Why wasn't Italy an exterminator?

World War II General WWII Discussion
#1

The Italians never ran extermination programs like, nor behaved with the indescribable institutionalised inhumanity of, their German and Japanese Axis partners.

Why?

The Italian Fascists focused on Jews as a problem and in the late 1930s passed laws severely oppressing and dispossessing Jews, as did the Nazis, but the Italians never moved to the Nazi model of extermination nor did they display by relentlessly inhumane treatment the racial contempt of their other Axis partner, Japan, towards people they regarded as inferior.

In part this might be explained by Germany supplying the death camps etc for Italian Jews, but this didn’t have much impact until after 1943 when the Nazis effectively controlled Italy.

Was there something different about the Italian character or experience, perhaps going back to WWI experience, which explains its difference from German conduct? But that still does not explain the difference from Japanese conduct as Japan, like Italy, was an Ally in WWI and did not experience even the tiniest fraction of the suffering which Germany experienced during and after the war.

#2

Correct me if I’m wrong. But I was under the impression that the Italians also had a much more loose categorization or definition as to who was a “Jew.” And that persons the Nazis would have considered Jewish were actually members of the Fascist Party. At least initially…

#3

Deputy leader of the Fascists was a person of Jewish descent.

#4

The Dux has a strong hatred for Jew, like Hitler or less, but he didn’t mix his personal feelings with his policy. In Nazism philosophy the key is the superiority of arian race. In Fascism philosophy the key is the superiority of italian nation, regardless races, the important thing is to be italian. When Mussolini became closer with Hitler agreed with his crazy politic of elimination of Jewish and published the “Leggi Fascistissime”, some laws against Jewish similar to Nurumberg Laws. But in real a lot of Fascist itself and a large part of Italy population didn’t understand or agree with this racist laws. And kiwimac say it, a part of Fascist himself are Jewish, at least at the beginning. Mussolini knew it, and this is why before 1943 there are only minor acts of violence against the Jews, he tricked Hitler with resounding acts against Jewish but in real didn’t take too many actions. In the France territory held by Italy after the conquer of France by Germane the population of Jewish between 1940 and 1943 grows at very high rate, because Jews from Vichy and occupied territory knew that they were safe with Italians.