-Caveat Lector-
"The new [Fascist] govemment [of Italy] hastened to inform
Angelo Sacerdoti, the chief rabbi of Rome and an active Zionist,
that it would not support anti-Semitism either at home or abroad.
The Zionists, assuring Il Duce of their loyalty, then obtained an
audience with Mussolini on Dec. 20, 1922. Mussolini bluntly told
them how he viewed Zionism -- as a tool of BRITISH interests."
ZIONISM AND ITALIAN FASCISM, 1922-1933
from Lenni Brenner's
"Zionism in the Age of Dictators," Chapter 4
The World Zionist Organisation's attitude toward Italian
Fascism was determined by one criterion: Italy's position on
Zionism. When Mussolini was hostile to them, Weizmann was
critical of him; but when he became pro-Zionist, the Zionist
leadership enthusiastically supported him. On the day Hitler came
to power they were already friends with the first Fascist leader.
As a revolutionary, Mussolini had always worked with Jews in
the Italian Socialist Party, and it was not until he abandoned
the left that he first began to echo the anti-Semitic ideas of
the northern European right-wing. Four days after the Bolsheviks
took power, he announced that their victory was a result of a
plot between the 'Synagogue', that is, 'Ceorbaum' (Lenin),
'Bronstein' (Trotsky), and the German Army.[(1)] By 1919 he has
Communism explained thusly: the Jewish bankers --'Rotschild',
'Wamberg', 'Schyff' and 'Guggenheim'-- were behind the Communist
Jews.[(2)] But Mussolini was not so anti-Semitic as to exclude
Jews from his new party and there were five among the founders
of the Fascist movement. Nor was anti-Semitism important to his
ideology; in fact it was not well received by his followers.
Anti-Semitism in Italy had always been identified in the
public mind with Catholic obscurantism. It was the Church which
had forced the Jews into the ghettos and Italian nationalists had
always supported the Jews against the Popes, whom they saw as
opponents of a united Italy. In 1848 the walls of the Roman
ghetto were destroyed by the revolutionary Roman Republic.
With their defeat the ghetto was restored, but the final victory
of the nationalist Kingdom of Italy in 1870 brought an end to
discrimination against the Jews. The Church blamed the Jews for
the nationalist victory, and the official Jesuit organ, Civilta
Cattolica, continued to insist that they had only been defeated
by 'conspiracies with the Jews [that] were formed by Mazzini,
Garibaldi, Cavour, Farini and De Pretis'. [(3)] But this clerical
ranting against the heroes of Italian nationalism merely
discredited anti-Semitism, particularly among the anti-clerical
youth of the nationalist petty bourgeoisie. Since the essence of
Fascism was the mobilisation of the middle class against Marxism,
Mussolini listened carefully to his followers' objections: what
was the point of denouncing Communism as a Jewish conspiracy, if
the Jews themselves were not unpopular?
'True Jews have never Fought against You'
As with many another, Mussolini originally combined
anti-Semitism with pro-Zionism, and his Popolo d'ltalia continued
to favour Zionism until 1919, when he concluded that Zionism was
merely a cat's-paw for the British and he began to refer to the
local Zionist movement as 'so-called Italians'. [(4)] All
Italian politicians shared this suspicion of Zionism, including
two Foreign Ministers of Jewish descent --Sidney Sonnino and
Carlo Schanzar. The Italian line on Palestine was that Protestant
Britain had no real standing in the country as there were no
native Protestants there. What they wanted in Palestine was an
international 'Holy Land'. In agreeing with the position of the
pre-Fascist governments on Palestine and Zionism, Mussolini was
primarily motivated by imperial rivalry with Britain and by
hostility to any political grouping in Italy having a loyalty to
an international movement.
Mussolini's March on Rome of October 1922 worried the
Italian Zionist Federation. They had no love for the preceding
Facta government, given its anti-Zionism, but the Fascisti were
no better on that score, and Mussolini had made clear his own
anti-Semitism. However, their concerns about anti-Semitism were
lifted immediately; the new govemment hastened to inform Angelo
Sacerdoti, the chief rabbi of Rome and an active Zionist, that
they would not support anti-Semitism either at home or abroad.
The Zionists then obtained an audience with Mussolini on 20
December 1922. They assured the Duce of their loyalty. Ruth
Bondy, a Zionist writer on Italian Jewry, relates: 'The
delegation, on its part, argued that Italian Jews would always
remain loyal to their native land and could help establish
relations with the Levant through the Jewish communities there.'
