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All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941-1943
All or Nothing The Axis and the Holocaust 19411943 Author:Jonathan Steinberg The Nazi decision to exterminate the Jewish people was a secret closely guarded even from their axis partner, Fascist Italy. When the Italians discovered the true fate of the Jews being deported `to the East,' a small group of senior Italian military officers and diplomats decided to say `no.' They conspired to frustrate the will of Mussolini, w... more »ho had ordered the surrender of refugee Jews in Italian-occupied Yugoslavia to the Germans and to obstruct the Nazi's `Final Solution to the Jewish Question' in Greece and France.
All or Nothing tells this singular story of courage and humanity for the first time from both the Italian and German sides and makes use of oral accounts both of Jews who were saved by the Italians and of the officers and diplomats involved.
Steinberg asks the deeper and more perplexing questions: Why did the Italian fascists save Jews while the Germans cooperated in their extermination? And why did Hitler tolerate Italian protection of the Jews? The book examines the different behaviors of the two regimes, the two armies, the two societies and the two dictators. He explores the implications for Axis strategy and politics of the prosecution of Germany's policy of genocide at the heart of the German war effort. The answers found by Steinberg provoke a radical reassessment of the entire issue of human responsibility in warfare.« less