BOOKS BY ALBERTO CAVAGLION

This article surveys Davide Rodogno’s latest essay (Il nuovo ordine mediterraneo: le politiche di occupazione dell’Italia fascista in Europa, 1940-1943, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2003) mainly taking into account the part referring specifically to the racial policy in the italian-occupied zone of southern France. Reviewing the latest studies on the subject by Klaus Voigt, Michele Sarfatti and Rodogno himself, it suggests there might be a dissonance between the severe conclusions these works imply, and the oral history documentation acquired in the last 20 years, the vaste amount of memoirs available today, which instead seem increasingly to confirm the tolerant and humanitarian attitude held by Italian troops. Behind this, there might be a problem of source criticism: that is, a rather misleading interpretation of the material today available. The new documents published by Rodogno, and formerly by Sarfatti, do not attest any case of jews actually being handed over to Germans between November 1942 and September 1943, but a continuous, obsti¬nate, perhaps even cunning dilating strategy which lasted until the eve of the Armistice. Without falling into the anthropological simplifications which, for example, characterized Jonathan Steinberg’s essay (All or Nothing, Routledge, London, 1990), the article questions the nature of such an odd attitude, framing it within the wider context of the events of summer 1943, as Italy begins to move away from the harsh oppressive policy of Nazism and of the collaborationist government of Vichy. In appendix an unpublished document from the Administrative Departmental Archive of Nice.