British Reactions to the Introduction of Race Laws in Fascist Italy, 1938-1939

When in the autumn of 1931 Major Duncan McCallum and his wife Violet were travelling from Kenya to British Somaliland, the local Italian provincial governor Commendatore Massimo Adolfo Vitale hosted them in Italian Somaliland. From this encounter spurred a friendship between the British Major and the Italian Officer, with the both of them remaining in correspondence until 1937, when the contact was temporarily lost due to Vitale’s transfer to Libya.¹ Only in February 1939 McCallum gained new information on the whereabouts of his friend, as he received a letter by Vitale, sent from Derna in Libya on the 21December 1938. Calling on their friendship, Vitale asked “for a big favour, in one of the very saddest moments of (his) life.” After thirty-four years in the government’s service, both in the military and in the colonial administration, numerous military decorations earned by himself, his son and other members of his family, the Italian Officer was dismissed from service for the sole motive of being the son of two Jews and thus falling victim to the recently introduced Italian racial laws. The favour Vitale asked of McCallum therefore regarded the possibility of using his contacts in the British establishment to help him find a post anywhere in the British administration. Vitale underlined that he would be willing to serve anywhere around the globe within the British colonial Empire.² In an attempt to aid his friend, McCallum forwarded the letter to Sir Neill Malcolm, High Commissioner for Refugees, and David Victor Kelly at the Foreign Office, underlining especially Vitale’s connection to the Italian colonial administration.³ Unable to find a fitting occupation, Kelly’s response was negative, but he encouraged McCallum to further attempt to contact the Colonial and the Home Office.⁴

When, however, only a few days later a second letter from Vitale arrived, McCallum began to grow worried of the surprisingly open approach the former high-profile colonial Officer chose in engaging with the British institutions, suspecting a ”crude attempt on the part of Italian officialdom to obtain information from Great Britain.”⁵ Following this suggestion, the Foreign Office’s attitude changed rapidly, fearing that “there may be something fishy in this”⁶ When only a few days later, a desperate Vitale appeared in London and tried to meet up with his friend McCallum, the latter was shocked and avoided any contact with his (now former) friend, who had now become a refugee.⁷

Up to this point, the story of Massimo Adolfo Vitale’s attempt to find aid in liberal Great Britain can be traced through a series of letters collected in three files, created by the Foreign Office and stored at the National Archives of Great Britain. In 1939, without the help of his acquaintances in the British establishment, he fled first to France and later to Morocco. The Commendatore returned to Italian State service in 1944, after the abrogation of the racial laws, and returned to his home country in autumn of the same year, where he began to work for the new Italian government.⁸

Vitale’s case, just one among hundreds of such desperate requests for help that can be found in the archives of the Foreign Office of many philanthropical organisations and of numerous individuals throughout Great Britain,⁹ stands out, as after 1945 he would go on to become one of the pioneers of early Italian Holocaust research.¹⁰ At the same time, his case shows how the “measures for the defence of the Italian race,”¹¹ not only impacted crucially on one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, but also “internationalised” the question of Italian race politics, as Jewish philanthropical organisations and the British government were forced to deal with Fascism’s new use of the categories of race and nationality.

This paper, based on documents from the National Archives, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Collections of the Wiener Holocaust Library, aims to reconstruct some of the early reactions of British Jewry and diplomatic institutions to the introduction of racial laws in Italy and to delve into the contacts between these two subjects. The broader aim of this work is not to offer an exhaustive reconstruction of British diplomatic reactions and Jewish networking efforts, instead, it tries to outline some of the central decision-making processes between September 1938 and January 1939 and to show preliminary analytical and interpretative approaches to the findings, that I hope to build on in my doctoral research.

An outside look on Fascist Racism – The British case

While British reactions to German antisemitism and the Holocaust have been at the centre of numerous historical studies over the last decades,¹² the responses of the British establishment and public to the Italian racial laws have not yet been systematically analysed.

