Giovanni Preziosi i Generalny Inspektorat do spraw Rasowych (1944-1945)

Abstract

Giovanni Preziosi and the General Inspectorate of Race (Ispettorato Generale Della Razza) (1944‑ 1945)

This article is devoted to the analysis of the ideas of Giovanni Preziosi (1881‑1945), an Italian journalist and director of the main anti‑Semitic journal in Italy, “La Vita Italiana”, in circulation from 1921 to 1945. He also served as Minister of State from 1942‑1943, as well as the head of the General Inspectorate of Race in the period of the Italian Social Republic. He is regarded as one of the foremost theorists of Italian anti‑Semitism in the XX century, as well as one of the main representatives of Fascism in the period preceding the March on Rome. Preziosi also played a leading role in the implementation of racist policies in Italy in the years 1938‑1945. In his famous Memoriale, which he developed in January 1944 and then sent to Mussolini and Hitler, he blames Jews and Masons for the fall of Fascism on 25 July 1943 and proclaims the “final resolution of the Jewish problem” in Italy. As the head of the General Inspectorate of Race in the years 1944‑1945, he attempted to adopt the German model in Italy, particularly in the project of bills he wrote in May 1944, which were based on the Nuremburg Laws from 1935 and which were to be a revision of the decrees from 1938‑1939.