Galeazzo Ciano
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Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari (March 18, 1903 – January 11, 1944), was Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Benito Mussolini's son-in-law.
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[edit] Early life
Ciano was born in Livorno. He was the son of Admiral Count Costanzo Ciano, a veteran of World War I and one of the founding Fascists. After receiving his law degree, Ciano served as an attaché in Rio de Janeiro. In 1930, he married Edda Mussolini, with whom he soon left for Shanghai where he served as Italian Consul. Back in Italy, a few years later, he became the minister of press and propaganda.
[edit] Minister of Foreign Affairs
In 1936 Ciano became Italian minister of foreign affairs. In this position, he replaced Dino Grandi, who had presented, to foreign diplomats, a less martial position than Mussolini wanted (Grandi was sent to London as an ambassador).
Ciano gained the confidence of Umberto, Prince of Piedmont (later King Umberto II of Italy), son of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Ciano shared Umberto's mentality and a notable charme, even if Ciano was certainly less discreet than the prince. He became the favorite correspondent between Umberto and his wife Marie José and the Fascist movement. This was considered a productive friendship, both by Victor Emmanuel and by Mussolini, because the two would have one day been the respective heirs of the crown and of the government. Victor Emmanuel honoured Ciano with the Collar of the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, one of the highest royal decorations.
It was probably with the approval of Umberto that Ciano kept Italy distant from Hitler's Germany as long as possible, with the extraordinary help of the ambassador at Berlin, Bernardo Attolico. He sensibly perceived the danger that Hitler represented for Italy when Nazis killed the Austrian premier Dollfuss, who had close ties with Mussolini's family (Dollfuss' wife was in Italy when he was murdered), and could see in this act the sign of an icy warning about the Fuehrer's intentions. After a sequence of meetings with Ribbentrop and Hitler which followed the "Pact of Steel", Ciano's doubts about Germany increasingly deepened, and he had several violent discussions with his father-in-law. In the end, he wrote in his diaries, he was not so sure whether he would have wished for Italy "a German victory or defeat". However it is clear that he disliked Germany, dreaded a German request for the Italians to give up their northern lands to the Germans, and he hated Hitler.
In the meanwhile, Italy had conquered Albania, (April 1939) and Ciano was named viceroy of those territories. Ciano supported the annexation of Albania.
At the beginning of the war, his anti-German positions became more evident (Hitler had once warned Mussolini: There are some traitors in your family). In February 1943 Ciano was transferred from his post as foreign minister and became ambassador to the Holy See. It was then that his links with Msgr. Montini (later Pope Paul VI) reached their peak, keeping in contact with all the major international powers through the mediation of the influential priest.
During the war, in contrast with his previous hostility to the alliance with Germany, Ciano supported the Greco-Italian War (Oct/Nov 1940) which resulted in (predictable) disaster.
[edit] Role in fall of Mussolini
At the July 25, 1943 meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, where internal opposition against Mussolini finally surfaced, Ciano joined the vote against his father-in-law. Ciano was placed under house arrest by the Badoglio government, which took power after arresting Mussolini. But his wife, Edda, arranged with the Germans for the family to be flown to exile in Spain. Unfortunately the Germans took the family to Germany, where they were kept as guests/prisoners until October. Whilst the Cianos were held in Germany, the Germans arranged to spring Mussolini from the hotel in the mountains, where he was being held by the Badoglio government. Hitler then persuaded Mussolini to head up a puppet government in the north of Italy (the Italian Social Republic). Ciano was returned to the Mussolini regime in Salò on October 19, 1943 where he was imprisoned in Verona with several Fascist Grand Council members who had voted against Mussolini.
[edit] Trial and execution
Ciano's vote against the Duce was considered high treason. After a dramatic public trial on January 8/9, 1944 Ciano and four other fascist cohorts were found guilty and executed by firing squad on the morning of 11 January 1944. It has been much discussed whether this showed that Mussolini did not want to, or simply could not, protect his relative. Many observers note that if Mussolini had commuted Ciano's death sentence, Mussolini himself would have lost all credibility. Edda Ciano attempted to plead with her father and the Germans for her husband's freedom, in exchange for his diaries. The deal is believed to have been vetoed by Hitler, despite the support of Himmler.
[edit] Ciano's diaries
After Ciano's death, aided by Emilio Pucci (her former lover) Edda escaped to Switzerland, disguised as a peasant woman. She had Ciano's wartime diaries hidden beneath her skirt, and was given special consideration as a pregnant woman by frontier guards who were supposedly on the lookout for the fugitive.
War correspondent Paul Ghali of the Chicago Daily News learned of her secret internment in a Swiss convent and arranged the publication of the diaries. They reveal much of the secret history of the Fascist regime between 1939 and 1943 and are considered a prime historical source. (The diaries are strictly political and contain little of Ciano's personal life.)
After Mussolini's death, Edda remained without financial support and Switzerland (where she still remained) put her, and her children, under the Allies' authority. She was confined on the island of Lipari for one year.
[edit] Insight
Ciano's figure is one among the most controversial of the whole regime: he was open to bribery and cruelty. In the end, however, he was one of the few who seriously opposed the dangerous alliance between Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. Perhaps he also showed a certain courage in voting against his father-in-law, exposing himself to certain personal isolation. The paradox remains that this man of moderate moral qualities, but undoubted intelligence, had a keener political vision than the Duce and more personal courage than the king.
[edit] Miscellaneous
A number of films have depicted his life, including Mussolini and I (1985) in which he was played by Anthony Hopkins.
His son Fabrizio Ciano wrote a personal memoir entitled Quando il nonno fece fucilare papà ("When Grandpa had Daddy Shot").
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943 (2000) ISBN 1-931313-74-1
- Ciano's diplomatic papers: being a record of nearly 200 conversations held during the years 1936-42 with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco; together with important memoranda, letters, telegrams etc / edited by Malcolm Muggeridge; translated by Stuart Hood, London: Odhams Press, (1948)
- Giordano Bruno Guerri - Un amore fascista. Benito, Edda e Galeazzo. (Mondadori, 2005) ISBN 8804534672
- Ray Moseley - Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano, (Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300079176
- R.J.B. Bosworth - Mussolini (Hodder Arnold, 2002) ISBN 0340731443
- Michael Salter and Lorie Charlesworth - "Ribbentrop and the Ciano Diaries at the Nuremberg Trial" in Journal of International Criminal Justice 2006 4(1):103-127 doi:10.1093/jicj/mqi095
- Fabrizio Ciano - Quando il nonno fece fucilare papà ("When Grandpa had Daddy Shot") Milano, Mondadori,. 1991
| Preceded by: Benito Mussolini |
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs 1936–1943 |
Succeeded by: Benito Mussolini |