This discrepancy, on the one hand, can be explained by the general disparity of interest in international historiography towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. On the other hand, it stems from the tendency to regard Italian racism as a direct consequence, or even imitation of National-Socialist antisemitic law-making. Even though historians Renzo De Felice and Meir Michaelis proved that it wasn’t German political pressure to cause the introduction of racial policies in Italy beginning in the summer of 1938, National-Socialist racism until recently was still widely considered the main role model for the Italian “racial-turn” of 1938 and caught most of the interest of international historiography.¹³

In an attempt to challenge this apologetic view of national history, Italian historians from 1988 onwards, outlined the endogenous and autochthonous nature of the Italian racial policies and showed that not only racism and antisemitism didn’t spur from German pressure or influence, but that there were deep roots, embedded within the nation’s history and culture, fascism could – and did – build its policies upon.¹⁴ More recent international studies, however, addressed antisemitism and far-right dictatorships in Interwar Europe from a transnational point of view¹⁵ and progressively understood the Rome-Berlin Axis not only as a military, but as a cultural alliance, based on a common project for a New European Order.¹⁶ Between the Italian interpretation of fascist racism as a phenomenon characterized by its particularities, and the notion of antisemitism as a commonality among nearly all far-right regimes in Interwar Europe, a certain historiographical “tension” emerged.

In response to this, a series of recent contributions suggests conceiving of the ideological particularities of Fascist racism as a result of mediatic framings, employed by the regime to distinguish itself rhetorically from its National-Socialist partner.¹⁷ Through this analytical approach, on the one hand, the “tension” is dissolved, as the particularities of Italian racism are interpreted as the regime’s way of positioning itself within a broader political block of far-right regimes. On the other hand, the attempt to distinguish itself from Germany, suggests the conscious use of racism as a means of foreign politics. International responses to the Italian decisions, therefore, become a new and interesting field of research to better understand the Fascist racial project. In this context, British reactions are of central importance, as there were numerous ideological, political and diplomatic entanglements, which differentiated the Italian-British relationship from the one with Nazi Germany, as the latter was immediately perceived as a dangerous, while fascism for many years seemed to offer an adequate political solution for the Italian context, an interesting experiment not to be expanded to Great Britain, however.¹⁸ More radical voices – most prominently Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) – even called for a proper British Fascism and shaped Great Britain’s view of the phenomenon. After the rise of National-Socialism and its first political successes, Germany, however, replaced Italy as Mosley’s major reference point, partly due to its antisemitic propaganda, which was promptly adopted by the BUF. ¹⁹ As Bernhard Dietz shows, Italian fascists also invested important resources into the construction of close relationships with parts of the British intellectual establishment.²⁰ It seems reasonable to assume that this attempted projection of “soft power” was linked to specific diplomatic and political ambitions.

As Mussolini planned to transform the Mediterranean into an “Italian sea” the confrontation with Great Britain, which controlled the accesses of Gibraltar and Suez, in the long run was inevitable.²¹ The invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935 significantly worsened the relation between the two countries, as Great Britain and the League of Nations sanctioned Rome for its actions. The Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War one year later and the beginning reproachment with Nazi Germany further aggravated the dispute with the western democracies.²² In the following years the Anglo-Italian relations were, therefore, characterized by a tension between two different positions. On the one hand, the British interest to limit Italy’s expansion in the Mediterranean and on the African continent, on the other, the attempt to avoid open confrontation with Italy as it could contribute to consolidate the “Rome-Berlin Axis”. ²³ It is for this reason that Great Britain maintained important diplomatic relationships with Italy, which grew even closer over the course of the crisis year 1938.²⁴ The special attention London paid towards the developments in Fascist Italy is reflected by the articulated diplomatic documentation produced by the Foreign Office, which constitutes an important indicator of the impact Fascist racial policies had on the political equilibrium in Europe.

Finally, Great Britain in the late 1930s was home to a well-organised and internationally connected Jewish Community. Further, being responsible for Palestine under a League of Nations mandate, London diplomacy paid much attention to the developments regarding the “Jewish question”, and from 1933 onwards, to the growing problem of refugees fleeing from Germany.²⁵ The entanglements between the various local Jewish organizations and the British political sphere, as well as its international network which included individual and institutional contacts with the Italian Jewish community, produced important reflections on the Italian developments and their political and social implications.

