Vouloir tout et son contraire... Pitoyable errance dans les sphères fascistes, sphères étranges... Qui diable croyait donc au fascisme? Parfois on a des doutes sur Mussolini lui-même. Ciano est un personnage de tragédie, mais sans la grandeur. ( )

Count Ciano was Mussolini's Minister for Foreign Affairs and also his son-in-law, and these diaries recount the day-to-day life of the Italian government during the years of World War Two, including very interesting descriptions of his interactions with such figures as Hitler, von Ribbentrop and Goering. Ciano was against Italy's entry into the war and against making a signed alliance with Germany, as well. He is clear about this in his diaries even in the early going. His distrust of and dislike for the country's Nazi allies only grows over the years. Mussolini is showed as being far less than intellectually acute, open to hearing and believing what he wants to believe, rather than what the facts should be showing him. He insists in getting into the war, for matters of national glory and personal ego, essentially, despite the fact that Italy's armed forces and industrial capacity are both woefully inadequate in quality and numbers. And as the German and Italian armies are being routed in Russia and Africa, he continues to believe that the Axis fortunes are about to change. The day-to-day progressive layering of these factors make interesting, if not exactly compelling, reading. What comes through most clearly is the unintended sub-text of the diaries, the bankrupt nature of the Fascist system as a whole. Almost everybody but Mussolini can see what's happening, but, since he is the appointed leader, they all follow along nevertheless. Also, one cannot miss Ciano's blithe acceptance and approval of the Italian occupation of Albania and invasion of Greece, not to mention the earlier invasion of Ethopia that Ciano had taken part in as a bomber pilot. But, finally, in July, 1943, at Fascist Party Grand Council, Mussolini was voted out of power, with Ciano voting with the majority. That vote would soon cost Ciano his life when, returned to power by the Nazi's, Mussolini ordered Ciano's execution. In the diary's final entry, we find Ciano sitting in his Verona jail cell, awaiting death. He managed to get the diaries to his wife, Mussolini's daughter, Edda, who managed to smuggle them out of Italy despite the fact that the Nazi's were intent on finding and destroying the work. ( )

Count Ciano was son-in-law to Benito Mussolini. After his death by execution in 1944, his diaries were smuggled out of Italy by his wife Edda, Mussolini's daughter, who strapped them to her waist and feigned pregnancy. They provide interesting insights into contemporary views of world events.

His comments about Hitler are especially interesting: "Either he is under hallucinations, or he really is a genius." In August 1939 Ciano says that Hitler wants an alliance with Britain. In January 1941: Hitler is "not too definite on what he intends to do in the future against Great Britain. In any case, it is no longer a qustion of landing in England." Ciano suggests that Hitler's invasion of Russia was prompted by a desire to woo the West into supporting him. In June 1940, he says that Hitler wants to round up the Jews and send them to Madagascar.

On 17 January 1939, he mentions the atomic bomb: "Dentice di Frasso has given us information about an astonishing American invention of a very powerful smokeless, colorless, and flashless gunpowder. Dentice vouches for this claim but I am skeptical about such inventions. However I am inclined to have one of our specialists take a trip to the U.S. in order to meet the inventor and look into the matter." Six months before Pearl Harbor, Ciano predicts that Americans will intervene in Europe, but their intervention is "already discounted."

Fascinating glimpses into Axis thinking before and into World War II. ( )