A New York Times reporter covering the military spectacle wrote, “Signor Mussolini himself took a hand, and displayed considerable skill in thowing hand-grenades, showing he had not forgotten the lessons he learned in war.”16
But Sir Hoare was not impressed. To back up his words the day after he uttered them, the Royal Navy sailed 100 warships led by H.M.S. Hood, the largest battleship afloat, through the Straits of Gibraltar, into the Mediterranean Sea. The Duce did not feel himself intimidated, however, and asserted that Britain was only interested in siding with Abyssinia to preserve the status quo of her own colonial holdings around the world. Hoare publicly bristled, “If these suspicions are still in anyone’s mind, let him once and for all dispel them. No selfish or imperialist motives enter into our minds at all.”17
Few, even in the League of Nations, believed him. Indeed, behind the scenes he tried to cut a deal with Baron Aloisi, in which Abyssinia would be carved up between Britain, France and Italy, with Mussolini getting the largest serving, if only he refrained from military aggression. The secret plan had at least the tacit approval of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who may, in fact, have concocted it.18 “These politicians are truly despicable,” the Duce told Aloisi. “I don’t know how you can keep clean in their presence. I’d need a bath after every meeting with them.”19
His answer to Hoare’s suggestion was delivered from the Fascist Party’s Rome headquarters to an immense, expectant crowd gathered beneath its balcony. “Not only is an army marching,” he exclaimed on 2 October 1935, as the invasion got under way, “but forty million Italians are marching in unison with this army, because an attempt is being made to commit against them the blackest of all injustices. And it is against our people to whom humanity is indebted for the majority of its accomplishments, and it is against our people–saints, poets, artists, navigators, colonizers and settlers–that they have spoken of sanctions. To sanctions of an economic nature, we will reply with discipline, with sobriety, and a spirit of sacrifice. To sanctions of a military nature, we will reply with war!”20
The economic measures he anticipated were soon forthcoming. After almost unanimously condemning him as an aggressor, arms exports to Italy were stopped, trade was cut off, and all financial dealings suspended. Italy manufactured enough aluminum to sell overseas, but other materials vital for military production, such as nickel, tin and rubber, were available only through imports, now canceled. The United States embargoed arms shipments to either combatant, although Italy obtained petroleum from American oil companies whose directors had no misgivings about conducting business with an official ‘aggressor nation’. With his rich gold mines and playing on his certified victim status, Haile Selassie could make large credit purchases of materiel, particularly munitions, from the same League states that condemned a less minerally well-endowed Italy.
In defiance of the outside world, more than half-a-million Italian married people donated wedding rings to their country’s war effort, a sacrifice compensated by the Fascist government with bands of steel. “This colorless ring is far more precious to me than anything else on Earth,” exclaimed the wife of a serviceman on his way to the fighting in Ethiopia, “because it binds us together more closely than the most precious gold.”21
“I thank Almighty God for permitting me to see these days of epic grandeur,” stated the Bishop of Civita Castellana in a public speech, then removed his gold pastoral chain, handed it to Mussolini, and gave him the Fascist salute to the cheers of 12,000 on-lookers.22
Italians from many foreign lands, including the New York Metropolitan Opera star, Ezio Pinza, flooded Rome with donations. But other New Yorkers reacted differently.23 Following a boxing match, in which Primo Carnera, the world’s former heavy-weight champion, was knocked out by Joe Lewis, his fellow blacks went on a rampage, looting Italian-owned shops and restaurants in Harlem.24 Others opposed to Ethiopian slave practices did not join in the rioting. America’s celebrated East St. Louis-born entertainer, Josephine Baker, appealed for “a negro army” to help Mussolini “liberate” East Africa. 25
Some League delegates demanded that the Suez Canal be closed to prevent Italian forces from reaching East Africa. But such a move would have violated world trade agreements allowing free access to all nations, save in the event of military operations against Britain. Short of a declaration of war, which neither the British Prime Minister nor the Fascist Duce was willing to make, Mussolini’s invasion fleet could pass through the Canal without interference.
Most of Africa had been long before divvied up by the imperial powers, but now Italy, poor in natural resources, was being denied her relatively small portion, just as happened after World War One. The same British and French imperialists who boasted of colonizing foreign peoples, growing rich in the process, Mussolini argued, now had the unmitigated gall to castigate him as an aggressor for following their example.26 Justified as he felt in these comparisons, henceforward he would find himself increasingly isolated in his relationship with the West. Germany alone of the great powers commended his decision to occupy Abyssinia, the first move in a fateful friendship that bound Hitler and Mussolini together in a shared destiny.