In the following, based on these documents, I will describe the immediate reactions of British Jewry to the Italian race politics and show how the systematic collection and distribution of information regarding the Italian situation was meant to influence the political positioning of the British government. Secondly, I will outline the internal decision-making processes in the Foreign Office between October and December 1938, to demonstrate why ultimately the attempts of British Jewry failed and the British government never openly criticised Italian antisemitism.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews – Information as a means of gaining political influence

International reactions to Italian racism started immediately after the publication of the Manifesto della Razza (Race Manifesto) on 15 July 1938, allegedly written by a group of Italian Professors, in which ten key points of the fascist position towards the racial question were listed.²⁶ As the issue was commented on by international political newspapers, such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Times and The New York Times, the topic gained in momentum and was discussed within political and diplomatic circles. Therefore, it is not surprising, that the central organisation of British Jewry – the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD) – also immediately learned about the developments south of the Alps. Especially the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) in Amsterdam – an anti-Nazi organisation that observed the growing importance of Italian antisemites as early as 1936²⁷ – provided useful and in-depth-researched information on the matter.²⁸ Over the course of the summer, the JCIO continued to collect information from Italy and to forward it to the BOD and other Jewish organisations in Europe and abroad, keeping them informed on the public discourse in Italy and the political developments of the Fascist racist campaign.²⁹

By early September 1938, the situation escalated notably, as Italy by decree excluded all Jews from Italian Schools and Universities, and ordered the expulsion of all foreign Jews by March 1939, including those who acquired Italian citizenship after 1919.³⁰ Only a month later, during the meeting of the Great Fascist Council in the night between 6 and 7 October, the regime further defined its position on the racial question, publishing the Dichiarazione della Razza (Race Declaration). It contained the first definition of the legal category of “Jew” and thus laying the framework for the following racial laws of November, which further discriminated against Italian and foreign Jews.³¹

In a moment in which European borders became increasingly difficult to cross due to anti-immigration policies in numerous countries, thousands of mostly well-integrated individuals were, therefore, suddenly forced to leave the country.³² Numerous letters, mailed by Jews afflicted by the Italian legislation, their relatives or their employers to the British government and Jewish philanthropical associations, calling on them for help, bear witness to the difficulties of emigration and demonstrate how, after only a few weeks, Italian racial politics became a question of international importance exercising an important influence on foreign policy issues.

On 23 October, two weeks after the publication of the Dichiarazione della Razza, Jacob Rosenheim from the Agudas Israel World organisation wrote to Neville Laski, Chair of the BOD:

We are overwhelmed by letters from Italy, full of despair and anxiety; these unhappy families barely escaped from the teeth of Nazi-barbarism, don’t know where to seek a second refuge. All of them wish to come to England to remain here one or two years, before emigrating overseas.³³

Rosenheim further asked Laski to bring the matter to the attention of the British Foreign Office, hoping that, in the occasion of the upcoming ratification of the Anglo-Italian agreement,³⁴ a solution could be found particularly on behalf of the 20.000 individuals coming from countries to which they were unable to return – especially Germany and Austria.³⁵ In his response, Laski assured Rosenheim, that he had ”the matter (…) very much at heart”³⁶ and that he would bring it up with the authorities. He failed, however, to mention that he already wrote to Chamberlain weeks ago, asking the Prime Minister to receive a small deputation pleading the case of European Jewry before the upcoming negotiations, following the Munich Agreement³⁷ and that the Foreign Office deemed there was “no reason” for the Prime Minister to receive such a deputation.³⁸ Further, the Office wrote:

Under these conditions while it may be possible to listen to what a deputation from the Board of Deputies of British Jews has to say and to take note of their request, it seems impossible to hold out any encouragement that these requests will be entertained.³⁹

Laski and his colleagues at the BOD and its Joint Foreign Committee were therefore well-aware of the reluctance of the Foreign Office to let the strategic decision-making processes be influenced by humanitarian considerations advanced by a political and ethnical minority. At the same time, they were conscious of the fact, that the Home Office was yet reluctant to address the question of Italian Jews as part of the broader refugee problematic, as they had “so many urgent German cases to deal with, that it is not necessary to start on cases which will not become acute until March (1939) at the earliest”.⁴⁰ Further, the conviction that Italy’s take on racism would be more moderate than the German policies, was fuelled by the media and deeply rooted within the political establishment. The belief that, apart from the expulsion of “illegal Jewish” immigrants by March 1939, not much had to be expected, further slowed down political activism on behalf of the Jews on the peninsula.

