The 1930s Rome-Shanghai Radio Connection

An interesting little anecdote I came across in Tobias Hof’s Galeazzo Ciano: The Fascist Pretender, the bio of Mussolini’s son-in-law, Foreign Minister and, between 1930 and 1933, Consul in Shanghai.

Apparently Ciano had been able to do many favours to the radio pioneer Marconi before going to Shanghai. Radio and telegram links bewtween Italy and China were not great and lagged behind those to Britain and America. Mussolini wished to regularly hear from his daughter Edda (Ciano’s wife and pregnant in Shanghai) while also wanting news of deals Ciano was doing to sell Italian aircraft and munitions to China. So Marconi was called upon to seriously upgrade radio communications between Rome and Shanghai. It was such a big deal the New York Times, in 1932, reported that Il Duce was now able to talk to his duaghter in far away Shanghai (click here)