Ciano

This book is a biography of Galeazzo Ciano, based on a rich unpublished documentation coming from Italian, Vatican, British, French, Japanese, German and US archives and from the memoirs of international political personalities who met the the last Foreign Minister of fascist Italy. The book is a choral work that does not analyse only the private and public life of "the son-in-law of the fascist regime". This essay analyse also the construction of his extraordinary financial fortune, the complex relationship with his natural father Costanzo and his father-in-law, "father and master", Mussolini, the love story with Edda, interwoven with mutual betrayals but based on an unbreakable, almost fraternal, solidarity, the many sexual adventures that earned him the well-deserved fame of a compulsive serial seducer. This essay is also a biography of Italy of the Black Twenties. The essay analyse the history of fascist or assimilated to fascism ruling classes and the intrigues and power struggles conducted within the Fascist Party, and in the Quirinale salons, in the secret rooms of the Holy See, in the circles of the regime and in the palaces of Big Industry and Big Finance. The author then analyse the international strategy of Italy which for the first time, from 1936 to 1943, decided to present itself on the stage of history as Grande Potenza, only to be crushed, after June 1940, in the grip tightened around it by a malevolent ally, Hitler's Germany, and by the true Major Powers, England, United States, Russia. The true novelty of this text, however, consists in having demonstrated, for the first time, the substantial inauthenticity of the Ciano’s Diary, so far considered a veridical source to trace the history of fascism and the Second World War.