In an attempt to change this narrative, get a better understanding of the situation in Italy and improve organisation of the relieve efforts, beginning in November, the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) and the BOD started to systematically collect information and to share it with other philanthropical and governmental organisations. One of the first reports on the Italian situation was redacted with assistance of the Comitato Assistenza Ebrei Italiani (Committee for the Assistance of Italian Jews, COMASEBIT) founded on the 20 November in response to the official introduction of the race laws.⁴¹ In this first systematic approach to the problem, the author Charles Grey identified two aspects that would present enormous challenges for any attempt to help the affected Jews. On the one hand, he understood that there was little possibility of the Italian Jews “being able to aid their kin, due to the fact that the only ones, whose economic life is more or less unaffected by the decrees, are the very small commercial people and artisans who can scarcely ensure their own existence”. On the other hand, the bureaucratic procedures necessary to leave the country – especially the necessity to produce a “nulla osta” issued by the Italian authorities – were often contradictory and made for a Kafkaesque situation, even for individuals in possession of the necessary legal and economic requirements.⁴² Grey laid the focus of his report primarily on the necessity to accumulate further information regarding the legal developments and the composition of the Jewish community in Italy, further he made it clear that any meaningful help had to come from abroad.

In order to generate a better understanding of the situation in Italy and building on Grey’s initial research, Oxford historian and active member of the British Jewish establishment, Cecil Roth,⁴³ commenced to gather information and material on the Italian racial campaign. For this work he relied heavily on a network of friends and colleagues created in the years before, mostly composed of Italian Jews and intellectuals. Among them were the Zionist Umberto Nahon, the editor of the Jewish periodical Israel, Dante Lattes, the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities and important industrialist, Federico Jarach and Milan’s Chief-Rabbi Gustavo Castelbolognesi.⁴⁴ It is reasonable to assume that he also had access to the transcripts of the Italian laws and decrees, distributed by the JCIO to its subscribers. Before the end of the year Roth wrote two memoranda on the situation in Italy, not limiting himself on a description of the race laws of 1938 and their consequences, but tracing the history of Jews in Italy over the last 2000 years and especially outlining the complex – and partly positive – relationship fascism had with Italian Jewry up until 1938.⁴⁵ On the 29 December, the Joint Foreign Committee sent three copies of the memoranda to the Foreign Office that distributed them to the Home Office and the Embassy in Rome. Roth’s view on the situation of Italian Jewry is summarised well in an internal dispatch for the BOD:

I. It is insufficiently realized that the plight of Italian Jewry, after four months or less of anti-Jewish discrimination, is worse than that of German Jewry after the first four years, and that in certain respects the Italian persecution has gone further than its German model. (…)

II. Whereas a network of organisations are caring for the German refugees, there is none to assist the Italians, who are disappointed at the negative results of the applications made to (the BOD).⁴⁶

Only two days later, on 31 December, Lord Perth, the British ambassador in Rome, was approached by the COMASEBIT and an American Jew by the name of D. T. Cohen. He asked for a personal encounter with the ambassador to brief him on the situation of Jews in Italy⁴⁷ and to use his diplomatic bag to send information on the situation to London. ⁴⁸ The attempt to personally engage with the ambassador before Chamberlain’s arrival at Rome, however, failed, and Cohen had to settle for an encounter with secondary embassy personal.

