Abyssinian War

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Abyssinian War
Troops of Fascist Italy in the Abyssinian capital Addis Ababa
Troops of Fascist Italy in the Abyssinian capital Addis Ababa
date October 3, 1935 to November 27, 1941
place Abyssinia ( Ethiopia )
Exit Victory of Italy in the regular war until 1936/37;
Stalemate in the guerrilla war until 1940;
Italy was defeated in the East Africa campaign until 1941
consequences Italian de jure annexation of Abyssinia
Parties to the conflict
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia Ethiopia

Supported by: German Reich (1935–1936) United Kingdom (1940–1941)
German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) 
United KingdomUnited Kingdom 

Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) Italy

Commander
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia Haile Selassie I.

Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia Cash desk Haile Darge Imru Haile Selassie Seyoum Mengesha Mulugeta Yeggazu Desta Damtew Nasibu Zeamanuel Vehib Pascha Wolde Tzadek Abebe Aragai
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
TurkeyTurkey
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia
Ethiopia 1897Ethiopia

Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) Victor Emmanuel III.
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) Benito Mussolini

Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) Emilio De Bono Pietro Badoglio Rodolfo Graziani Ugo Cavallero Hamid Idris Awate Olol Diinle
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)

Troop strength
Maximum strength:

approx. 250,000 soldiers

Maximum strength:

330,000 Italian soldiers,
87,000 Libyan, Eritrean and Somali Askaris ,
100,000 military workers

losses

350,000–760,000 Abyssinians killed (including time of occupation)

25,000 military and civilian casualties
(including time of occupation)

The Abyssinian War was a war of aggression and conquest of the fascist Kingdom of Italy against the Empire of Abyssinia ( Ethiopia ) in East Africa, in violation of international law . The armed conflict that began on October 3, 1935 was the last and largest colonial campaign of conquest in history. At the same time it was the first war between sovereign states of the League of Nations , which a fascist regime waged to gain new "living space" ( spazio vitale ). Italy thus triggered the worst international crisis since the end of the First World War .

The Italian attack started with a pincer offensive without a declaration of war : in the north from the colony of Eritrea and in the south from Italian Somaliland . The Abyssinian armed forces offered bitter resistance, but in the end could not stop the advance of the numerically, technologically and organizationally superior Italian invasion army. After the fall of the capital Addis Ababa , Italy declared the war over on May 9, 1936 and formally incorporated Abyssinia into the newly formed colony of Italian East Africa . In fact, the Italians controlled only a third of the Abyssinian territory at that time; Fighting with remnants of the imperial army continued until February 19, 1937. Subsequently, the Abyssinian resistance waged a guerrilla war , which passed into the East Africa campaign on June 10, 1940 with the Italian entry into the Second World War and ended with the complete victory of the Allied- Abyssinian liberation troops on November 27, 1941.

In military history , the Abyssinian War marked the breakthrough of a new, particularly brutal form of warfare . Italy used chemical weapons of mass destruction on a large scale and waged the most massive air war in history to date . In this context, the civilian population and field hospitals of the Red Cross were also targeted . Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani (1936–1937) established a reign of terror in the Italian occupied territory , during which the elites of the old empire were systematically murdered by the fascists. In this context, research also speaks of the “first fascist war of extermination ” and compares the politics of Italy with the initial phase of the later German terrorist occupation in Poland . Graziani's successor Amedeo von Savoyen-Aosta (1937–1941) reduced the repression. At the same time, a racist apartheid regime was developed, and Italy continued to use chemical weapons against "rebels". In total, around 350,000 to 760,000 Abyssinians were killed as a result of the Italian invasion and occupation from 1935 to 1941.

After 1945, Ethiopia tried to set up an international tribunal for Italian war criminals based on the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials , but failed not only because of resistance from Italy, but especially because of that of the western allies. Thus, no Italian perpetrator has ever been prosecuted for war crimes committed in Ethiopia. The Italian government did not officially admit the systematic use of poison gas until 1996, and in 1997 Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro apologized in Ethiopia for the injustice caused from 1935 to 1941. Today's Ethiopia commemorates fascist rule with two national holidays, “Martyrs Day” on February 19th and “Liberation Day” on May 5th.

description

In German-language research, the Italian attack on the Ethiopian Empire from 1935 on is called the "Abyssinian War", while in Italian literature it is treated as the "Second Italian-Ethiopian War". The conflict between Italy and Ethiopia of 1895/96 is considered the " First Italian-Ethiopian War ". In English-language research, the terms “Ethiopian war” or “War in Abyssinia” are used, which are also rendered as “Ethiopian War” in works translated into German.

prehistory

Situation of the Abyssinian Empire

Orange: The northern Ethiopian heartland. Yellow: Conquests under Emperor Menelik II.
Flag of the Empire of Abyssinia with the crowned lion of Judah
Emperor Haile Selassie I (1934)

At the time of the Italian invasion, the Abyssinian Empire (Ethiopia) was considered the “oldest genuinely African empire”. Its old heartland in northern Ethiopia had developed from the ancient empire of Aksum , whose inhabitants had converted to Christianity as early as the 4th century . Favored by its seclusion and the tenacious self-assertion of its inhabitants, an archaic social system survived in this mountainous country, shielded from deserts and dry savannas, until the 20th century. The cultural and political supremacy of this Abyssinian high culture were held by the ethnic groups of the Amharen and Tigray who lived in the northern ancestral land and who regarded themselves as the peoples of the country. Ethiopia only received its present-day borders under Emperor Menelik II (1886–1913). The Negus Negesti ( "King of Kings") continued the policy of expansion, begun under his predecessors in his long reign. This brought Menelik II the reputation of a " black imperialist" and let countless peoples and tribes come under Abyssinian rule until the Christian peoples of the northern highlands finally found themselves as a minority in their own state. At the same time, Menelik II established the modern imperial central state with the Amharic as the lingua franca , the capital Addis Ababa , founded in 1886 , the "Bank of Ethiopia" with a national currency and other reforms.

In the age of high imperialism , the historical development of the great Ethiopian empire was also in danger. However, at the Battle of Adua in 1896, Menelik II's army managed to repel the first Italian attempt at conquest. The victory over the Italian expeditionary force secured the independence of the empire and ensured that Abyssinia was the only African state besides Liberia to be spared colonial rule. In addition, the victory of Adua left the fate of the country in the hands of the Amharic and Tigrin upper classes as well as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church . The Kushitic tribes of the south and the Nilotic peoples in the west and south-west were enslaved by the Christian state peoples, in 1914 an estimated one third of the entire population was living as slaves . In summary, the Ethiopia of the early 20th century is considered to be a large, multi-ethnic state with a feudal-like social structure, a backward country with a narrow economic base, a premodern education system, a poor transport system and a military organization based on feudal foot and rider contingents. In addition, there was conflicting coexistence between the dominant north and the rest of the empire, between the central government in Addis Ababa and the peoples in the periphery.

Ras Tafari Makonnen , who has been regent since 1916 , continued the course of authoritarian modernization. He worked nominally under Empress Zauditu , a daughter of Menelik, but rose during his 14-year reign to the strong man of the monarchy. Japan's path to modernity served as a model for his radical reforms. Ras Tafari modernized the administration, created new ministries, brought in a well-trained leadership elite, secularized and renewed the education system, built roads and hospitals, expanded the communication network and, from 1918, resolutely opposed the slave trade. In March 1924, his government officially abolished slavery. With the ban, slavery did not disappear immediately in Ethiopia, but it did defuse a major image problem that had so far badly damaged Abyssinia's reputation in the world. The fluent French-speaking regent pursued a foreign policy based on the Western powers, which aimed to free Abyssinia from its isolation. This course was rewarded in 1923, when the empire was the only African country to be accepted into the League of Nations with full rights and its independence was finally recognized internationally.

After Zauditu's death in 1930 he was crowned the new emperor, Ras Tafari took the throne name Haile Selassie I (“Power of the Trinity”) and from then on ruled Abyssinia alone. He did everything in his power to strengthen the imperial central power against the competing provincial powers. This process was supported by the constitution of July 16, 1931 . Based on Japan's constitution of 1889 , it was the first ever written constitution of the Empire of Abyssinia. In an unprecedented way it strengthened the emperor's decision-making prerogative and concentrated all power in his hands, with which he now resembled an absolutist monarch. The succession to the throne was limited to Haile Selassie's family, thus turning Abyssinia into a hereditary monarchy . The two chambers of the newly created parliament were of no real importance. Although the 1931 constitution strengthened national unity, the empire was finally transformed into an autocracy. In the last three years before the Italian attack, Haile Selassie I continued the modernization policy that had been initiated. Particular attention was paid to the construction of telephone lines and the first Abyssinian radio station was set up in 1931. At the same time, the Abyssinia government opened up to the world market and intensified trade relations with foreign countries.

Italian colonialism and fascism

Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1930)

When Benito Mussolini's fascists came to power in 1922, Italian colonialism received an enormous boost. In their agenda, practiced as a political religion , the fascists called for a totalitarian state and advocated a social Darwinist- based racism , pronounced militarism , a glorification of war and the ideal of restoring the power and glory of the ancient Roman Empire . This made the Italian attack on the Ethiopian Empire only a matter of time. Abyssinia militarily humiliated Italy in Adua in 1896 and stood as a symbol of the permanent frustration of Italy's colonial ambitions. In addition, Ethiopia was still independent and was therefore open to conquest. The conquest of Ethiopia was only intended to be a first step in a much larger imperial expansion program. The original fascist goal of Italian supremacy in the Mediterranean ( mare nostrum ) has been increasingly replaced by a planned "advance on the oceans" since the 1930s.

As early as the 1920s, the Italian fascists waged so-called "pacification wars" against the breakaway colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in North Africa ( Second Italian-Libyan War ) and against Italian Somaliland in East Africa ( colonial war in Italian Somaliland ). The war in Libya in particular became a test field for new war methods and weapons as well as a “school of violence”. In Libya, for example, chemical warfare agents were thrown from the air for the first time in 1923, and arbitrary mass executions were also part of the repression measures. In total, around 100,000 of the around 800,000 Libyans fell victim to the colonial war, around 40,000 of them in Italian concentration camps during the genocide in Cyrenaica . In March 1932, just a few weeks after the completion of the military operations in Libya, Colonial Minister Emilio De Bono undertook a trip to Eritrea agreed with Mussolini to discuss the situation there for a future war against Abyssinia. Despite his critical conclusion that an "armed intervention" would require a long preparation time and devour huge sums of money, De Bono came to the view in the weeks after his return to Italy that Italy had to look for its "colonial future" in East Africa. In the summer of 1932 De Bono commissioned the commander of the Italian troops in Eritrea to work out a military attack plan against Abyssinia. In autumn 1932, on the tenth anniversary of the fascist takeover of power, De Bono had enough illustrative material and strategic preliminary studies to obtain the green light from Mussolini for a comprehensive military strike against the Abyssinian Empire.

War preparations

Benito Mussolini during a maneuver by the Italian army (1929)

As the victorious power of the First World War , Italy was able to advance the development of its military clout unhindered in the 1920s. Italy, whose chemical weapons arsenal had been modestly exempted during the First World War, intensified its efforts in this area since the transfer of power to the fascists. On July 10, 1923, a "chemical military service" ( Servizio chimico militare ), subordinate to the Ministry of War, was launched, which controlled and coordinated all, even civilian research and development projects in this area. This organization soon included a staff of around 200 officers and numerous scientists who worked in special research departments. In contrast to the Weimar Republic , where the manufacture and import of chemical warfare agents was strictly forbidden by the Versailles Peace Treaty , chemical armament in Italy was by no means secret. In May 1935, Benito Mussolini took part in large-scale maneuvers at the Centocelle airport near Rome, which were all about chemical warfare. During this exercise, special forces demonstrated the throwing of gas hand grenades, methods of land poisoning, the overcoming of mustard gas barriers by gas-protected troops and the detoxification of contaminated terrain. In the field of chemical warfare agents, the Italian armed forces had reached a remarkably high level within a few years. In the mid-1930s, they were considered to be the first-rate power in this area around the world.

Mussolini honors Italian aviation officers in Milan (1931)

In early 1934, the Italian military planned, contrary to all international treaties signed by Italy, to use chemical warfare agents in a war with Ethiopia. At the end of December 1934 it was Mussolini who prepared the Italian army for a poison gas use in a memorandum. In April 1935 the construction of a total of 18 chemical warfare depots was ordered in the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somalia. In February, the Italian Air Force General and Undersecretary of State in the Aviation Ministry Giuseppe Valle had given the order to prepare 250 aircraft for the dropping of poison gas bombs. In the summer of 1935, the establishment of a chemical ordnance force for East Africa began. In total, over 1700 men of the Servizio chimico militare under the command of General Aurelio Ricchetti were mobilized for the Abyssinian War .

In the 1930s, Abyssinia also took steps to modernize the army, which in terms of organization and armament had more or less remained at the level of the Battle of Adua. The main thing was that it consisted of a decentrally organized rider and foot contingent commanded by provincial princes. It consisted of traditionally armed warriors who had little in common with the modern equipped soldiers of European land forces. In addition, an Imperial Guard of several thousand men existed as the core of a standing army, the only well-trained and reasonably modern armed unit. In order to professionalize the training of the troops, Belgian instructors were brought into the country and in 1934 a military academy for officer candidates was founded. Of course, Abyssinia did not have its own production facilities for modern military equipment. Therefore, the imperial government acquired rifles, machine guns, anti-aircraft cannons, ammunition and some obsolete combat aircraft on the international arms market. Nevertheless, there could be no question of forced armament. The country's material resources were far too limited for that.

From July 1934 to September 1935, Fascist Italy made diplomatic and economic preparations for war. Mussolini tried to get the approval of Britain and France, and took advantage of every small border incident to create a climate of nationalist excitement in Italy and mobilize more soldiers. The economy was reorganized with a series of measures in view of the war: On July 31, 1935, strategically important raw materials such as coal, copper, tin and nickel were monopolized by the state. The "General Commissariat for War Production" was set up, which now included 876 factories and 580,000 Italian workers. On July 6, 1935, Mussolini told his soldiers in the city of Eboli : “We don't give a damn about all negroes of the present, past and future and their possible defenders. It will not be long before the five continents will have to bow their heads to the fascist will. "

In 1935 the Ethiopian army numbered around 200,000 men, a few hundred machine guns, a few artillery pieces and a handful of aircraft. On the Italian side, the Colonial Minister and Supreme Commander, General Emilio De Bono , were subordinate to a total of 170,000 Italian soldiers, 65,000 African colonial troops ( Askaris ) and around 38,000 workers in the autumn of 1935 . Under his successor, Marshal Pietro Badoglio , around 330,000 Italian soldiers, 87,000 Askaris and around 100,000 Italian workers fought and worked in March 1936. The logistical resources included 90,000 pack animals and 14,000 motorized vehicles of various categories from passenger cars to trucks. The invading army of Fascist Italy also received 250 tanks, 350 aircraft and 1,100 artillery pieces by sea. Italian daily gasoline consumption exceeded Italy's total fuel consumption during World War I. The Italian Navy, which was mainly responsible for the transport of people and construction and war material, carried around 900,000 people and several hundred thousand tons of material during the war.

The "War of the Seven Months" (1935–1936)

Italian advance and trench warfare

General Emilio De Bono , first commander in chief of the Italian invasion army

Without declaring war, the Italian units passed the Mareb River on the night of October 2 to 3, 1935 , which marked the border between Eritrea and Abyssinia. Also on October 3, the Italian Air Force began bombing the operational targets Adigrat and Adua . Emperor Haile Selassie, who was in the capital Addis Ababa, had tried to create a buffer zone by withdrawing the army by 30 kilometers in order to avoid a military escalation. But after crossing the border, the Negus officially proclaimed general mobilization in the empire. The three Italian army corps of 30,000 each set off at the same time, but from different points of departure. While the 1st Army Corps under General Ruggero Santini was advancing from the Eritrean Senafe to Adigrat, the 2nd Army Corps, commanded by General Alessandro Pirzio Biroli , moved to Adua and the Eritrean Army Corps of General Pietro Maravigna , made up of Askaris and Italian black shirts , moved in Direction Inticho (Enticciò).

