rome (jta) |  Mussolini may have secretly attempted to persuade Hitler not to persecute Jews.

The London Times’ Rome correspondent reported that he saw documents to this effect from the Vatican’s secret archives. One document, he wrote, was from the office of the Vatican secretary of state dated April 1933, soon after Hitler became Germany’s chancellor.

It said that “the head of the Italian government” had given “an oral exhortation and then a secret message to Hitler imploring him not to allow himself to be carried away by an anti-Semitic campaign.”

Mussolini was not considered anti-Semitic in the early part of his rule, but in 1938 he became allied with the Nazis and enacted harsh anti-Semitic laws.