The major source of friction between National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy was Italy's stance on Jews. In his early years as Fascist leader, while Mussolini harbored racial stereotypes of Jews, he did not hold a firm stance on Jews and his official stances oscillated and shifted to meet the political demands of the various factions of the Fascist movement, rather than having any concrete stance. Of the 117 original members of the "Fasci Italiani di Combattimento" founded on 23 March 1919, five were Jewish. Since the movement's early years, there were a small number of prominent openly antisemitic Fascists such as Roberto Farinacci. There were also prominent Fascists who completely rejected antisemitism, such as Italo Balbo, who lived in Ferrara, which had a substantial Jewish community that was widely accepted and suffered few antisemitic incidents. Mussolini initially had no antisemitic statements in his policies. However, in response to his observation of large numbers of Jews amongst the Bolsheviks and claims (that were later confirmed to be true) that the Bolsheviks and Germany (that Italy was fighting in World War I) were politically connected, Mussolini made antisemitic statements involving the Bolshevik-German connection as being "an unholy alliance between Hindenburg and the synagogue". Mussolini came to believe rumors that Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was of Jewish descent. Mussolini attacked the Jewish banker Giuseppe Toeplitz of Banca Commerciale Italiana by claiming that he was a German agent and traitor of Italy. 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. In June 1919, Mussolini wrote on "Il Popolo d'Italia":