Italian Invasion of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie's Ethiopia had achieved modest modernisation by the 1930s — a 1931 constitution, schools, a bank, an airline, diplomatic recognition — but its feudal agrarian base and the Amhara court's limited control over peripheral regions left it militarily exposed. Italy under Mussolini, seeking to avenge the humiliation of Adwa (1896) and build the Roman-style empire his rhetoric required, invaded from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland simultaneously on 3 October 1935. Italian forces deployed industrial-scale warfare against a largely pre-industrial opponent: aircraft bombed towns and Red Cross stations, and mustard gas and phosgene were deployed aerially against troops, civilians, and medical facilities in systematic violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Despite Haile Selassie's personal appeal to the League of Nations Assembly in June 1936, the League's oil sanctions were incomplete — the United States was not a member — and Britain refused to close the Suez Canal to Italian shipping. Addis Ababa fell in May 1936; Mussolini proclaimed the Italian Empire with Victor Emmanuel III as Emperor of Ethiopia. Italy exploited Oromo, Somali, and Tigrinyan grievances against Amhara domination to recruit local auxiliaries. Ethiopian resistance continued as a guerrilla campaign. The invasion confirmed the League's impotence as a collective security institution and drove Mussolini toward the Berlin-Rome Axis.
- Year: 1935 CE
- Category: Political
