To sell the anti-Jewish campaign to Italians, for whom it smelled suspiciously like an effort by the Duce to ingratiate himself with Hitler, the regime was counting heavily on the striking similarity between the new laws and the measures the popes had for centuries imposed on Jews in the Papal States.[19] Indeed, the Fascists boasted they were being softer on the Jews than the popes had been. After all, they were not herding Jews into ghettoes; nor were they imitating the earlier popes in requiring Jews to wear special marks on their clothes.
