This is a barely re-edited old answer I gave about Mussolini's antisemitism. I'll add something on his reaction/knowledge of the holocaust.

 

Discussing Mussolini's attitude towards Jews requires a certain degree of speculation. We obviously cannot know with absolute certainty what Mussolini had in his private mind.

But furthermore, while he can't really be faulted with shyness in stating his opinions, this was a subject he seems to have taken little interest into – unlike the case of other dictators; so that we do not have all that much of Mussolini talking or writing about the “Jewish question”; at least not before the racial legislation was already on its way to become reality.

More so there was really very little of a “Jewish question” in Italy to be addressed: the 47,000 Italian Jews (and 10,000 foreigners) counted in 1938 were well integrated within society, to the point where little excuse was offered even to the vilest propaganda for claims of “racial” differences – in fact in the early 20th century many Italians would have had a hard time properly communicating with each other, due to different dialects, costumes and local traditions, so that a casual observer might have found more striking differences between a northerner and a southerner, than between a Jew and a non-Jew.

Therefore a large part of the traditional antisemitic literature still focused on the “mortal sin” committed against Christ, therefore attacking the Jews on religious and cultural grounds – with very little to say about “race^1”. Such an argument may have found Mussolini quite indifferent, given his personal views on religion and his distaste for conservatism.

 

A traditional argument used to dismiss Mussolini's antisemitism is the reference to his friendship with Jews, and even a romantic relationship with one – moreover Jews were well represented among the fascist supporters and even the high ranks of the Party.

As a matter of fact, Mussolini was not considered antisemitic by his contemporaries – and even after the introduction of the Racial Laws, many perceived the actions of the Regime as a German imposition – a questionable claim that we are going to address later.

Nonetheless this seems to me quite a weak argument: Mussolini wasn't antisemitic because he entertained civil relations with Jews.

Still, this make it reasonable to assume that – if Mussolini had any personal antisemitic tendencies, he wasn't bluntly open about that. We shouldn't overestimate this point since, even with antisemitism being a minor element in Italian culture at the time, an antisemitic remark was unlikely to raise many eyebrows, unless it was particularly crass or out of place; therefore it is possible for statements that we would now consider openly antisemitic to have been simply overlooked^2 .

Yet everything so far seems consistent with his reputation of not being antisemitic^3 .

 

There is more to the argument than it seems at first though. And to attempt to address it properly, it will be necessary to discuss briefly the overall state of the Regime in the 1930s and, in connection to this, the state of mind of Mussolini in those years – to establish the motive behind an evolution of his thinking to a form that I believe could be qualified as genuinely racist.

Before moving forward into more details, I think it is correct to say that – even if I am sinning with the obvious comparison – Mussolini was not an extreme antisemite as Hitler. Nor was his vision of the world rooted in antisemitism – or more in general racial struggle.

In fact a strong hatred of Jews would have been a hard fit in Mussolini's view of the world.

Mussolini was not the kind of person who holds a definite, irreducible set of values. On the contrary he believed that ideas – ideals – myths – along the lines traced by Bergson and Sorel, were the motors that pushed forward History. And their significance revolved entirely around this role: an idea was good as long as it served its purpose, to move peoples – nations forward, to inspire and mobilize the masses – a fact even more important now that the masses were becoming truly political actors but still lacked a rational understanding of their power.

In light of this Mussolini looks at time like a mere opportunist, changing clothes and trading chairs for personal gain. But really, Mussolini would have defined himself an idealist^4 : believing that, rather than concrete social or economical factors, ideas were the forces behind the motion of the great History: in this fact alone resided their greater importance. But the concept that an idea(l) could have any value per se – as in being right or true – was entirely foreign to him. And being faithful to one idea only would have meant ending up working against the course of History – and thus betraying his personal mission, as a Great Man.

