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The racial and antisemitic policy of the
Fascist regime introduced in Italy in 1938 was preceded and
supported by intensive propaganda and, at the same time, included
cultural policies grounded in a theoretical elaboration of racism.
Analyzing these policies necessarily requires referring to the
question of Fascist ideology.
In spite of Emilio Gentile's work that appeared during the 1970s,
the study of Italian Fascist ideology was considered something
marginal to the comprehension of the Fascist regime until the late
1980s or early 1990s. The reasons for this trend were many, one of
which was the preeminence in the historiography of the so-called
"anti-Fascist paradigm"; only after the fall of communism in Eastern
Europe and in Russia did historiography generally accept as relevant
the research of Fascist ideology (even though another paradigm has
appeared and replaced the antifascist one, the anticommunist
perspective). Gentile's originality consists in providing an
historical definition of Fascist ideology, without making it
abstract or theoretical. Gentile analyzes particular features of
Fascist ideology, tracing its development and showing its connection
with Fascist policies and institutions. He places Fascist ideology
in the framework of his definition of Fascism, basing it on the
correlation between organizational, cultural and institutional
dimensions of this historical phenomenon. This framework allowed him
to define Fascism as a totalitarian movement, regime, and political
religion. He analyzes the historical development of Fascism's
totalitarian ideology, and its manifestations in organizations and
institutions. One of the Fascist institutions was the "Ufficio per
lo studio dei problemi della razza" of the Ministry of Popular
Culture (later "Ufficio propaganda e studi sulla razza", also known
as Ufficio Razza), the most important institution devoted to the
racial propaganda and to the transmission of racism and antisemitism
in Italian culture during the Fascist regime.
The aim of my research, based on new unpublished documents, is to
reconstruct, according to this approach to the Fascist ideology, the
history and the activities of the Ufficio Razza, bringing to light
some features and different forms of Italian racism and
antisemitism. Another goal of this research is to compare the work
of the Italian Race Office with similar institutions in Nazi Germany
and in other countries of Europe such as Croatia and Romania. The
founding of the Race Office in Italy was strictly connected with the
history of the Manifesto of Italian Racism, which was published on
the 14th of July 1938, under the title "Il Fascismo e i problemi
della razza" (also known as the Racist Scientists' Manifesto). The
Race Office was officially created in August 1938 for the study,
organization, promotion and support of the racial campaign.
Moreover, the coming-into-being of the Race Office was also
intimately connected to the already existing racial theories and
studies in Italy and to the racial and antisemitic campaigns before
1938 (which represents another stage of this research).
In the last fifteen years, historiography has moved towards a new
vision of the racist policy of the Fascist regime, reevaluating its
cultural aspects and considering the role of the scientific culture
in relation to that policy. Abandoning the concept that racism based
on the Nazi-German model is the only form of racism (as one may
understand from the works of Renzo De Felice), some scholars have
claimed that there existed an Italian racism distinct from the
German one, and tried to depict the form taken by Italian racism as
"spiritualistic." Although antisemitism, already existing in Italy
in various forms, was not a constituent element of the Fascist
ideology (at least until 1938 when it became part of the Italian
racism aimed to defend the Italian race), after 1938 a large part of
Italian culture and young Fascists, as De Felice wrote, supported
antisemitism. At the same time, as pointed out by Giorgio Israel, a
theoretical and scientific elaboration of racism did exist in Italy
connected with the racial policies of the Fascist regime. After the
First World War, many sectors of the Italian scientific community
that dealt with racial topics - in particular demography, eugenics,
constitutionalist medicine, physiology and anthropology of races -
turned their attention to the issue of national identity. The
elaboration and development of the racial studies converged with the
centrality of the population issue in the Fascist regime. Changing
his earlier position, Mussolini in 1927 adopted a racial nationalism
and the demographic question then became a central issue for his
totalitarian ideology. The population policies of the Fascist
regime, as outlined by Carl Ipsen, passed through different stages.
Of great relevance among these stages for the transition towards an
openly racial phase was the imperial policy of Fascism in the second
half of the thirties. The colonization of Eastern Africa led in 1937
to the introduction, for the first time in the Italian Fascist
regime, of racial legislation regulating the relations between
Italians and native Ethiopians.
