Galeazzo Ciano

Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari (Italian pronunciation: 18 March 1903 – 11 January 1944) was Foreign Minister of Fascist Italy from 1936 until 1943 and Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law. On 11 January 1944, Count Ciano was shot by firing squad at the behest of his father-in-law, Mussolini, under pressure from Nazi Germany. Ciano wrote and left behind a diary that has been used as a source by several historians, including William Shirer in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and in the 4-hour HBO documentary-drama Mussolini and I. Gian Galeazzo Ciano was born in Livorno, Italy, in 1903. He was the son of Costanzo Ciano and his wife Carolina Pini; his father was an Admiral and World War I hero in the Royal Italian Navy (for which service he was given the aristocratic title of Count by Victor Emmanuel III). He was a founding member of the National Fascist Party and re-organizer of the Italian merchant navy in the 1920s. The elder Ciano, nicknamed Ganascia (“The Jaw&quo