This makes it highly unlikely that Mussolini was a secret Jew hater. Such a position, would have required for him to subscribe to a “doctrine” that he wasn't making use of – while we know on the other hand that he made large use of the other “ideals” he valued useful: socialism, classes, general strike, war, the superiority of the Italian culture, tradition, etc.

Among these, at first at least, we find no place for racist theories in the broad sense: no struggle of “races”, no identification of Nations or peoples with biological entities. Rather, he seemed almost unable to understand that another “Great Man” could succeed while submitting himself to an ideology. He betrays this in his advice to Hitler, in a private message sent on March 31st 1933:

 

Every regime has not only the right but the duty to remove from places of authority any element non entirely trustworthy, but to this end it is not necessary, rather it could be damaging, to bring on the racial ground – Semitism and Arianism - what is instead simply a measure to protect and develop the revolution.

 

Mussolini is not only advising moderate action but pointing out that – while the hate propaganda against the “enemies” had served its purpose in bringing Hitler to power, it might no longer be beneficial now. He doesn't seem to believe that antisemitism and – more in general – the idea of unending racial struggle could really serve as the major force beyond the progress of a people. Nor he seems to understand that for Hitler, this was not a matter of rational thought on whether racism was “useful”.

Nonetheless such concept may have had some appeal for Mussolini: for both personal reasons and his ideological formation, he understood History as a process of self-affirmation through struggle^5 . While this struggle appeared at first rooted in the forms of culture^6 , government, philosophy, taking concreteness in the myths of the Italian Nation, Risorgimento, Socialism, General Strike, Violent Action; it was not inconceivable for him to adopt the more crude ideology of biological struggle.

It was in the end a matter of: does it really work?

 

And indeed somewhere along the line, he seems to have changed his mind; because in 1939 he commented about the Czechs^7 using these words: The Czech have proved themselves a craven people. They are the Jews of the Slavic peoples.

Here he not only used the word Jew in a derogatory sense but seemed to interpret the conflict among Nations no longer in cultural terms or political terms but very much in terms of racially defined entities.

As to when exactly and how this change happened, it is difficult to pinpoint a moment; but I don't think we can deny that some sort of change happened. As for the reason of it; we know that Mussolini had been impressed by Hitler's successes, if not by Hitler himself; victim perhaps of the same misinformation that led Hitler to believe in the victorious fascist revolution.

The apparent strength and unity of the German Nation behind its leader, compared to Mussolini's difficulties in bringing forward a similar change in Italy, might have changed Mussolini's view on the effectiveness of racial struggle as a defining myth.

Addendum. On Mussolini's “reaction” to the Holocaust.

 

Mussolini knew about the Holocaust – in broad strokes. Even if I know of no evidence that he had be brought up to date, which would make little sense as the Germans always treated it as an internal issue, willful ignorance can only take you so far.

But that does not mean that he thought much of it; and he might have considered it a smaller issue on the grand scheme of things, choosing not to dissociate the fate of the Jews from that of any other victims of the war. That's why we do not have – to my knowledge – any record of Mussolini's thoughts on the Holocaust.

Therefore we must establish the extent of Mussolini's knowledge through inference.

We have various instances of Mussolini referencing the fate of the Polish, that of the peoples in the occupied lands and so on – often to compare the much better treatment he was able to broker in favor of the Italians after 1943. Even before though, it is clear that Mussolini was aware of the general conduct of the German forces in the occupied lands. The systematic killing of “partisans” had been reported back by the Italian troops – who also absolved anti partisan duties, and complained a few time of being forced to give “civilians” to the Germans – and some steps were taken to prevent too dire a picture to be spread by the tales of the few coming back from the Italian disastrous Russian expedition in 1941-42.

While no specific differentiation was made by Mussolini between the Jews and the other victims, it is evident that he was aware that the actions taken by the German forces on the oriental front were especially brutal.