The last attempt to gather further information and to use it to influence the political standing of Great Britain already began in mid-December, when Laski, on behalf of the BOD and the AJDC, approached Sir John Hope Simpson. After Simpsons refusal, he contacted Scottish diplomat Sir Andrew MacFadyean, asking him to engage in a fact-finding-mission to Italy.⁴⁹ to J. H. Simpson, 13^th December 1938 and ivi. N. Laski to A. MacFadyean, 13^th December 1938.] The journey, scheduled initially to coincide with Chamberlain’s visit to Rome⁵⁰ – and therefore inherently political – was mostly organised by Roth, who provided MacFadyean with the contact details of many of his close friends and colleagues and planned for him to visit Milan, Rome and Florence. The contacts suggested by Roth among others included Nahon, Castelbolognesi and Lattes and represented the Italo-Jewish intellectual community he had come to know through his studies, which MacFadyean integrated with his own acquaintances, mostly from clerical and aristocratic circles.⁵¹ In the report he wrote after his return to Great Britain, MacFadyean stressed the difficulties connected to the emigration from Italy and underlined in the meantime that life for Italian Jews, not forced to leave the country, became increasingly unbearable. While he maintained the analytic framework of dividing the Jewish question in Italy into two parts, one regarding the foreign Jews in Italy and the second one about the discrimination of the Italian Jews, he concluded regarding both of these aspects:

There is nothing which British Jewry or World Jewry can do directly to produce any sensible improvement in the situation. The origin of the malady being political, the cure must be political, and therefore affected, if at all, by government action. Those with whom I talked were unanimous in deprecating any campaign, systematic and organized, by foreign Jews.⁵²

By the end of January 1939 all of these reports had been sent to the Foreign Office, in order to pressure British Politics into aiding the Jews in Italy and openly criticising Fascist antisemitism. However, neither ambassador Perth, nor Prime Minister Chamberlain – whose visit to Rome MacFadyean later described as a “diplomatic insanity”⁵³ – openly condemned the Italian racial policies. Neither did the British political establishment make any attempt to include the East-European and Italian Jews in the framework of the Evian refugee agreement,⁵⁴ which entered into force before the publication of the Manifesto della Razza and was limited only to German and Austrian Jews. The Jewish community in Great Britain, therefore, was not able to avoid the expulsion of thousands of families from Italy or to pressure the Foreign office into openly condemning the Italian policies. Consequently, by March 1939, it shifted its focus towards the construction of assistance networks to help those who managed to leave Italy to settle and find work.

The Foreign Office – Italian racism in the context of British diplomacy

Without being able to reconstruct the complex Anglo-Italian diplomatic relations and the role of racial policies therein, in this paper, I want to trace a part of the internal discourse within the Foreign Office, as it illustrates the different approaches and categories adopted by the political agents, helping to understand, why between 1938 and 1939 the British establishment deemed it reasonable to not publicly condemn what was happening in Fascist Italy.

In response to the Italian decrees of September and the planned meeting of the Grand Council of Fascism on the evening of 6 October, the day before, the United States’ ambassador William Phillips handed a diplomatic note to the Italian government,⁵⁵ stating that:

(…) Italians who have been properly admitted into the United States may reside wherever they like therein and are accorded the full protection of our laws (…) they also enjoy religious freedom and there is no discrimination neither on the ground of race or creed. My government believes, therefore, that upon further consideration the Italian Government will decide that American citizens lawfully residing in Italy will not be discriminated against on account of race or creed and that they will not be subjected to provisions of the nature of those embodied in the decree-laws in question.⁵⁶

This – for diplomatic standards already straight forward – critique of Rome’s decisions was reported by the Anglo-American press as an even harsher attack. Indeed, the Daily Mail’s correspondent in Washington stated: “There is a plain implication that if Italy discriminates against the Jews the United States will probably be forced to apply retaliatory measures”,⁵⁷ an interpretation many other newspapers shared. As a result, members of the Jewish Community started to pressure the British government to “adopt the same principle as President Roosevelt has done regarding the terrible decrees issued by the Italian Government in respect of the Jews”, hinting at the possibility of retaliation against the Italians living in Great Britain – an option never explicitly mentioned in the original note.⁵⁸

