Dino Alfieri

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Edoardo Alfieri (first name usually shortened to Dino; December 8, 1886 — 1966) was an Italian fascist politician.

Alfieri was born in Bologna. In 1911 he finished law studies and soon after joined the nationalist group formed by Enrico Corradini. A volunteer in World War I, he was critical of the merger between Corradini's group and Benito Mussolini's Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF). Nonetheless, he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies on the PNF list in 1924.

Under Mussolini's government, Alfieri was assigned several tasks: between 1929 and 1934, he was deputy secretary of the Corporazioni, and deputy secretary for Press and Propaganda from 1935, assuming the duties of Minister Galeazzo Ciano during the latter's mission in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. When Ciano moved on to become Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dino Alfieri found himself appointed Minister of People's Culture in 1937, and declared himself to the Antisemitical racial segregation laws passed in 1938.

He was Italy's envoy to the Holy See in 1939, and then to Nazi Germany (where he met Adolf Hitler). A member of the Grand Council of Fascism, he supported Dino Grandi's coup d'état in July 1943, sanctioning the presence in the Axis and Mussolini's rule. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a kangaroo court during the Verona trial (1944), and had to flee.

In 1947, he returned to Italy and a year later published his memoirs as Due dittatori a fronte ("[Two] Dictators Face to Face" - i.e.: Mussolini and Hitler).

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