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Sisters in Resistance
How a German Spy, a Banker's Wife, and Mussolini's Daughter Outwitted the Nazis
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In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by Italy's Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, had permeated public consciousness. What wasn't reported, however, was how three women—a Fascist's daughter, a German spy, and an American socialite—risked their lives to ensure the diaries would reach the Allies, who would later use them as evidence against the Nazis at Nuremberg.
In 1944, Benito Mussolini's daughter, Edda, gave Hitler and her father an ultimatum: release her husband, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband's journals to the press. To avoid the peril of exposing Nazi lies, Hitler and Mussolini hunted for the diaries for months, determined to destroy them.
Hilde Beetz, a German spy, was deployed to seduce Ciano to learn the diaries' location and take them from Edda. As the seducer became the seduced, Hilde converted as a double agent, joining forces with Edda to save Ciano from execution. When this failed, Edda fled to Switzerland with Hilde's daring assistance to keep Ciano's final wish: to see the diaries published for use by the Allies. When American spymaster Allen Dulles learned of Edda's escape, he sent in socialite Frances De Chollet, an "accidental" spy, telling her to find Edda, gain her trust, and, crucially, hand the diaries over to the Americans. Together, they succeeded in preserving one of the most important documents of WWII.
Drawing from in‑depth research and first-person interviews with people who witnessed these events, Mazzeo gives readers a riveting look into this little‑known moment in history and shows how, without Edda, Hilde, and Frances's involvement, certain convictions at Nuremberg would never have been possible.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 21, 2022 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781549129841
- File size: 244620 KB
- Duration: 08:29:37
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 1, 2022
New York Times best-selling authors Abrams and Fisher join forces with Gray, the young Black lawyer who served as Martin Luther King's defense attorney when King was tried for his part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, to tell the story of the trial in Alabama v. King (150,000-copy first printing). Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bissinger chronicles The Mosquito Bowl, a football game played in the Pacific theater on Christmas Eve 1944 between the 4th and 29th Marine regiments to prove which had the better players (400,000-copy first printing). In The Spy Who Knew Too Much, New York Times best-selling, Edgar Award-winning Blum recounts efforts by Tennent "Pete" Bagley--a rising CIA star accused of being a mole--to redeem his reputation by solving the disappearance of former CIA officer John Paisley and to reconcile with his daughter, who married his accuser's son (50,000-copy first printing). Associate professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, Clague reveals how The Star-Spangled Banner became the national anthem in O Say Can You Hear? Multiply honored for his many history books, Dolin returns with Rebels at Sea to chronicle the contributions of the freelance sailors--too often called profiteers or pirates--who scurried about on private vessels to help win the Revolutionary War. With The Earth Is All That Lasts, Gardner, the award-winning author of Rough Riders and To Hell on a Fast Horse, offers a dual biography of the significant Indigenous leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull (50,000-copy first printing). With We Refuse To Forget, New America and PEN America fellow Gayle investigates the Creek Nation, which both enslaved Black people and accepted them as full citizens, electing the Black Creek citizen Cow Tom as chief in the mid 1800s but stripping Black Creeks of their citizenship in the 1970s. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Hoffman's Give Me Liberty profiles Cuban dissident Oswaldo Pay�, who founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1987 to challenge Fidel Castro's Communist regime (50,000-copy first printing). Forensic anthropologist Kimmerle's We Carry Their Bones the true story of the Dozier Boys School, first brought to light in Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Nickel Boys (75,000-copy first printing). Kissinger's Leadership plumbs modern statecraft, putting forth Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Lee Kuan Yew, and Anwar Sadat as game-changing leaders who helped create a new world order. From a prominent family that included the tutor to China's last emperor, Li profiles her aunts Jun and Hong--separated after the Chinese Civil War, with one becoming a committed Communist and the other a committed capitalist--in Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden. New York Times best-selling author Mazzeo (Irena's Children) reveals that three Sisters in Resistance--a German spy, an American socialite, and Mussolini's daughter--risked their lives to hand over the secret diaries of Italy's jailed former foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, to the Allies; the diaries later figured importantly in the Nuremberg Trials (45,000-copy first printing). A Junior Research Fellowship in English at University College, Oxford, whose PhD dissertation examined how gay cruising manifests in New York poetry, Parlett explains that New York's Fire Island has figured importantly in art, literature, culture, and queer liberation over the past century (75,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-selling Writer, Sailor,...
