FASCIST MEMOIRS CIANO'S HIDDEN DIARY, 1937-1938

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100080076-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 1998
• Sequence Number: 76
• Publication Date: August 3, 1953
• Content Type: OPEN

Approve~or Releas~~~n~~~~?.~"~~~~~~-~~1~~~~?~~'~~`08
Fascist Memoirs
airs. A disgusting incident, likely to
CIANO~S HIDDEN DIARY, 1937-1938
(220 pp.)-Dufton ($4).
s lini once reminded Count Galeazzo Cia-
n ,little realizing that the son-in-law he
o dered shot in January r944 would prove
a talkative exception. As Italy's Foreign
inister from 1936 to 1943, Ciano jotted
st volume, covering 1939-43 appeared
1945? The latest covers 1937-38, the
ors of the German annexation of Aus-
t}ia, the forging of the Rome-Berlin-To-
pinion of the Germans. The Chief .. .
t fly at the `sons of slaves."'
To turn the army, at least, into a Prus-
an facsimile, Mussolini introduced the
tep. When old soldiers and short-legged
oose-step is Prussian. Nonsense. The
y fault if the King is half-size. Natural-
AUTHOR CIANO, FOREIGN MINISTER RIBBENTROP HL FRIENDS
Also a slight suggestion of AI Capone.
kyo Axis, and Munich. Like the first, it
packs no great historical surprises, but
sketches in a .lively picture of intrigue
and ethical corrosion along with some gos-
sipy portraits of Fascist bigwigs. As a
strutting I-witness of fateful events, Cia-
no thought that he and the Duce were
swashbuckling through history like Ren-
aissance princes, when actually, as the
diaries reveal, they were only learning to
heel every time the Germans heiled.
"The Goose Is Roman." The Fascist
leaders were painfully anxious not to lose
face with the Germans. "Pay attention to
uniforms," Ciano cued himself for a visit
to Germany. "We must be more Prussian
than the Prussians." Mussolini repeatedly
lectured Ciano on "the necessity for re-
deeming Italy's reputation as a faithless
nation. Bismarck used to say that you
can't have a policy with Italy when she is
faithless both as friend and foe." Yet no
one took a more contemptuous view of
the Italian people than Mussolini him-
self. One incident or another kept him
boiling. "The Duce has -been made furi-
ously angry ... by the bad behavior of
some farmers from Bari who were being
without making himself ridiculous. He
will hate it for the same reason that he
has always hated horses-he has to use a
ladder to climb on to one."
The Silen+ Par+ners. In one mood,
Mussolini would defend all his sedulous
aping of the Nazis on the ground that
"Italy will never be sufficiently Prussian-
ized." In another, he would klarbor black,
if fanciful, designs against his ally: "I
shall combine the whole world into a co-
alition against Germanism. And we shall
crush Germany for at least two centuries."
What irked the Italians most was tha
they were treated as silent partners of th
Axis, and only called in when matter
reached the sign-on-the-dotted-line stage.
After the Austrian Ansclaluss, "the Duc
was in a mood of irritation with the Ger
mans .they ought to have given u
warning-but not a word." Just befor
Munich, Ciano notes: "The Duce is dis
turbed by the fact that the Germans ar
letting us know almost nothing of thei
program with regard to Czechoslovakia.'
Frustrated, but awed by Hitler's suc
cesses, the Duce and Ciano were reduce
to scoffing privately at their opposit
Approved For Release 2000/08/24 :CIA-RDP70-000588000100080076-9
CPYRGHT
umbers. "Ribb`entrop ... is vain, frlvo-
~~aa loquacious. The .Duce says you
9f~e to look at his head to see that
e has a little brain." On a visit to Goring,
Ciano found him in mufti: "A tie .. .
passed through a ring with a ruby. More
large rubies on his fingers. In his button-
hole, agreat Nazi eagle with diamonds.
A slight suggestion of Al Capone." When
Hitler visited Italy, Ciano recorded: "The
King ...told the Duce and me that the
first night of his stay at the Palace, at
about one in the morning, Hitler asked
for a woman. This caused a great commo-
tion. Then it was explained-apparently
he can't get to sleep, unless with his own
eyes he sees a woman remake his bed .. .
Mussolini believes that Hitler puts rouge
on his cheeks in order to hide his pallor."
Spain Led +o Specula+ion. Not love of
the Germans, as such entries make plain,
but contempt for French and British in-
decision made the vacillating Duce pick
the German side. When the French and
British governments failed to rouse after
Italy's pro-Franco intervention in Spain,
Ciano writes: "T am surprised. [Its is
enough to make one speculate about the
decline of the French and British peoples."
In September 1938, when Ciano phoned
Mussolini that Chamberlain was flying to
meet Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the Duce
exclaimed: "There will not be war, but
this is the liquidation of English prestige."
Ciano, who could "cry like a small child"
when he heard Mussolini's voice on the
radio, was hardly the man to change the
Duce's mind.
As Ciano tells it, British and French
envoys came to him "literally over-
whelmed," "groggy," "white as a sheet."
He greeted them with "perfect serenity"
and "absolute calm." An occasional voice
of sanity tries to puncture this ham acting.
l lying General Italo Balbo told Ciano
"There no longer exists a taste for sin-
cerity in Italy." He warned that the Ger-
mans "will let us down." Heedless and un-
principled, Ciano, at the end of 1938, was
plotting the annexation of Albania, stirring
up anti-French demonstrations, egging on
the Japanese,like aretarded boy playing
with homemade fireworks.
Good News from Spain
TORMENT (312 pp.}-Perez Galdos-
Farrar, Straus ~ Young ($3.50).
Offhand, this novel .has w at seems a
pretty used-up plot, the story of a tar-
nished Cinderella. Senorita Amparo Em-
perador was very beautiful, very poor,
and an orphan, without beaux or hope of
dowry. In Madrid, in 186q, that was
about as bad a fix as a girl could find her-
self in. So Amparo had become a slavey
for her distant, stingy relatives, Rosalia
and Francisco Bringas, who kept her
jumping from dawn to dusk and repaid
her with spoiled food and a few rare
pesetas.
Then Agustin, a cousin of the Brin-
gases, came back from America, and Am-
paro's situation began to look up. Agustin
was a jewel of a man, kind, modest, a bit
awkward socially, but enormously rich,
and generous to a fault. Pushing 45, he