Galeazzo Ciano was born in Livorno on 18 March 1903. His father was Admiral Costanzo Ciano, a medal of honor in the First World War.
Galeazzo Ciano: the first years
In 1925 he graduated in Law and entered into diplomacy; he moved from one position to another: attaché to the embassy in Rio de Janeiro, to the legation of Beijing as first secretary (1927), to that of Buenos Aires and to the Italian embassy to the Holy See (1930) just opened after the signing of the Lateran Pact the year before.
Marriage with Edda Mussolini
In 1930 he meets and marries Edda, Mussolini's eldest daughter. She then abandoned diplomacy and entered politics under the protective wing of her father-in-law.
In 1933 Galeazzo Ciano was appointed head of the press office of the head of government, then Undersecretary for Press and Propaganda (1935), member of the Grand Council of Fascism.
He takes part in the war of Ethiopia with an air force squadron; he receives a silver medal and is appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs (1936).
As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Galeazzo Ciano at first meekly supported Mussolini's policy (intervention in the Spanish civil war, approach to Nazi Germany, occupation of Albania), but then little by little his enthusiasm for Hitler's Germany cooled down.
Shortly before the beginning of the war
After the meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tedeco Ribbentrop for the signing of the Steel Pact (May 1939), one is increasingly convinced that Germany will drag Italy into war-making it a docile instrument in its hands.
Therefore, from August 1939, Galeazzo Ciano carried out an effective "braking" action with Mussolini and convinced him of the "non-belligerence" for the first phase of the war.
On December 16, 1939, Ciano delivered an essentially anti-German speech to the Chamber, but after the German victories of spring 1940, he could not avoid Italy's entry into the war in June.
The conduct of Galeazzo Ciano during the Second World War
Galeazzo Ciano has by now attracted the hostility of the Germans and above all of Ribbentrop and limits himself to passive conduct, marked by skepticism about the outcome of the war. However, he was one of the promoters of the unhappy military operation against Greece in April 1941 (only German military support would determine the victory); he attempted a rapprochement with Yugoslavia; he tried to bind Hungary to himself, but was unable to alleviate the suspicions by which he was surrounded by the most intransigent elements of Fascism.
On 5 February 1943 Mussolini implemented a general change of ministers, appointing Cyan as ambassador to the Holy See.
A few months later, at the meeting of the Grand Council on the night between 24 and 25 July, Ciano voted against his father-in-law; the king had Mussolini arrested and appointed Marshal Pietro Badoglio as head of a government responsible for opening armistice negotiations with the Allies.
After Mussolini's arrest, Galeazzo went to Germany convinced that the Germans would help him to repair in Spain; instead he was held as a prisoner.
Following the events of 8 September 1943, also persecuted by the hatred of Ribbentrop, on 19 October he was handed over to the fascists of the Italian Social Republic (also known as the Republic of Salò), who locked him up in the prison of Verona.
Conviction and death
Subjected to trial for high treason together with the members of the Grand Council who signed the agenda, presented by Dino Grandi, against Mussolini, he was sentenced to death and shot with De Bono, Pareschi, Gottardi and Marinelli at Forte Procolo, near Verona (11 January 1944).
The flight of Edda and the Diary of Cyan
His wife Edda tried hard to save him. She then fled to Switzerland, bringing with her five of the seven large diaries in which her husband's diary is contained (those that refer to the period 1939-1943); the other two remain in Italy with the volumes of the Colloqui.
Immediately after the war, the five most important diaries of the Diary are published; a few years later, the other two (which record the events from August 1937 to December 1938).
These Diaries are a first-hand testimony to the most fatal years of Italian and world politics, useful for reconstructing the complex events that led to the Second World War and governed its events.
The Diaries also reveal defects and virtues of the author, a typical representative of the second fascist generation, a brilliant and unscrupulous observer, but often superficial and contradictory in his judgments and actions, who paid with his life not only his faults.