Galeazzo Ciano
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Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Count of Cortellazzo (March 18, 1903, Livorno – January 11, 1944), was Benito Mussolini's Foreign Minister and son-in-law. Galeazzo was the son of Costanzo Ciano, a veteran of World War I and one of the founding Fascists.
Biography
Ciano was born in Livorno. 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, later 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 Humbert II of Savoy, son of the King, whose mentality and a notable charme he shared, even if Ciano was certainly less discreet than the prince. He became the favorite correspondent between Humbert (and Maria José) and the Fascist movement. This was considered a productive friendship, both by the king and the dictator, because the two would have one day been the respective heirs of the crown and of the government. The king had honoured him with the "Collare della Santissima Annunziata", one of the highest royal decorations.
It probably was with the approval of Humbert 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 the allied country 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, 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, when his anti-German positions had became more evident (Hitler had once warned Mussolini: There are some traitors in your family), he was sent to the Vatican as ambassador to the Holy See. It is at this moment 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 campaign against Greece, (Oct/Nov 1940) which resulted in (predictable) disaster.
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. Nevertheless, he followed Mussolini north to Salò, where the Italian Social Republic (called RSI, for Repubblica Sociale Italiana) had been founded in opposition to the Pietro Badoglio government, which had switched allegiance to the Allies. His wife Edda had tried in vain to arrange asylum in exile for their family, the Vatican having refused to hide them. Apparently, Germans pretended to try to help them to reach Spain, but arrested them instead, and sent the former minister to Verona October 19, 1943 where he was imprisoned with several Fascist Grand Council members who had voted against Mussolini.
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 in the morning of January 11. 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. It is known that when informed, Edda, sincerely in love with Ciano, crossed half of the country with emergency vehicles, running the risk of being raped, to reach the republic's headquarters first and the prison immediately after, but her attempts at rescue were in vain.
Afterwards Edda Ciano 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 in Lipari for one year.
Ciano's figure is one among the most controversial of the whole regime: he was open to bribery and cruelty and he was a traitor. In the end, however, he was one of the few who seriously opposed the dangerous alliance between Italy and 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.
See also
- Mussolini and I
- Joachim von Ribbentrop
- Vyacheslav Molotov
Reference
- The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943 (2000) ISBN 1931313741
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