On the Abyssinian side, Emperor Haile Selassie transferred the command of the northern troops to Ras Kassa, one of the most important dignitaries of the empire. Under his command, the units of the Rase Immirù, Sejum and Mulughieta fought an initially unsuccessful defensive battle. Almost unhindered by the Abyssinian forces, which were previously largely withdrawn, the Italians achieved successes of high symbolic power in the first few days. On October 5th, General Santini's troops hoisted the Italian tricolor on the Fort of Adigrat, which had been abandoned after its defeat in the First Italo-Ethiopian War in 1896. On October 6th, Adua was taken, the conquest of which was one of the main objectives of the Italian offensive. A week later, Axum , the cradle of Abyssinian culture, fell. The first phase of the war was completed in the north under De Bono on November 8, 1935 with the capture of the village of Mekelle (Macallè). This step was significant in several ways. With Mekelle, the seat of government of East Tigrè had been conquered, and important caravan connections from Dessiè and Lake Asciangi led to the town.

Front line October 1935 to February 1936

In relation to the available forces of 110,000 men, De Bono had opened up a fairly extensive front line on the northern front with three widely spaced attack wedges. After the great land gains of the first weeks of the war, he saw the most urgent task in fortifying the conquered positions, securing the connections between the attack wedges, wiping out pockets of resistance and bringing in supplies. Fearing that another advance would provoke dangerous evasion attacks in the rear of his own units, he slowed the pace of the attack at the beginning of November and stopped it completely at Mekelle in mid-November. This militarily considered approach aroused the displeasure of Mussolini, who viewed it as an unauthorized and unauthorized departure from the strategy of offensive war. On November 11, the dictator ordered De Bono's units to advance a further 50 kilometers to the Amba Alagi , that is, to extend the front to a total of 500 kilometers. The old general, who considered further extension of the line of operations to be a military "mistake", resisted. It is true that Mussolini finally agreed with his fascist companion in terms of content and approved the temporary standstill on Mekelle's line. De Bono's defiant demeanor, however, found Mussolini unacceptable, and so he replaced him - still promoted to Marshal - on November 14th by the incumbent Chief of Staff Pietro Badoglio.

The second phase of the war lasted from mid-November to mid-December 1935. It was dominated by a positional war . The new Commander-in-Chief Badoglio had been informed of his appointment on November 15 in the Palazzo Venezia . Accompanied by his two sons, who served as air force pilots, Badoglio arrived in Massaua from the port of Naples on November 26th. From there he went to Adigrat, where the seat of the Italian high command was. After an inspection tour which he had undertaken at the beginning of the hostilities in the theater of war, the Chief of Staff was already informed about the situation in East Africa. He did not judge her much differently than his predecessor. For the time being, he did not order any new offensives either. After the first weeks of the war had led the invading army on the northern front 200 kilometers into enemy territory and the deployment of the Abyssinian army had meanwhile been completed, Pietro Badoglio did everything in his power to secure the conquered areas against all eventualities and to keep the advanced line of operations at Makalle. The fighting force should no longer hover in the air, he justified his measures against the dictator.

In the context of the two-front war, the units operating on the southern front were assigned the task of binding enemy forces and thus improving the chances of success for the main thrust in the north in the operational plans. Nevertheless, General Rodolfo Graziani, experienced in the desert war, put everything on the offensive from the start. The ambitious officer did not want to resign himself to the fact that he had been chosen as the commander of a secondary theater of war. That is why his units attacked across the entire front width of 1,100 kilometers. In the first few days they occupied Dolo and Oddo. Gorrahei was captured on November 5th. Then they met the resistance of the Abyssinian Southern Army. Supported by heavy rainfall, which softened the dirt roads and made them impassable for heavy military equipment, the troops of Ras Desta Damtù and Degiac Nasibù managed to stop the advance of the enemy units into the desert highlands of the Ogaden.

Abyssinian Christmas Offensive and Badoglio's "Unbounded War Violence"

Abyssinian warriors on their way to the Northern Front (1935)

Badoglio had taken over the command of De Bono in a strategically difficult situation. His armed forces were split in two, one at Adua and one at Mekelle. Although only 100 kilometers apart, there was no direct communication between the two units. The units at Adua had to be supplied via two mule tracks that could be cut off by the Ethiopians, and the flanks of the troops at Mekelle were wide open. While Badoglio concentrated on flank security, he had the center guarded by only four Black Shirt divisions. In this situation, the third phase of the war began in mid-December and lasted well into January 1936. In the midst of the war of positions, which was preparing a major offensive that would make the difference in the war, troops of the Imperial Northern Army under the command of Ras Kassa unexpectedly launched relief attacks. In the center, the black shirts were pushed back, and Badoglio had to call in additional Eritrean units for reinforcement.

The Italian armed forces had to evacuate some of their outposts, give up passports they controlled and withdraw from towns that were already occupied. In particular, the units commanded by Ras Immirù , with up to 40,000 Abyssinian soldiers on the right flank of the Italians, advanced far into territory in the province of Tigray that had already been believed to be lost and came as far as the vicinity of Axum. The "Gran Sasso" division had to withdraw as far as Axum, while the units from Ras Immirù near Dembeguinà even managed a small victory in a field battle. It became increasingly clear that the Italians had overstretched the lines of operations during their rapid advance and that they were by no means controlling the rear of the army. With the onset of the Abyssinian counter-offensive, partisan activity behind the Italian lines also increased. Ambushes loomed everywhere. On the right-hand sector of the front, the Italian soldiers often did not know from which direction the Abyssinians would attack. These were able to achieve considerable success at times and brought the invaders on various sections of the front in dire straits, which aroused memories of the defeat of Adua among the invaders.

In this decisive phase, the “war became unbounded”. To stop the Ethiopian advance, Commander-in-Chief Pietro Badoglio decided to wage a chemical war on a large scale. As units from Ras Immirù were about to cross the Takazze River , fighter planes dropped Yperite bombs on human targets for the first time on December 22nd. This mission took place without official authorization from Rome. It was not until December 28 that Mussolini officially authorized Badoglio to order the dumping of all kinds of poisonous gas “also on a large scale” ( anche su larga scala ). A few days earlier, the dictator had authorized General Rodolfo Graziani on the southern front to use highly toxic substances. There, on December 24th, three Caproni bombers flew the first poison gas attack. A large herd of cattle and camels grazing near the village of Areri was bombed. From now on the chemical weapon of mass destruction was integrated into most of the Italian operations. Until the fall of Addis Ababa, there was massive and systematic use of poison gas on both fronts. Although they ultimately did not resolve the conflict, the Yperit attacks by the Air Force ushered in the turn of the war. They brought the Abyssinian Christmas offensive to a standstill and helped to bomb the way south.

Front line February to May 1936

After the Abyssinian Christmas offensive had been stopped with the most brutal means, the fourth phase of the war began in mid-January 1936; it lasted until the capture of Addis Ababa on May 5th. A severely brutalized warfare, which in addition to the deployment of chemical warfare agents also included the burning of entire areas, the slaughter of the herds of cattle and numerous massacres, now shaped the conflict. After securing his supplies and receiving three additional divisions from Mussolini, Badoglio was ready for his offensive. Opposite him were three Ethiopian armies. On the right flank at Adua stood Ras Immirù with 40,000 men, in the center Ras Kassa and Ras Sejum with 30,000 men and on the left flank Ras Mulughieta with 80,000 men. Between January and May 1936 there were massive clashes between the war opponents. The First Tembi Battle, the Battle of Endertà (Inderta), the Second Tembi Battle, the Battle of Scirè and the decisive battle on Lake Asciangi at Mai Ceu (Maychew) took place on the northern front. In the latter case, the Imperial Guard was wiped out.

Although the war was decided on the northern front, heavy fighting also broke out in the south and southeast. In contrast to the Abyssinian commanders in the north, who belonged to the traditional ruling class of the empire, General Graziani faced commanders of the younger generation here: Ras Desta Damtu in the south and Dejazmach Nasibu Za-Emanuel as governor of Harrar in the southeast. After the capture of Neghelli, Graziani's Italian troops launched the great offensive in the Ogaden area and captured the city of Harrar. In all of these battles and maneuvers, an interaction of the air force with the motorized ground troops and the light infantry proved its worth on the Italian side. The Italians also benefited from the relatively good organization and logistics. A large part of the replenishment was carried out via the repaired connecting routes, which were hastily created in day and night work, as well as via air bridges.

League of Nations and International Reactions

The Abyssinian War triggered the worst international crisis since the end of the First World War and presented the League of Nations with the greatest test since it was founded. Two member states faced each other in the military conflict. For the first time since the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, the League of Nations was confronted with a lawbreaker who defied the principles of the “civilized world” and fundamentally called the system of collective security into question. According to Article 16 of its statutes, aggression constituted an act of war against the international community as a whole. The Ethiopian government left no stone unturned to report the Italian acts of violence to the League of Nations and to have them condemned. This approach was the only promising strategy for the militarily defeated country. Just a few weeks after Ual-Ual, Ethiopia asked the League of Nations for mediation and for several months tried to achieve a non-violent settlement of the conflict, in which Italy never showed any real interest.

As early as October 7, 1935, the League of Nations Assembly condemned Italy as an aggressor and thereby blamed the country for the outbreak of hostilities. A few days later, it also imposed economic and financial sanctions by 50 votes in favor, with three abstentions from Italy's neighbors Austria, Hungary and Albania. They came into force on November 18, but were so mild compared to the possible punitive measures that they did not hinder Italy in its warfare. Neither the embargo on arms, ammunition and military equipment nor the credit freeze had a strong effect, and the trade embargo exempted goods essential to the war effort such as oil, iron, steel and coal. In addition, Italy could easily acquire all the raw materials and goods it needed from states that did not belong to the League of Nations. No one in Geneva seriously considered closing the Suez Canal to Italian warships or a military intervention.

Throughout the hostilities there were several initiatives by Abyssia before the League of Nations. In his telegram of December 30, 1935, Emperor Haile Selassie I protested sharply against the Italian use of poison gas for the first time. The emperor branded them as “inhumane practices” and charged that they, in conjunction with other war crimes, aimed at the “systematic extermination of the civilian population”. This set the tone that ran through almost all diplomatic interventions by the imperial government like a red thread. At the Geneva headquarters of the League of Nations, the Abyssinian government made two specific demands for weeks: First, it asked for financial support in order to be able to buy arms and armaments on the world market. Second, she called for the sanctions to be extended to include essential items such as oil, iron and steel.

The position of National Socialist Germany stood in sharp contrast to the position of the British and French democracies . Hitler had adopted an ideology related to fascist Italy. Mussolini, however, was not prepared to tolerate a German annexation of Austria, which would have made Nazi Germany a direct neighbor of Italy on the Brenner Pass . The German dictator, determined to expand into southern Austria, concluded that, should Mussolini be victorious in Abyssinia, he would be in a strong enough position to counter Germany's ambitions. At the same time, Mussolini would not be able to do so as long as his army was involved in an African war. The German Führer was therefore anxious to strengthen the Abyssinian resistance and responded benevolently to Abyssinian requests for help to the Germans. This made the German Reich practically the only country that supported Abyssinia. Without Mussolini's knowledge, Haile Selassie's army was supplied with three aircraft, over sixty cannons, 10,000 Mauser rifles and 10 million cartridges from the German side.

Course of the war after the proclamation of the empire

The proclamation of the Italian Empire on May 9, 1936, with which the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III. assumed the title of "Emperor of Abyssinia" was a diplomatic expediency to announce the de jure conquest of Abyssinia before the world . In fact, at that time, the Italians controlled only a third of the Abyssinian territory, which included most of the large cities and some important transport axes. Furthermore, huge areas in central, western and southern Ethiopia were completely under Abyssinian control. The Abyssinian troops remaining in these zones did not surrender, and the local population did not recognize the authority of the occupying power either. In the following five years Italy tried to conquer the remaining areas, in which around 25,000 resistance fighters were constantly under arms. Large parts of north and north-west Abyssinia, however, were permanently beyond Italian control. In 1936, 1937 and 1938/39, Italy had 446,000, 237,000 and 280,000 soldiers, respectively, available to conquer and control the Abyssinian territories. The Ethiopian resistance after May 1936, whose supporters called themselves “patriots” (Amharic arbagnoch ), can be divided into two phases: The first lasted until February 1937 and was essentially a continuation of the war. A few high commanders of the imperial army were dominant, namely Ras Immirù, Ras Desta Damtù and the Kassa brothers, the three sons of the former commander-in-chief on the northern front. The subsequent second phase was marked by a transition from the resistance movement to guerrilla warfare, which was mostly led by members of the lower Abyssinian nobility.

Continuation of the regular war (1936–1937)

After Haile Selassie I fled into exile in Britain, an Abyssinian counter-government was formed in the western Ethiopian city of Gore. This was in loose connection with the emperor and had two main tasks: On the one hand, it was supposed to create a political counter-body that would delegitimize the Italian occupation. On the other hand, she was entrusted with the organization and coordination of the ongoing Abyssinian resistance. The government in Gore was officially headed by Bitwoded Wolde Tzadek. The most important figure in authority, however, was Ras Immiru, who was considered the most capable general of the Abyssinian army and who had appointed the Emperor Haile Selassie as his viceroy in Abyssinia before he went into exile. In Gore, the Ras received particular support from the Black Lions Organization - a resistance group made up of military and civilian intellectuals. The actions of the "patriots" showed a considerable degree of efficiency, despite the fact that central coordination never succeeded.

Administrative division of Italian East Africa (AOI)

On May 12, while Badoglio was holding the Victory Parade in Addis Ababa, a column of trucks belonging to the Italian Air Force was attacked by "patriots" and almost completely destroyed. A similar action by the resistance took place two days later. Badoglio responded by sending six Eritrean battalions to the rural outskirts of the capital to carry out “retaliatory measures”. Military operations of this kind were supported by Mussolini, who told Badoglio, in relation to the policy of retaliation, that "we must sin by excess, not by lack". In June 1936, Graziani, as the new viceroy, received the order from Mussolini to occupy southwestern Ethiopia in one fell swoop in order to accelerate the recognition of the Italian empire. The territory called "Gouvernement Galla-Sidama" by the Italians was the most fertile agricultural area and had significant mineral resources. In addition, Great Britain was interested in maintaining a zone of influence in this region. Due to a lack of troops and the onset of the rainy season, Graziani opposed a quick offensive. He argued that Addis Ababa did not have enough troops to defend itself, and because the roads were damaged by the rain, the incoming reinforcements were not on the ground quickly enough. The offensive against southwest Abyssinia was therefore postponed to October after the end of the rainy season.

The Abyssinian resistance made several ambitious attempts to retake Addis Ababa during the 1936 rainy season. This was intended to halt the Italian advance into western Ethiopia and to strengthen the government of Gore. Ras Immiru and Wolde Tzadek made the first attempt, advancing from the cities of Ambo and Waliso to the capital in June. However, the company failed due to resistance from the local Oromo population, who refused to allow the Abyssinian troops to march through. Due to the previous repression in the Empire, the Oromo were hostile to the Gore government. Ras Immiru had to withdraw with his soldiers to southwest Ethiopia, where he finally surrendered to the Italians in Kaffa and was deported to Italy. On July 28 and 29, 1936, the second Abyssinian attack on Addis Ababa took place, this time from the northwest: the two Kassa brothers Aberra (Abarra) and Asfa Wassen, the sons of Ras Kassa, who had over 10,000 soldiers in their headquarters in the city of Fiche decreed, around 5,000 "patriots" besieged the capital. Their units penetrated into the city center, where they encountered fierce resistance from the entrenched occupiers, and were finally pushed back with the help of the Italian air force. A month later, on August 26, another Abyssinian commander, Dejazmach Balcha, led the third unsuccessful offensive from the southwest. But the struggle for Addis Ababa had made it clear how insecure Italian rule still was.

Announcement of the complete occupation of Ethiopia in December 1936 on the title page of La Domenica del Corriere

In order to make attacks of this kind impossible in the future, Viceroy Graziani had a barbed wire fence secured by machine gun nests around the capital, the gates of which were only opened during the day for security reasons. After the failure of a direct capture of Addis Ababa, the "patriots" tried to cut off the capital from supplies via the railway line to Djibouti. During the rainy season, this was the only and therefore vital supply route. Under Dejazmach Fikre Mariam, 2,000 Abyssinian fighters attacked the railway line with automatic firearms . The most daring action of this kind by the resistance took place on October 11, 1936, when an armored train carrying Colonial Minister Alessandro Lessona was fired at by "patriots" for half a day in the village of Akaki, despite the strictest secrecy. The Italians used tanks and over a hundred aircraft to secure the supply line, and guards were set up every 50 meters along the entire railway line. This made it clear again that the Italian occupying power did not have Abyssinia under control.

In the meantime Graziani had begun what was known as the “great colonial police operation” against the remaining Abyssinian military leaders. Again, massive aerial bombardments and poison gas were used. Initially, the Italians turned against the three Kassa brothers in the central Ethiopian region of Shewa : Wonde Wassen Kassa set out on September 6, 1936 with 1,500 armed warriors from the city of Lalibela to unite with his two brothers against the Italians in the city of Fiche . His unit was intercepted by Italian troops, and on December 11, 1936, Wonde Wassen Kassa was executed. His two brothers, Aberra and Asfa Wassen, were promised a pardon in the event of surrender. However, they were arrested by General Tracchia, who occupied Fiche with 14,000 soldiers, and executed on December 21, 1936. After the military operations against the "patriots" in the Shewa region, Graziani's focus turned to Ras Desta Damtu, who delayed the Italian conquest of southern Ethiopia with an army of over 10,000 men. After an expired ultimatum, the Italians attacked Desta Damtus units with three military columns and over 50 aircraft in the Arbegona region (Arbagoma) on January 18, 1937. Both the air force and ground troops were given a free hand to completely destroy the Abyssinian army. At the Battle of Jebano on February 2, the Abyssinians suffered heavy losses and Desta Damtu lost one of his generals. From February 18 to 19, 1937, the last open field battle of the war took place near the town of Goggeti (Gojetti). The Ethiopian units were wiped out by the Italians. Ras Desta Damtu himself managed to escape, but was arrested on February 24 by a unit collaborating with the Italians and then shot.

Guerrilla War in Italian East Africa (1937–1940)

Centers of Ethiopian resistance (“patriots”) and Italian military operations until the end of 1937
Ethiopian "patriots" besiege the city of Debre Markos

With the death of Ras Desta Damtu, the Italians had eliminated all the great Abyssinian military leaders by the spring of 1937. In the meantime they had also taken the city of Gore and driven out the provisional Abyssinian government. The prospect of a control of Abyssia was however thwarted with the terrorist wave of the fascists in the pogrom of Addis Ababa that broke out at the same time . On February 19, 1937, two young members of the Abyssinian resistance, Abraha Daboch and Mogas Asgadom, attempted an assassination attempt on Viceroy Graziani in Addis Ababa. After its failure, the Italian occupying power, and especially the fascist party militia of the Black Shirts, reacted with days of mass murders against the black population of the capital. This Italian act of violence initiated the transition to the second phase of the Abyssinian resistance: the nationwide guerrilla war , with a focus on the Amhara governorate.

The security situation was so tense in 1937 that Viceroy Graziani was unable to consent to the rapid and massive withdrawal of troops requested by Rome because of military necessity. Since August 15, 1937, Italian troops in the Amharic regions of Gojjam and Begemeder were attacked, besieged, destroyed or captured by "patriots". The most famous guerrilla leaders were Abebe Aregai, Haile Mariam Mammo, Dejazmach Tashoma Shankut and Fitawrari Auraris. In the Amharic unrest regions of Shewa, Begemder and especially Gojjam they successfully attacked Italian units and convoys, besieged enemy fortifications and carried out acts of sabotage. On the high plateau, which was ideally suited for guerrilla tactics, it was teeming with small and large herds of resistance. In September 1937, a popular uprising against the Italian occupation forces finally began in Gojjam. This resulted on the one hand from the massive repression in the previous months, on the other hand in the devastation of the land and forced disarmament of the population by the Italians. The agrarian Ethiopian society regarded the possession of land and weapons as inalienable rights, the abolition of which could not be tolerated. At the end of 1937 the resistance of the "patriots" of the Gojjam region had isolated the Italians in their fortifications. In his last report as Viceroy, Graziani had to admit to Mussolini on December 21, 1937 that more than 13,000 soldiers had died on the Italian side since the capture of Addis Ababa - many thousands more than in the "War of the Seven Months" itself.

The new viceroy of Italian East Africa, Amadeus von Aosta, tried to soften the brutality of his predecessor and to rely on a colonial policy based more on cooperation with the local elite. In contrast, the new commander in chief of the Italian armed forces in East Africa, General Ugo Cavallero, continued the use of poison gas in the governorates of Amhara and Shewa. In view of the open rebellion in these parts of the country with around 15,000 armed men, as well as several thousand in the Oroma-Sidama governorate, Cavallero set out on a campaign of reconquest against the Gojjam region in Amhara. To this end, he developed a network of roads running through the area and set up 73 military camps along the district boundaries to cut off Gojjam from the outside world. The military action that began in the spring of 1938 claimed around 2,500 to 5,000 deaths among the resistance fighters, but did not result in the population being subjugated. A second campaign was launched northwest of Shewa Province, killing around 2,000 rebels, but the leader of the local revolt escaped. In the following year, 1939, a military stalemate finally set in, which led to a decline in actions by the Abyssinian resistance. The Italians had failed in the suppression of the Abyssinian guerrilla war, but the latter were unable to take the well-fortified Italian positions. On the eve of the Second World War, on the outbreak of which the resistance movement relied, the Italians lost around 10,000 men and around 140,000 wounded.

Internationalization of the war and liberation (1940-1941)

Italian offensives and liberation of Abyssinia during the East Africa campaign in 1940/41

The conflict reached its final and decisive stage in the course of its internationalization after fascist Italy entered World War II at the beginning of June 1940 on the side of the German Reich. In July 1940, Italian troops advanced from Italian East Africa against the British colony of Kenya and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan , capturing some towns and cities near the border. After France's military collapse, an armistice was concluded with its colony Djibouti , which granted Italy extensive powers for the duration of the war, including the use of the port facilities in French territory. In August 1940 , Italian troops captured British Somaliland . Italy controlled the whole of the Horn of Africa for a short time. On September 13, an army of 150,000 men commanded by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani attacked British units in Egypt from Libya . However, the Italian offensive stopped after a few days. The British counterattacked in December and crossed the border with Libya on January 2nd. The failure of the Italian "parallel war" forced National Socialist Germany to provide aid. Since February 1941, the " German Africa Corps " was established in Libya under Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel . All of this heralded the end of sovereign Italy, which, in the wake of its military defeats, increasingly declined to a subordinate brother-in-arms of Germany, which Berlin no longer took seriously.

Haile Selassie I with British Commanders Sandford (left) and Wingate (right) in April 1941

The Italian offensives in Africa forced Great Britain, which had favored the Italian conquest of Ethiopia through its appeasement policy and officially recognized the conditions created by armed violence in East Africa in 1938, to radically change its policy. The Italians not only threatened some British possessions and areas of influence in Africa (Sudan, Kenya, Somaliland, Egypt), but also the sea route to India, the Achilles' heel of the Empire. It was only because of this threat that Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to provide military support to the Ethiopian resistance. British arms aid proved crucial to the liberation. In January 1941, the British unleashed three attacks on Italian East Africa almost simultaneously. The first attack was carried out by Anglo-Indian troops under General William Platt from Sudan. They penetrated into Eritrea and fought their way into the Tigray. The second offensive, also from Sudan, was started 500 kilometers south and targeted the province of Gojjam. Emperor Haile Selassie I, who had returned from exile and had waited for further developments in Khartoum in Sudan, also took part in it. Together with the British commanders Daniel A. Sandford and Orde Wingate , he was at the head of the Gideon Force , a small brigade of British and Ethiopian troops. Together with the "patriots" of the Gojjam province, the Gideon Force advanced against the Blue Nile and Addis Ababa. The third attack was carried out by soldiers of General Alan Cunningham , who marched into Somalia from Kenya, captured the capital Mogadishu and from there slowly fought their way through Harrar against Addis Ababa.

British soldiers demolish a fascist stone monument in Kismayo with a bulldozer (1941)

With combined forces, the British and Abyssinian troops succeeded in bringing the Italian occupiers from Ethiopia into severe distress. The Ethiopian "patriots" played an important role during the liberation campaign. In their previous four-year struggle, they had done a great deal to tire the enemy occupying forces. Now, having received military support from the British, they went on the offensive. With British air support they marched through the Gojjam region and played an important role in the conquest of the city of Bure (Buryé). The army of the "Patriots" was advancing so quickly that the British command posts feared that the Abyssinians would reach the capital before their armed forces and endanger the European inhabitants living there. Therefore, the air support for the "Patriots" was ended again. In the Shewa region, Ras Abebe Aragai , whose resistance continued throughout the occupation, surrounded the capital Addis Ababa with his troops. Cunningham's troops reached the capital on April 6, 1941.

Exactly five years after Marshal Pietro Badoglio took Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie moved into the liberated center of his empire on May 5, 1941. Abyssinian armed forces of the "Patriots" were also involved in the conquest of many other cities in Ethiopia in the following months. After some bitter resistance, the Italian occupation forces surrendered unconditionally on May 19. Viceroy Amadeus of Savoy, who had holed up with his remaining troops at Mount Amba Alagi, went into British captivity. The last battle of the war took place in Gondar on November 27, 1941. On this day the garrison of General Guglielmo Nasi also had to surrender. Ethiopia, which was the first sovereign nation to fall victim to fascist aggression in the 1930s, was thus also the first fascist-occupied country to be liberated with Allied help in 1941.

Warfare and war crimes

The air war

The Abyssinian War saw the most massive and brutal air force deployment the world had seen up to that point, marking a crucial stage in the history of modern air warfare . In the theater of war in the Horn of Africa, far more people were killed in air bombardment in 1935/36 than in all previous conflicts combined. While the Luftwaffe was still at an experimental stage during World War I and was only used as an "auxiliary weapon", the air forces of all European countries then rose to become independent armed forces alongside the army and navy. The ever greater ranges and attack speeds, but also the extremely increased weapon effect of the bomber plane fundamentally changed the nature of the war. The bomber plane was a symbol and product of the dawning high-tech age.

Wing cockade of the Regia Aeronautica from 1935 with the fascist lictors' bundles

The bombing of the Adua and Adigrat settlements on October 3, 1935 marked the beginning of the military air force deployment in East Africa. Based on the air raids on villages and provincial towns, a variant of the action was pursued in the first months of the war that was already foreseen in the tangible war plans against the Ethiopian Empire from 1932/33. The deliberate destruction of the villages did not correspond to an ad hoc decision by the High Commissioner Emilio De Bono, but was planned well in advance. This strategy was later retained in principle under the command of Pietro Badoglio. Although Badoglio in mid-February 1936 did not consider the use of bacteriological weapons to be necessary in the further course of the war, the general pleaded until February 29, 1936 for a “decisive terrorist operation from the air on all centers in the Shewa region , including the capital to carry out ". The question of the bombing of the capital or the railway line between Addis Ababa and Djibouti proved to be of great relevance throughout the war and preoccupied not only those in charge of the military in East Africa, but also Mussolini and international diplomacy. Ultimately, it is mainly due to political reasons that Addis Ababa and the railway line were largely spared during the war, although in both cases the destruction was planned first.

Nowhere else was the military imbalance between Italy and Abyssinia more apparent than in the air force. In total, an armada of 450 combat aircraft was deployed in the Horn of Africa - around half of the total number of the Italian Air Force. Three quarters of the air fleet moved to East Africa consisted of bombers. The aviation forces, commanded by General Mario Ajmone Cat , flew hundreds of attacks during which they dropped tens of thousands of fragmentation, incendiary and gas bombs on enemy targets. From the beginning of the war, the Italian Regia Aeronautica completely dominated the airspace over Abyssinia. The few aviators on the Abyssinian side were either not operational or were destroyed on the ground shortly after the start of hostilities.

The heavy air raid on Dessiè , the provincial capital of Wollo , became a symbol of this new warfare . It was carried out on December 16, 1935 by 18 aircraft in two waves of attack. They destroyed numerous buildings and civil facilities as well as a hospital run by American Adventists . Most of the 50 people killed in the attack were civilians. The provincial cities of Neghelli, Jijiga and Harrar were also relatively heavily devastated by Italian aircraft . Adigrat , Adua, Quoram, Gorahei, Debre Markos , Sassa Baneh, Degeh Bur and others were hit a little more easily . Not least because of the violent international reactions after the heavy air strikes on the provincial cities, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa (Dire Daua), the most militarily profitable bomb targets, were not attacked from the air. At Mussolini's instructions, the capital was to be excluded from terrorist attacks because of the foreigners residing there. The strategic bombings of Abyssinian population centers were among the first in history. Although they cost a few hundred deaths in the worst case, according to Aram Mattioli (2005), as systematically carried out acts of war, they already pointed to “the area bombing of the Second World War that devoured people”.

Attacks on the Red Cross

British Red Cross field hospital in Abyssinia
A British Red Cross tent after the Italian bombing

The Italian air strikes against field hospitals of the Red Cross are also considered unprecedented acts of violence. Recent research has shown a total of 15 attacks on Red Cross facilities, mainly on field hospitals, in the four months between December 6, 1935 and March 29, 1936. Seven of these were deliberately carried out, and eight more were side effects of air strikes aimed at other targets. The Swedish mission was hardest hit at Melka Dida on the southern front. The purely medical facility was 25 kilometers behind the front and 7 kilometers from the headquarters of Ras Desta Damtù. On December 30, 1935, the well-marked camp was attacked in several waves by ten fighter planes. Yperite grenades were also used. As a result of the bombing rain, 42 people were killed, most of them patients.

Fascist Italy accused Abyssinia of systematically abusing the Red Cross symbol for civil and military purposes. Both allegations were widely spread through fascist diplomacy, press and propaganda. The Italian allegations, however, had little substance. Individual cases were often misinterpreted, exaggerated or inadmissibly generalized by the fascist propaganda. According to Rainer Baudendistel (2006), the Italians fell victim to their own strategy. Since for them the Abyssinian War was a war between unequal, between a civilized nation and a people of barbarians, there could and should not be any communication between the two. As a result, the Italian high command accepted bombing the Red Cross rather than clarifying exactly whether the possible target was a regular field hospital or not.

In total, the Italian air strikes caused 47 fatalities, several dozen wounded and great material damage such as the destruction of the only Red Cross aircraft that was in service on the Abyssinian side. The Air Force dropped more than 10 tons of bombs, including 252 kilograms of mustard gas bombs, over the Red Cross. The fact that there were no more victims to complain about is considered a stroke of luck for the Red Cross helpers. The Italian air strikes against the Red Cross were based on a pattern. The further the field hospitals advanced towards the Abyssinian front and the more they got in the way of Italian operations, the greater the risk of being bombed. Practically all foreign and Abyssinian field hospitals that came into such a situation had to experience this. The hospitals, on the other hand, which were at a safe distance from the front, remained unscathed, although they were regularly overflown by Italian war planes. This refutes the Abyssinian allegation that the Red Cross was systematically bombed by the Italians.

The poison gas war

Warfare agents, technology, areas of application

An Italian SM.81 bomber

Italy used three chemical warfare agents in Abyssinia: arsenic , phosgene and yperite , which - filled in gas bombs - were dropped by fighter planes. In addition, poison gas grenades were used to an unknown extent, which were prepared on site and whose use, in contrast to the gas bombs dropped by the Air Force, was largely not documented. One of the few documented exceptions was the heavy artillery bombardment of the Amba Aradam with arsenic shells in February 1936 . The Italian Air Force used explosive devices of various sizes and designs. The main role was played by yperite, known as "mustard gas", which was the most toxic known warfare agent in the mid-1930s. Even fatal in the smallest concentrations, yperite, as an oily and pungent smelling skin poison , leads to an agonizing death or severe injuries within several hours.

The heavy, torpedo-shaped bomb C.500.T. became the symbol of the brutal Italian Yperit mission. With a total weight of 280 kilograms, it contained a total of 212 kilograms of mustard gas. This large-caliber explosive device was specially developed for the conditions in East Africa and was used there in particular on the northern front. After being dropped by fighter planes, the almost head-high bomb was detonated using a time fuse at a height of 250 meters above the ground. Depending on the wind strength, a fine rain of warfare agents with a length of 500 to 800 meters and a diameter of 100 to 200 meters came down. In accordance with the military successes, the air force took on the central role in the gas war. The aircraft types Caproni Ca.111, Caproni Ca.133 and Savoia-Marchetti SM.81 had already been equipped with suitable suspension devices for gas bombs in the workshop. The powerful bombers had been developed in 1932 and 1935, had a range between 980 and 2,275 kilometers, had several machine guns on board and had a cargo capacity of 800 kilograms to two tons. Both the Caproni bomber and the Siai-Marchetti S. 81 were later used in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

An Italian bomber of the Caproni Ca.133 type

The use of chemical warfare agents, which had an offensive character from the start, brought a new dimension to the Abyssinian War. In the course of the war, however, the arsenic shells used by the artillery proved to be less effective than the poison gas bombs of various calibres dropped from the air. At the tactical and strategic level, the effects of the use of poison gas were enormous. As the Italian armed forces were informed, thanks to the intelligence service, about which routes the Abyssinian armies were choosing, when they would move and where the headquarters were set up, it was possible, for example, to set up “chemical blockades” on passes or at river crossings. After being dropped, the closed areas proved to be impassable for the Italians for three to five days, which could have serious consequences depending on the time pressure of the maneuvers. Especially on the southern front, where Graziani urged to advance as quickly as possible, this "side effect" of the tactical use of poison gas was problematic. The resolutions formulated at the beginning of the war not to hit the civilian population or to keep the gas bombs for large targets were given up after just a few weeks. Pilots bombed even the smallest gatherings of people, caravans and herds of cattle with explosives, incendiary bombs and poison gas, especially on the southern front.

The chemical warfare agents were supposed to terrorize the enemy, limit his operational planning and break the morale of the enemy units and the civilian population. On March 2, 1936, Mussolini released all the cities of Ethiopia for bombing, with the exception of Addis Ababa and the Dire Dawa railway junction. This decision was made after Badoglio had called for “terrorist action by the air force over the Ethiopian centers, including the capital” a few days earlier. Regarding the gas war, Mussolini admitted his generals "to use any poison in any quantity given the enemy's war methods", but with regard to the city bombing he repeated his protective directive against Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa several times, but only towards the end of the campaign still had a formal character.

Abyssinia had little to oppose the chemical warfare of the Italian armed forces. The Ethiopian army also expected the gas war, but without being able to assess the dimensions of the new warfare. The Ethiopian government gave the commanders instructions on how to behave in the event of a plane attack or suspected poison gas. In order to instruct the soldiers, who are often ignorant of reading, German manuals on the gas war were translated into the Amharic language and provided with many hand-drawn sketches. The Ethiopian army had hardly any means at its disposal against the use of poison gas. Most of the soldiers in the imperial army went into battle barefoot and had neither protective suits nor special shoes or gas masks that would have kept the fine rain of warfare agents away, including through hard rubber , or allowed them to cross contaminated terrain. Only the imperial guard had a few thousand gas masks, which proved to be of very little use against mustard gas. There was no medical service in the imperial army that could have alleviated the suffering of the poison gas victims. The civilian population was defenselessly exposed to the devastation from the air. As in all of Africa, there were no shelters in Ethiopia, nor did the people possess rudimentary protective knowledge, not to mention gas masks. There was no detox.

Extent of the use of poisonous gas

It is difficult to say exactly how many poison gas bombs have been used in Ethiopia. It is also difficult to determine which bombs were filled with which weapons. On the northern front, the Luftwaffe dropped around 1,020 C.500.T bombs from December 22, 1935 to March 29, 1936, which corresponds to a total of around 300 tons of yperite. In addition, Badoglio had 1,367 artillery shells filled with arsenic fired at the Abyssinian soldiers during the Battle of the Amba Aradam (February 11-15, 1936). On the southern front, between December 24, 1935 and April 27, 1936, the Luftwaffe dropped 95 C.500.T bombs, 172 to 186 21 kilogram yperite bombs and 302 to 325 phosgene bombs, totaling around 44 tons Poison gas corresponds. For the period from December 22, 1935 to April 27, 1936, this results in a total of around 350 tons of poison gas. From 1936 to 1939 about 500 more poison gas bombs were dropped on the Abyssinian resistance. Therefore, during the entire period of the Italian war of aggression and the occupation from 1935 to 1941, according to conservative estimates, the Ethiopians suffered 2,100 poison gas bombs or around 500 tons of poison gas. As a consequence, historians speak of a “massive gas war”.

Most of the C.500.T bombs were dropped on the northern front until the First Tembi Battle. In the battle itself, around three times fewer yperite bombs were dropped than in the previous period. In the period up to the next battle, that of Endertà, the number of bombs dropped increased massively and in the battle itself was roughly the same as in the First Tembi Battle. In the interval between the next battle, the number of bombs dropped increased again. In the Second Tembi Battle, the Italian Air Force used relatively few C.500.T bombs and possibly did without them at the Battle of Scirè. The gas war on the southern front looked different than on the northern front. In contrast to the northern front, several different types of yperite bombs and also phosgene bombs were used in the south. In addition, there were many skirmishes on the southern front, but only two major military confrontations: when taking the town of Neghelli and during the Harrar offensive. The operations from the air always preceded those on the ground. The tendency not to limit the bombings with the C.500.T bombs to the period of the battles thus existed on both the northern and southern fronts. The gas war also proved to be a constant in the south.

After the proclamation of the empire, Mussolini gave Viceroy Graziani again on June 8, 1936 the use of poison gas to extinguish armed revolts. Until the end of November 1936, months after the official proclamation of Italian East Africa, not a month passed without the Italian Air Force deploying 7 to 38 C.500.T explosive devices over Abyssinia. Until Viceroy Graziani was replaced in December 1937, poison gas continued to be used regularly in all regions of Ethiopia. Under Graziani's successor, Duke Amadeus of Aosta, poison gas bombs were mainly used in the governors of Amhara and Shewa. The commander in chief of the Italian troops in Italian East Africa, General Ugo Cavallero , who was a supporter of Graziani's approach to eradicating the Ethiopian resistance, was in charge. Yperite and arsenic shells were also used on Cavallero's orders in the Zeret massacre in April 1939. In late autumn 1940, an Italian plane released poison gas over a rebel camp, killing five resistance fighters and seriously injuring many more.

Contrary to rumors that quickly found their way into the international press, the Italian troops did not use chemical warfare agents from the start in the Abyssinian War. The first missions were flown shortly before Christmas 1935 as a result of the Abyssinian counter-offensive. It was only this threatening situation that led the Italian high command to drop its previous considerations. The Italian Air Force also did not allow Yperit to be randomly spread over villages, towns and crowds, and moreover did not use spray planes to contaminate large areas of agricultural land. Mussolini assumed that this final delimitation of the war would have caused more political damage than military benefit internationally. Although the gas attacks were mostly directed against armed units in contested areas, they were carried out without any consideration for the civilian population. By the end of 1936 alone, several thousand, perhaps even tens of thousands, Abyssinians were killed by poison gas, and countless others were mutilated or blinded.

Biological weapons

According to the current state of research, no biological weapons were used in the Abyssinian War. However, their use was originally intended as an integral part of Italian warfare. Although until then no country in the world had used such, Mussolini thought openly of the use of bacterial cultures in February 1936. Ras Kassa's Abyssinian troops had previously put pressure on Badoglio's army on the northern front. Badoglio, however, pleaded against the use of bacteriological agents, because less the opposing combat units than the civilian population would have been affected by these measures. In addition, if bacteria were used, the Italians' offensive would have come to a standstill because entire areas would have been contaminated. As a final reason for not further radicalizing warfare, the general stated that the use of bacteria would provoke violent protests in the world and that further-reaching sanctions by the League of Nations, such as the oil embargo, could not be ruled out. Mussolini agreed with Badoglio's remarks. According to Giulia Brogini Künzi (2006), one can ultimately only speculate how bacteriological warfare in East Africa would have looked in practice. What is certain is that the Italian medical services had the armed forces and the population in the already conquered areas vaccinated against typhus and cholera . However, this measure could also have served as a general preventive measure in isolation from military considerations.

Destruction of livestock and the ecosystem

Since the Ethiopian troops could not fight in the long term without the support of the population because they were dependent on the information and local resources, the Italian warfare aimed at the destruction of all militarily useful elements such as the herds of cattle . With the extermination of tens of thousands of herd animals , the Italian military pursued the double goal of cutting off the food supply to the Ethiopian army and disciplining the civilian population or forcing them to leave the contested territory. A real hunt for livestock has begun on both fronts, as meat has traditionally been the basic foodstuff for most of the residents. The sheep, goats, camels and cattle were not only the food source, but also the capital of the nomads in the south of the country. On the southern front, the herds of cattle were systematically attacked from aircraft with explosives and poison gas bombs. Graziani abandoned his original plans to attack only "big targets" in favor of a blanket scorched earth strategy. From December 1935, small and very small groups of people and animals were also hit, unless it could be ruled out that they were of importance to the enemy.

A comparable way of gaining an advantage through direct intervention in the living space was the targeted burning of landscapes. Forests, steppe areas or rivers were set on fire with incendiary bombs and petrol so that Abyssinian riflemen could no longer hide in the shade of the trees. For the Swiss historian Giulia Brogini Künzi (2006), this procedure can almost be viewed as a forerunner of the chemical defoliants that were used later in the Vietnam War . In addition, the Italian generals contaminated rivers and water points with poison gas. Countless farmers and animals perished when they drank contaminated water. General Graziani in particular used this type of warfare on the southern front. On January 24, 1936, he instructed a squadron to cremate a forest in which enemy units had hidden after a battle with gas and incendiary bombs: “Set on fire and destroy what is flammable and destructible. Clean up everything that can be cleaned up. ”The damage to the ecosystem and the destruction of communities has reached a dimension, especially in the south, which justifies speaking of deliberate action by the Italians.

Exploitation of ethnic and religious conflicts

The Italians systematically capitalized on the ethnic and religious tensions between the conquered peoples. As early as the Second Italo-Libyan War from 1922 to 1932, Fascist Italy deployed Christian Askari colonial troops from Eritrea against the Muslim resistance. In the Abyssinian War, the "Libia" division commanded by General Guglielmo Nasi, which consisted of North African Muslims, was deployed. It went into action on April 15, 1936 and took part in Graziani's final offensive in Ogaden . By relocating Libyan mercenaries to the southern front, the fascist regime enabled them to avenge themselves for years of past acts of violence perpetrated on their families by Askaris from Eritrea during the fascist "reconquest of Libya". Muslim units of the "Libia" division were instrumental in conquering the cave-rich area of ​​Wadi Corràc on the southern front, cutting off their opponents' escape route and then killing 3,000 Ethiopians. Graziani commented: “Few prisoners, in line with the custom of the Libyan troops.” The murder of prisoners continued at the watering holes in Bircùt, Sagàg, Dagamedò and in Dagahbùr. In view of the cruelty of the Askari, General Nasi, who was less radical than Graziani, promised his Libyan units a bounty of 100 lire for every prisoner alive. The “Libia” division ultimately made 500 Ethiopian prisoners who were then interned in the Danane concentration camp.

During the occupation, members of the Oromo ethnic group were incited against other ethnic groups by the Italians . As a result, the Oromo, who collaborated with the occupying forces, killed and mutilated many peasants of other ethnicities, cutting off women's breasts and men's genitals.

Execution of prisoners of war

Already during the "war of the seven months" the vehemently advancing Italians took hardly any prisoners. In large numbers, these would have put additional strain on the company's logistics, which were already heavily burdened. Deployed Abyssinian soldiers were often shot on the spot or executed after disclosing military information. Even fighters who surrendered voluntarily could not count on leniency or hope for compliance with the 1929 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War . The annexation of Ethiopia by Italy had the effect that from then on Rome could regard all resistance fighters as "rebels" against the legitimate order and punish them harshly. On June 5, 1936, Mussolini ordered all “rebels” captured immediately to be shot. According to Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, Achille Starace , commander-in-chief in the Abyssinian region of Gondar, not only had prisoners shot but also used them as targets for heart shots: “He shot them first in the genitals and then in the chest. Eyewitnesses reported these details. "

Crimes of occupation of Italy

Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani (1937)

Recent research has confirmed and expanded the picture of Italian occupation crimes drawn by pioneers such as Angelo Del Boca and Giorgio Rochat on the basis of a great deal of new information. Some massacres were forgotten for a long time, while the number of victims had to be revised upwards significantly for others. Already during the "War of the Seven Months" in 1935/36, especially since the change of command to Pietro Badoglio, there were regular serious attacks against the local population in the areas occupied by the Italian armed forces. These included rape, massacre, looting, the desecration of Ethiopian Orthodox churches and the burning of entire villages. The violence against the civilian population on some sections of the front became so widespread that Commander-in-Chief Pietro Badoglio felt compelled to intervene against these practices. In January and February 1936, for example, he called on General Alessandro Pirzio Biroli to keep the troops listening to his command in check: "If we continue like this, the whole population will rebel against us."

Nevertheless, a few days after the capture of Addis Ababa, Badoglio also subjected the capital to an initial "cleansing", which resulted in a wave of executions with around 1,500 deaths. At Mussolini's orders, members of the young educated class (“Young Ethiopians”), whom the dictator described as “conceited and cruel barbarians”, were to be liquidated. On July 30, 1936, Abuna Petros, one of the highest dignitaries of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was shot dead by Italian Carabinieri in a public square in Addis Ababa . After the proclamation of the empire, Rodolfo Graziani was appointed viceroy to Badoglio and established a reign of terror in the Italian occupied territory with the approval of Rome. On July 8, 1936, Mussolini authorized the viceroy to carry out targeted mass murder of civilians as well: “I authorize Your Excellency again to systematically begin and lead a policy of terror and extermination against the rebels and the complicit population. Without the law on retribution 1 to 10, the plague cannot be mastered in the necessary time. ”In a similar way, Colonial Minister Alessandro Lessona of Graziani called for the“ use of extreme means ”. The most common forms of execution were hangings and shootings, other methods also included burning entire families in their homes with flamethrowers or beheading them. The display of chopped-off heads impaled on long lances on streets was intended to act as a deterrent.

In Italian East Africa, the terror of occupation emanated not only from regular members of the army, but also from the fascist militia ( black shirts ), from police units of the Carabinieri and from African colonial troops ( Askaris ). Members of the Abyssinian resistance and dissidents were mostly not imprisoned, but were often executed immediately after their capture. Only a few hundred high-ranking members of the Ethiopian aristocracy were given a chance of survival in prison. 400 of them were deported to Italy on Mussolini's orders and sentenced to exile there. In addition, the Italian oppressive apparatus in East Africa also used concentration camps , although this camp system was much more pronounced than previously assumed by research. Up until now, the literature has spoken almost exclusively of two concentration camps: The Danane camp was established in Italian Somaliland in 1935, and the Nocra camp in Eritrea in 1936 . Up to 1941, up to 10,000 prisoners, including women and children, were interned in the two penal camps . Because of the catastrophic conditions prevailing in both institutions and the very high death rates, historians also classify them as death camps . As part of a more recent research project, a total of 57 camps were documented in Italian East Africa, 35 of them in Ethiopia, 14 in Eritrea and 8 in Somalia. With the two camps in Ethiopia, Shano and Ambo, the existence of two camps was also documented which "served the sole purpose of eliminating the prisoners".

The most serious occupation crimes occurred in the period after the bomb attack on Viceroy Graziani, which provided the pretext for summary executions and massacres. During a ceremony in front of the viceroy's official residence in Addis Ababa on February 19, 1937, hand grenades shot Graziani, the Italian occupation elite, seriously injured. Some soldiers died. As a result, the local fascist party leader Guido Cortese began the three-day pogrom in Addis Ababa , in which, according to the first comprehensive account by Ian Campbell (2017), mainly fascist black shirts murdered around 19,200 people. Within a very short time, the capital lost up to 20% of its inhabitants, with fascist death squads also taking targeted action against the Abyssinian intelligentsia. After the failed attack on the viceroy, repression made a qualitative and quantitative leap. Graziani now extended the terror of the occupation to entire sections of the population whom he considered "dangerous" and accused of anti-Italian attitudes.

The occupiers targeted the Amharic nobility, the clergy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the intelligentsia, including large landowners, bishops, monks and top imperial officials. Members of these groups in the troubled provinces of Central Ethiopia were particularly at risk, especially the Amhars among the ethnic groups. On March 1, 1937, Graziani instructed General Guglielmo Nasi to shoot all members of the Amharic nobility and all former officers of the imperial army in Harrar Governorate. Similar edicts were issued against the “Young Ethiopians” and the collective of soothsayers, magicians and storytellers, who were highly regarded by the common people as seers and interpreters. By the beginning of June 1937, a total of 2,509 people, mainly belonging to these groups, were shot dead by the Carabinieri police units alone. Graziani also ordered the Debre Libanos massacre . In this "bloodiest massacre of Christians on the African continent", Italian officers and colonial troops under General Pietro Maletti shot around 2,000 Abyssinian clergy, theology students and pilgrims from the monastery town of Debre Libanos from May 19 to 26, 1937.

