Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano

by Ray Moseley

Married to Benito Mussolini's favorite daughter Edda, Galeazzo Ciano was a brilliant, ambitious and ruthless young Italian. Throughout his period in office Ciano kept a diary so detailed and revealing that both Mussolini and Hitler sought to impound and destroy it. The diary was smuggled out of Italy by Edda, who sought unsuccessfully to trade it for Ciano's life. The diary was later acquired by the American spy, Allen W. Dulles (later head of the CIA) and published in full in the Chicago Daily News. It remains one of the classic insider accounts of the workings of the Fascist and Nazi governments. Ciano's glamorous, violent, and promiscuous life was acted out at the highest levels of European politics and society. There has never been a biography of him in this is one gripping read.

Genres: History, Italy, Biography

314 pages, Hardcover

First published October 22, 1999

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptionally well written by a former staffer at The Chicago Tribune, 'Mussolini's Shadow' details the life of the dictator's son-in-law and erstwhile Foreign Minister while throwing much light on the Mussolini family in general. Included also is a reconstruction of how his papers, recordings and diaries were smuggled out of Italy and into the hands of the Allies and, ironically, The Chicago Daily News.

Throughout, the war is in the background, the focus being on Ciano and the expectation being that the reader has some background on the matter. So, too, some knowledge of the history of Italian fascism is presupposed. While Ciano's pet project, the initial attack against Greece, is given in some detail, major events of WWII, such as the defeat at Stalingrad, aren't even mentioned.

[Sebastian Breit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benito Mussolini was Count Galeazzo Ciano's father in law. Ciano had married Mussolini's daughter Edda, and the two soon became the most glamorous - and scandalous, since both had many affairs -couple in Italy. Ciano was an aristocrat, a masher, a soldier, a diplomat and a politician - and he only was good at the first two of that list of five. He was largely unfit to fill the role of foreign minister when it still mattered in the years preceeding the war; too arrogant, too gullible, too out-of-touch with the specialists in the diplomatic corps. Despite having been informed by the charge d'affaires in Berlin as early as May 1939 that a war against Poland was in the making, he chose to ignore this counsel. With devasting consequences: Italy blundered into a war, and it did so in no small part to Ciano's lack of professional and moral spine. This development was doubly tragic, since there were instances when he did prove he had one (he vehemently argued with Mussolini to stay out of the war in 1939 after it had started).

Moseley shows Ciano and his father in law as bundles of contraditions, full of ambition an empty of all political morals, devious and naive at the same time, criminals without any qualms to order murder on the one hand, loving husbands and fathers on the other. In both cases, the word schizophrenic seems like a good description.

Ciano was appalled at what he saw as an immoral attack on an innocent Poland, but had no qualms about annexing Albania and starting an unprovoced war against Greece. He despised the double game that Hitler played with Italy, but he betrayed and treated the representatives of smaller nations just as condescending no different than that. And as the greatest irony of al he thought the Italian people loved him whereas in fact he was the most hated man in Italy.

What the book also does exceptionally well besides following Ciano's professional life and death is shining a light onto the character of Benito Mussolini, a man of fickle judgement and so volatile of character he made Hitler look amicably stable in comparison. Mussolini's mood swings were no less pronounced than those of Germany's "Führer", but whereas Hitler managed to maintain a keen mind in military and technological matters, making him at least gifted amateur, Mussolini not only lacked the knowledge but was outight delusional even during the best days of the war.

That, and Moseley's book is of course a fountain of hilarious and mind-boggling quotes like this one:

"I am very happy about the fact that - for once - Italians spread terror through their hawkishness instead of spreading pleasure through their skills as mandoline players."

-- Benito Mussolini after the bombing of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War, as quoted in the Diaries of Count Ciano.

Moseley does well in condensing thousands of pages of Ciano's diaries and correspondence, and statements of his friends, associates and enemies into less than 300 pages. It's not the full picture - it's never the full picture - but it is a fascinating overview over the rise and fall of Italy's second man behind Mussolini.

Final Verdict: 5/5 Moseley's biography of Galeazzo Ciano is an insightful, frustrating, and at times surprisingly amusing volume shining light on the man who saw himself as the heir to the Duce, and who only too late found the strength of character to act. Buy it. Read it.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you're a playboy millionaire what do you do for and encore? MUSSOLINI'S SHADOW is a thoroughly researched political biography of one of the most puzzling figures of World War II, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Il Duce's foreign minister and son-in-law. Pompous clown? Yes. Tragic figure? Yes? Opportunist and fool? Yes. Pro-war? Yes? Against Italy going to war in 1940? Yes. Ray Moseley has rescued this footnote to history and related the rise, fall and execution of a man who could never make up his mind.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is truly one of the most disturbing stories in World War 2. Ciano would become the epitome of everything hated in Italy. He would claim responsibility for the invasion of Albania and Greece and blamed for some of the worst defeats in Italy's history. Much of this is undeserved as Mussolini was calling many of the shots and the fall out between the two became apparent. Had Ciano been stronger and not captured under the personality cult of Mussolini the break would have been bigger and he would have opposed the war shattering the Duce ideas of a strong Italian army. The diaries that Ciano wrote would be key aspects of Nuremberg and both the allies and axis sought to acquire them. The story of the acquisition is heart wrenching and Edda Ciano's bravery is truly remarkable. What she went through from the execution of her husband to the estrangement of her father Mussolini was simply amazing. This is a must read for those who want to understand how World War 2 unfolded and the war that Italy played. It is a well written biography and truly a great addition to the historiography.

[William Sariego · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book if you are curious about Italian politics from the WWII era. The author's writing is rather pedestrian, however.