All or nothing : the Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943 /

Whereas Meir Michaelis (Mussolini and the Jews, CH, Sep'89) and Susan Zuccotti (The Italians and the Holocaust, CH, Sep '87) portrayed the fate of Jews under Fascism in Italy, noted German and European historian Steinberg examines the condition of Jews under Italian and German occupation in Yugoslavia, Greece, and France between 1941 and 1943. Steinberg attempts to explain why Italian officers and diplomats saved Jews, while their German counterparts carried out orders that delivered them to the death camps. He finds that Italian officers acted within a traditional monarchist frame of mind that was quite often liberal, antifascist, and even philo-Semitic when they protected both Italian Jews and Jewish refugees of other nationalities. German officers, on the other hand, were governed by traditions of obedience and by rigidities of thought that allowed them to blend their prejudices with Hitler's ideology of Untermenschen. For German soldiers there was also no escape from the Nazi system of repression and terror, whereas Italian officers could flout some orders without necessarily incurring great risks. Steinberg has succeeded in giving further insight into the motives of those who refused to go along with genocide and others who collaborated in it. Some of his explanations will provoke objections. However, no library, graduate or undergraduate should miss this study. It is well researched and documented, based on extensive archival sources, and crisply written. Good bibliography; adequate index. -G. P. Blum, University of the Pacific