Count Ciano’s Chinese Aftershave Annoys Hitler, 1936

Posted: October 6th, 2022 | No Comments »

I’ve been very fortunate to receive a proof copy of Caroline Moorehead’s new biography of Edda Mussolini (out October 27 2022). It’s excellent, as expected. My interest is of course largely in the 30 months or so Edda spent in China in the early 1930s, largely in Shanghai where her husband Count Galeazzo Ciano was Consul General. Ciano (later Mussoilini, his father-in-law’s Foreign Minister and then, after Musolini’s death, arrested and executed by firing squad) had of course, earlier, served as an attache at the Italian Legation in Peking. The book has a lot of interesting info on Edda’s time in Shanghai, her husband’s constant philandering, her affair with Zhang Xueliang (the Young Marshall) and their lives in Shanghai and Peking.

Obviously China stuck with Ciano in many ways….they acquired a lot of furniture and rugs for insdtance that followed them back to Italy. Then, in October 1936 Ciano visited Hitler at Berchtesgarden as Italian Foreign Minister, ostensibly to discuss Italian-German relations in relation to the Spanish Civil War. According to Moorehouse Hitler later told an aide that he had loathed the smell of Ciano’s Chinese aftershave lotion….

Now my question – a dig at Ciano’s China sojourns? Or did Ciano stay loyal to a Chinese brand of aftershave? Anyone know?

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