Publisher Description

Describes the history and nature of the Italian Race Laws during the period (1938-43) when Italy was independent of German control.

Provides a comprehensive history from the rise of fascism in 1922 to its defeat in 1945. The author uses statistical evidence to document how the Italian social climate changed from relatively just to irredeemably prejudicial. He demonstrates that Rome did not simply follow the lead of Berlin.

This history of Italy's Jews under the shadow of the Holocaust examines the lives of five Jewish families: the Ovazzas, who propered under Mussolini and whose patriarch became a prominent fascist; the Foas, whose children included both an antifascist activist and a Fascist Party member, the DiVerolis who struggled for survival in the ghetto; the Teglios, one of whom worked with the Catholic Church to save hundreds of Jews; and the Schonheits, who were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck.

Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy reveals the centrality of violence to Fascist rule, arguing that the Mussolini regime projected its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination, and other everyday forms of coercion. Fascist repression was thus more intense and ideological than previously thought and even shared some important similarities with Nazi and Soviet terror.

Zimmerman examines the attitude and behavior of the Polish Underground towards the Jews during the Holocaust.

With Mussolini ’s Italy, R.J.B. Bosworth—the foremost scholar on the subject writing in English—vividly brings to life the period in which Italians participated in one of the twentieth century’s most notorious political experiments. Il Duce’s Fascists were the original totalitarians, espousing a cult of violence and obedience that inspired many other dictatorships, Hitler’s first among them. But as Bosworth reveals, many Italians resisted its ideology, finding ways, ingenious and varied, to keep Fascism from taking hold as deeply as it did in Germany. A sweeping chronicle of struggle in terrible times, this is the definitive account of Italy’s darkest hour.

"For the common reader as well as the professional one, Victoria de Grazia opens doors and sheds new light on a fascinating subject."—Mary Gordon, author of The Other Side

The period spanning the two World Wars was unquestionably the most catastrophic in Europe's history. Despite such undeniably progressive developments as the radical expansion of women's suffrage and rising health standards, the era was dominated by political violence and chronic instability. Its symbols were Verdun, Guernica, and Auschwitz. By the end of this dark period, tens of millions of Europeans had been killed and more still had been displaced and permanently traumatized. If the nineteenth century gave Europeans cause to regard the future with a sense of optimism, the early twentieth century had them anticipating the destruction of civilization. The fact that so many revolutions, regime changes, dictatorships, mass killings, and civil wars took place within such a compressed time frame suggests that Europe experienced a general crisis. The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945 reconsiders the most significant features of this calamitous age from a transnational perspective. It demonstrates the degree to which national experiences were intertwined with those of other nations, and how each crisis was implicated in wider regional, continental, and global developments. Readers will find innovative and stimulating chapters on various political, social, and economic subjects by some of the leading scholars working on modern European history today.

"A careful historical account linked to personal narratives."-New York Times Book Review. Eighty-five percent of Italy's Jews survived World War II. Nevertheless, more than six thousand Italian Jews were destroyed in the Holocaust and the lives of countless others were marked by terror. Susan Zuccotti relates hundreds of stories showing the resourcefulness of the Jews, the bravery of those who helped them, and the inhumanity and indifference of others. For Zuccotti, the Holocaust in Italy began when the first "black-shirted thug" poured a bottle of castor oil down the throat of his victim, or when the dignity of a single human being was violated. She writes: "We might examine again how most Italians behaved from the onset of fascism. . . . Did they do as much as they could? Or should they, and the Jews as well, have recognized the danger sooner, with the first denial of liberty and free speech? We might also ask ourselves whether we, as creatures without prejudice, would act as well as most Italians did under similar pressures. Would we risk our lives for persecuted minorities? Would we be more sensitive to the first assaults upon our liberties, when the only ones really hurt in the beginning are Communists, Socialists, democratic anti-Fascists, and trade unionists? And finally, we might be more aware than we are of the horrors that a racist lunatic fringe can commit, even in the best of societies." Susan Zuccotti teaches modern European history at Columbia University. She is also the author of The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews. The introduction by Furio Colombo was translated into English for this Bison Books edition. The author of God in America: Religion and Politics in theUnited States, Colombo is professor of Italian Studies at Columbia.