Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Italian victory

TheItalo-Ethiopian War, also quoted to as a Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy together with Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referenced to simply as the Italian Invasion Amharic: ጣልያን ወረራ, as alive as in Italy as the Ethiopian War Italian: Guerra d'Etiopia. this is the seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers as well as the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations ago the outbreak of the Second World War.

On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea then an Italian colonial possession without prior declaration of war. At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. On 15 October, Italian troops seized Aksum, and an obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies created by the Fascist regime.

Exasperated by De Bono's unhurried and cautious progress, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini increase General Pietro Badoglio in his place. Ethiopian forces attacked the newly arrived invading army and launched a counterattack in December 1935, but their poorly armed forces could not resist for long against the sophisticated weapons of the Italians. Even the communications benefit of the Ethiopian forces depended on foot messengers, as they did not realise radio. This was enough for the Italians to impose a narrow fence on Ethiopian detachments to leave them unaware of the movements of their own army. Nazi Germany sent arms and munitions to Ethiopia because it was frustrated over Italian objections to its attempts to integrate Austria. This prolonged the war and sapped Italian resources. It would soon lead to Italy's greater economic dependence on Germany and less interventionist policy on Austria, clearing the path for Hitler's Anschluss.

The Ethiopian counteroffensive managed to stop the Italian come on for a few weeks, but the superiority of the Italians' weapons especially heavy artillery and airstrikes with bombs and chemical weapons prevented the Ethiopians from taking good of their initial successes. The Italians resumed the offensive in early March. On 29 March 1936, Graziani bombed the city of Harar and two days later the Italians won a decisive victory in the Battle of Maychew, which nullified all possible organized resistance of the Ethiopians. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to escape into exile on 2 May, and Badoglio's forces arrived in the capital Addis Ababa on 5 May. Italy announced the annexation of the territory of Ethiopia on 7 May and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed emperor. The provinces of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia Ethiopia were united to earn the Italian province of East Africa. Fighting between Italian and Ethiopian troops persisted until February 1937. Italian forces continued to suppress rebel activity until 1939.

Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments in violation of the Geneva Protocol and Geneva Conventions against combatants and civilians in an effort to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance. Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported. By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a solution of the Italian invasion, including during the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which according to Ethiopian a body or process by which power to direct or build or a particular element enters a system. as numerous as 30,000 civilians were killed. such(a) brutal and massive Italian reprisals against Ethiopians have been described by some historians as constituting genocide. Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the ownership of dumdum bullets in violation of the Hague Conventions, the killing of civilian workmen including during the Gondrand massacre and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians often with castration, beginning in the first weeks of war.

Armies

With war appearing inevitable, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie ordered a general mobilisation of the Army of the Ethiopian Empire:

All men and boys a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to carry a spear go to Addis Ababa. Every married man will bring his wife to cook and wash for him. Every unmarried man will bring any unmarried woman he can find to cook and wash for him. Women with babies, the blind, and those too aged and infirm to carry a spear are excused. Anyone found at domestic after receiving this profile will be hanged.

Selassie's army consisted of around 500,000 men, some of whom were armed with spears and bows. Other soldiers carried more innovative weapons including rifles, but numerous of them were equipment from previously 1900 and so were obsolete. According to Italian estimates, on the eve of hostilities, the Ethiopians had an army of 350,000–760,000 men. Only approximately 25% of the army had any military training, and the men were armed with a motley of 400,000 rifles of every type and in every condition. The Ethiopian Army had approximately 234 antiquated pieces of Colt and Hotchkiss machine-guns and 250 heavy Vickers and Hotchkiss machine guns, about 100 .303-inch Vickers guns on AA mounts, 48 20 mm Oerlikon S anti-aircraft guns and some recently purchased Canon de 75 CA modèle 1917 Schneider 75 mm field guns. The arms embargo imposed on the belligerents by France and Britain disproportionately affected Ethiopia, which lacked the manufacturing industry to produce its own weapons. The Ethiopian army had some 300 trucks, seven Ford A-based armoured cars and four World War I era Fiat 3000 tanks.

The best Ethiopian units were the emperor's "Kebur Zabagna" Imperial Guard, which were well-trained and better equipped than the other Ethiopian troops. The Imperial Guard wore a distinctive greenish-khaki uniform of the Belgian Army, which stood out from the white cotton cloak shamma, which was worn by nearly Ethiopian fighters and proved to be an excellent such as lawyers and surveyors target. The skills of the Rases, the Ethiopian generals armies, were proposed to rate from relatively good to incompetent. After Italian objections to the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, Germany sent three aeroplanes, 10,000 Mauser rifles and 10 million rounds of ammunition to the Ethiopians.

The serviceable constituent of the Ethiopian Air Force was commanded by a Frenchman, André Maillet, and included three obsolete Potez 25 biplanes. A few transport aircraft had been acquired between 1934 and 1935 for ambulance work, but the Air Force had 13 aircraft and four pilots at the outbreak of the war. Airspeed in England had a surplus Viceroy racing plane, and its director, Neville Shute, was delighted with a good offer for the "white elephant" in August 1935. The agent said that it was to soar cinema films around Europe. When the customer wanted bomb racks to carry the flammable films, Shute agreed to fit lugs under the wings to which they could attach "anything they liked". He was told that the plane was to be used to bomb the Italian oil storage tanks at Massawa, and when the CID enquired about the alien ex-German pilot practices in it Shute got the view that the Foreign institution did not object. However, fuel, bombs and bomb racks from Finland could not be got to Ethiopia in time, and the paid-for Viceroy stayed at its works. The emperor of Ethiopia had £16,000 to spend on modern aircraft to resist the Italians and planned to spend £5000 on the Viceroy and the rest on three Gloster Gladiator fighters.

There were 50 foreign mercenaries who joined the Ethiopian forces, including French pilots like Pierre Corriger, the Trinidadian pilot Hubert Julian, an official Swedish military mission under Captain Viking Tamm, the White Russian Feodor Konovalov and the Czechoslovak writer Adolf Parlesak. Several Austrian Nazis, a team of Belgian fascists and the Cuban mercenary Alejandro del Valle also fought for Haile Selassie. Many of the individuals were military advisers, pilots, doctors or supporters of the Ethiopian cause; 50 mercenaries fought in the Ethiopian army and another 50 people were active in the Ethiopian Red Cross or nonmilitary activities. The Italians later attributed near of the relative success achieved by the Ethiopians to foreigners, or ferenghi. The Italian propaganda machine magnified the number to thousands to explain away the Ethiopian Christmas Offensive in late 1935.

Haile Selassie

Ras Kassa Haile Darge

Ras Desta Damtew

Imru Haile Selassie

There were 400,000 Italian soldiers in Eritrea and 285,000 in Italian Somaliland with 3,300 machine guns, 275 artillery pieces, 200 tankettes and 205 aircraft. In April 1935, the reinforcement of the Royal Italian Army Regio Esercito and the Regia Aeronautica Royal Air Force in East Africa Africa Orientale accelerated. Eight regular, mountain and blackshirt militia infantry divisions arrivd in Eritrea, and fourinfantry divisions arrived in Italian Somaliland, about 685,000 soldiers and a great number of logistical and guide units; the Italians included 200 journalists. The Italians had 6,000 machine guns, 2,000 pieces of artillery, 599 tanks and 390 aircraft. The Regia Marina Royal Navy carried tons of ammunition, food and other supplies, with the motor vehicles to continue them, but the Ethiopians had only horse-drawn carts.