Between Mussolini and Hitler: The Jews and the Italian Authorities in France and Tunisia (review)

Book Reviews 197 Between Mussolini and Hider: The]ews and the Italian Authorities in France and Tunisia, by Daniel Carpi. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994. 341 pp. $49.95. Attempts to explain Mussolini's 1938 adoption of antisemitism as well as the fundamental difference between how Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ultimately treated the Jews within their respective empires have led some historians to emphasize the contrasting political cultures ofthe two nations and the dynamics of the German-Italian alliance. In his book Between Mussolini and Hitler, focusing on the Jews in France and Tunisia, Daniel Carpi offers a different perspective. He emphasizes the primacy of FrenchItalian relations on the one hand and the indigenous Fascist roots of Mussolini's turn to antisemitism on the other. Uncovering additional archival materials concerning Italy's policy of protecting the Jews-both Italian and foreign-within its occupation zone in France, Carpi argues that political concern for the future fate of these territories was key. To assert its sovereignty, the Vichy regime tried to round up and deport theJews; conversely, to symbolize their authority and long-term territorial aspirations, Italians blocked French policy and protected Jews. Humanitarian and moral motivations were aroused by the awareness of the Nazi mass murder of Jewish deportees in the east, but they were ultimately less important than political considerations. If the general story of Italy's protection ofJews in its French occupation zone has been told before, Carpi provides much new material concerning Italian policy in German-occupied France and Tunisia. The original attitude of Italian authorities toward Italian Jews resident in these two regions was negative, for such Jews were suspected of being over· whelmingly anti-fascist. German greed for the property of Italian Jews in France, as well as the carelessness of French policemen in including Jews of Italian citizenship in the roundups of foreign Jews, forced Italian diplomats into the habit of protecting Italian Jews as part of protecting Italian interests, despite their initial antipathies. In Tunisia, Italian Jewry constituted some six percent of the Italian population but owned over 50 percent of Italian property, and protection of Tunisia's Italian Jewry was even more clearly a matter of preserving the Italian pOSition there. In conclusion rather than as introductory background, Carpi argues that Mussolini's turn to antisemitism in 1938 is to be explained more by internal factors than by Italian-German relations. For Carpi Italian Fascism was a coalition of radical and violent anti-bourgeois proponents of "fascist revolution" on the one hand and conservative, bourgeois, Catholic, antisocialist proponents of order on the other. Mussolini himself was of "two 198 SHOFAR Spring 1996 Vol. 14, No.3 souls" but preserved the consensus behind the popularity of the Fascist regime as long as he tilted toward the latter. When Mussolini took a radical turn toward "fascist revolution" in both foreign and racial policy in the late 1930s, he broke the consensus and alienated the military, civil service, and diplomatic elites who ultimately triumphed over the weakened and vacillating Duce of 1942-43 and shaped the policies that thwarted Nazi Germany, protected Jews, and preserved Italian honor. In this reviewer's opinion, Carpi could have strengthened his book by expanding the historiographical section and explicitly engaging the arguments of other historians of Italian Jewish policy and rescue, such as Meir Michaelis, Jonathan Steinberg, and the late Menachem Shelach. Christopher R. Browning Pacific Lutheran University Insiders and Outsiders: Jewish and Gentile Culture in Germany and Austria, edited by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and Gabriele Weinberger. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994. 365 pp. $44.95. Insiders and Outsiders is an ambitious attempt to present an overall history of the dynamics of the outsider, in his/her contribution to German and Austrian culture. The book consists of 28 essays by cultural and literary historians as well as by journalists, all of whom are involved in GermanJewish studies. In addressing the issue of the outsider within literary discourse, the editors take a historical approach focusing on the Jewish community. Divided into six sections with an introduction and conclusion, the book begins with a broad sweep of the history of the Jewish influence during specified...