The Italo-Ethiopian War that ensued has since been condemned as the cowardly subjugation of innocent, defenseless primitives by a modern, industrialized dictatorship greedy for their land. Others regarded it as the first step in Axis ambitions to conquer the world, and the worst example of militant racism. Images of a barefoot, indigenous people pathetically striving to ward off Italian tanks with wooden spears are still presented in popular documentaries of the period. But Haile Selassie forbade most of his troops from wearing footgear of any kind in the belief that boots made crossing rough ground more difficult. Only elite members of his Imperial Guard, the Kebur Zabagna, were allowed to dress entirely in uniforms, including boots.27
A closer look at the conflict reveals it was not the racial confrontation generally imagined. Tens of thousands of tribal peoples from East Africa volunteered to fight for the Italians. Foremost among these were the Penne di Falco, or native Askari ‘Hawk Feathers’, renowned for more than the tall tarbush fez, with its single, long plume. Valued by Italian commanders for their elan, the Penne di Falco were effective cavalry, playing an important role in the capture of Dese, Haile Selassie’s military headquarters, where they presented arms to the commander of the Eritrean colonial division commander, General Pirzio-Biroli. The Regio Corpo di Truppe Coloniali also featured a ‘Libyan Brigade’ of volunteers from Yemen, and Somali dubats (‘turbans’), Muslim soldiers led by the Sultan of Olol Dinle, who would capture the city of Geladi for Italy early in the campaign.
Outside participation on the Emperor’s side was more pronounced. As David Nicolle, an historian of the Italo-Abyssinian War, remarked, “The role of foreign advisors and mercenaries in the modernization of Ethiopian arms was crucial”.28 Junior officers of the Kebur Zabagna were sent to Europe for military education until a cadet school was opened in Haile Selassie’s summer residence at Oletta, near Addis Ababa, the capital. The school had been established by a Captain in the Swedish Royal Life Guards, Viking Thamm.
A larger military mission from Sweden was led by General Virgin, who taught the Emperor’s warriors about modern deployment, while vastly improving their communications and fortifications on the northern front. In place of the Ethiopian Army’s backward medical services, which relied primarily on ritual magic, the Swedes dispatched Red Cross ambulances fully outfitted with doctors, volunteer staff and the latest supplies. These were matched by British, Dutch and Finnish Red Cross units, including assistance from Egypt’s Red Crescent.
In 1934, with war on the horizon, the government in Belgium sent military advisors to establish a training centre at Harar for the creation of two modern infantry battalions, plus squadrons of horse-soldiers, camel-mounted infantry, and armored cars. Next year, Colonel Reul led an ‘Unofficial Belgian Mission’ of professional soldiers to Haile Selassie’s Dese headquarters. Experienced veterans from the Belgian Congo, they transformed the Emperor’s rag-tag forces into modern armies, often personally leading them into battle, like Captain Cambier, who was killed in one of the first engagements of the conflict.
Swiss advisors turned the Kebur Zabanga into an up-to-date gendarmerie armed with modern Mannlicher rifles purchased from Czechoslovakia. Other firearms came from France, like the Lebel Fusil Modèle 1886 M93 bolt-action rifles, which fired soft-nosed 8mm rounds the Italians mistook for banned ‘dumdums’, because they caused similarly awful wounds. A German arms dealer managed to sell twelve state-of-the-art Pak 35/36 anti-tank guns to Haile Selassie before Hitler learned of the transaction and put a stop to all further sales. By then, the Ethiopian Army possessed 234 pieces of artillery, each one provided with at least 400 shells, plus over 1,000 Colt and Browning machine-guns from America and Britain, respectively. There were substantially more examples of Stokes mortars, used by Imperial Guardsmen with particular skill late in the campaign. Among the most effective weapons operated by the Ethiopians were Oerlikon light anti-aircraft guns, which not only accounted for enemy planes shot down, but were used with telling effect against ground targets. Major Wittlin, from Switzerland, commanded an Oerlikon battery in defense of the strategic Awash River bridge. Over it passed the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway line, which carried weapons and munitions from French Somaliland.
The Ethiopian Air Force was certainly the least valuable component in Haile Selassie’s armed forces, but it did see action. Based at Akaki, its crews operated a relatively new German Junkers Ju.52 trimotor that could fly double duty as a transport or bomber, although only about a hundred 10-kg bombs were available. Four French, unarmed Potez-25 observation planes flew numerous and invaluable reconnaissance throughout the war, while a single Farman monoplane was pressed into service as a message-carrier, together with an Italian Breda sportsplane. For protection, these defenseless aircraft had to rely on just two Dutch Fokker fighters, which, despite their sturdy condition, could not provide escort for every one of its charges at all times.