[(5)]
Mussolini bluntly told them that he still saw Zionism as a
tool of the British, but their pledge of loyalty softened his
hostility somewhat and he agreed to meet Chaim Weizmann, the
President of the WZO, who attended on 3 January 1923. Weizmann's
autobiography is deliberately vague, and often misleading, on his
relations with the Italian, but fortunately it is possible to
learn something of the meeting from the report given at the time
to the British Embassy in Rome. This explains how Weizmann tried
to deal with the objection that Zionism wore Britain's livery:
'Dr Weizmann, whilst denying that this was in any way the case,
said that, even if it were so, Italy stood to gain as much as
Great Britain by a weakening of Moslem power.' [(6)]
This answer cannot have inspired too much confidence in
Mussolini, but he was pleased when Weizmann asked permission to
name an Italian Zionist to the commission running their
settlement in Palestine. Weizmann knew the Italian public would
see this as Fascist toleration for the WZO, which would make it
easier for Zionism amongst wary Jews, frightened at the thought
of coming into conflict with the new regime. Mussolini saw it the
other way around; by such a cheap gesture he would win support
both at home and abroad from the Jewish community.
The meeting produced no change in Italian policy toward
Zionism or the British, and the Italians continued to obstruct
Zionist efforts by harassing tactics on the League of Nations
Mandate Commission. Weizmann never, then or later, mobilised
opposition to what Mussolini did to Italians, but he had to say
something about a regime that actively opposed Zionism. He spoke
out, in America, on 26 March 1923: "Today there is a tremendous
political wave, known as Fascism, which is sweeping over Italy.
As an Italian movement it is no business of ours -- it is the
business of the Italian Government. But this wave is now breaking
against the little Jewish community, and the little community,
which never asserted itself, is today suffering from
anti-Semitism.[(7)]
Italian policy toward Zionism only changed in the mid-1920s,
when their consuls in Palestine concluded that Zionism was there
to stay and that Britain would only leave the country if and when
the Zionists got their own state. Weizmann was invited back to
Rome for another conference on 17 September 1926. Mussolini was
more than cordial; he offered to help the Zionists build up their
economy and the Fascist press began printing favourable articles
on Palestinian Zionism.
Zionist leaders began to visit Rome. Nahum Sokolow, then the
Chairman of the Zionist Executive and later, in 1931-3, the
President of the WZO, appeared on 26 October 1927. Michael
Ledeen, a specialist on Fascism and the Jewish question, has
described the political outcome of the Sokolow-Mussolini talks:
"With this last meeting Mussolini became lionised by Zionism.
Sokolow not only praised the Italian as a human being but
announced his firm belief that Fascism was immune from
anti-Semitic preconceptions. He went even further: in the past
there might have been uncertainty about the true nature of
Fascism, but now, 'we begin to understand its true nature --
true Jews have never fought against you'. These words,
tantamount to a Zionist endorsement of the Fascist regime, were
echoed in Jewish periodicals all over the world. In this period,
which saw a new legal relationship established between the Jewish
community and the Fascist state, expressions of loyalty and
affection for Fascism poured out of the Jewish centers of Italy."
[(8)]
Not all Zionists were pleased with Sokolow's remarks. The
Labour Zionists were loosely affiliated to the underground
Italian Socialist Party via the Socialist International and they
complained, but the Italian Zionists were overjoyed. Prosperous
and extremely religious, these conservatives saw Mussolini
as their support against Marxism and its concomitant
assimilation. In 1927 rabbi Sacerdoti gave an interview to the
journalist Guido Bedarida:
"Professor Sacerdoti is persuaded that many of the
fundamental principles of the Fascist Doctrine such as: the
observance of the laws of the state, respect of traditions, the
principle of authority, exaltation of religious values, a desire
for the moral and physical cleanliness of family and the
individual, the struggle for an increase of production, and
therefore a struggle against Malthusianism, are no more or less
than Jewish principles."[(9)]
The ideological leader of Italian Zionism was the lawyer
Alfonso Pacifici. An extremely pious man, he ensured that the
Italian Zionists were to become the most religious branch of the
world movement. In 1932 another interviewer told of how Pacifici
also: "expressed to me his conviction that the new conditions
would bring about a revival of Italian Jewry. Indeed, he claimed
to have evolved a philosophy of Judaism akin to the spiritual
Tendenz of Fascism long before this had become the rule of life
in Italian polity."[(10)]
Establishment of Relations between Mussolini and Hitler
If the Zionists at least hesitated until Mussolini warmed to
them before they responded, Hitler had no such inhibitions. From
the beginning of the Fascist take-over, Hitler used Mussolini's
example as proof that a terror dictatorship could overthrow a
weak bourgeois democracy and then set about smashing the workers'
movements. After he came to power he acknowledged his debt to
Mussolini in a discussion with the Italian ambassador in March
1933. 'Your Excellency knows how great an admiration I have for
Mussolini, whom I consider the spiritual head of my "movement" as
well, since if he had not succeeded in assuming power in Italy,
National Socialism would not have had the slightest chance in
Germany.'[(11)]
Hitler had two cavils with Fascism: Mussolini savagely
oppressed the Germans in the south Tyrol which the Italians had
won at Versailles, and he welcomed Jews into the Fascist Party.
