Emperor Haile Sellasie in full Combat

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia began on 3 October 1935. It met immediate resistance in the form of massive frontal attacks by the 250, 000-strong Ethiopian army, which demonstrated its traditional bravery but suffered very heavy casualties. Haile Selassie favoured organized retreat and guerilla warfare, but he was ignored by his Rases. (Each provincial governor-minister and high official, many of whom doubled as generals, had the title of ‘Ras'.) The proud feudal Rases generally felt that guerilla warfare was degrading, and fit "only for bandits.

Several Ethiopian generals, like Betwoded Makonnen, Governor of Wallega, and Ras Mulugeta, the Minister of War and a veteran of Adowa, died in combat rather than direct operations from the rear, which they were untrained to do. Their deaths indicate their great bravery and their heroism, but also the lack of tactics and lack of organization of the Ethiopian army.

The Ethiopian army, in fact, had made hardly any changes since the time of Menelik. It had sufficient manpower: in 1935 it was able to mobilize 250 000 men, but they were not trained, and there was no time to train them. The tactics of frontal assault that were so successful at Adowa against the careless and inefficient Italian army of the 1890s were quite unsuitable against the reorganized, highly mobile, armoured Italian army of 1935, that was capable of breaking up frontal attacks with artillery fire, with machine guns, and with bombing and strafing from aero planes.

Co-ordination was non-existent.

The Rases gathered men, usually illiterate peasants, under their individual leadership and attacked the enemy separately. They were too proud to ask for help from each other. No adequate central command organization had been developed, and a coordinated strategy was impossible. Many of the peasant levy soldiers, having fought a battle, went home, as was traditional in Ethiopian warfare. They did not consider themselves as 'deserters'.

Inadequate weapons

But the primary cause of Ethiopia's defeat in 1935-6 was inadequate weapons. The armed forces had 11 slow and unarmed aero planes, three of which could not leave the ground and one of which was given to the Red Cross. The air force had only 371 bombs. There were only 13 anti-aircraft guns. A third of the rifles would not fire; they were carried for display. Above all, there was a severe lack of ammunition. Ethiopia produced no arms or ammunition and was unable to buy enough when war threatened, because of the Anglo-French arms embargo and the lack of money in the imperial treasury. The faulty tactics and lack of modern weapons of the Ethiopians are well illustrated in this account of a battle by the Italian commander, Marshal Badoglio:. . . against the organized fire of our defending troops, the Ethiopian) soldiers, many of them armed only with cold steel, attacked again and again in compact phalanxes, pushing right up to our wire entanglements which they tried to beat down with their curved scimitars.

The disparity in weapons between the two sides was most marked in the air. The Italians used aerial photography to reveal daily the massed Ethiopian positions, which were then heavily bombed with high explosive and poison gas, or strafed with cannon fire. This was, in fact, the first war in which Europeans used either aeroplanes or gas against Africans. To this extent it was a new-Style aggression. The Ethiopians were well aware of their deficiencies in weapons. At one stage a peasant levy force which was expected to provide its own rifles and equipment staged a riot against the comparatively well-armed Imperial Guard, out of protest at the situation.

Brigadier-General Mengistu Neway, a young officer in 1935-6, at his trial after the abortive I960 coup, said, as part of his evidence against Haile Selassie's regime; 'I ruminated over why the Ethiopian armed forces were so easily broken by the forces of the enemy and I realized that it was fundamentally because of our backwardness.' He did not blame international factors for the defeat of his country.

The country was not united in resisting the invader. The Ethiopian army lived off the country and thus forfeited the support of the peasant masses, who became uninterested in the war. Many local chiefs who opposed Haile Selassie's claim to the throne, or had simpler and more mercenary motives, accepted Italian bribes even before the war broke out.

The Italians were also able to play upon ethnic rivalries within Ethiopia, especially between the Amhara and the Wello Galla, who lived about half-way between Addis Ababa and Eritrea. Many of the Galla chiefs were bribed by the Italians not to mobilize for Haile Selassie when the war broke out. Early in the war a leading Tigrean noble, Haile Selassie Gugsa, was bribed by the Italians and betrayed the centre of the Ethiopian line by' leading his forces over to the Italians in a vital stage of the defence of the northern frontier. Mussolini appointed Gugsa the puppet governor of the province of Tigre under the Italian regime.

