Mussolini’s Concentration Camps for Civilians: An Insight into the Nature of Fascist Racism

This book fundamentally challenges how Italians remember life in Italy during the time of Mussolini and the Fascist years. It examines what Italians know of these Fascist concentration camps, which were set up all over Italy between 1940 and 1943, directly influenced by Mussolini’s race laws of 1938. The book discusses in detail the Fascist race laws, comparing them with those of the Nazi regime. It studies the complex structure of internment created in Italy, in order to provide evidence that Fascist racism and Nazi racism evolved as two distinct but parallel movements that, while they shared many characteristics, were not the same. Using original documents from local archives, the book’s detailed and comprehensive reconstruction of the camps - where they were located, why they were there, what they looked like, who was sent there, and how the internees lived or died - provides a unique insight into Fascist racism and how Italy, at the time, chose to deal with people who were neither Christian nor Italian.