Ciano proceeded to flee to Germany but was arrested and handed over to Mussolini's new regime based in Salò, the Italian Social Republic.

[3] Ciano wrote and left behind a diary[4] that has been used as a source by several historians, including William Shirer in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)[5] and in the four-hour HBO documentary-drama Mussolini and I (1985).

He was the son of Costanzo Ciano and his wife Carolina Pini;[7] 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).

[8] The elder Ciano, nicknamed Ganascia ("The Jaw"), was a founding member of the National Fascist Party and re-organizer of the Italian merchant navy in the 1920s.

[9] After studying Philosophy of Law at the University of Rome, Galeazzo Ciano worked briefly as a journalist before choosing a diplomatic career; soon, he served as an attaché in Rio de Janeiro.

[12] Soon after their marriage, Ciano left for Shanghai to serve as Italian consul,[13] where his wife had an affair with the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang.

In 1937, he was allegedly involved in planning the murder of the brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli, two exiled anti-fascist activists killed in the French spa town of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne on 9 June.

The other involved him being reprimanded for a rowdy celebration of an aviator in Bari; he wrote a letter to Mussolini stating that the Duce had "opened a wound in him which can never be closed."

[22] In late 1942 and early 1943, following the Axis defeat in North Africa, other major setbacks on the Eastern Front, and with an Anglo-American assault on Sicily looming, Ciano turned against the doomed war and actively pushed for Italy's exit from the conflict.

Grandi put on the table a resolution asking King Victor Emmanuel III to resume his full constitutional powers – in effect, a vote leading to Mussolini's ousting from leadership.

[26] After the Verona trial and sentence, on 11 January 1944, Ciano was executed by a firing squad along with four others (Emilio De Bono, Luciano Gottardi, Giovanni Marinelli and Carlo Pareschi) who had voted for Mussolini's ousting.

"[27] Ciano is remembered for his Diaries 1937–1943,[28] a revealing daily record of his meetings with Mussolini, Hitler, Ribbentrop, foreign ambassadors and other political figures.

Edda tried to barter his papers to the Germans in return for his life; Gestapo agents helped her confidant Emilio Pucci rescue some of them from Rome.

When Hitler vetoed the plan, she hid the bulk of the papers at a clinic in Ramiola, near Medesano and on 9 January 1944, Pucci helped Edda escape to Switzerland with five diaries covering the war years which were then buried beneath a rose garden.