In response to his observation of large numbers of Jews amongst the Bolsheviks and claims that the Bolsheviks and Germany (that Italy was fighting in World War I) were politically connected, Mussolini said antisemitic statements involving the Bolshevik-German connection as being an "unholy alliance between Hindenburg and the synagogue". Mussolini came to believe rumours that Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was of Jewish descent. In an article in "Il Popolo d'Italia" in June 1919, Mussolini wrote a highly antisemitic analysis on the situation in Europe involving Bolshevism following the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War and war in Hungary involving the Hungarian Soviet Republic: