Second italo-Ethiopian war

Origin and crisis

From the point of view of fascistic Italy, the war of Ethiopia answers logical triple:

Italy took delay in the race with the colonies: it has only the Libya, the Erythrée and the Somalia, thin territories compared with the empires French and British; because of that, it misses raw materials and sees its surplus population to emigrate in other countries.
Italy also seeks to avenge humiliating it demolished Adoua for 1896.
Enfin, the mode Fasciste of Mussolini axis its Propagande on the Italian size and the external conquests, and on the duty to civilize a State presented as late (of the Moslems of Red Sea are still reduced there in slavery, in spite of the laws of the Négus).

November 22nd 1934, an anglo-Ethiopian frontier commission falls suddenly on an Italian detachment to the wells from Wal-Wal, theoretically in Ethiopian territory. The 23, a shooting burst for an unknown reason, and an Italian officer is killed (one is unaware of who drew the first shot). The Italians counteract the machine-gun, then by interposed planes and tanks, forcing the Ethiopian ones to flee and killing an English officer.

The negociations which follow this incident quickly become very tended. Mussolini claims that Walwal belonged indeed to Italy since years, and requires public excuses in front of the Italian flag. Hailé Sélassié I {{er}} refuses and requires the withdrawal of the Italians, who are indeed advanced very far in the west, but France dissuades it to cause a scandal with the Société of the Nations. It will carry the business to Geneva only in 1935. At this time, the Conférence of Stressed Walwal eclipse and makes it possible Mussolini to take again the hand.

Year 1935 occurs in sterile debates to the SDN: commission of experts, Commission of the Thirteen, the Five, the Eighteen… The Italian army, it, continues its rise to power: it ends up constituting a task force of 400.000 men, directed by the marshal Pietro Badoglio. The son-in-law of the Duce, the count Ciano and the wire of the dictator will take part in the countryside. In same time, it excites the tensions within the British empire by helping Ibn Saoud, and it sends its ships, planes and submarines in devices of intimidation in front of the Greek Malta, Alexandria, and ports. The Italian planes fly over even Athens. On the other hand, the Italian submariners ridicule themselves while panicking vis-a-vis grenades of exercise.

Curiously, France and Great Britain almost do not move. However, they hold Suez, Aden, Djibouti, the Puntland, the Sudan anglo-Egyptian, the Kenya, and could easily intervene against a too greedy rival. But Mussolini is the showpiece of the new alliance vis-a-vis Hitler: the froisser is not needed… Moreover, Foreign Office has a fear panics to see the Italian submarines and planes to attack the English ships in Malta. One evokes even a raid-suicide of the Regia aeronautica on London!

Still in December 1935, the secretaries British Hoare and French Laval will try to propose a compromise solution. but their plan is unacceptable: it would cut down Ethiopia by two thirds of its territory, and would transform it into Italian protectorate in fact. Hailé Sélassié cannot of course sacrifice its kingdom thus, and Mussolini does not may find it beneficial any to cease the hostilities: the war promises to him more.

Unfolding of the war

The October 2nd 1935, the offensive is started. The October 6th, Adoua, city located at the north of the Empire, falls. The military forces which are opposed are without common measurement:

on a side, the Italian army deploys tanks and fighters. The latter were employed to disperse Mustard gas with the back of the face, with for goal to weaken the Ethiopian resources, to touch the civil population mortally and to demoralize the troops abyssines.
of the other, the troops of the négus, fewer and less better armed, resisted sometimes heroically, as with May Chew or Amba Alaguié. But an embargo on the weapons imposed by the three colonial powers bordering since 1918 had limited the armament of Ethiopia to old reformed rifles and the equipment gracefully offered by the various European governments to Négus. Moreover Ethiopian aviation had one apparatus: that of Négus!

The May 5th 1936, Addis-Abeba falls. Italy seizes a rich country, whose position is strategic in the Corne of Africa. This conquest indeed makes it possible Italy to join its territories of Érythrée and Somalia, and finally to encircle the British Somaliland and Djibouti. The whole forms the Italian Eastern Africa.

The exit of war

The evening even Mussolini proclaims the Italian empire in front of twenty million Italians. Victor-Emmanuel III becomes emperor, Mussolini and Badoglio receives their sticks of marshals of Empire. Mussolini entrusts that he would have preferred to relieve the king…

In 1937, wanting to celebrate in its manner the fifteenth birthday of “walk on Rome” fascistic black shirts, it steals the obelisk of Axoum, principal symbol of the history and of the identity of the kingdom pre-Christian of Axoum, and the fact of placing in front of the ministry for the Colonies (become then the head office of FAO-the United Nations for the food and agriculture), thus celebrating its transitory “African empire”.

This adventure will leave in Mussolini the conviction that France, England and the SDN are relics of another age. The world such as wants Fascism must erase them. It turns then to another alliance, that of Germany…

Haïlé Sélassié, left in exile, lance in Geneva a call to the Company of the Nations the June 27th 1936 front assembled European powers. In spite of the warning statements of the Emperor in front of the Fascistic danger which this war lets appear, as well as the obstinate pressures of the Count Carlo Sforza, the SDN is satisfied to issue economic sanctions ever come into force. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil war burst. It is time to pass to more serious…

The left Emperor, a resistance organizes himself against the Italian occupant, under the crook of Ras Abebe Aragay. In 1940, England provides enfn weapons to the Ethiopian refugees who then can, from Kenya, throw an offensive on Addis-Abeba.

The occupation ends the May 5th 1941, date of the return of Haïlé Sélassié Ier to Addis-Abeba.

See too

The film: the Short cut

External bonds

Chart of the War

Source

Haile Selassie I, My Life and Ethiopia' S Progress: The Autobiography off Emperor Haile Sellassie I , New York, Frontline Books, 1999. ISBN 0948390409

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