The British embassy in Rome confirmed the exchange of notes, without however, being able to confirm the version circulating in the press and stated that while the “Americans [were] moving in the matter of American Jews (…) it would be wiser (…) to wait for the results” before taking further decisions.⁵⁹ Although two weeks later, “the Americans seem(ed) to have got very little change from the Italians.”⁶⁰ The Board of Trade still assured that “if any mitigation of the treatment of Jews from American nationality” could be secured “the Secretary of State would no doubt desire to insist that Jews of British nationality should receive no worse treatment than those of American nationality.”⁶¹ In the meantime, the British legal advisors found no grounds on which to attack the Italian laws on principle. The embassy therefore was recommended to await further developments regarding the American request and “concentrate their efforts on securing reasonable treatment in cases of hardship, as for example in such matters as the disposal of property and permission to export the proceeds.”⁶² When the Italians finally responded, they excluded every possibility of favorable treatment of American Jews as such, as it “would constitute an unjust discrimination with respect to other foreign Jews.”⁶³

In the light of the American initiative’s failure, the Foreign Office decided to proceed with extreme caution to avoid a similar embarrassment on the stage of international politics. Perth presumed that an official protest of His Majesty’s government against the discrimination of British subjects in Italy would most certainly fail to obtain any change. Even though the legal advisor of the embassy entertained the idea of a formal protest on the base of the Anglo-Italian commercial treaty of 1883,⁶⁴ Perth decided to abstain from this option.⁶⁵ It could be possible, that this lack of urgency was also determined by Perth’s look at the situation of Jews in Italy, which still, in early October, he reported to be less harsh than what many expected.⁶⁶

When in December, the impending deadline of the expulsion decree, finally, forced the Embassy to take on the issue of Jewish British subjects threatened by the expulsion, Perth decided to confront the matter personally with Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.⁶⁷ In his response to Phillips, he remarked the possibility to appeal on an individual basis to a governmental commission to avoid deportation,⁶⁸ an option the British ambassador was well aware of.⁶⁹ On 3 December, Perth talked to Ciano, explicitly on a personal basis and not in the form of a formal complaint, and reported to London that “the interview was more satisfactory than (he) had dared to hope and Count Ciano showed much good will.”⁷⁰ Perth handed Ciano a list containing the names of thirteen British families, afflicted by the expulsion decree, but eager to stay in Italy, as most of them were professionals and very well integrated into the country’s social and economic fabric. While no promises were made, Perth seemed optimistic that a solution could be found.⁷¹ Indeed, only a week later Ciano – through Leonardo Vitetti – assured that all families in question could remain in Italy. He further explained that similar agreements could be reached with a number of other countries – excluded the United States – “who had brought up the question of principle”.⁷² Perth therefore concluded: “The crux of the business is that the Italian Government are likely to do a considerable amount for British Jews so long as we don’t attack them on the question of principle.”⁷³ The Southern Department in London deemed that “it might be more heroic to make vigorous protests, but I fear it would not help the Jews.”⁷⁴ The situation of British Jews in Italy, therefore, seemed to be resolved, but only in exchange for the British diplomat’s silence regarding the broader question of principle.

So, when by the end of the month, Dr. Cohen asked for an encounter with Perth, to inform him of the developments of the racial question in Italy and try to convince him to take action on behalf of the Jewish community on the peninsula, this course of action had already been categorically ruled out by British diplomacy. In fact Perth “(…) arrange(d) for him to be invited to call at the Embassy and see a member of the staff, who will explain to him that the British Ambassador here can only concern himself with the cases of British Jews and has no standing to concern himself with the general question.”⁷⁵ The Foreign Office had already ruled out every kind of general commitment on behalf of the Jews in Italy – ultimately, rendering useless the information-campaign organised by the BOD to put pressure on the His Majesty’s government.

Political opportunism or a question of principle?

The behavior outlined up to this point can be interpreted from various perspectives. Certainly, the British decision could appear to be a simple dismissal of humanitarian issues in favor of an opportunistic approach to foreign politics. But, as Michael Marrus remarks, there is a certain danger to this kind of interpretation. In retrospect, “(w)e believe that people should have acted otherwise, and we set out to show how they did not.”⁷⁶ Instead, to fully comprehend the British decisions, it is necessary to understand the underlying ideological framework on which the diplomats based their reasoning. Tony Kushner, in this regard, suggests that “national identities and their interplay with the dominant liberal ideologies determined the responses of countries such as Britain and America to the Holocaust,”⁷⁷ meaning that it is necessary to take into account ideological aspects of the British liberal identity such as the concept of citizenship.

