On January 8, 1944, a special court of the Italian Social Republic began proceedings against nineteen former members of the Fascist Grand Council. While all of them were charged with treason for deposing Benito Mussolini as Duce of Italy six months earlier, only six were present in the courtroom, with the rest being tried in absentia. Easily the most prominent of the accused was Galeazzo Ciano, who had not only served as foreign minister but was Mussolini’s own son-in-law and presumed successor. Though Ciano claimed that his vote had been mistaken, he was nonetheless sentenced to death two days later, with his execution carried out along with those of four other defendants on January 11.

Ciano’s death was a bloody coda to a political career that, just a few years earlier, seemed capable of only an upward trajectory. After a series of prestigious diplomatic postings Ciano had entered the government, first as a junior minister, then as Minister for Press and Propaganda before being named, at the age of only 33, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. While such a rapid ascent fueled many of the claims that Ciano was being groomed to succeed his father-in-law, one of the arguments that Tobias Hof makes in his illuminating biography of the man is that these claims were mere speculation lacking in evidence. As he goes on to demonstrate, though, this makes his career no less illuminating for the insights it offers into the politics of Italian fascism.

Hof eschews a traditional biographical approach in favor of a more thematic one that focuses on four key aspects of his subject’s political career. The first of these describes the role family connections played in establishing Ciano in politics. The foremost figure here is Costanzo Ciano, Galeazzo Ciano’s father. A naval officer who distinguished himself in combat during the First World War, Costanzo used his personal contacts as the Fascist party boss of the port city of Livorno to aid his son throughout Galeazzo’s early career. This may have included arranging his son’s initial meeting with Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, Galeazzo’s marriage to whom proved an enormous boost to his prospects.

Ciano’s marriage to Edda Mussolini soon turned Ciano into the second most important man in Italy. In the process he found himself at odds with others in the party, some of whom resented the authority granted to someone who had not proven himself by rising through the ranks. Here Hof shifts his attention to Ciano’s roles as politician and diplomat, finding in both of them views and positions often at odds with the ideology of the Fascist movement. Ciano managed these disagreements successfully in part because of the support he enjoyed from his father-in-law, but when Mussolini began favoring war rather than Ciano’s “performative foreign policy” to achieve their shared goals Ciano found himself increasingly marginalized in the decision-making process.

Hof’s final focus is on the succession question itself. In many ways this is the most interesting chapter of the book, as Hof uses it to compare Ciano with his father-in-law. Ciano comes out much the worse in the process, as his bourgeois tastes and reputation as a bon vivant clashed with Fascist attitudes towards social elites. Nor did Ciano measure up physically to Mussolini despite the fact that he was twenty years younger than the Duce. Whereas Mussolini carefully cultivated an active and athletic image, Hof shows how Ciano’s attempts to do so were awkward and unconvincing. Nor did Ciano enjoy much support from the monarchy or the Catholic Church, which cost him any chance of succeeding Mussolini after the latter was dismissed by the king in July 1943.

By examining Ciano’s career within the context of the contemporary Italian political scene, Hof demonstrates the limits of the changes wrought by fascism on it. This also lends credence to his argument that the study of Italian fascism has long been unduly limited by an excessive focus on Mussolini himself, to the extent (unlike in, by comparison, the historiography of Nazi Germany) of crowding out examinations of others who played important roles in his government. Hof’s book both demonstrates the value of further studies of their careers and it serves as an excellent model for them to follow. Not only can it be recommended to anyone interested in Ciano himself, but it should be read as well by anyone who is seeking to understand the politics of fascist Italy more generally. ( )