None of them were at much initial risk, however, because aerial confrontations were rendered infrequent by the vast air spaces in which pilots on both sides were compelled to operate. Only in the final phase of the war were all but two specimens of this bizarre collection destroyed–a single Potez that had been nicknamed ‘Bird of the Prince’, captured with only minor damage at its Akaki airfield, and the Ethiopia I, a radically modified British De Havilland Moth, Haile Selassie’s private plane. It is still on display at the Italian Air Force Museum, in Vigna di Valle.
The Emperor’s hybrid Air Force attracted equally motley crews. Only the Potez reconnaissance planes were actually flown by Ethiopians. The rest and most ground personnel were foreigners–politically indifferent mercenaries, muddled idealists, or thrill-seeking adventurers from elsewhere, like Lieutenant Micha Babitcheff, the crazy Russian director of the Ethiopian Air Force, and his fellow countryman, Theodore Konovaloff, an electrical engineer. ‘Flight Captain’ Allesandro del Valle came from Cuba, and Ludwig Weber was a foreign volunteer responsible for transforming the old De Havilland Moth into Ethiopia I. A former member of the K.P.D., Germany’s Communist Party, he fled Europe in early 1933 just as Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor. The Emperor’s personal pilot before and during the campaign, Weber would be killed during the capture of Addis Ababa.
Another fascist-hater from Germany was a stunt pilot who arrived in a 12-seat, twin-engined American Beechcraft just ahead of the Italian invasion. Previously, Count Carl von Rosen had been disinherited by his family for personal behavior which might only be described as anti-social and irrational in extemis. Throughout the campaign, he continued to fly medical supplies to the front and wounded men back to the rear. During one such mission, a low-level strafing run by Regia Aeronautica fighters shot up and destroyed von Rosen’s doughty Beechcraft on the ground. He escaped unharmed.
Another Count, a French one, was less fortunate. Hilaire du Berrier traveled throughout Europe trying to recruit volunteers like himself for the Emperor’s Air Force with less material than moral support. Returning to Abyssinia, he arrived just as the capital was about to fall, and fled for his life, but was captured by the Italians about fifty-five kilometers away. Ordered by Paris to leave East Africa before the war started, some Frenchmen deliberately stayed behind. Lieutenant Pierre Corriger shared Ludwig Weber’s duties as Haile Selassie’s personal pilot by flying the Emperor around on inspection tours of the most important military bases. Demeaux, Corriger‘s mechanic, left only after Addis Ababa was taken by the enemy.
Afro-Americans Hubert Fauntleroy Julian and Johannes Robinson spent every dime they owned for travel expenses from New York and Chicago, respectively, arriving at the Akaki airfield months later, flat broke, but full of ‘racial solidarity’ for their Ethiopian kinsmen. After announcing himself as ‘The Black Eagle of Harlem’, ‘Colonel’ Julian rendered himself persona non grata to his hosts by cracking up one of their few, serviceable aircraft on an attempted demonstration flight.
More seriously, General Mehmet Wehib Pasha headed a mission from Ankara, and was without doubt the best military mind in Abyssinia. His experience as commander of the Turkish 2nd Army at Gallipoli, where Australian troops were pinned down and massacred in 1915, had been preceded four years by action in Libya against the Italians. Now, in front of Harar, he was fighting them by constructing modern fortifications deemed ‘impregnable’ at the time, and referred to in the Western press as comprising East Africa’s ‘Hindenburg Line’.
General Pasha’s impact on Haile Selassie’s armed forces was to carry forward their modernization at all levels, and delay the invaders long enough for them to be swamped by wave upon wave of the Emperor’s feudal levies. With substantial foreign assistance in weapons, munitions, supplies, advisors, and volunteers, the powers at his command were not limited to the primitive tribal warriors wielding spears portrayed in popular histories. Instead, the Abyssinian armed forces comprised a military elite of European leaders commanding ground forces of mostly native peoples outfitted with relatively modern weapons and supplies.