The Italian counter-guerrilla was also marked by excessive retribution and cruelty. For example, General Sebastiano Gallina's soldiers murdered hundreds of peasants in October 1936 and burned down their huts during a “cleanup”. On October 27, Viceroy Graziani encouraged the general to continue "with the relentless work of destroying everything." The fate of the village of Gogetti, 40 kilometers south of Addis Ababa, in February 1937 was also typical. By order of Mussolini, Brigadier General Carlo Geloso had all male residents over the age of 18 shot and the village huts burned down during a large-scale purge. The governor of Amhara, notorious for his brutal counter-guerrilla, General Pirzio Biroli, ordered "large-scale air operations" in the Gojjam region after numerous mass executions in the summer of 1937 in order to prevent the population from defection to the guerrillas. His pilots were supposed to “bomb and burn all of the above-mentioned centers, not sparing churches and cattle. The lesson must be hard, massive, devastating, in order to give the population a tangible demonstration of our superiority and strength. ”Graziani's successor, Duke Amadeus of Aosta, initiated a milder occupation policy that was not only based on repression, but also not entirely Renounced violence. In April 1939, at least 1,000 people were killed with poison gas, flamethrowers or shootings in the Zeret massacre .

Abyssinian war crimes

War crimes were also committed by Abyssinian troops and the resistance movement as early as 1935/1936. On February 13, 1936, an Abyssinian commando attacked a Gondrand construction site near Mai Lahlà (Rama) and massacred at least 68 workers and one woman behind the front. To the horror of the Italian public, the majority of the men killed were maimed and emasculated. The Lekept massacre is also known. Viceroy Graziani had sent three planes with 13 officers to Lekept on June 26, 1936 to meet the pro-Italian local leader Hapte Mariam. The officers were provided with a sum of 3,000 Maria Theresa thalers in order to build up a local army in Lekept to serve the Italians. That night, twelve of them were killed and the three planes burned by students from the city of Holetta and Eritrean deserters. Nevertheless, according to Aram Mattioli (2005), it is noticeable that the resistance did not rely on arbitrary terror. He said that he did not commit any acts of violence in busy streets, restaurants or markets in which uninvolved passers-by were harmed. Rainer Baudendistel (2006) also states that the violations of the first Geneva Convention of 1929, which fascist Italy was guilty of during the seven-month campaign in Abyssinia, “weighed much more heavily than those of the Ethiopian Empire”. The belief in the opposite, which is still widespread in Italy today, is a "myth" that can be ascribed to the "lasting effect of fascist propaganda and actual repression".

consequences

Casualty numbers

Between 1935 and 1941, between 350,000 and 760,000 of the approximately 10 million Abyssinians fell victim to the Italian war of aggression and the occupation regime. As in many other mass crime cases, international research disagrees about the exact number of victims. None of the warring parties kept reliable statistics. In addition, there were no known statistical surveys of its inhabitants in Abyssinia, so that the number of the total population is also an approximation. The numbers for the total population vary between 8 and 12 million. According to the Ethiopian government from 1946, the total number of victims was at least 760,000 dead. This number is considered too high by most European historians. Recent Italian research assumes that between 1935 and 1941, between 350,000 and 480,000 Ethiopians were killed. The Swiss historian Aram Mattioli (2005) assumes a maximum of 380,000 deaths. Historians largely agree, however, that more Ethiopians were killed during the occupation from 1936 to 1941 than in the "War of the Seven Months" of 1935/36. For the most intense phase of the war of 1935/36, the numbers fluctuated between 55,000 and 275,000 Abyssinians killed. Aram Mattioli considers 150,000 Abyssinian victims most likely for this phase of the war, including around 50,000 civilians. For the period of occupation from 1936 to 1941, Ethiopian government figures give more than 480,000 deaths, Aram Mattioli estimates 180,000 to 230,000 victims here. The Italian historian Matteo Dominioni (2006) assumes that 150,000 to 200,000 Ethiopians were killed between March 1936 and June 1940 on the basis of lists by the occupying forces.

In any case, this loss of hundreds of thousands of human lives meant a tragedy for the not very populous Empire on the Horn of Africa. In relation to the total population, Abyssinia paid the Italian conquest attempt with a higher blood toll than nations affected by the First World War, with the exception of Serbia. The central high plateau of Ethiopia thus became the scene of the first war-related mass extinctions since the League of Nations was founded.

According to Aram Mattioli (2005), the Italian losses from 1935 to 1941 amount to a total of 25,000 military and civilian deaths, including an above-average number of Askaris. For him, this number already indicates how bitter the fighting in East Africa was. The fascist government in Rome officially put losses of 2,800 Italians and 1,600 Askaris during the war period from October 1935 to May 1936. Brian R. Sullivan (1999) assumes 12,000 Italians killed and 4,000–5,000 ascaris killed for the "War of the Seven Months". In East Africa, which was still not pacified, another 12,000 Italians and between 30,000 and 35,000 Askaris were killed between May 1936 and June 1940. According to the Italian historian Alberto Sbacchi (1978), around 44,000 Italians were wounded or sick by May 1936, and another 144,000 by 1940.

Abyssinia under Italian occupation

Italian East Africa as part of the fascist colonial empire (1939)

Under the Italian occupation, Abyssinia disappeared from the map as a geographical unit. The borders of the old empire were dissolved and its territory was united with the previous colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland. These now formed the newly formed colony "Italian East Africa" ​​( Africa Orientale Italiana , AOI for short). In fact, however, it was an occupation and thus an illegitimate form of exercise of power, since Ethiopia had been a sovereign and internationally recognized state before the annexation. In terms of international law, the country did not experience anything fundamentally different from what happened later to Czechoslovakia and Poland through National Socialist Germany. In addition, the war continued unabated after the capture of Addis Ababa, as the Italians had only conquered a third of Abyssia.

The area was divided into six semi-autonomous administrative units. All the fascist governors practiced a remarkable level of authoritarianism, paternalism and racism. An inevitable side effect of Italian colonial policy in Abyssinia as elsewhere was the exclusion of the subject population from all forms of power-sharing. The colonial administration started from the theory that colonies are extensions of the motherland to be settled by Italians and exploited by Italian capital. This approach aimed to transform the colonies into regions of a Greater Italy ( Magna Italia ). Colonial Minister Alessandro Lessona did not see the subordination of the interests of the native African population to the interests of Rome as contradicting the proclaimed “civilizing mission”. Instead, he assumed that Abyssinians would be grateful and submissive.

Unlike the surrounding colonial areas, however, Abyssinia had a growing and well-articulated intellectual elite. Many of them had trained in schools and universities abroad. The Italians began the systematic liquidation of these Abyssinians, as well as anyone else suspected of having received some form of significant training. The future school system for Abyssinians was limited to primary education. From the beginning, Mussolini was determined to remove all historical symbols that reminded of the independence of Ethiopia. He personally issued the order to remove the two most important statues in Addis Ababa: those of the Emperor Menelik and those of the Lion of Judah. The dictator later stole one of the two obelisks of Axum, which was then shipped to Rome. The looted property brought to Italy also included the monument of the Lion of Judah, five crowns of Ethiopian emperors and several historical paintings that had adorned the Abyssinian parliament.

Radicalization of the fascist regime

Mussolini as the celebrated "founder of the empire" ( Il fondatore dell'Impero ) on the title page of La Domenica del Corriere (1936)

The Abyssinian War and the proclamation of the empire marked an even deeper turning point in the history of Italian fascism than the transition to dictatorship at the turn of the year 1924/25. Not only did a sharper foreign policy begin to pave the way, which further undermined peace in Europe. At the same time, there was a renewed radicalization at home, which brought Italy a good deal closer to the fascist end goal of a totalitarian state. Spurred on by the military success in East Africa and the strengthened radicals within the fascist party as a result, Mussolini relied on a forced continuation of the "fascist revolution" in Italy. The state party PNF now received more and more powers and demanded a profound fascization of the state and society. By filling more and more political positions with convinced fascists, as well as by the progressive connection and control of public institutions by the party, a new society of warlike people should be used, the "Romans of modernity".

In addition, the Abyssinian War also played a decisive role in the growing anti-Semitism of the fascist regime, which reached a climax with the racial laws of 1938. The racism practiced against colored Africans in the Italian colonies was combined in Italy with a “declaration of war on the bourgeois spirit lurking everywhere”, which inevitably brought the Jews into the center of attention - they were considered to be the embodiment of a “bourgeois-satiated mentality”, which now was denounced everywhere and disturbed the image of national and racist homogeneity. In this way, colonial racism served as a “Trojan horse” for a völkisch hostility towards Jews, which until then had been a marginal element in the fascist party.

For Italy's foreign policy, recent research has highlighted the fact that the country entered a “ fascist decade of war” with the attack on Ethiopia . The Mussolini regime waged permanent war from 1935 to 1945: after the attack on Abyssinia, military interventions followed in Spain, Albania, France, North and East Africa, Greece, the Soviet Union and finally in Italy itself. This “fascist war decade” was through five Key elements were: 1. the weakening of international relations, 2. the formulation and implementation of a strongly imperialist ideology, 3. the development of innovative fascist warfare, 4. the adaptation of a characteristic use of force, 5. the exploitation of propaganda.

Prevented war crimes tribunal

Initial situation under international law

At their summits in Moscow (1943) , Tehran (1943) and Yalta (1945) , the leaders of the Allied powers reaffirmed their will to prosecute war criminals and extradite them to their accusers. In 1943, the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) was set up for this purpose , which was supposed to create a list of suspected war criminals on the basis of this. On August 8, 1945, the London Statute introduced war crimes, which could already be punished with reference to the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907, the “crime against peace” and the “crime against humanity” into international law. Against the background of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials , the Ethiopian Empire, as the first victim of the later Axis powers , initiated an international tribunal to try the Italian war criminals. According to the legal situation at the time, many of the acts of violence committed were serious violations of international law. The invasion itself was a criminal act because it violated the Briand-Kellogg Pact , which had outlawed wars of aggression and conquest in 1928. The calculated involvement of the civilian population in the fighting amounted to a break with the principles of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations .

The air strikes on undefended towns and villages, the destruction of natural resources through the contamination of water points and the slaughter of cattle herds as well as the arbitrary execution of bystanders were contrary to international law. Italy's gas warfare violated the Geneva Protocol , which Italy signed without restrictions in 1925 , which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons. The fact that Italian units did not take prisoners on certain sections of the front or left them to an often fatal fate in the Danane and Nocra concentration camps, the invaders also broke the Geneva Convention of 1929, which provided for extended protection and humane treatment of prisoners of war. A “crime against humanity” contrary to international law was the bloody mass repression under Viceroy Graziani, in particular the targeted extermination of entire population groups, the mass executions without prior trial and the massacres of civilians.

Ethiopia's initiatives at UNWCC and Great Britain

As a first step on the way to an “African Nuremberg”, the documentation “La Civilization de l'Italie fasciste en Éthiopie” prepared by the press and information department of the Ethiopian government should be. The two-volume black book , written in French, denounced the Italian acts of violence on the basis of found documents and photographs, and was intended to sensitize Western government circles and the public to crimes on the East African theater of war. On the 10th anniversary of the Italian attack, Ethiopia acceded to the London Statute and on May 20, 1946 announced the establishment of the "Ethiopian War Crimes Commission". Addis Ababa tried to put pressure on the UN Commission, as it had not included the Italian war crimes in Ethiopia in its mandate, particularly at the instigation of the British. The UNWCC stated that it was only responsible for violent crimes committed during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945. However, crimes committed by the Japanese military leadership were already being tried in the Tokyo trials, dating back to 1928.

The UNWCC only changed its negative attitude following the entry into force of the Paris Peace Accords on February 10, 1947. Among other things, Italy undertook to take all necessary steps to avoid suspected criminal penalties in accordance with the Nuremberg Convention Having committed a lawsuit, ordered them to be brought to trial or aiding and abetting them. On October 29, 1947, the UNO commission agreed to include in its work the war crimes committed by Italians in Ethiopia. At the same time she called on the Ethiopian government to submit her cases to the commission by March 31, 1948. In order to meet the deadline, the Ethiopian government decided to bring only ten charges against alleged major war criminals to the UNWCC. It was already clear that all perpetrators at the middle and lowest command level would not be prosecuted. Other main responsible persons like Benito Mussolini or Emilio De Bono were no longer alive. In early 1948, Ethiopia provided the UNWCC with detailed evidence on war and occupation crimes committed by Italians. The Ethiopian war criminals list included seven high-ranking military officials, two politicians and a party exponent in the following order:

1. Marshal Pietro Badoglio (Commander in Chief of the Italian Armed Forces in East Africa), 2. Marshal Rodolfo Graziani (Commander of the Southern Front and Viceroy of Italian East Africa), 3. Alessandro Lessona (Colonial Minister), 4. Guido Cortese (Head of the Fascist Party in Addis Ababa), 5th General Guglielmo Nasi (Governor of Harrar), 6th General Alessandro Pirzio Biroli (Governor of Amhara), 7th General Carlo Geloso (Governor of Galla and Sidamo), 8th General Sebastiano Gallina, 9th General Ruggero Tracchia , 10. Enrico Cerulli (Head of Department in the Colonial Ministry for East Africa and Deputy to Viceroy Graziani). Ethiopia charged each of the ten main perpetrators of criminal mass murder. Specifically, Badoglio was charged with the systematic use of poison gas and the targeted bombardment of hospitals. Graziani was charged with systematic terrorism, the deportation and internment of civilians, looting and willful destruction, the use of poison gas and the deliberate bombing of hospitals. Lessona, the only high-ranking representative of the former political leadership, and Cerulli were accused of aiding and abetting systematic terrorism. Cortese wanted to be held responsible as the mastermind of the terrible pogrom in Addis Ababa, while the remaining five field commanders were to be tried for the massacres and mass executions they had ordered.

The UNWCC discussed and paid tribute to the incriminating evidence submitted by Ethiopia on March 4, 1948. Despite British concerns, it agreed to put the seven military leaders and the fascist party functionary Cortese on the list of war criminals. Only Alessandro Lessona and Enrico Cerulli were not to be charged, since they had not personally participated in crimes, but merely to be summoned as witnesses in future trials. However, this UNWCC decision, which amounted to a moral victory for Ethiopia, was faced with new difficulties. The eight accused were not in Ethiopian custody, but lived as partially respected citizens in Italy. Despite his involvement in the fascist dictatorship, Pietro Badoglio was held in high regard as he led Italy into the war as the first post-fascist prime minister in October 1943 on the side of the Allies. At the same time, he had paved the way for the democratic parties to power in April 1944 when he had accepted the parties of the National Liberation Committee (CLN) into his government. As a guarantor of state continuity and a right-wing politician, Badoglio was highly valued by the conservative establishment in Western Europe. Even after serving as Prime Minister, the British government defended him on several occasions from charges of his role in Mussolini's wars of conquest.

With these difficulties in mind, the Ethiopian government decided in 1948 to meet Italy. In a letter to the British Foreign Office on November 23, 1948, she agreed to forego a large part of the proceedings and only to hold the two former Marshals Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani responsible. In order to guarantee a fair trial for the two accused, the Ethiopian government proposed an international tribunal with a majority of non-Ethiopian judges, which should work according to the procedural model and the legal principles of the Nuremberg Trials. In addition, the imperial government asked Great Britain for help and mediation with the Italian government. However, the British Foreign Secretary refused and referred the African country on January 31, 1949 to the direct negotiation path with Italy. All British governments did not want Italy, which had participated in the war against Nazi Germany from 1943, to account for crimes in Africa that had been committed during the years of the unfortunate appeasement policy . Britain's indulgent attitude at the time had greatly facilitated Italian aggression. In addition, after the outbreak of the Cold War, everything should be avoided that would have made the already strong political left in Italy even stronger. Great Britain, France and the USA absolutely wanted to keep Italy in the western camp and were prepared to let the tribunal sought by Ethiopia to try the main Italian war criminals fizzle out.

Last bilateral initiative and failure

Finally referring to the bilateral route, the Ethiopian government made one last attempt in September 1949 to try Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani after all. The Ethiopian ambassador in London referred to his Italian counterpart once again on Italy's obligations under the peace treaty of 1947. However, the Italian ambassador rejected the demands on the grounds that there were no diplomatic relations between the two countries. The British Foreign Office, which was also informed, did not fundamentally question the legitimacy of the Ethiopian extradition requests in its response, but stated that the timing was inappropriate. Ethiopia would do well not to force the question of the war crimes trial any further if it is interested in a federation with Eritrea. This demarche marked the end of the Ethiopian efforts. Aram Mattioli (2006) assessed the consequences of the lack of a war crimes tribunal as follows:

“The silent 'general amnesty' for Mussolini's bloody veterans had a decisive influence on the memory of the events. It not only prevented the many thousands of African victims of the fascist tyranny from receiving justice and satisfaction. The sabotage of an 'African Nuremberg' also contributed to the fact that Mussolini's dictatorship never went down in the collective memory of Europeans as the brutal mass killing regime that it was. "

Reception in society and politics

Contemporary reception

Even contemporary assessments noticed the suffering that the Abyssinian War brought upon the civilian population. So reported John Melly , the then head of the British Red Cross in the war zone: "This is not a war, it is also not a bloodbath, it is the torture of tens of thousands of defenseless men, women and children with bombs and poison gas." Marcel Junod , delegate of the International Red Cross, compared the event with a "veritable hell" in the face of hundreds of poison gas victims on the Quoram level, who were seriously injured and suffered excruciatingly without medical care. The chief delegate of the Red Cross in Abyssinia, Sidney H. Brown, reported to Geneva headquarters in 1936 that the Italians were waging a real "war of extermination" ( guerre d'extermination ) and that there was no distinction between the army and the civilian population.

Propaganda depiction of Benito Mussolini on the front page of La Domenica del Corriere newspaper (1938)

In Italy itself the Abyssinian War aroused tremendous enthusiasm, in particular Badoglio's victory report on May 5, 1936, put Italian society in a “collective state of intoxication”. For the fascists, Italy had now risen to a colonial great power in the "war of the seven months", which ruled the third largest colonial empire in the world right behind Great Britain and France. Against a backdrop of tremendous propaganda efforts, Italy's public generally saw Mussolini as a man who had succeeded where his liberal predecessors had failed. Italy had won a great campaign on its own, and Mussolini defied the League of Nations and the great powers, thereby gaining additional prestige. The 50 million hectares of the best Ethiopian arable land, which were just waiting to be cultivated by two million Italian colonists, were also highlighted for propaganda purposes. In 1936, even communist secret reports declared that the issues of nationalism and "proletarian war" which fascism had instituted had set the ordinary population in motion and that there was "a broad mass of workers influenced by fascism". Communist leaders came to the conclusion that they had to respect patriotic sentiments, which went so far as to accept a measure of nationalism and to be willing to collaborate with workers who were friendly to the fascist. However, there were also publicly expressed rejection of the invasion on the part of Italian anti-fascists. B. by Carlo Rosselli , who was murdered on Mussolini's orders in 1937 in his French exile.

For the broad support front that carried the Abyssinian War of 1935/36, the support of the Catholic Church proved to be decisive. Since the Lateran Treaty of 1929, the state church had developed into a pillar of the fascist regime. In the months leading up to the aggression, Catholic dignitaries had supported Italy's right to expand. In a speech on August 25, 1935, Pope Pius XI awakened. it appears that the Vatican considered the Italian claims to be justified. After the outbreak of hostilities, the Vatican took a neutral stance and refrained from any further comment on the events of the war. The silence, however, was usually interpreted in such a way that the Pope did not want to take a stand against the aggressor. In the nationalist climate of the autumn of 1935, most of the Italian bishops enthusiastically supported the illegal war in East Africa, far more enthusiastically than the entry into the First World War twenty years earlier. Most church princes believed in the reasons for war (spread of civilization, conquest of living space, abolition of slavery) pretended by the regime's propaganda and endeavored in their sermons and speeches to use the image of a “just war”. The Bishop of Cremona declared three weeks after the start of the war: “May the blessing of God rest on those soldiers who fight on African soil, conquer new fertile land for the Italian genius and thereby spread Roman and Christian culture. May a Christian counselor appear once again in Italy all over the world. "

Mussolini with Hitler during his state visit to Germany (1937)

The empire of Abyssinia, whose Amharic ruling class had produced one of the oldest Christian cultures, appeared to the Italian bishops as a "land of barbarians" to which Italy had to fulfill a civilizing mission. With the conquest of this old kingdom they also linked the hope of a new mission area. Without knowing all the details of the warfare, most of the bishops and believers were a mirror of society as a whole, which was in a state of nationalist intoxication in 1935/36. During the Giornata della fede on December 18, 1935, the bishops called for wedding rings to be donated and also made gold donations personally. In public ceremonies, many of them blessed regiment standards as well as the troop transports put to sea and asked God's blessing for Italy, the king and the "Duce". Even more committed than the clergy on the home front were the 200 and then 300 military chaplains who participated in the Abyssinian War as members of the army. Most of them were staunch fascists who, on the one hand, had to provide for the spiritual support of the troops and, on the other hand, took on the role of regime propagandists: They drafted the national-Catholic vision of a renewed Christian Roman Empire, composed glorifying ones Hymns and prayers for the war of conquest in East Africa and the Italian dictator stylized as the savior. They kept silent about the war crimes. On Sundays, the military chaplains celebrated field masses, which always ended with a prayer for the monarch and "Duce".

At the international level, Italy's aggression ushered in a new era of the law of the thumb. The passive behavior of the Western powers dealt the hitherto functioning system of collective security a severe blow from which it should no longer recover. This encouraged Adolf Hitler to march into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and in May 1936 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: “Mussolini has prevailed. What do England and the legendary League of Nations want to do now! You can see: you have to have power to assert yourself. Everything else is nonsense. ”The new violence dimension of this war was also perceived by the general staffs in the“ Third Reich ”. The personal war memories of Emilio De Bono, Pietro Badoglio, Rodolfo Graziani and Vittorio Mussolini soon appeared in German licensed translations. A hero cult developed around Marshal Graziani, the epitome of the new fascist military leader, in the “Third Reich”. In Germany, it was primarily the military writer Rudolf von Xylander , who lectured at the Berlin War Academy , who propagated that lessons for the war of the future could be learned from what was happening in East Africa . In a much-read study, he presented the speed and efficiency of Italian warfare as exemplary and stated as the “main lesson” that only war of movement, fought with the most modern technology, had a chance of success in the future. Rudolf von Xylander also interpreted the events in East Africa as a turning point in military history and spoke of the “first modern war of annihilation on colonial soil”. As a Social Darwinist conclusion to the Abyssinian War, he stated: “It is regrettable that an old empire perished. But one must also bear in mind how world history often shows such events, how in nature only those who are the strongest have a right to life. ”No direct statements by Hitler about the Abyssinian War have been passed down. However, during his state visit on September 27, 1937, he honored Mussolini not only as the “ingenious creator of fascist Italy”, but also as the “founder of a new empire”.

The Abyssinian War also had a great response in Africa, as well as with people of African origin worldwide.

Culture of remembrance in Ethiopia and internationally

Ethiopia is celebrating three days of remembrance for the struggle for independence in a way that is unique in the world. While "Adua Day" on March 2nd commemorates the victorious decisive battle in the First Italian-Ethiopian War in 1896, two Ethiopian national holidays are dedicated to the memory of the Italian occupation between 1935 and 1941: February 19th and May 5th . The first date refers to the darkest and most formative event of the fascist tyranny: the thousands of Ethiopians who were murdered by the occupying forces in brutal "reprisals" after the assassination attempt on Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani in February 1937. "Martyrs Day" was a non-working holiday until the 1974 revolution. After the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie I, it was converted into a non-working day of remembrance. This had less to do with a downgrading of events in the national memorial hierarchy than with the fact that, after the introduction of three Muslim national holidays, their total number was to be limited. While there is still no Adua memorial in Addis Ababa or on the battlefield itself, the memorial for “Martyrs Day” on Seddest Kilo Square, directly across from the main campus of the University of Addis Ababa, is unmistakable.

Ethiopia's former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (2012)

The second of the two days of remembrance stands for the symbolic, triumphant entry of Emperor Haile Selassie into the capital on May 5, 1941, exactly five years after the fascists marched into Addis Ababa. For the emperor, his role in the British-led campaign in the final phase of the war represented an almost inexhaustible political capital. May 5th was officially designated as the beginning of a new era and the memory of liberation was strongly idealized. It was supposed to make the emperor's controversial escape into exile forgotten. According to the Ethiopian historian Bahru Zewde (2006), a personality cult, impregnated with a “liberal” dose of the emperor's achievements during and after the war up to the revolution of 1974, was omnipresent in the political life of Ethiopia. It is therefore hardly surprising that this imperial version of the story was disputed by the new rulers after the ousting of Haile Selassie in September 1974. The emperor's entry into Addis Ababa was now portrayed as the return of a ruler who had abandoned his people in the hour of greatest need. The liberation of Addis Ababa by British troops and the local resistance fighters who supported them, which had already taken place on April 6, 1941, was therefore declared to be the new true date of the transition from the fascist occupation to the newly won freedom. For about two decades, April 6th was celebrated as liberation day until the Ethiopian regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, which had emerged from the EPRDF party , finally returned on May 5th as “Liberation Day” in the 1990s.

The British East Africa campaign, which together with the Ethiopian resistance led to the end of fascist rule in Ethiopia, has been preserved in the ethiopian culture of remembrance to this day. Winston Churchil, the architect of the British war effort in Ethiopia, is still reminiscent of the “Churchill Road” central traffic axis in Addis Ababa. Other streets have been named after Anthony Eden , then Secretary of State for Great Britain, and various British commanders, although some names have since been changed. Orde Wingate and Dan Stanford, the British commanders of the Gideon Force, with whom Kaier Haile Selassie marched into Gojjam, were named after schools: the once respected "General Wingate Secondary School" and the "Sandford English Community School".

Maaza Mengiste in the Literaturhaus Frankfurt (January 2013)

The time of the Italian occupation produced a flood of Ethiopian literature, both fiction and scholarly works. The occupation forms the background or even the leitmotif of numerous Amharic novels that were written after the liberation (1941). Typical for this are the books by Makonnen Endalkachaw , who, according to Bahru Zewde (2006), “showed far more talent as a writer than as prime minister between 1943 and 1957”. One of the classics of post-war literature is “Ar'aya” by Germachaw Takla-Hawaryat. Also important are the works of the writers Yoftahe Neguse and Walda-Giyorgis Walda-Yohannes, who are considered the real fathers of the Ethiopian Patriotic Association , which called on Ethiopians to defend the fatherland during the war. At that time Neguse began to write his main work Afajasheñ . His colleague Walda-Yohannes in turn wrote the book YaWand Lej Kurat (“The Pride of a Son of the Fatherland”), which was supposed to give moral support to soldiers at the front and of which over 40,000 copies have been shown to have been circulated. The Ethiopian Patriotic Association , known in Ethiopia as Hagar Feqer , played a pioneering role in promoting Ethiopian music and theater after the liberation. The “Black Lions” resistance group, which consists of intellectuals and the military, was described by Taddasa Mecha in the book Anbasa BaMe'erab Ityopya (“Black Lion in Western Ethiopia”). The Ethiopian guerrilla fighters of the "Patriots" experienced a literary processing through the works of Taddasa Zawalde ("To the astonishment of the survivors") and Garima Taffara ("Gondar with his shield"), which thematize the resistance in the Amharic provinces of Shewa and Gondar / Begemder . For the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop Abuna Petros, who is venerated as a martyr due to his execution by the Italians in Ethiopia , a statue was erected in Addis Ababa, which is one of the city's famous sights. The Ethiopian poet Tsagaye Gabra-Madhen wrote the play Petros Yahin Sa'at ("Petros at that hour") for Abuna Petros .

Ethiopian-Canadian journalist Aida Edemariam , who works for The Guardian , published The Wife's Tale: A Personal History as a book in 2014 , in which her Ethiopian grandmother's memories of the Italian invasion and occupation play a key role. Edemariam's book has received several international awards. In 2019, the Ethiopian-American author Maaza Mengiste published the novel The Shadow King , the plot of which takes place during Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 and addresses the often neglected role of Ethiopian women fighters in the armed resistance. In 2020, a film adaptation of the novel, directed by Kasi Lemmons and with the collaboration of Oscar-nominated film producers Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, along with Stephanie Haymes-Roven and Curt Kanemoto, was announced. The Abyssinian War is also dealt with in the 2012 documentary Barbarisches Land, produced by the Italian filmmaker team around Angela Ricci Lucchi and Yervant Gianikian in France , which shows annotated original recordings from 1935/36 from private film archives. The documentary film Die Südtiroler in Mussolini's Abyssinian War 1935–1941 by Franz J. Haller and Gerald Steinacher, with Aram Mattioli as historical advisor, focuses on the experiences of German-speaking South Tyroleans .

Culture of remembrance in Italy

Indro Montanelli (1992)

The overwhelming majority of Italians remembered the fascist aggression against Ethiopia not because of its brutality, but as an “African adventure” and “typically Italian war with few deaths and many orders” ( Indro Montanelli ). In the case of war veterans, former colonial officials and returnees, this attitude sometimes manifested itself as open pride in Italy's civilizational achievement in Africa. The former fascist colonial minister Alessandro Lessona wrote to his compatriots in 1973: “The conquest of the empire remains a shining page in the history of Italy. On this occasion we demonstrated our military skills and showed that if the Italian people are led with prudence [...] can act in unity and know how to sacrifice themselves for a greater good. "

Although the great majority of Italians did not regard the war in Abyssinia after 1945 as a glorious sheet of national history due to the military defeat and the final collapse of the “Impero”, indulgent, mythic images prevailed in the collective memory of the “greatest colonial war of all time”. Until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, it was taken for granted that the Italian armed forces had waged a clean and regular war in East Africa. In the early 1990s, the influential conservative star columnist Indro Montanelli emphasized to a member of the Ethiopian imperial family that the Italian army was not to blame. The only dark episode of the Africa campaign, according to Montanelli, was the shameful execution of the Kassa brothers, who were shot even though they had been promised their lives prior to their voluntary submission. Even the left-wing journalist Giorgio Bocca stated in 1995: "If you really took stock of Italian colonialism, you would quickly come to the conclusion that we gave the colonies more than we got."

The Italian aggression against Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941 also left its mark on Rome. The famous axumitic monolith from the 4th century, which stood near the Caracalla baths until November 2003 , was transported back to Ethiopia in spring 2005. The obelisk was brought to Rome in 1937 as a war trophy. His long-missed repatriation clouded relations between Italy and Ethiopia for decades. But in the northeast of Rome, as in other Italian cities, entire streets are reminiscent of the colonial era: “Viale Eritrea”, “Viale Somalia”, “Via Adua”, “Via Dessie”, “Via Tembien”, “Via Endertà”, “Piazza” Addis Ababa ”. They are also names of countries, cities and major battles related to the Abyssinian War. This is explained, among other things, by the fact that in the historiography Italian fascism was hardly given the same status as German National Socialism, and that Italy was not confronted with the problem of decolonization after 1945 because it had already lost its colonies.

At the end of the 1990s, the Italian armed forces began to review the history of the Abyssinian conflict and published monographs on the deployment of the army, the air force and the navy in Ethiopia. Although the use of chemical warfare agents could no longer be concealed, the general staff work La campagna italo-etiopica (1935–1936) , published in two volumes in 2005, is devoted in detail to the gas war in Abyssinia, but, according to the historian Nicola Labanca in his review, “ the myth of the decent Italian is not called into question in the work ”.

Labanca in particular is one of the Italian historians who followed in the footsteps of Del Boca and Rochat and who critically examined Italian colonial history from the 2000s onwards. These include, for example, historians such as Matteo Dominioni or Paolo Borruso, who deal with specific works such as the Italian occupation and the Ethiopian resistance struggle (Dominioni) or the Debre Libanos massacre (Borruso).

After the publication of the work published by the Italian General Staff in 2011 on the Italian occupation in Abyssinia (Etiopia: 1936–1940: le operazioni di polizia coloniale nelle fonti dell'Esercito italiano.) , Dominioni criticized that the book was based only on Italian sources, too if it is written meticulously, but therefore does not correspond to the standards of modern historiography. With regard to the new publication, Del Boca admittedly that he had particularly emphasized the Italian war crimes in his work and had neglected the Ethiopian ones, but that he does not share the described break with Graziani's policy of oppression after the Duke of Aosta took over.

The example of Debre Libano shows that the Italian public still struggles with a critical reappraisal. After the massacre of representatives of the Coptic Church was made known to a broad audience in a 2016 documentary by Antonello Carvigiani, the Ministry of Defense announced the establishment of a historians' commission, but it was not implemented. During his state visit to Ethiopia in March 2016 , the Italian President Sergio Mattarella laid a wreath in memory of the Ethiopian victims of the Italian occupation.

On the other hand, the renaming of street names that were dedicated to the fascist general Pietro Maletti and commander of the Italian troops at Debre Libanos, following the discovery of the atrocities of Debre Libanos, shows that a rethinking process has also begun among the general public.

Research history

Italian historiography

The “process of collective self- absolution ” was favored by academic historiography, which either ignored the fascist war and occupation crimes in Africa until the 1970s or underestimated their dimensions. The "Committee for the Documentation of Italy's Enterprises in Africa", set up by a ministerial decision in 1952, published 50 volumes on the subject, but gave up the opportunity to take a self-critical overall assessment of the Italian presence in North and East Africa. Significantly, the committee consisted of 15 former top officials of the colonial administration. In this official documentary with the harmless title “L'Italia in Africa”, the former functionaries drew a flattering picture of the colonial past. Scientifically largely worthless, the gigantic work, as a kind of white paper, secured the dominant history.

Until the 1980s, even the renowned historians of the time paid no attention to the colonial past and did not consider it to be of any importance for the overall interpretation of the fascist dictatorship. In this context, Renzo De Felice was significant, as the fascism expert par excellence, had a great influence on public opinion in Italy. The conservative history professor mentioned the gas war in Abyssinia in a single line in his many thousand pages long biography of Mussolini. De Felice's findings suggested that the great majority of the Italians during the “twenty black years” (Ventennio nero) had proven to be immune to racism and that the fascist dictatorship between 1925 and 1943 was free from criminal mass murder. In 1993 De Felice balanced his research to the effect that fascism could neither be described as racist nor as anti-Semitic. He also saw the fascist regime fundamentally protected from the "charge of genocide" and outside the "cone of light of the Holocaust".

Until the 1970s, access to the relevant archives was only possible under difficult conditions, if at all, especially for critical historians or scientists from the former colonies. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Italian aggression, the newspaper Gazetta del popolo published a series of articles by its foreign correspondent Angelo Del Boca . This processed extensive source material and also resorted to eyewitness reports from personalities of the Ethiopian resistance, whom he interviewed in Addis Ababa. Del Boca's 1965 study La guerra d'Abissinia 1935–1941 was the first scientific reconstruction of the events. The fact that the Italian armed forces waged a brutal war of conquest and used poison gas on a massive scale was widely documented. Despite the overwhelming evidence, a storm of public indignation broke out after the book was published. Old fascists, colonial nostalgics and war veterans in particular accused Del Boca, a member of the Socialist Party (PSI), of deliberately falsifying history for political purposes. In particular, the evidence of the systematic use of poisonous gas was regarded as unacceptable. In Italy, ruled by the Democrazia Cristiana, historians seeking scientific enlightenment such as Angelo Del Boca or Giorgio Rochat were considered "enemies of the fatherland".

Ethiopian research

The years of occupation and resistance became a preferred subject of research at the Addis Ababa University Department of History . Twenty major papers on various aspects of this subject were published between 1970 and 1995. They address the looting and destruction shortly before the fascists marched into Addis Ababa, everyday life under Italian rule, the role of the Eritrean Askaris who defected from the Italian armed forces to resist, but also the resistance in the regions of Gojjam, Shewa, Wollega , Begemder and Arsi . A doctoral thesis leads to a macro study of the resistance, in which the tactics and strategy of the resistance fighters are analyzed. With the exception of the work by Tabor Wami ( YaDajjazmach Garasu Dukina Yalenoch Arbaññoch Tarik , Addis Ababa 1986), these remained unpublished. The resistance in Gojjam was rated as so central that two dissertations on this topic have taken on: In addition to the Italian one by Matteo Dominioni, there is also an Ethiopian one by Seltene Seyoum ( A History of the Resistance in Gojjam (Ethiopia): 1936–1941 , Addis Ababa 1999).

War motives

Economic and social policy approach

For decades, historiography was devoted to the question of the motives for war. Already in the interwar period, journalists loyal to the regime of the fascist dictatorship postulated that the conquest of East Africa was due to the economic and demographic pressure in Italy. However, the benefits of settlement efforts in East Africa up until the mid-1920s were clearly questioned in contemporary specialist journals from the military, colonial, political and cultural sectors. In addition, until April 1936, neither in Italy nor in Ethiopia had it been precisely clarified which international legal status Ethiopia was to receive in the future. For a long time, it was completely open whether it was a colony under direct rule, a mandate or a protectorate. Only the flight of the Ethiopian emperor into exile brought a clarification. But even after the Italians officially announced their victory, the security situation in the newly founded East African Empire did not meet the wishes of those in favor of a white settlement. In addition, the Italian authorities failed to establish a functioning bureaucracy. So the settler question only gained relevance late.

At the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, historians mostly from the left explained the drive behind Italian imperialism in East Africa with economic arguments. George W. Baer (1967) analyzed the desperate economic situation in Italy in the wake of the global economic crisis and also listed the structural weaknesses in industry and agriculture. He diagnosed a dominant social-imperialist motivated background for the war. Even Franco Catalano (1969 u. 1979) examined the effects of the global economic crisis. In order not to have to devalue the lira, according to Catalano, the only way out for the government was to stimulate the economy through the arms industry. Luigi Cattanei's (1973) assessments were similar . The Abyssinian War was intended to restore self-confidence to the small and middle class and to dampen workers' fear of unemployment. According to Cattanei, social tensions should be reduced through the valve of foreign policy. In his early publications in particular, Giorgio Rochat took the view that through the war the fascist regime sought to bring about internal consolidation after the years of economic crisis. In his opinion (1978), the expansion of fascist Italy was not the result of long-term planning, but arose from favorable socio-economic circumstances. More recent research contributions, such as those by Bahru Zewde (1994) and Robert Boyce (1989), which also follow the traditional economic-historical track, emphasize the state's extraordinarily strong commitment to economic and financial policy. Both authors saw the Abyssinian War as an answer to the economic crisis of the early 1930s.

Although the consideration of economic interests in the preparation of the Abyssinian War is considered to be assured, their relevance is rated differently. Wolfgang Reinhard (1990) relativizes their crucial importance and emphasizes that the Mussolini government did not shrink from introducing compulsory loans and special taxes to finance the war. Italy also took out extensive foreign loans, particularly from the German government. Even macroeconomic control instruments, such as monetary and currency policy, were put at the service of expansion. According to Giulia Brogini Künzi (2006), the campaign was not primarily initiated to find a way out of the economic crisis. She points out that since the founding of the first colony (Eritrea), financial and economic experts in the administration, but also in the specialist press, have repeatedly emphasized that the colonies caused considerable costs. Experience has shown that every additional colony in Africa brought more debt than economic prosperity. In this context, it could also be denied that the war was instigated by large Italian industry.

Diplomacy-historical approach

The second important strand of research for explaining the Abyssinian War is the approach to the history of diplomacy. Its representatives interpret the campaign primarily as a diplomatically well-secured deal with France and Great Britain. In doing so, Renzo De Felice (1975) resolutely rejected the socio-economic and historical studies by Catalanos, Rochats and Baers. According to De Felice, the economic crisis had already been overcome by the time the war was planned and the outbreak of war, and the regime's popularity was at its peak. Nevertheless, he admits that Mussolini, in the course of further propaganda activities, had sought to bind the youth and certain circles of the fascist party even more closely to himself. De Felice also countered the thesis that the Abyssinian War was a testimony to the “imperialism inherent in fascism”. The author also differentiated himself from the political or cultural-historical interpretation that the Abyssinian War was a result of great power thinking. In other words, De Felice did not locate the deciding factor for the expansion into Ethiopia in domestic policy, but in foreign policy. Mussolini only decided to go to war in December 1934, when it was certain that the two great powers France and Great Britain would not thwart his plans.

The interrelationships between the major European powers were at the center of Armand Cohen's (1975) standard work .

Interpretations of Angelo Del Bocas

The historian who, since the 1960s, laid the foundation for the interpretations of those authors who saw a clear difference between the expansionist policy of liberal Italy and that of fascist Italy, is Angelo Del Boca. On Italian colonialism, Del Boca wrote, among other things, a four-volume colonial history of Italy. As a journalist and scientist, the author repeatedly struggled to get free access to the sources. The more conservative archivists, bureaucrats and politicians viewed his commitment and his research results negatively.

For Del Boca, the focus was on the political, culture-specific and mentality-historical aspects of expansion, rather than the immediate economic and diplomatic framework. Del Boca emphasized that - in contrast to the expansion of liberal Italy - the colonization of North and East Africa during fascism called for a much greater involvement of the masses. In doing so, he implicitly referred to the industrial character of controlled opinion-forming. During the liberal era, expansion was primarily a matter for the army and the state, and most Italians had little relation to the colonies until the 1930s. Mussolini, on the other hand, first achieved control over almost all means of communication with his personal press office and then with the help of the specially established Ministry for Popular Culture and Propaganda. A population of 40 million was convinced that the development of Italy was inextricably linked to the expansion in Africa.

Typological classification of the war

Rudolf Lill (2010)

In Italy, the Abyssinian War has long been viewed as a colonial war , a limited conflict that is not only geographically remote, but also had little to do with the tragedies of World War II. The war - although now more the opinion of a poorly informed public than the historian - aimed to give Italian emigrants a “place in the sun” and was basically nothing more than a kind of “development aid from the kind-hearted bravi italiani” ". More differentiated but related patterns of interpretation have long been considered widespread in German-speaking countries. The German historian Rudolf Lill (2002) explained : “In this actually anachronistic colonial war, the Italians accumulated all the crimes that the older colonial powers had committed during their conquests; but they did not enter the much worse level of the National Socialist genocide. As soon as Ethiopia was subjugated, the inhabitants experienced tolerable treatment, they were supposed to be integrated into the Impero , the empire. The viceroy, Duke Amadeo of Savoy-Aosta, who had been in office since 1937 and for whom a permanent government was intended, has done a great deal for the country, which has now been modernized by Italian officials and engineers, doctors and teachers. "

Such interpretations are resolutely contradicted by recent research. The Swiss historian Aram Mattioli (2005) points out that after the Italian invasion of Addis Ababa under Viceroy Graziani, a period of mass repression began with terrible excesses of violence, which fell victim to tens of thousands of Africans. There was never a mild and selfless occupation regime in Ethiopia. The Swiss historian Giulia Brogini Künzi (2006) also attests a “new quality” to the Abyssinian War. Individual elements of modern colonial warfare that shaped the conflict in the main phase of the war in 1935/36 tended to be present as early as the Second Boer War (1899–1902) or the Rif War (1921–1927). Nevertheless, Italy did not wage an old-style colonial war in Ethiopia, but in phases an all-out war that "was fought with all financial, economic and military means available at the time". In addition to the first-time use of large quantities of high-quality weapons and technical equipment, the numerically impressive parade of soldiers and civilians, Brogini Künzi also emphasizes the "ideological framework of fascism, which provided the breeding ground for the formulation of the Italian military doctrine". In a review of Brogini Künzi's monograph, Rudolf Lill (2007) also follows this assessment in that the Italian concept of “integral war” already refers to the Second World War.

Mussolini and Hitler in Munich (1938)

In 1978 the Polish historians Andrzej Bartnicki and Joana Mantel-Niécko ruled on Graziani's reign of terror that his methods of repression could only be compared with the reprisals that “the Hitler fascists perpetrated against the subjugated peoples of Eastern Europe”. In 2008, the fascism expert Brunello Mantelli , who teaches at the University of Turin, found that Mussolini and his generals in Abyssinia were using methods that “were in no way inferior to those that Adolf Hitler later used”. In order to avoid inappropriate comparisons with the “Third Reich”, such assessments must, according to Aram Mattioli (2006), be differentiated and strictly limited to the period before the start of the German war of annihilation against the Soviet Union in 1941. The targeted liquidation of the Ethiopian intelligentsia and the clergy, but also of parts of the Amharic leadership elite, is comparable to the German terrorist occupation in Poland, in the context of which, shortly after the invasion, the targeted extermination of the Polish educated classes, the officer corps, the higher Catholic clergy and thousands started by Jews. Wolfgang Schieder (2003) and Patrizia Dogliani (1999) also draw a comparison with the “German approach in Poland” in 1939/40 . At the same time remember Graziani collective destruction commands according Mattioli but also to individual aspects of German warfare in the Soviet Union, for example, Hitler's decree of 1941 on the execution of all captured commissars of the Red Army .

As early as 1979, Angelo Del Boca noted in his monograph Gli italini in africa orientale that the conflict under Commander-in-Chief Pietro Badoglio got out of hand and subsequently assumed the features of a "war of extermination". In a similar way, Hans Woller (2010) follows the interpretation of the French historian Pierre Milza (2000), according to which fascist Italy waged a veritable "war of terror and extermination" after the change of command to Badoglio in the Horn of Africa. Woller sees this classification as justified by the fact that the Abyssinian War anticipated many of those brutal practices that were then fully developed in the Second World War. The war in Abyssinia was the bloodiest military conflict of the interwar period: “Badoglio, Graziani and the other officers [...], who were on duty in Africa for the third time after 1911/12 and 1922/32, knew how to deal with the colored locals obviously no longer have any inhibitions. ”Aram Mattioli (2005) admits on the one hand that“ the greatest colonial war of conquest in history ”served to establish a short-lived Italian colonial rule over Ethiopia. Nevertheless, according to him, the events in the Horn of Africa “should not be interpreted in colonial categories alone”. At first glance it was a belated colonial company in the long history of European expansion, but it was actually a "war of aggression and conquest" waged with sophisticated logistics, immense effort and the most modern technology. Together with the Italian historian Nicola Labanca , Mattioli assumes that the Abyssinian War can no longer be captured in the context of a colonial conquest, but must be interpreted as a "fascist war".

For Alan R. Kramer (2007 and 2019) and Sven Reichardt (2017) of the Abyssinian war marked the beginning and breakthrough of "fascist warfare" ( fascist warfare ). This ultra-nationalist-motivated form of war with an “eliminatory and genocidal tendency” is characterized not only by its brutality but also by its speed, it is also directed comprehensively against the civilian population and glorifies the aerial warfare. Italian fascism also fought for the conquest of new "living space" (spazio vitale) and for the first time explicitly combined colonial and fascist warfare. Mattioli (2006) similarly assesses the conflict as "the first major war that a fascist power [...] waged to gain new 'living space' [...] and to implement a large-scale imperial project". According to Mattioli, from a global perspective, the Abyssinian War forms the “bridge” between the colonial wars of the imperialist age and Hitler's Habitat War: “What Mussolini's legionaries tried out in East Africa, Hitler's ideological soldiers in Eastern Europe set a few years later with radicalized ideological energy, more efficient organization and with technological Once again potentiated means of violence on a large scale. ”As a consequence, Mattioli and some other historians classify the Abyssinian War as the“ first fascist war of extermination ”. Nicola Labanca (2010) rejects the terms war of extermination and total war for the main phase of the war from 1935/36, but sees individual episodes of this type during the Italian repression against the Ethiopian resistance from 1936 to 1941. According to Michael Thöndl (2007), the intensity of the Italian Warfare and occupation will continue to be judged controversially in the future. However, as a conclusion so far, he holds:

"[...] that the brief rule in Abyssinia was probably the phase in the history of Italian fascism up to 1943 in which it came closest to totalitarianism and thus also to the later National Socialist occupation in Eastern and Southeastern Europe."

Genocide Debate

Contrary to what was claimed by Emperor Haile Selassie I in his famous speech to the League of Nations in Geneva, no archive documents found indicate that Fascist Italy wanted to commit genocide against the Ethiopian population for racist reasons . Nevertheless, there is no consensus among historians on the question of whether the events in the invaded and occupied Abyssinia from 1935 to 1941 constituted genocide or not. While some researchers such as Angelo Del Boca and Pierre Milza unequivocally answered in the affirmative, other experts are more cautious in their assessment. The Turin historian Nicola Tranfaglia is of the opinion that the Italian crimes “come close to genocide”, and Jost Dülffer (1998) attributes “features of a racist war of extermination” to the Italian approach in East Africa. According to Aram Mattioli (2005), the answer to the question ultimately depends on how genocide is defined. In a narrow interpretation of the UN Genocide Convention of December 9, 1948, the Italian acts of violence in Ethiopia were hardly included because they were not committed with the clearly identifiable intention “to completely or partially destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such ". In this assessment, only the verifiable intent and the moment of systematic advance planning are decisive. Neither Mussolini nor his generals had planned an Ethiopia without the Ethiopians, or ordered a systematic genocide against the black population as a whole. In the systematic murder of members of certain social groups or strata of society carried out by fascist Italy, Mattioli (2006) sees the "offense of sociocide" as fulfilled. According to the Italian historian Matteo Dominioni (2008), one could at least speak of genocide in relation to the Italian policy of extermination towards the Amharen ethnic group from March to May 1937.

Periodization of the war

The fascists boasted that they had conquered Ethiopia in seven months, between October 1935 and May 1936, and consistently spoke of the "war of the seven months" ( La guerra dei sette mesi ). An Italian research volume was published thirty years later under this title, which stems from the tradition of fascist self-interpretation. More recent research, however, increasingly periodizes the conflict to cover the entire period from 1935 to 1941. The main argument is that the Ethiopian resistance did not collapse even after the fall of the capital, and that the Italians never controlled the entire country.

