Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were united in a `brutal friendship'. Both had savage racial laws; both Hitler and Mussolini viciously denounced the `Jewish menace'. But while in the Second World War Jews who fell into the hands of the German army were consigned almost without exception for the death camps, not one Jew who came under the control of the Italian army ended there. The Italian officers protected not just Italian Jews, but Jewish refugees of every nationality. To the Germans, their actions were inexplicable and subversive.
Yet the protectors of the Jews were no philo-Semites, nor were they (often) great respecters of human life. Some of those same officers had sanctioned savage atrocities against Ethiopians and Arabs in the years before the war. They saved the Jews because it was `unworthy and immoral' to send them to death camps; to sustain morality they risked their careers, and sometimes, their lives. Only a handful of German officers protested; none of them took the same active steps as the Italians.
Jonathan Steinberg uses this remarkable and poignant story to unravel the motives and forces underpinning Nazism and Fascism. As a renowned historian of both Germany and Italy, he is uniquely placed to answer the underlying question; why? What made the armies fighting a savage partisan war in the Balkans behave so differently? His answers must provoke a radical re-think of the whole issue of human responsibility in warfare.