TheItalian racial laws, otherwise referred to as theRacial Laws (Italian:Leggi Razziali), were a series of laws promulgated by thegovernment ofBenito Mussolini inFascist Italy from 1938 to 1944 in order to enforceracial discrimination andsegregation in theKingdom of Italy. The main victims of the Racial Laws wereItalian Jews and theAfrican inhabitants of theItalian Empire.[1][2][3]
In the aftermath ofMussolini's fall from power and theinvasion of Italy by Nazi Germany, theBadoglio government suppressed the laws in January 1944. In northern Italy, they remained in force and were made more severe in the territories ruled by theItalian Social Republic until theend of the Second World War.[2]
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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 ofItalian Jews, banned books written by Jewish authors, and excluded Jews from public offices and higher education.[1] Additional laws stripped Jews of their assets, restricted travel, and finally, provided for their confinement in internal exile, as was done forpolitical prisoners.[1] In recognition of both their past and future contributions and for their service as subjects of theItalian Empire, Rome passed a decree in 1937 distinguishing theEritreans andEthiopians from other subjects of the newly-founded colonial empire.[1][3] In the Kingdom of Italy, Eritreans and Ethiopians were to be addressed as "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 theNational 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 theItalians to be descendants of theAryan 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 theGran Consiglio del Fascismo, which took place on the night between 6 and 7 of October 1938 inRome,Palazzo Venezia. Not all Italian Fascists supported discrimination: while the pro-German, anti-JewishRoberto Farinacci andGiovanni Preziosi strongly pushed for them,Italo Balbo strongly opposed the Racial Laws. Balbo, in particular, regarded antisemitism as having nothing to do with fascism and staunchly opposed the antisemitic laws.[7] The Racial Laws prohibited Jews from most professional positions as well as prohibited sexual relations and marriages between Italians, Jews, and Africans.[5] The press in Fascist Italy highly publicized the "Manifesto of Race", which included a mixture of biological racism and history; it declared that Italians belonged to the Aryan race, Jews were not Italians, and that it was necessary to distinguish betweenEuropeans and non-Europeans.[8]
While some scholars argue that this was an attempt by Mussolini to placateAdolf Hitler, who increasingly exerted influence over Mussolini in the late 1930s and is speculated to have pressured him to increase the racial discrimination and persecution of Jews in the Kingdom of Italy,[9] others believe that it reflected sentiments long entrenched not just in Fascist political philosophy but also in the teachings of thepost-TridentineCatholic Church, which remained a powerful cultural force in Mussolini's Fascist regime,[10] representing a uniquely Italian flavour ofantisemitism[11] in which Jews were seen as an obstacle to theFascist transformation of Italian society due to being bound to what Mussolini saw as decadentliberal democracies.[12]
Il Tevere, an Italian Fascist newspaper founded by Mussolini and directed byTelesio Interlandi, frequently promoted antisemitism and railed against thealleged threat of "international Jewry".[13] It was a frequent source of praise for Adolf Hitler's antisemitic policies until its disbandment after thefall of Mussolini and the Fascist regime on 25 July 1943.[13] In the aftermath ofMussolini's fall from power and the followingGerman occupation of Italy, theBadoglio 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 theItalian Social Republic (1943–1945) until theend of the Second World War.[2]
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Leading members of theNational Fascist Party (PNF), such asDino Grandi andItalo Balbo, reportedly opposed the Racial Laws,[14] and the laws were unpopular with most Italian citizens; theJews 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 ancientItalian Jews that practiced theItalian rite and had been living in the Italian Peninsula sinceAncient Roman times;Western Sephardic Jews who had migrated to Italy from the Iberian Peninsula after theReconquista and promulgation of theAlhambra Decree in the 1490s; and a smaller portion ofAshkenazi Jewish communities that settled in Northern Italy during theMiddle Ages, which had largely assimilated into the established Italian-rite Jewish and Sephardic communities. Most Italians were not widely acquainted with the Jewish population, and Italian society was unaccustomed to the kind of antisemitism that had been relatively common and thrived for centuries inGerman-speaking countries and other regions ofNorthern,Northwestern, andEastern Europe, where Jews had more presence and lived in large numbers for a long period of time.
During theyears of Benito Mussolini's dictatorship prior to 1938, there had not been anyrace laws promulgated in the Kingdom of Italy. The Racial Laws were introduced at the same time as Fascist Italy began to ally itself withNazi Germany, and mere months before Fascist Italy would form thePact of Steel, which signed the military alliance between the two countries.William Shirer inThe 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 ofNordicism,biological racism, and antisemitism, especially the virulent and violent antisemitism and biological racism that could be found in theideology of Nazi Germany. Many early supporters ofItalian fascism, including Mussolini's mistress, the writer and socialiteMargherita Sarfatti, were in fact middle-class or upper middle-class Italian Jews.Nordicism and biological racism were often considered incompatible with theearly ideology of Italian fascism; Nordicism inherently subordinated the Italians themselves and otherMediterranean 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 earlyMediterraneanist perspective, which suggested that allMediterranean 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 onNazi racial policies, leading to the introduction of the antisemitic Racial Laws.[16]
HistorianFederico 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]
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