The Italian Invasion of Abyssinia
Why the world community did not prevent Mussolini from conquering Abyssinia ?
The growing role of the Soviet Comintern in the countries of Europe continued to generate inevitable opposition. Only in 1932 did pro-fascist forces manage to firmly consolidate their hold on power in Austria, Portugal and Hungary, and in the 1933 parliamentary elections in Spain, the united forces of the socialists won with a minimal advantage, more like a statistical error, thereby splitting society in half. Inspired by Italian fascism, while exploiting socialist slogans and ideas, German National Socialism single-handedly gained a foothold in the young Weimar Republic. Almost immediately, Hitler stopped Germany's participation in the League, correctly viewing it as an instrument for maintaining the Versailles world order, which restrained the potential of the German people, which is why they so fiercely despised them. Yesterday's threat of communism, with its insatiable thirst for world revolution, has given way to new political currents built on an irresistible thirst to take revenge, fully making up for lost time.
Benito Mussolini considered the main goal of the Italian kingdom to be undisputed dominance in the Mediterranean, similar to what the Roman Empire once had. Having overcome the ideas of disarmament, the power of the Italian army and navy steadily increased, and with it the determination to act.
Mussolini's speech, mid-1930s
As a result of the First World War, the Italians received clearly less than they had expected for supporting the Entente against Austria-Hungary, allied with the Germans. The main direction of foreign policy, both before the war and in the thirties, was the Balkans, where on the ruins of the Habsburg state the southern Slavs formed a united Yugoslavia, which became a thorn in the side of the unlimited Italian influence in the region. Fearing to interfere, or rather to personally unleash a military conflict on the territory of Europe, the Duce shifted the center of Italian interests to the expansion of its own colonies.
Italy had colonies in Africa since the end of the last century, both on its northern coast and in the east of the continent, bordering the Ethiopian Empire, the only black state that had retained real sovereignty at that time. Earlier, the Italians, having just acquired their first African possessions, had already tried to subjugate Ethiopia (Abyssinia), not considering it a full-fledged state, but then the people of this country were able to defend their independence. The inability of Italy, in whose heart the greatest state in the history of mankind had once been born, which became the vector of development of the entire European civilization, to subdue the technologically lagging Africans, was a great national trauma for every Italian. And Mussolini, as the leader of his people, was firm in his intention to wash away this stain of shame.
The inevitability of war was understood all over the world several years before it began, since the Duce did not particularly hide his plans, gradually increasing the number of Italian corps in the bordering Somalia and Eritrea, controlled by Italy. It was simply impossible not to notice the hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the border, as it was impossible to simply ignore them, given the previous experience of relations between the countries. In early September 1935, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie gave the order for general mobilization, simultaneously turning to the League of Nations in the hope that this would help avoid unnecessary casualties. And he found support, since a group of five states was soon formed on the Franco-British initiative, whose efforts were directed at appeasing Italy. Mussolini was adamant in his aspirations, rejecting concessions after concessions that the Africans could only make. The only thing that could have saved Ethiopia from war was voluntary defeat, but no one in their right mind would have thought of falling at the Italian boot out of pride or common sense.
Emperor Haile Selassie addresses the League of Nations, 1936
"Do not the peoples of the world realize that in struggling to the bitter end I am not only fulfilling my sacred duty to my people, but also guarding the last citadel of collective security? Are they so blind that they do not see that I bear responsibility to all mankind?" - from an address by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, April 29, 1936.
Without any declaration of war, on October 3 of the same year, the Italian army began an invasion of Ethiopia, without even thinking of finding any justification for it. Soviet diplomats were the first to raise this issue at a meeting of the League Council, and within a few days, the majority of delegates came out with condemnation of Italy, for the first time talking about economic and political sanctions.
Despite the obvious advantage of the well-trained Italians, the Ethiopians were not going to capitulate, sometimes throwing themselves into hand-to-hand combat against machine guns and tanks, so the war promised to be protracted from the very beginning. The Italian army at that time was considered one of the strongest in the world, so its inability to break the resistance would be another disgrace to the reputation of the entire state, which was unacceptable for the Duce. Wanting to end the extremely costly campaign as soon as possible, the Italians decided to actively use chemical weapons, despite the ban provided for by the Geneva Protocol of 1925, because of which soon over a hundred thousand soldiers would die from suffocation, as well as civilians convicted of disloyalty to the invaders.
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Realizing the futility of the decisions taken earlier, the League of Nations, without thinking twice after what had happened, abandoned the sanctions introduced earlier, once again demonstrating the weakness and indecisiveness of its creators, the creators and guarantors of the new order, and at the same time the entire Versailles system of international relations.
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