Haile Selassie also had to face rebellions in Gojjam province in the rear of the resistance to the Italian advance. Therefore the Italians were able successfully to re-employ the old techniques, used to such effect by European powers during the Scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century, of divide and conquer followed by divide and rule. Many Somalis from Italian Somaliland fought in the Italian army which invaded Ethiopia. So once again, as in the Scramble, imperialism succeeded in setting African brother to fight brother. The policy saved many Italian lives.

As the Italians, in the early months of 1936, advanced on Addis Ababa, Haile Selassie had to consider three possibilities.

One was to continue the retreat south of the capital, into the territory of the hostile (anti-Amhara) southern Galla.

The second was to continue resistance in the heart of the country, by guerilla warfare, which contained the serious risk that the Emperor might be captured by the Italians.

The third was flight out of the country. Haile Selassie, supported by the great majority of his councilors, decided on the third alternative, and on 2 May 1936 the Emperor and his party left Addis Ababa by train for Djibouti in French Somaliland and the safety of a British warship.

Ethiopia was economically weak and couldn't win a war. Haille Sellasie had not yet started developing the economy when the war broke out.

Emperor Haille Sellasie's escape to England on 2^nd May 1936 demoralised his forces.

The delay of support from African states led to Ethiopian defeat.

The Italian techniques of divide and conquer and later divide and rule led them to victory.

The over whelming support at home enable Mussolini to succeed.

Mussolini's careful planning enabled him win he war.

Support from Eritrea and Somalia: Mussolini had a large, strong, well-trained and equipped army.

The weakness of the League of Nations

The weakness of the League of Nations led to the defeat of Ethiopia as follows:

When the war broke out, it imposed sanctions on Italy but these excluded the trade in oil and coal, since this were very essential for Italy's war efforts, the sanctions were as good useless.

The League of Nations failed to stop Italy from stockpiling arms in Eritrea and Somalia. This enabled her to defeat Ethiopia.

The League of Nations didn't have a standby army to check the Italian aggression against Ethiopia.

The League of Nations lacked proper funding and a permanent Headquarter from where to conduct its affairs.

The League of Nations lacked clear principles for example it allowed free entry and exit of member states. Hence slightly before crisis, Italy left the organisation.

League members allowed arms to flow to the Italians via the Suez Canal,. Hence they were hypocritical.

The most powerful league members, namely Britain and France proposed the partition of Ethiopia as a solution. This was very unfair and showed the conspiracy of the whites against the blacks.

USA, which had proposed the formation of the league, isolated itself completely from its affairs.

Britain and France were comfortable with appeasing Italy so as to keep European peace rather than protecting weak member states. They didn't want Italy to test her weapons on European soils and indirectly encouraged her to do so in Ethiopia.

On 5 May the Italians occupied Addis Ababa, and on 9 May Ethiopia was officially annexed to Italy. However, many individual armies remained in the field under their local commanders, and turned to guerilla resistance, which lasted as long as the Italian occupation.

The Flight of Haile Selassie

Haile Selassie's flight to Britain, where he spent several years in exile, has been criticized on two grounds, one emotional and one practical. First the emotional argument: some Ethiopian generals, when they heard of the Emperor's decision to flee, planned to assassinate him to save his honour. Never before in the proud history of the Ethiopian people, had their Emperor, 'the Elect of God' and 'the King of -Kings', deserted the chosen people for foreign asylum.

Marcus Garvey, the great West Indian Black nationalist, castigated Haile Selassie as a coward who, instead of slinking away to England, should have died on the battlefield in the tradition of Ethiopian leaders like Tewodros and Yohannes IV. Yet Garvey surely was wrong. If Haile Selassie had fought on he might have been captured, and then killed in a shameful way, by execution, or kept alive and used by the Italians.

The practical criticism has more weight, and concerns the Emperor's inadequate grasp of the nature of international diplomacy. Haile Selassie seems genuinely to have believed that if he went to Europe to appeal in person at the League of Nations to the principle of collective security against aggression, he would internationalize the conflict and secure Great Power assistance in getting the Italians out of his country. He clearly failed to understand the motives of Britain and France, who were appeasing Mussolini for the sake of security against Hitler.

