws as an obvious imposition or intrusion of German values into Italian culture, and a sign that Mussolini's power and the Fascist regime were collapsing under Nazi German influence.[15][17]

See also

References

  1. ^
    S2CID 201401541
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 9780415290159
    .
  3. ^
    OCLC 1122565258
    .
  4. ISBN 9788816409071
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-230-80267-4
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-521-84515-1
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0520071995
  8. ^ Joshua D. Zimmerman, Jews in Italy Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945, pp. 119-120
  9. S2CID 143652167
    .
  10. S2CID 161818702
    .
  11. S2CID 143799280
    .
  12. S2CID 143090861
    .
  13. ^
    ISSN 1469-9583
    .
  14. ^ Gunther, John (1940). Inside Europe. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 262.
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-9004212558
    . Retrieved 9 January 2016.
  16. ^ a b Neocleous, Mark. Fascism. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. p. 35
  17. ISBN 978-0618794263
    .

Bibliography

External links
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