The process that led up to the adoption of the anti-Jewish racial
legislation and policy in 1938 does not represent a necessary path
from these antecedents, in contrast to what can be observed in the
German case of Nazi ideology and legislation. This is what makes the
difference between the historiographical interpretations of Giorgio
Israel and Pietro Nastasi, on the one hand, and Roberto Maiocchi, on
the other. Maiocchi asserts a deterministic transition from Italian
racism to the racial and antisemitic policy of Fascism. According to
Israel and Nastasi, the anti-Jewish racial policy introduced by the
regime in Italy was the historical result of different factors, all
of them equally important and concurrent: the demographic policy in
the '1920's connected with the ideological task of creating the "new
Fascist man"; the racial science and eugenics; the imperial and
colonial policy of the Fascist regime; the anti-bourgeois campaign
declared by Mussolini in 1937; the alliance with Nazi Germany; the
inferior position of the Jewish minority after the Concordat with
the Catholic Church in 1929; and the struggle against Zionism
qualified as an "enemy of Fascism."
According to Mauro Raspanti it is possible to distinguish between
three cultural forms of racism in Italy: biological, national and
esoteric-traditionalist. They correspond to three different phases
of the “Ufficio Razza” policy managed by three directors: Guido
Landra (1938-1939), Sabato Visco (1939-1941) and Alberto Luchini
(1941-1943). A more accurate and detailed analysis of the cultural
policies of the “Ufficio Razza” show how it became an institutional
place of struggle between aryan-biological and roman-spiritualistic
racism (according to the typical pattern of the cultural policies in
the Fascist regime), acknowledging the existence of a particularly
Italian kind of racism, quite different from the German one: the so
called “roman-italic-spiritualistic” racism, principally promoted by
Sabato Visco and Nicola Pende. This kind of racism, with its central
concept of the ethnic group, became the hegemonic form of racism, at
least for a certain period of time, because it was more acceptable
to Catholic culture and mentality (as showed by Israel and Nastasi).
It received also great support from scholars of the humanities.
The function of the “Ufficio Razza” was to culturally promote and
scientifically justify racism and antisemitism in Italy; these aims
were reached by means of propaganda conferences, publications (books
and a special journal La difesa della razza [1938-1943], that will
be also analyzed in this research, mainly in the period in which it
was strictly connected with the activities of the Race Office),
specialized libraries, programs of scientific research in the
Italian universities, and the organization of racial exhibitions.
The last phase (1941-1943) is characterized by the creation of
several Centers for the Study of the Jewish Question where, in
addition to the abovementioned activities, lists and population
records of the Jews were collected in collaboration with the local
police-headquarters and prefectures. These records were probably
later used for the arrest and deportation of the Jews under the
Social Italian Republic (1943-1945), when the “Ufficio Razza” had
already been transformed together with other tasks into the
“Ispettorato per la razza” (1944-1945).
An analysis of the activities of the Italian Race Office reveals the
connections between its cultural policies and parts of the
scientific research tradition in Italy, and at the same time,
permits one to evaluate the role played by the elite culture and the
university institutions in the construction of Italian racism and
racial antisemitism. It also enables us to reconstruct the main
currents of the racist political doctrines during the Fascist
regime. A complete analysis of this topic in all its aspects and
stages (as far as the documentation permits) has never been carried
out till now (not even by the recent works of Aaron Gillette). The
integration of the unpublished documents (found in institutional and
private archives, most of which have not yet been examined by
scholars) with the published materials, clarifies the role of the
cultural policies of the “Ufficio Razza” within the general context
of the Fascist policies and of the Italian culture during this
period. From this perspective, it is possible to carry out a
comparative analysis of the cultural dimensions of racist and the
antisemitic policies in some European countries that created
institutions analogous to the “Ufficio Razza." What further makes
the comparison possible is the fact that some of the Uffico Razza's
leading men maintained links with similar institutions in Germany,
Romania and Croatia and, for instance, with leaders of the German
racist movement such as Eugen Fischer and Alfred Rosemberg. This
cooperation finds its roots in the context of the international
scientific network developed before the period of the persecutions
of the Jews in Europe. This analysis will also point out the
differences and similarities in the respective national contexts and
forms of racism and antisemitism.
From a methodological point of view, the reconstruction of these
activities and cultural policies will be emphasized in this research
in order to examine the cultural practices as a means of sustaining
authority, asserting difference and, above all, persecuting Jews.
Moreover, to determine the role of academic and university culture
in the persecution of the Jews in Italy during the Fascist regime
throughout the history of the Race Office in comparison with
analogous institutions in Nazi Germany, Croatia and Romania requires
an approach that combines the analysis of cultural and political
practices, in order to explain the relations between ideologies and
action, attitudes and behaviors of individuals within social groups
situated in a particular political society and cultural context.
From this point of view, political language will be considered in
this research as an essential element of the political reality (in
the sense of providing for the possibility of action); propaganda
will be regarded as a social technique that disseminates
"contingent" information in order to create an "accepted opinion"
among groups of people; and education will be seen as
"noncontingent" information that involves durable values (according
to the theory of Francesco Fattorello).
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