Raffaele Guariglia

Raffaele Guariglia, Barone di Vituso (Naples, 19 February 1889 – Rome, 25 April 1970) was an Italian diplomat. He is best known for his brief service as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the short-lived 1943 World War II-era Italian government headed by Pietro Badoglio.

Born in 1889 as heir to the noble Neapolitan family of di Vituso, Guariglia had the connections necessary to make a career in the Italian Foreign Service, which he joined in 1909. During his first twenty-three years in the service, he occupied a series of diplomatic posts of sub-ambassadorial rank, serving in Paris, London, St. Petersburg, Brussels, and other capitals. Meanwhile the Italian government fell under the domination of Benito Mussolini.

Guariglia attained ambassadorial rank in 1932 when he was named Italy's ambassador to Spain. In 1935 he was translated to Buenos Aires and in 1937 to France. In Paris, he achieved close friendship with a person with insider status in the French government, the Countess Hélène de Portes. De Portes had separated from her noble husband and developed a tie as the long-term romantic partner of a rising French politician, Paul Reynaud. In 1938 Reynaud became Minister of Finance. Although Reynaud's own position was that of staunch opposition to Nazi Germany, his partner's growing liaison with Italy, together with Italy's deepening ties to Germany, compromised this opposition. Guariglia's work was complicit in this power shift.

In May–June 1940 de Portes and Reynaud, who had become Prime Minister of France, were leading their country as it fell under blitzkrieg attack. When Italy declared war on a defeated France on 10 June 1940, Guariglia's services as ambassador were no longer appropriate.

Guariglia was serving as Italy's ambassador to neutral Turkey in 1943 when Mussolini's government fell. As an Italian patriot who had loyally served the Fascist regime without developing close personal ties to Mussolini, the career diplomat was Badoglio's choice to be the Foreign Minister of what Rome hoped would be a successful neutralist government. Guariglia returned to the Ministry, took on his new responsibilities on 30 July 1943, and almost at once opened indirect negotiations with the Western Allies.

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