Like their opponents, the Italians did receive some assistance from overseas, although not at all as much as the Ethiopians collected. The Italians purchased 100 Caterpillar tractor vehicles and 450 Ford trucks from the United States. But the technical superiority of their arms, organization and support had to compensate for the distinct numerical advantage possessed by an enemy operating artillery and armored cars. Moreover, some of the Italians’ equipment proved either unsatisfactory or disappointing in combat conditions. Breda machine-guns were often clogged by sand sticking to their oil-lubricated cartridges, while rate of fire for the cumbersome, complicated Fiat-Revelli machine-gun was low, a horrible disadvantage when confronted by masses of charging warriors.
Recruited from Italy’s mountainous regions, the elite Alpini were among the world’s finest light artillery troops, but they were handicapped by an otherwise excellent 45mm Mortar Model 35, which shot an inadequately powerful round. Italian artillery, too, was less than ideal. The range of the 65/17 infantry support field gun was poor. The Italian Army’s first tank regiment had been established on Mussolini’s orders eight years before the East African Campaign, although too many of its units operated the Carro CV 33, nicknamed ‘the Italian Oven’ by Ethiopian warriors, who commonly jammed its puny treads with tree limbs, setting them on fire after stalling the worthless ‘tankette’, and cooking its crew trapped inside. How many Italian tankers were the guests of honor at such cannibal feasts during the conflict is unknown.
Despite these significant deficiencies, the invasion foreshadowed things to come in World War Two. Close cooperation between ground forces and Regia Aeronautica warplanes was copied by German Wehrmacht tacticians for their attack on Poland, four years later. Also prefiguring Axis tactics under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the Libyan Desert, the Italians advanced across Ethiopia in columns, with their aircraft playing a major role in the outcome of the East African campaign, particularly during low-level strafing runs on enemy troop concentrations. Large numbers of Abyssinian infantry were decimated and the morale of survivors unused to the terror of attacks from the sky was badly shaken. Particularly innovative were Regia Aeronautica mass drops of parachute-flares to illuminate night-time battlefields. The deployment of motor vehicles in large numbers, most notably armored cars, was used for the first time by the Italian Army.
Important as developing military technology undoubtedly may have been, the Campaign was characterized by a great deal of vicious, hand-to-hand combat and fighting at very close quarters. In these awful confrontations, the courage and will-power of ground troops determined the final outcome. Outsiders observed that “the courage of Ethiopian warriors was found in a crowd, rather than as individuals,” according to Nicolle. “They were virtually unstoppable in a massed charge, but were also prone to panic.”29 Haile Selassie’s enlisted men nonetheless embodied an enthusiastic offensive spirit, and demonstrated their bravery throughout the war. For their part, they came to regard Mussolini’s Italians as better soldiers than their grandfathers, who had been defeated at Adowa.
3 October dawned with Italian forces moving in a coordinated pincer movement against Abyssinia southward out of Eritrea and northward from Somaliland. Despite their technological advantage in aircraft and armor, the Duce’s 300,000 troops were outnumbered by three-to-one odds. Military experts in the West concluded he needed more than a year of hard fighting to subdue Haile Selassie’s tribal armies, which would cost him a projected 20,000 casualties.
These estimates heartened League delegates certain their sanctions should grind the Italian economy to a halt by spring 1936, and were confident Mussolini’s ‘Ethiopian adventure’ would provoke his downfall. Indeed, some overseas’ observers better acquainted with the heavy European military aid Ethiopia had been receiving during the previous ten years speculated that he might even lose the war or suffer a domestic political crisis, as a consequence.
The Duce was himself no less conscious of economic and political deadlines. Over the loud objections of aristocrat careerists in the royal armed forces, he installed younger, more politically reliable officers, instructing them in no uncertain terms to wind up operations before summer: “This is Fascist Italy’s first real appearance on the world stage as a military power. We must not disappoint our international audience! Far more than the subjugation of East Africa is at stake.”30
At the start of the Campaign, these instructions appeared to be fulfilled, as his forces poured across pontoon bridges spanning the Mareb River at the Eritrean border. A 20th Century Rubicon had been crossed. They were heartily welcomed by Azebu Galla tribesmen, who looked upon the Italians as liberators from Haile Selassie’s tyranny, and joined them against the genocidal Ethiopians. Abyssinia’s counter-invasion strategy depended on large forces poised to overwhelm the Italians at Ogaden, but these were cut off before they could move by a swift advance undertaken by the Aosta Lancers, elite units operating in conjunction with regular Army forces. They were led by General Rudolfo Graziani, who would go on to become Italy’s most important commander in World War Two. During 1935’s first week of October, his pre-emptive strike along the Ogaden front propped open Ethiopia’s front door for the main body of the invasion.