Sisters in Resistance: How a German Spy, a Banker’s Wife, and Mussolini’s Daughter Outwitted the Nazis

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.