FASCISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Pages 484-485

But the most remarkable difference was Hitler's attitude to Jews. In spite of recognizing Mussolini and Italian fascism as models, he seemed to avoid discussion of the role of Jews in the Italian movement. ⁶¹ If one accepts that anti-Semitism was absolutely central to Nazism, an assertion that Hitler himself often made, then it is extremely curious that the movement he repeatedly recognized as his model was not anti-Semitic. Hitler asserted that Jews inevitable undermine or corrupt any enterprise with which they have contact. Yet they were undeniably of great importance in the personal life of the man whom Hitler most admired in the world and in the movement he described as his inspiration.
   It is hard to believe that Hitler was unaware of the role of Jews in Italian Fascism.
[...]
Moreover, Fascist leaders, from Mussolini on down, repeatedly criticized Nazi anti-Semitism and tried to dissuade Hitler and his lieutenants from taking such a hard line in regard to the Jews, often pointing to the beneficial role of Jews in modern Italian history.⁶² Fascist leaders in other countries, too, criticized Nazi racism; Hitler and other Nazi leaders were undoubtedly aware of those criticisms.⁶³
   When encountering criticism of this sort, Hitler typically remained aloof, letting his lieutenants speak for him. Some of them actually seemed to accept that Italian Jews were different from German Jews, an acknowledgment that one might extrapolate from Hitler's rare comments on the issue.⁶⁴

⁶¹ The issue of the role of Jews in Fascism and in modern Italian history is not even mentioned in Mein Kampf, in Hitler's Secret Book, in Hitler's Table Talk, in Hermann Rausching's The Voice of Destruction, in Otto Wagener's Hitler - Memoirs of a Confidant, or in Eberhard Jäckel, ed., Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen - covering thousands of pages of his speeches, writings, and informal conversations, in which he pontificates endlessly on nearly every subject under the sun.
⁶² This tangled issue is elaborately investigated in Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, passim.
⁶³ Cf. Michael Ledeen, Universal Fascism; Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews
⁶⁴ When the Italian ambassador in early 1933 tried to dissuade Hitler from anti-Jewish actions, Hitler reportedly told him, in a heated exchange, that "no one understands this problem better than I do ... and I know how dangerous the Jews in Germany are." The qualifying "in Germany" cannot bear much weight, however, since Hitler time and again poke of "world Jewry" and rarely if ever explicitly recognized that Jews differed significantly from country to country.

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