← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 19455 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-08-05
2005-08-05 22:20 | User Profile
[I]A hypothetical question: would it have been possible for Hitler to recruit (at least some) German Jews to the Nazi Party, and concentrate on crushing just Communists - if he had only wanted or tried to? Both Italian and Croatian Fascists seemed to be able to do so.[/I]
[B]From "[I]The History of the Jews in Italy[/I]" (1945), by Cecil Roth, pp. 509-511:[/B]
[FONT=Georgia][COLOR=Indigo][SIZE=5]THE TOTALITARIAN STATE[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]"[B]WHEN, at the beginning of 1919, a wordy, unscrupulous journalist who had formerly been prominent in the ranks of extreme radicals founded the Fascist Party, under the cloak of militant patriotism, he found some of his earliest supporters among the Jews[/B], oblivious to the tragic implications of his doctrine. The new party was rabidly nationalist, and for a hundred years past the Jews had been counted among the most fervent supporters of Italian nationalism; it was anti-Socialist, and the Italian Jews were now pre-eminently members of the bourgeoisie. Mussolini for his part was eager for support from whatever quarter it might come. Like other Italians, he did not differentiate between the Jews and other sections of the Italian people; they had, moreover, shown their devotion to the conception of a Greater Italy in recent years in the Chamber, on the field, even in d'Annunzio's melodramatic raid on Fiume. Accordingly, the attitude of the Jews to the new movement at its inception was indistinguishable from that of the general population. If some of them, of liberal political tendencies, abhorred it, others were its dupes and were included among its earliest and most fervent supporters. [B]Half a dozen of them collaborated in its foundation, at least three were among the "martyrs" who gave their lives on its behalf in its earliest period of struggle, and were subsequently interred in its grandiose shrines[/B]. The Italian Jews, in their attitude to Fascism, were no worse, but alas no better than their compatriots.
During Mussolini's first years in power, their position remained ostensibly much as it had been before, and their place in Italian life was hardly affected. [B]Aldo Finzi, a redoubtable airman, was for a long time the Duce's right-hand man, suppressed an anti-Fascist rising in Milan and became assistant minister of the interior[/B]; and incongruously enough it was his wedding with a Catholic, at which a cardinal officiated, that gave an oppurtunity for the first demonstration of the rapprochement with the Vatican. [B]Carlo Fóa, Italy's outstanding physiologist, was editor of the Fascist review [I]Gerarchia[/I], in which capacity he did a good deal to mould the party's opinions and policy[/B]. Margherita Sarfatti was one of Mussolini's favorites, collaborated with him in his journalistic work, and later became his biographer. [B]Of the fifteen jurists who drew up the Fascist constitution, three were Jews; and Guido Jung, who was of foreign Jewish extraction, was for some years finance minister[/B].
...
"On the other hand, there was something to be put to the credit side, so long as Jew-baiting was generally considered disreputable. [B]Mussolini personally intervened to suppress manifestations of it on more than one occasion. He intermittently condemned antisemitism, received foreign Jewish representives, and was readily accessible to Italian Jewish leaders, such as Angelo Sacerdote, the lion-hearted Chief Rabbi of Rome, whom he assured in 1924 that "antisemitism is a growth which cannot obtain a foothold in Italy[/B]."[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]
[B]Some additional material from Arnaldo Momigliano's book "[I]On Pagans, Jews and Christians[/I]", pp. 243, 247 and 250:[/B]
[SIZE=3][COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Trebuchet MS]"One of the best-known (Italian) heroes of the First World War remains Roberto Sarfatti, the eighteen-year old student who happens to be the son of Margherita Sarfatti, who was later the mistress and the biographer of Mussolini. Even in the disgraceful Abyssinian and Spanish wars on 1936 the young hero was one of our Jewish students in the University of Turin, Bruno Jesi, who soon found himself confronted by the racial laws.
...
"[B]In 1939, when all Jews were thrown out of the army, the navy, and all other governmental positions, the Italian fleet, which had been rebuilt by the Jewish naval architect General Umberto Pugliese, was commanded by two Jewish admirals, Ascoli and Capon, the latter being the father-in-law of Enrico Fermi. In 1940 the Italian fleet was virtually destroyed by English bombing in the harbor of Taranto, and General Pugliese was called back to save what could be saved of the fleet he had built and the Fascists had lost[/B]. Admiral Capon, if I remember correctly, was allowed to fall into Nazi hands.
...
Fascism was bound to exclude most of those Jews who had solid liberal or socialist traditions behind them, while economic interests led some Jews to direct involvement with Fascism. [B]One of the most honest Fascists was Gino Olivetti, the representative of industrial interests inside Fascism.[/B] Fascist ideological sympathies were also to be found among jurists like Gino Arias and Giorgio del Vecchio, who wanted a reform of the Italian state on corporate lines. I have already mentioned the special situation in Ferrara, where the Fascist mayor was a Jew with a prestigious Jewish name, Ravenna.[/FONT][/COLOR][/SIZE]
Petr
2005-08-07 15:50 | User Profile
ping!
2005-08-07 16:49 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.anti-nazi.tk]Check out this website![/URL] :ninja:
2005-08-07 19:02 | User Profile
Wicked88, just what has that link got to do with the content of this thread? What's your point?
Petr
2005-08-07 20:53 | User Profile
Petr,
Maybe he is trying to make that idiotic writer's point.