Yet by going to England, and by making a dramatic appeal for the rights of small nations against aggression at the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, Haile Selassie succeeded in publicizing the conflict in a way that would have been impossible if he had remained in his country. And he gained recognition in ways that he had not foreseen. He said at Geneva: 'I was defending the cause of all small people who are threatened by aggression.' He internationalized a vital moral issue. He set himself up, though not intentionally, as the symbol of the black man's resistance to imperialism, and evoked a deep-seated and widespread response from Africans and black Americans.

And for Ethiopia he gained something too by going to Europe. Had he not become the living and uncaptured symbol of Ethiopia's independence and unity, the country would at least have been mandated and even possibly partitioned after the Second World War.

Richard Greenfield expressed this point most succinctly when he wrote; 'Haile Selassie's decision to go into exile may have been hasty but it proved politically correct.'2

Ethiopian Resistance to Italian Occupation, 1936-41

At no time did the Italians 'pacify' Ethiopia. Guerilla resistance went on unabated throughout the five years of Italian rule. The guerilla fighters, or Patriots, were generally the remnants of the old feudal armies destroyed in 1935-6. But a new type of guerilla force grew up, the 'Black Lions', formed largely of graduates, with a more modern and democratic concept of organization and leadership than the old army had. They were led by Ras Imru (who became prime minister during the abortive I960 coup), who seemed to be adept at overcoming ethnic and cultural conflicts among his men, and at getting Ethiopians and Eritreans to co-operate with one another as real comrades. Imru was eventually captured, but the struggle went on under other leaders. In 1937 a Committee of Union was set up, as a unified organization for all Patriot leaders, and to co-ordinate resistance.

Italian methods of rule ensured that the Patriots would have plenty of mass support. The Italians are often credited with achieving a great public works building programme in Ethiopia. But the great new roads they constructed were built by forced labour, and the new hospitals, schools and municipal buildings were for the use only of Italians.

The Italians were persistently brutal towards the Ethiopian people. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers who surrendered when promised safe conducts were executed and buried in mass graves. The Graziani massacre of 1937 is without parallel in the crimes of colonialist Africa.

It occurred when Marshal Graziani, the Italian Viceroy, announced he would distribute gifts to the poor after the manner of the Emperor, outside the palace, and some resistance fighters in the crowd that gathered threw grenades at Graziani, who was wounded. Italian troops then opened fire on the unarmed thousands in the crowd, many of them women and children.

There were three days of terror in the capital when the Italians killed countless numbers of defenceless Ethiopians and burnt down many homes and massacred many Ethiopian prisoners of war into the bargain. At least 10 000 and possibly 30 000 were killed in this episode.

The patriotic Ethiopian Church played a full part in the resistance: many priests died for their country and their faith. In 1938 Bishop Petros was publicly executed in the Addis Ababa square where his statue stands today, for refusing to broadcast against the Patriots. At the ancient monastery of Debra Libanos, 350 monks were killed when the Italians discovered a store of guns there.

Many Italian punitive expeditions against the Patriots left large tracts of land devastated or depopulated. This effectively turned many of the peasants, hitherto indifferent to who ruled in Addis Ababa, against the Italians.

Ethiopian resistance was even carried into Italy itself. In 1937 an imperial ceremony was held in Rome to commemorate the anniversary of the occupation of Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian youth named Zeral Deress was sent to Rome to present some captured Ethiopian trophies, including a sword, to high Italian officials in the presence of Mussolini and the King of Italy.

In the middle of the ceremony Zerai noticed the captured gold statue of the Lion of Judah. His sense of patriotism overwhelmed him, and he drew the ceremonial sword and slew five fascist officials before he was shot down.3

Ethiopian resistance from 1936 to 41 is not just an isolated episode of Ethiopian history. It is an integral part of pan-African history. It is a vital link between the primary resistance of the period of the Partition and the modern mass nationalism of the period since the Second World War. Yet however noble and heroic Ethiopian resistance was, it was purely symbolic, and played no real part in regaining independence. Ethiopia owed the restoration of its independence and Haile Selassie the recovery of his throne to a fortunate accident of history.

 

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2 Richard Greenfield, Ethiopia: a New Political History, Pall Mall Press, London, 1965.

3 Zerai Deress, seriously wounded, was taken to hospital, and recovered. Some years later he died in an Italian prison. His statue now stands in Addis Ababa, and the first ship of the Ethiopian navy was named after him.