The periodizations by Angelo Del Boca and Alberto Sbacchi were also followed by Matteo Dominioni, who in his monograph, published in 2008, distinguishes four other phases of the Abyssinian War in addition to the war phase of 1935/36:

  1. the "national war" ( la guerra nazionale ) from 1936 to 1937 under Graziani, which was mercilessly waged with all available resources,
  2. the "war of occupation" ( la guerra di occupazione ) from 1937 to 1939, which was marked by the violent repression of Cavallero,
  3. the “Colonial War” ( la guerra coloniale ) of 1939 from 1940 under Amedeo von Aosta, which was less bloody and open to political mediation
  4. the “World War” ( la guerra mondiale ) from 1940 to 1941, which was determined by the international context.

After Nicola Labanca traditionally limited the Abyssinian War to the years 1935/36 in his monograph on the conquest of Libya in 2012, he also extended the dating in his monograph on the Abyssinian War published in 2015 to the years 1935 to 1941, which now also includes guerrilla and Contains counter-guerrilla warfare and the internationalization of the war as part of the East Africa campaign. On the part of German-language research, an anthology was published in 2006 in which the Abyssinian War is also dated from 1935 to 1941.

In this context there is also a discussion about the “correct” periodization of the Second World War. According to Gerhard L. Weinberg , the Manchurian Crisis and the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1931 and 1937 as well as the Abyssinian War from 1935 onwards were among the "forerunners" of the Second World War because of their brutality. However, according to Weinberg's interpretations and the traditional Western view of history, this only began in 1939 with Germany's attack on Poland. Researchers like Richard Pankhurst and most Ethiopian historians, however, regard the Abyssinian War in Africa as the actual beginning of the Second World War. In Ethiopian historiography, the importance of the border incident near the village of Ual-Ual for the opening of hostility is emphasized as the actual beginning of the war. Berhanu Denqe, first court historian before making a name for himself as the Ethiopian ambassador to the USA, gave his work on the Abyssinian War the significant title KaWalwal eska Maychew (“From Ual-Ual to May Ceu”). The popular historian Pawolos Noñño also gives a lot of space to the early phase of the war in his richly illustrated book ( YaItyopyana YaItalya Torenat , Addis Ababa 1980). The historian Zawde Hayla-Maryam (1991) goes one step further. He sees Ual-Ual not only as the prelude to the Abyssinian War, but also as the beginning of the Second World War.

Film documentaries

literature

Monographs, edited volumes, articles

  • Asfa-Wossen Asserate , Aram Mattioli (ed.): The first fascist war of annihilation. The Italian aggression against Ethiopia 1935–1941 (= Italy in modern times. Vol. 13). SH-Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-89498-162-8 . ( Review by Manfred Funke )
  • Arthur J. Barker: The Civilizing Mission: A History of the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-1936. Dial Press, New York 1968.
  • Arthur J. Barker: The Rape of Ethiopia, 1936 (= Ballantine's Illustrated History of the Violent Century. Politics in Action. No. 4). Ballantine Books, New York NY 1971.
  • Rainer Baudendistel: Between Bombs and Good Intentions: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936. Berghan Books, New York / Oxford 2006, ISBN 1-84545-035-3 .
  • Riccardo Bottoni (Ed.): L'Impero fascista. Italia ed Etiopia (1935-1941). Il mulino, Bologna 2008, ISBN 978-88-15-12476-0 . (Italian)
  • Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935/36. Colonial War or Total War? (= War in History. Vol. 23). Schoeningh, Paderborn et al. 2006, ISBN 3-506-72923-3 (also: Bern, University, dissertation, 2002) ( full text ; review by Hans Woller )
  • Giulia Brogini Künzi: The Desire for a Lightning Fast and Clean War: The Italian Army in East Africa (1935/36). In: Thoralf Klein, Frank Schuhmacher (ed.): Colonial wars: Military violence under the sign of imperialism. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-936096-70-5 , pp. 272-290.
  • Angelo Del Boca : La guerra di Abissinia 1935-1941. Feltrinelli, Rome 1965. In the English translation: The Ethiopian War 1935–1941. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1969.
  • Angelo Del Boca: Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale. La conquista dell'Impero. Laterza, Bari 1979. (Italian)
  • Angelo Del Boca: Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale. La caduta dell'Impero. Laterza, Bari 1982. (Italian)
  • Angelo Del Boca: I gas di Mussolini: il fascismo e la guerra d'Etiopia. Editori riuniti, Rome 1996, ISBN 88-359-4091-5 . (Italian)
  • Angelo Del Boca: La guerra d'Etiopia: l'ultima impresa del colonialismo. Longanesi, Milan 2010, ISBN 978-88-304-2716-7 . (Italian)
  • Matteo Dominioni: Lo sfascio dell'Impero. Gli italiani in Etiopia 1936–1941 (= quadrant 143). Prefazione di Angelo Del Boca. Laterza, Bari 2008, ISBN 978-88-420-8533-1 . (Italian)
  • Federica Saini Fasanotti: Etiopia: 1936–1940: le operazioni di polizia coloniale nelle fonti dell'Esercito italiano. Ufficio storico - Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito, Rome 2010, ISBN 978-88-96260-13-5 . (Italian)
  • John Gooch: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943. Allen Lane, o. O. 2020, ISBN 978-0-241-18570-4 .
  • John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032.
  • Nicola Labanca : Una guerra per l'impero. Memorie della campagna d'Etiopia 1935-36. Il mulino, Bologna 2005, ISBN 88-15-10808-4 . (Italian)
  • Nicola Labanca: Colonial War in East Africa 1935/36: The First Fascist War of Extermination? In: Lutz Klinkhammer , Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi , Thomas Schlemmer (eds.): The "axis" in war. Politics, Ideology and Warfare 1939–1945 (= War of History , Volume 64). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn et al. 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76547-5 , pp. 194-210.
  • Nicola Labanca: La guerra d'Etiopia: 1935-1941. Il mulino, Bologna 2015, ISBN 978-88-15-25718-5 . (Italian)
  • Luigi Emilio Longo: La campagna italo-etiopica, 1935-1936. (2 volumes). Ufficio storico - Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito, Rome 2005 ISBN 88-87940-51-7 . (Italian)
  • Aram Mattioli : Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941 (= culture - philosophy - history. Vol. 3). With a foreword by Angelo Del Boca. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-280-06062-1 ( review ). ( Review by Malte König )
    • The chapter The Apartheid System is an abbreviated, largely identical version by Aram Mattioli: Fascist Italy - an unknown apartheid regime. In: Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.): Legal injustice. Racist Law in the 20th Century. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-593-37873-6 , pp. 155-178.
  • Aram Mattioli: Unbounded War Violence. The Italian use of poison gas in Abyssinia 1935–1936. In: Quarterly Books for Contemporary History . Volume 51, Issue 3, 2003, pp. 311–337, online (PDF; 7 MB) .
  • Anthony Mockler: Haile Selassie's War. Olive Branch Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-1-56656-473-1 .
  • Marco Montagnani, Antonino Zarcone, Filippo Cappellano: Il Servizio chimico militare, 1923–1945: storia, ordinamento, equipaggiamenti. (2 volumes) Ufficio storico - Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito, Rome 2011 ISBN 978-88-96260-24-1 . (Italian)
  • David Nicolle: The Italian Invasion of Abyssinia 1935-36. Osprey, Oxford 1997, ISBN 1-85532-692-2 .
  • Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. The Red Sea Press, Lawrenceville 1997, ISBN 978-0-932415-74-5 .
  • Richard Pankhurst: Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia: A History of Their Discussion, from the League of Nations to the United Nations (1936-1949). In: Northeast African Studies , Vol. 6, No. 1-2, 1999, pp. 83-140. ( PDF online )
  • Ferdinando Pedriali: L'aeronautica italiana nelle guerre coloniali. Guerra etiopica 1935-36. Ufficio Storico dell'Aeronautica Militare, Rome 1997. (Italian)
  • Ernesto Pellegrini: Le implicazioni navali della conquista dell'impero, 1935-1941. Ufficio Storico della Marina militare, Rome 2003. (Italian)
  • Giorgio Rochat: Militari e politici nella preparazione della campagna d'Etiopia: studio e documenti, 1932–1936. F. Angeli, Milan 1971. (Italian)
  • Brian R. Sullivan: The Italian-Ethiopian War, October 1935 – November 1941: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences. In: Ion A. Hamish, Elizabeth Jane Errington (Eds.): Great Powers and Little Wars: The Limits of Power. Praeger Publishers, Westport 1993, ISBN 0-275-93965-0 , pp. 167-202.
  • Michael Thöndl : Mussolini's East African Empire in the Records and Reports of the German Consulate General in Addis Ababa (1936–1941). In: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries, Volume 88, 2008, pp. 449–488, ( online ).
  • Michael Thöndl: The Abyssinian War and the Totalitarian Potential of Italian Fascism in Italian East Africa (1935–1941). In: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries. Volume 87, 2007, pp. 402-419, online .
  • Bahru Zewde: The Ethiopian Intelligentsia and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1941. In: The International Journal of African Historical Studies. Volume 26, No. 2, 1993, pp. 271-295.

International context

  • Manfred Funke : Sanctions and cannons. Hitler, Mussolini and the international Abyssinia conflict 1934–1936 (= Bonn writings on politics and contemporary history. 2, ISSN  0935-1191 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1970.
  • Robert Mallett: Mussolini in Ethiopia, 1919–1935: The Origins of Fascist Italy's African War. Cambridge University Press, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-107-46236-6 .
  • G. Bruce Strang (Ed.): Collision of empires: Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and its international impact. Routledge, London / New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-4094-3009-4 .

The Abyssinian War and South Tyrol

  • Sebastian de Pretto: In the struggle for history (s): places of remembrance of the Abyssinian War in South Tyrol. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8470-1108-8 .
  • Andrea Di Michele (Ed.): Abyssinia and Spain: Wars and Remembrance / Dall'Abessinia alla Spagna: guerre e memoria. 1935-1939 . History and Region / Storia e Regione , No. 1/2016 (25th year), ISBN 978-3-7065-5555-5 .
  • Gerald Steinacher (Ed.): Between Duce, Führer and Negus. South Tyrol and the Abyssinian War 1935–1941 (= publications of the South Tyrolean Provincial Archives. Vol. 22). Athesia, Bozen 2006, ISBN 88-8266-399-X .

Historical overview

  • Saheed A. Adejumobi: The History of Ethiopia. Greenwood Press, Westport / London 2007, ISBN 0-313-32273-2 .
  • Brunello Mantelli: Brief History of Italian Fascism. 4th edition, Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 2008 [1994], ISBN 978-3-8031-2300-8 .
  • Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Blackwell Publishing, Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, ISBN 978-0-631-22493-8 .
  • Hans Woller : History of Italy in the 20th century. Verlag CHBeck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60158-3 .
  • Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Ohio University Press / Addis Ababa University Press / James Currey, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], ISBN 0-8214-1440-2 .

Other literature

  • Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer, Javier Rodrigo (eds.): Fascist Warfare, 1922–1945: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation. Palgrave Macmillan, o. O. 2019, ISBN 978-3-030-27647-8 .
  • Marco Maria Aterrano, Karine Varley (eds.): A Fascist Decade of War: 1935-1945 in International Perspective (= Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right ). Routledge, London / New York 2020, ISBN 978-1-138-57415-1 .
  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Mia Fuller (eds.): Italian Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillian, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-230-60636-4 .
  • Ian Campbell: The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. Oxford University Press, New York 2017, ISBN 978-1-84904-692-3 .
  • Gabriele Schneider: Mussolini in Africa. The fascist racial policy in the Italian colonies 1936–1941 (= Italy in modern times. Vol. 8). SH-Verlag, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-89498-093-1 .

Web links

Commons : Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. Mattioli: Ent Grenzente Kriegsgewalt , p. 324, footnote 50.
  2. Mattioli: Ent Grenzente Kriegsgewalt , p. 324, footnote 50.
  3. Mattioli: Unbounded War Violence , p. 311.
  4. Mattioli: A forgotten key event of the world epoch. In: Asserate, Mattioli (ed.): The first fascist war of annihilation. P. 21.
  5. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 25.
  6. See Angelo Del Boca: The Ethiopian War 1935–1941. Chicago 1969, passim; John Gooch: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943. o. O. 2020, p. 10.
  7. ^ Stanley Payne: History of Fascism. The rise and fall of a European movement. Vienna 2006, p. 292.
  8. a b Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, pp. 25 f, 28 and 74.
  9. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 74.
  10. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 75 f; Aram Mattioli: A Forgotten Key Event of the World War II. In: Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Aram Mattioli (ed.): The first fascist war of annihilation. The Italian aggression against Ethiopia 1935–1941. Cologne 2006, pp. 9–26, here p. 11.
  11. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 75 ff.
  12. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 77.
  13. ^ Ian Campbell: The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. Oxford University Press, New York 2017, p. 17; Stanley Payne: History of Fascism. The rise and fall of a European movement. Vienna 2006, p. 289; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001, p. 151; Wolfgang Schieder: Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. On the problem of the formation of a fascist regime. In: Gerhard Schulz (Ed.): The great crisis of the thirties. From the decline of the world economy to World War II. Göttingen 1985, pp. 44-71, here p. 56.
  14. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 62 f.
  15. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn et al. 2006, p. 146 for 149 f; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, pp. 10, 35 and 51; Hans Woller: History of Italy in the 20th century. Munich 2010, pp. 132 and 134 f.
  16. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 58 f.
  17. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 102 f.
  18. ^ Luigi Emilio Longo: La campagna italo-etiopica, 1935-1936. Pp. 397, 431, 467-472.
  19. Marco Montagnani, Antonino Zarcone, Filippo Cappellano: Il Servizio militare chimico, 1923-1945: storia, ordinamento, equipaggiamenti. P. 45.
  20. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 77 f.
  21. Brunello Mantelli: Brief History of Italian Fascism. 4th edition, Berlin 2008 [1994], p. 107.
  22. Aram Mattioli: A veritable hell. In: Die Zeit , December 13, 2001.
  23. Giulia Brogini Künzi: aspects of the totalization of the colonial war. In: Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Aram Mattioli (ed.): The first fascist war of annihilation. The Italian aggression against Ethiopia 1935–1941. Cologne 2006, pp. 27–44, here p. 29; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 72.
  24. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 216.
  25. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 216; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 85.
  26. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 239.
  27. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 225; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 85.
  28. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 87.
  29. Giulia Brogini Künzi: aspects of the totalization of the colonial war. In: Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Aram Mattioli (ed.): The first fascist war of annihilation. The Italian aggression against Ethiopia 1935–1941. Cologne 2006, pp. 27–44, here p. 35; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 85.
  30. ^ A b John Gooch: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943. o. O. 2020, p. 21; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 88.
  31. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 88 f.
  32. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 89 f.
  33. ^ John Gooch: Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935-1943. o. O. 2020, p. 22.
  34. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 237; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 90.
  35. Giulia Brogini Künzi: Italy and the Abyssinian War 1935-36. Colonial War or Total War? Paderborn 2006, p. 237; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 90; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 235.
  36. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 125 f.
  37. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 126 f.
  38. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 127 f.
  39. ^ Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 226.
  40. John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032, here p. 1022; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 136; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, pp. 58 and 163.
  41. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 136 f; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001, pp. 167 and 169.
  42. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 136 f; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 166 f; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], p. 168.
  43. John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032, here p. 1022
  44. Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, from 1935 to 1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 167.
  45. John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032, here p. 1023; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 167.
  46. Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, from 1935 to 1941. Lawrenceville 1997, pp. 166-168; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], p. 168 f.
  47. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 138.
  48. John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032, here p. 1023; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 243; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 166 f and 170 f.
  49. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 139; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 243; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 172.
  50. Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, from 1935 to 1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 172 f.
  51. Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, from 1935 to 1941. Lawrenceville 1997, pp. 173-176.
  52. Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, from 1935 to 1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 176; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], p. 169.
  53. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 139; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 243 f; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 176, Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], pp. 169–171.
  54. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 139; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 243 f; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, p. 176, Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], pp. 169–171.
  55. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 139; Alberto Sbacchi: Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941. Lawrenceville 1997, pp. 181 and 190 f.
  56. John Gooch: Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922-39. In: Journal of Strategic Studies , Volume 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1005-1032, here p. 1025; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 245.
  57. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 164; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Ohio University Press / Addis Ababa University Press / James Currey, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], p. 176-
  58. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 165; Bahru Zewde: A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991. 2nd edition, Oxford / Athens / Addis Abeba 2001 [1991], p. 176.
  59. a b Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 165 f; Richard Pankhurst: The Ethiopians: A History. Malden / Oxford / Carlton 2001, p. 249.
  60. Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, pp. 94 and 99.
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