The centrality of the concept within the Foreign Office can be observed in numerous occasions, one of them the already outlined Vitale case. On one hand, it shows how, the Foreign Office is reluctant to take responsibility for the Jews as such, while, on the other hand, it demonstrates the importance attributed to citizenship and nationality. Whereas Italy factually excluded the Jew Vitale from the nation, the British still feared he was secretly working for Rome, as they could not fully grasp the ideological radicality of the Fascist decision. While the British government refused to be held responsible for the Jews in general, the concept of citizenship posed a limit to this indifference. In fact, in early November, British diplomats argued that they had “no title to intervene on behalf of the Jews in Italy and it would be utterly useless to do so”, but they recognized immediately that they could not adhere to this course of action regarding British subjects.⁷⁸ This question of differentiation between Jews and British Jews, had already risen in late August. On 26 August, the Consulate in Naples referred to the Embassy in Rome, that recently a number of British subjects was approached by the Italian police, with inquiries regarding their race.⁷⁹ Commenting on the issue, Sir Noel Charles pointed out that he “could not see why the Italian police have really any right in interfering with the religious beliefs of foreigners” and that further he was convinced that “when a policeman asks a man whether he is a Jew or not that man is entitled to show his passport to the Italian authority and confine himself to the statement that he is a British subject.”⁸⁰ While the practicality of Charles’ approach was questioned, his general positioning was deemed reasonable.⁸¹ The Foreign Office, in this case, took a firm stand in the defence of British subjects faced with racial discrimination in Italy, without regard to the political consequences. As the Office was sure that “there is no such thing as a Jewish race”⁸² – an observation that fully concurred with the view of the Jewish establishment⁸³ – it refused to act on behalf of a distinction effectively dictated by the Fascist race laws – this would suggest that there were more than opportunistic political considerations to steer the British course of action.

For British diplomacy to react to the Italian developments as suggested by the BOD’s memoranda, which all called for a political intervention, as the hardship endured by the Jews in Italy exceeded the possibilities of philanthropical self-help, not only would have provoked a political confrontation with the regime. Although it would, implicitly, have meant to accept the racial paradigm and abandon the liberal conception of citizenship. The British government’s decision, therefore, was an ambiguous one. While it refused to adhere to the “new reality” dictated by the Italians and continued to adhere to the key-concepts of liberal democracy, at the same time, it washed its hands of the matter of 20.000 foreign Jews facing expulsion.

While the ideological dimension of British decision-making has to be taken into consideration, naturally, the political evaluations cannot be considered as secondary. On one hand, the unofficial agreement between Ciano and Perth prevented the embarrassment of having to accept the expulsion of British citizens from another country. On the other, the concession to not criticise Italian racial policies constitutes an important diplomatic victory for Ciano. Indeed, the promptness of the positive Italian answer and the open willingness to reach similar agreements with other countries is revelatory to the Italian intentions of using the racial policies in the field of foreign politics. Not only did the introduction of antisemitism strengthen Italy’s bond with Nazi Germany and possibly served as a cultural connection to other far right regimes in Eastern Europe. It also transformed the Jews living in Italy in political hostages, whose conditions and treatment could be traded for concessions in the field of foreign politics. It is in this line of research, that the analysis of international responses to fascist racism, both in the political and in the media-sphere, in my opinion, has the potential to contribute in a meaningful way to the field of Italian racial-studies. While in this brief report I have attempted to highlight some of the potentially interesting findings of my research in a concise manner, I hope to explore the international reactions to Italian racism in more detail and develop comprehensive interpretative approaches in my doctoral research.

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This article presents a number of preliminary research results of my ongoing doctoral research-project hosted at the University of Genoa «The international impact of the publication of the “Race Manifesto” in Fascist Italy, 1938-1940». Research for this project was made possible through the support of the EHRI Conny Kristel Fellowship taken at the Wiener Holocaust Library, funded through the European Unions’ Horizon 2020 Program.

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