The Ciano Diaries

A daily record of the Second World War as it was made, kept by the man at Mussolini’s elbow.

Galeazzo Ciano served as Italy’s foreign minister from 1936 to 1943, present at every major decision of the Axis alliance from inside the Italian half of it. His diaries cover the formation of the Pact of Steel, the diplomatic prelude to the German invasion of Poland, Italy’s entry into the war in June 1940, the campaigns in Greece and North Africa, the long Italian disillusionment with the German alliance, and the Grand Council session of July 1943 that removed Mussolini from power and ended Ciano’s own life six months later.

The diaries have been described as the most important single political document on Italy’s wartime years; they were entered as evidence at the Nuremberg trials, used by William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and have been quoted in every serious history of the war’s origins for the better part of a century.

The diaries show how stereotyped was Hitler’s course in utilizing his most solemn pledges to other governments as a means of deluding them as to his real intentions. — Sumner Welles, U.S. Under Secretary of State, in his introduction to the 1946 edition

The most important single political document concerning recent Italian affairs in existence. — U.S. Office of Strategic Services, Bern station, 1945