{"id":20604,"date":"2022-12-13T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=221545"},"modified":"2022-12-13T14:12:22","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T13:12:22","slug":"edda-ciano-hilde-beetz-how-the-women-stood-up-to-hitler","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/edda-ciano-hilde-beetz-how-the-women-stood-up-to-hitler\/","title":{"rendered":"Edda Ciano & Hilde Beetz: how the women stood up to Hitler"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 13 December 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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If Edda Ciano were to rescue her husband, she would have to do what no one else dared: she would have to blackmail Adolf Hitler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cF\u00fchrer,\u201d she wrote in a letter dated 10 January 1944, \u201cfor some time the documents have been in the hands of persons who are authorised to use them in case anything should happen to my husband\u201d. She gave Hitler three days to release Galeazzo Ciano, or she would publish the Italian\u2019s private diaries. It was a gambit as unlikely as it was daring. A young German spy named Hilde Beetz had already been sent to seduce her husband and learn the location of the documents. That spy\u2019s mission had already produced results.<\/p>\n

But what Hitler could not know was that in the final months of 1943, the young spy assigned to beguile Galeazzo Ciano in a prison cell had fallen in love with her target and was, even now, helping Edda to deliver her brazen blackmail message.<\/p>\n

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Why did Hitler want Galeazzo Ciano\u2019s diaries?<\/h2>\n

So, who was Galeazzo Ciano, and why were his diaries of such interest to Hitler? Galeazzo Ciano had been, until the previous summer, Benito Mussolini<\/a>\u2019s foreign minister and political heir-apparent. Crucially, he was also Mussolini\u2019s son-in-law. Edda Ciano, n\u00e9e Edda Mussolini, was the headstrong favourite child of Il Duce.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in 1938, with Galeazzo Ciano seen just to Hitler\u2019s right. Germany and Italy would enter a new political and military alliance the following year, dubbed the \u2018Pact of Steel\u2019. (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

As Mussolini\u2019s foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano had been privy to secret conversations between Germany and Italy, and by 1942, became ever more convinced that joining the Axis powers had been a grave mistake. Determined to act, he began secret negotiations with the Allies and sought to remove Italy from the war. When that failed, he reached out to Allied intelligence, attempting to broker a separate peace.<\/p>\n

After that, too, failed, he joined a plot to remove his father-in-law from power in the summer of 1943, and, for a few weeks \u2013 until Hitler liberated Mussolini from his mountain-top prison \u2013 Ciano and his co-conspirators succeeded.<\/p>\n