Italy invades Ethiopia

On October 3, 1935, without a declaration of war, Italian troops crossed from the colony of Eritrea into Ethiopia, one of the only independent African states and a member of the League of Nations. Ethiopia, under Emperor Haile Selassie, had a poorly equipped army, largely armed with old rifles. Italy brought tanks, aircraft and, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, mustard gas. Addis Ababa fell on May 5, 1936, and Italy annexed Ethiopia, merging it with Eritrea and Somaliland into Italian East Africa.¹⁴

Mussolini wanted a colonial empire to give fascist Italy glory, land for settlers and a distraction from the problems at home. He also wanted revenge for Adwa, where in 1896 Ethiopian forces had crushed an Italian army, the most humiliating defeat of a European power in colonial Africa. A border clash at the Wal Wal oasis in December 1934 gave him a pretext. Italian generals, first Emilio De Bono and then Pietro Badoglio, advanced slowly but surely with overwhelming force.¹

The League of Nations branded Italy the aggressor and voted for sanctions, but they excluded oil and the Suez Canal stayed open to Italian ships. Britain and France, who feared pushing Mussolini toward Hitler, even considered a secret plan, the Hoare-Laval pact, to give Italy much of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie went into exile and in June 1936 appealed to the League in Geneva, warning that the world was failing to defend a victim of aggression. Ethiopian resistance continued under Italian occupation, which was brutal, including the massacre in Addis Ababa of February 1937. British and Ethiopian forces liberated the country in 1941, and Haile Selassie returned on May 5, 1941.¹²³⁵