In Europe

asked himself why Ginzburg had waited to become an Italian citizen before taking part in ‘the conspiracy’. His own answer was: ‘It was precisely the Italian tradition which he considered to be the foundation for his own anti-Fascism.’
    At first, however, Mussolini's experiment – unlike National Socialism – was viewed in Europe with a certain sense of appreciation. Many intellectualsfound Fascism, like communism, an attractive alternative to ‘weak-kneed’ democracy. Terror was a price they were willing to pay. Mussolini's new society seemed to stand head and shoulders above debilitating party politics, religious feuding and the class struggle. Everywhere the dictator was lauded for his fight against ‘political corruption, social anarchy and national degeneration’. The newspapers were amazed by the speed with which he carried out building projects and set up pension funds and other social services, and the comment heard wherever Europeans compared notes was that ‘at least the trains in Italy are running on time again’. Winston Churchill called him a ‘Roman genius’, and in 1927 he assured Italian journalists that if he was Italian he would follow Mussolini ‘wholeheartedly, from start to finish, in your triumphant fight against the beastly predilections and passions of Leninism’. The Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi praised him as the saviour of Italy. In October 1927, the readers of the Dutch daily
Algemeen Handelsblad
chose him as ‘the greatest figure of his day’, second only to Thomas Edison.
    Mussolini's greatest diplomatic triumph was the concordat of 1929, which defined relations between the Vatican and Italy. When he embarked on his Ethiopian foray in 1935 – even as the Germans were expanding eastward, Mussolini wanted to build a colonial empire around the Mediterranean – the expedition was bid Godspeed by Pope Pius XI. In the cathedral at Milan, Cardinal Alfred Schuster blessed the banners which would ‘bear the cross of Christ to Ethiopia’.
    After that, an end came to the international appreciation for Fascism. Mussolini changed colours like a chameleon; he had always done so, but now it became obvious even to the most casual observer. In late 1937, he converted to anti-Semitism. Not only did he hope in this way to establish himself in Hitler's good graces, but he was also angry about the growing criticism of his Ethiopian adventure by the international ‘Jewish’ press. Criticism was something to which he was not accustomed. In imitation of Germany, marriages were forbidden between Jews and ‘persons of Aryan descent’, Jewish teachers and students were banned from the schools, restrictions were imposed on Jewish entrepreneurs. Leone Ginzburg, who successfully applied for Italian citizenship in 1931, despite his Jewishness, had it rescinded in 1938.
    Even so, under Mussolini, neither Ginzburg nor Foa were ever persecuted for being Jewish. Italy never became a truly anti-Semitic state. Thereluctance with which Italian officials and police – the Fascists among them – carried out the anti-Semitic measures stood in stark contrast to the punctuality shown, for example, by German, Austrian and Dutch officials. The deportation of Jews from Italy only began after the Germans had seized power, after September 1943. The number of Italian Jews killed was therefore significantly lower than in Germany: close to 7,000, a total of 16 per cent of the country's Jewish population. (By way of comparison, in France almost 25 per cent of all Jews were killed, in Belgium 40 per cent, in the Netherlands around 75 per cent.) In few European countries was the Holocaust sabotaged as thoroughly as in Fascist Italy.
    The Fascists’ racism was as void of content as many of their other slogans. It was not fanatical and principled, as it was with the Nazis, but opportunistic. From the beginning, the Fascist movement had Jewish members and Jewish financiers. Of those who took part in the March on Rome, 230 were Jews, after which Jewish party membership rose to more than 10,000. Anti-Semitic theoreticians like Giovanni Preziosi had little influence. When Il Duce and Pope Pius XI met in 1932, it was not Mussolini but the Pope who uttered overtly anti-Semitic comments. In a report unearthed by Mussolini biographer Richard Bosworth, the church's problems in the Soviet Union, Mexico and the Spanish Republic were, in the Pope's words ‘reinforced by the anti-Christian spirit of Judaism’.