All of this though still concerned essentially the Einsatzgruppen actions in the Holocaust (I am not at all confident in my knowledge of the subject, so I hope someone would correct any mistakes I make; /u/commiespaceinvader has provided many valuable posts on the subject, that you could check). For the specifics of the extermination camps, the Italians seemed to have known less (less of the specific nature of the process, I mean). This was a consequence of the fact that the extermination of Italian Jews begun only after the Regime's collapse in 1943 and the establishment of the Puppet Social Republic in Salò.

Despite Mussolini's attempts to retain some sort of autonomy – both military and political – the reality was that the Germans were able to force the hand whenever the issue mattered to them. And the Jewish question did. On the other hand the few thousand Jews lost to the Germans did not appear to matter much to Mussolini. For around a year he attempted to stall the process of actual deportation, accepting the idea of relocating the Jews to Germany but trying to let it fall into nothing. In March 1944 though he had to give up in a belated sacrifice to save his puppet republic.

So, if the Italian racial legislation during the 1938-42 years had been essentially one of severe segregation (I am using the word loosely here – not to suggest any precise analogue), the institution of the Salò Republic brought a score of new measures that initiated the actual persecution.

First, the Jews were proclaimed enemies of the State in the “constitution/program” of Verona. [Those belonging to the Jewish race are foreigners. During war time they belong to an enemy nation] Second, they were to surrender their properties [land, estates, buildings, assets, cash in the end] to the State. Third, their concentration begun in selected areas (such as the concentration camp in Fossoli – near Modena). Fourth, their deportation begun, under German control.

The first two points appear to have created no hesitation on the new fascist government. After all the RSI was desperately in need of cash (they were able to collect something over two billion lire) and looking to regain the good favors of the German ally.

The other two met with some resistance, from Mussolini in the first place. He had always avoided the deportation measures and to some extent favored the idea of munificently granting an “arian patent” to those Jews who had distinguished themselves in service of the Regime. He had – it appears – no desire to eliminate the Jews; but it must have looked to him like a necessary sacrifice to be made. The fact that the number of Italian Jews subject to the measures was small might have weighted on his decision.

Mussolini had in fact to face an internal opposition, of what we may describe the more decisively filo-nazi wing of the Social Republic. On the antisemitic issue this wing was led by Roberto Farinacci – a fascist integralist, who had proposed himself to the Germans as Salo's leader and even had a (disastrous) personal meeting with Hitler – and Giovanni Preziosi – the virulent soul of Italian antisemitism, a “former” priest who championed the “Jewish treason” theory for Italy's surrender and advocated their elimination, going as far as to clamor for it on the Volkischer Beobachter and then write to Mussolini (and informally passing it to Hitler – Preziosi was in Munich at the time) paraphrasing Hitler himself: The first step is not that of creating a national constituent of the State, but that of eliminating the Jews. As often throughout history, the capital adversity is not that of shaping the new state of things, but making room for it. Our first central task is not the so called national unity […] but the total elimination of the Jews [including] rooting out those more or less baptized, arianized. Then push out of any core of the national life […] the mongrels, husbands of Jew women and anyone with a drop of Jewish blood

On March 15^th 1944 Preziosi was made director of the Office for Race and Demographics, in charge of the Italian part in the Jews' deportation: essentially to collect them in the concentration camps established during the previous year and giving them to the Germans. Of the 7,495 thus collected and sent on the way of the extermination camps, 6,885 died there [this does not include summary executions taking place on Italian soil].

Mussolini never made a mystery of his contempt for Preziosi and did prevent the latter's attempts to widen the criteria for “jewishness” to some extent. That said, at this point, the fate of the Jews – both Italian and foreign – became more or less an afterthought. Nor were the Germans willing to share any information with the Italians or to waste time on the issue; as the answer of the German IVB4 to the RSI foreign office inquiring about one deported Jew shows: we do not wish to move further with the Italian Embassy's request to make inquiries about the actual location of a Jew Taubert. It is best to advise the Italian diplomacy never to make such requests again. We need time and hard work to attend to much more vital things in the general interest. […] We are deeply concerned that the Embassy of a fascist republic is still employing its influence in favor of the jews.