But Hitler saw, quite correctly, that what the two of them wanted
was so similar that, eventually, they would come together. He
insisted that a quarrel with the Italians over the Tyrolians
would only serve the Jews; therefore, unlike most German
rightists, he was always willing to abandon the Tyrolians.[(l2)]
Furthermore, in spite of the fact that he had no knowledge of
Mussolini's earlier anti-Semitic remarks, in 1926, in Mein Kampf
Hitler declared that in his heart of hearts the Italian was an
anti-Semite. "The struggle that FASCIST ITALY is waging, though
perhaps in the last analysis unconsciously (which I personally do
not believe), against the three main weapons of the Jews is the
best indication that, even though indirectly, the poison fangs of
this supra-state power are being torn out. The prohibition on
Masonic secret societies, the persecution of the supra-national
press, as well as the continued demolition of international
Marxism, and, conversely, the steady reinforcement of the Fascist
state conception, will in the course of the years cause the
Italian government to serve the interests of the Italian people
more and more, without regard for the hissing of the Jewish world
hydra."[(13)]
But if Hitler was pro-Mussolini, it did not follow that
Mussolini would be pro-Nazi. Throughout the 1920s the Duce kept
repeating his famous 'Fascism is not an article for export'.
Certainly after the failure of the Beer Hall putsch and the
Nazis' meagre 6.5 per cent in the 1924 elections, Hitler
represented nothing. It required the Depression and Hitler's
sudden electoral success, before Mussolini began to take serious
notice of his German counterpart. Now he began to talk of Europe
going Fascist within ten years, and his press began to report
favourably about Nazism. But at the same time he repudiated
Hitler's Nordic racism and anti-Semitism. Completely disoriented
by his philo-Semitism, the Zionists hoped that Mussolini would be
a moderating influence on Hitler when he came to power.[(14)] In
October 1932, on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome,
Pacifici rhapsodised about the differences between the real
Fascism in Rome and its ersatz in Berlin. He saw: "radical
differences between the true and authentic Fascism --Italian
Fascism, that is-- and the pseudo-Fascist movements in other
countries which ... are often using the most reactionary phobias,
and especially the blind, unbridled hatred of the Jews, as a
means of diverting the masses from their real problems, from the
real causes of their misery, and from the real culprits."[(15)]
Later, after the Holocaust, in his autobiography "Trial and
Error," Weizmann lamely tried to establish an anti-Fascist record
for the Italian Zionists: 'The Zionists, and the Jews generally,
though they did not give loud expression to their views on the
subject, were known to be 'anti-Fascist'.[(16)] Given
Mussolini's anti-Zionism in the early years of his Fascist
career, as well as his anti-Semitic comments, Zionists hardly
favoured him in 1922. But, as we have seen, they pledged their
loyalty to the new power once Mussolini assured them that he was
not anti-Semitic. In the first years of the regime, the Zionists
knew he resented their international affiliations, but that
did not b ring them to an tiFascism and, certainly after the
statements in 1927 by Sokolow and Sacerdoti, the Zionists could
only be thought of as Mussolini's good friends.
Notes
1. Meir Michaelis, "Mussolini and the Jews", p. 12.
2. "Ibid.", p. 13.
3. Daniel Carpi, 'The Catholic Church and Italian Jewry under the
Fascist', "Yad Vashem Studies" vol. IV, p. 44n.
4. Michaelis, "Mussolini and the Jews", p. 14.
5. Ruth Bondy, "The Emissary: A Life of Enzo Sereni", p. 45.
6. Daniel Carpi, 'Weizmann's Pohtical Activities in Italy from
1923 to 1934', "Zionism" (Tel Aviv, 1975), p. 225.
7. Chaim Weizmann, 'Relief and Reconstruction', "American
Addresses" (1923), p. 49.
8. Michael Ledeen, 'Italian Jews and Fascism', "Judaism" (Summer
1969), p. 286.
9. Guido Bedarida, 'The Jews under Mussolini', "Reflex" (October
1927), p.58.
10. Paul Goodman, 'Judaism under the Fascist Regime', "Views"
(April 1932), p. 46.
11. Carpi, 'Weizmann's Political Activities in Italy', p. 238.
12. Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", p. 628.
13. "Ibid"., p. 637.
14. Michaclis, "Mussolini and the Jews", p. 49.
15. Ibid., p. 29.
16. Weizmann, "Trial and Error", p. 368.
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