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 soninlaw. On 11 January 1944, Count Ciano was shot by firing squad at the behest of his fatherinlaw, 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 4hour HBO documentarydrama 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 reorganizer of the Italian merchant navy in the 1920s. The elder Ciano, nicknamed Ganascia ( The Jaw quo