In 1938 comrades sent him back to Italy with instructions to make contact with underground antifascists; but he was intercepted at the frontier by Italian police and returned to France where he was now based till 1940. During May/June 1940 the German army invaded France, leaving the northern half of the country under German military occupation and virtually the entire southern part of the country administered by a pro-German puppet government. The Italian government hastily declared war on France in June 1940 and launched its own invasion from the south-east: this had little military impact, but it confirmed and strengthened the Rome-Berlin "axis" alliance. During this period, Paolo Vittorelli had been sent on a fund-raising mission to Egypt on behalf of "Justice and Freedom". Developments in France made a return to Paris unrealistic, and instead he established a new base for himself in Cairo, where he organised an antifascist "Justice and Freedom - Cairo" group. He managed to establish a relationship of uneasy mutual acceptance with the British, and over the next four years became increasingly effective as an antifascist publicist. Many British administrators still recalled that in the First World War the Italian government had been persuaded to join the fighting on the British side, and were inclined to view an Italian opponent of the Italian government with initial suspicion. As the war progressed, however, the British captured large numbers of Italian prisoners of war whom they detained in camps around Cairo. Vittorelli and his comrades undertook an exhaustive four year programme of visits to the prisoner of war camps where they engaged with Italian captives and shared their antifascist convictions. He also directed "Corriere degli Italiani", an Italian language GL newspaper produced in Cairo. He also taught "History of Economic Theory" and "International Law" at Cairo's the French Faculty of Jurisprudence.