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April 4, 2022
University of Montreal literature professor Mazzeo (Eliza Hamilton) unravels a tangled knot of Fascist intrigue and family infighting in this riveting WWII history. At the center of the story are Italian foreign minister Galleazzo Ciano and his wife, Edda, Benito Mussolini’s favorite daughter. In 1943, Ciano voted with the Fascist Party’s Grand Council to oust Mussolini. His replacement was Ciano’s archrival, Pietro Badoglio, who, in a bid to solidify his power, put Ciano under house arrest. This prompted Edda to approach a group of Nazi officials with a proposal: if they helped the Cianos flee to Spain, Edda would hand over her husband’s diaries (which contained state secrets and unflattering depictions of Italian and German officials) so they could further their own aims with Hitler. After striking a deal, the family was betrayed and ended up in Germany, where S.S. agent Hilde Beetz fell in love with Ciano while seducing him into revealing the whereabouts of his diaries. Hitler eventually returned Mussolini to power and sent the Cianos back to Italy, where Ciano was executed in 1944. Soon after, Beetz brokered a deal between Edda and U.S. intelligence, which wanted Ciano’s diaries for evidence against the Nazis in postwar trials. Mazzeo efficiently relates these complex events and renders empathetic portraits of the story’s main players. WWII buffs will be enthralled. -
May 1, 2022
A distinguished cultural studies scholar explores the web of intrigue surrounding the infamous Ciano Diaries. Before he became famous for condemning the Third Reich and its leaders, Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944) was better known as Mussolini's playboy son-in-law and foreign minister. In her latest elegant book of European cultural history, Mazzeo offers a colorful account of Ciano and Mussolini, the affairs and double-crosses that surrounded the diaries, and the courageous women whose efforts saved the manuscripts for posterity. Ciano began keeping diaries about Hitler's inner circle in 1939, the year he started to question the war in Europe and the Third Reich's alliance with Italy. Though in the service of a dictator, Ciano realized Mussolini's involvement with Germany would be Italy's downfall. So he turned to his journals, where he expressed his virulent disgust with the Third Reich and recorded "the political squabbles" between men like Himmler and Goebbels who "vied for power and influence with Hitler." By 1943, the foreign minister, who gossiped shamelessly about his diary, had become a liability to the Third Reich. The Germans then sent a beautiful, young, married spy to learn the location of the journals, which Ciano had hidden before using them as collateral for a passage into exile. Little went according to plan. The spy fell in love with Ciano and turned double agent for the Allies. In that role, she developed an unlikely alliance with Ciano's wife, Edda, and an American socialite to protect as much of Ciano's manuscript--portions of which still ended up in German hands--for postwar publication in the U.S. Intelligent and compelling, Mazzeo's probing book delves intriguingly into the "moral thicket" into which a group of strangers found themselves plunged during the long, dark days of World War II. A tantalizingly novelistic history lesson.COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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May 15, 2022
The story Mazzeo (The Hotel on Place Vend�me, 2014) tells here reads like a John le Carr� novel, too incredible to be true--and yet it is. At the height of WWII, Mussolini's son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano, voted to oust il Duce from the Fascist Party. Ciano was eventually imprisoned and executed. The Nazis knew he kept diaries full of incriminating information. Edda, his wife, knew too, and hid them to be used as leverage to get her family safely out of the country. S.S. agent Hilde Beetz, who interrogated Ciano in prison, fell in love with him and became a double agent. She helped get Edda out of Italy, and brokered a deal with the Allies to publish the diaries. To accomplish this, an American socialite and sometime spy, Frances de Chollet, befriended Edda and obtained the diaries, which were eventually used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. This little-known but very important WWII story has the pacing of a thriller novel with the research acumen expected from this excellent writer.COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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May 1, 2022
State secrets, atrocities, spies, double agents: this backdrop forms the real-life entanglements of this biograpby by Mazzeo (Irena's Children). At the center of this web is the daughter of Benito Mussolini, Edda Mussolini Ciano, and her husband, Galeazzo Ciano. While Galeazzo is a foreign minister and son-in-law to Mussolini, he also becomes disenchanted by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany's crimes. His diaries become sought-after documents by both his enemies and his allies. Readers enter Mussolini's inner circle, where politics has devolved into a deadly game of risk. There is the notoriously cruel Joachim von Ribbentrop of Hitler's administration, one that the Ciano couple distrust. There is also the seductive spy Hildegard Burkhardt Beetz, who becomes a double agent against Germany. Galeazzo turned on Mussolini in 1943, and he paid for it with his life. However, his wife Edda had a plan for revenge herself. She would get Ciano's papers, which detailed Hitler and Mussolini's secret plans, to the Allies. The style is energetic yet informative. VERDICT A nail-biting account of state crimes and secrets, real world action pitting spy versus spy and diplomat versus diplomat.--Jeffrey Meyer
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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