Cyber Ethiopia

Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-6, the greatest colonial war ever fought on the continent of Africa, and the collapse of the League of Nations' effort to restrain the aggressor, was followed by the establishment of the short-lived Italian Fascist colonial empire. This event, which was proclaimed on May 9, 1936, four days after the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa, ranked in Fascist mythology as second only to the Duce's so-called March on Rome of October 1922, and took place in an atmosphere of euphoria approaching delirium, which set the tone of much subsequent Fascist propaganda. The realities, even from the point of view of the Italian administration, let alone from that of the subject and oppressed population, were very different as the present series of

articles, based largely on then confidential or unpublished Fascist and other Italian sources, attempts to show. "Beating of the Drum" The atmosphere in the first months of the Fascist occupation was summed up by Patrick Roberts of the ex-British Legation in Addis Ababa. Writing on December 16, 1936, he remarked that the Italians in Ethiopia were "fed on propaganda which eschews plain statements of fact and prefers the language of bombast and self-laudation. Italian soldiers are always 'brave', their leaders' speeches are always 'vibrating', and Italy herself is always 'great' and 'powerful' and 'noble'. Certain nouns, in fact, never seem to appear without the adjective consecrated by the intensity of national pride and, can it be, by a lurking lack of self-confidence which seems to reassure itself by such a noisy beating of the drum." The triumph of Fascist colonialism as painted in such propaganda had in fact little relationship to the actual situation in East Africa: the supposedly monolithic regime was, as we shall see, soon to be rent with serious internal dissension, and excessive corruption, while the vast and largely inaccessible Ethiopian empire was still largely unoccupied. Many areas of Ethiopia could not in fact be brought under Italian control without expensive and long drawn-out campaigns of "pacification," in some cases necessitating the prior construction of roads. The possibility of effective economic development of the empire was even more remote. This was recognised by a leading Italian soldier, Marshal E. Caviglia. He confided to his diary on May 6, the day after the Fascist occupation of Addis Ababa, that "one must not forget that to develop Ethiopia we need two or three generations and many milliards which we do not have". No Plans One of the first problems facing the Fascist leadership in the initial phase of the occupation was that it had embarked on the invasion without any precise plans for the government of the new empire. Fascist thinking was moreover hampered by the fact that General Emilio De Bono, one of the founders of Fascism, a sometime Minister of the Colonies, and the principal architect of the invasion, had been dismissed early in the campaign for his failure to achieve the rapid military advance demanded by Mussolini. His successor Marshal Pietro Badoglio, once a royalist opponent of Fascism, was regarded in Fascist circles as a political illiterate or ignoramus with the limited mentality of a soldier and virtually no understanding of the grand conceptions of Fascism. Fascist policy for the empire had therefore to be framed largely in Rome, without the support of the local commander-in-chief, and took the form of directives from the supposedly infallible Duce and his doctrinaire Minister of Colonies, Alessandro Lessona, neither of whom had any knowledge whatsoever of local conditions in Ethiopia. Haile Sellase Gugsa Mussolini, a man of violence who had murdered his political opponents in Italy (Matteotti, Carlo Rosselli, etc), thus stifling opposition to his regime at home, was determined on a ruthless policy of repression in the belief that it would crush Ethiopian resistance. Though aware of the assistance he had obtained from local collaborators during the invasion, he envisaged only a limited role for them. Dismissing the proposal that Dajazmach Haile Sellase Gugsa of Tegray, one of the earliest collaborators, be given the title of Highness, he telegraphed to Badoglio on January 18, 1936, saying, "it is understood that he [the Dajazmach] had no more than a purely local value... it is necessary that Gugsa remain within the frame of the indigenous hierarchy without taking away from him that which we promised him, but also without giving him exaggerated hopes of obtaining that which we cannot and must not give him." The latter was of course a reference to a crown). Italian Prestige Deeply concerned at what he considered the need to maintain Italian prestige vis-a-vis the "native", or colonial, population the Duce later telegraphed to Badoglio, on April 23 1936, shortly prior to the Fascist occupation of Addis Ababa, to say that "for obvious reasons it is necessary to reserve precedence for the national [i.e. Italian] troops." (A reference to how to handle the anticipated forthcoming victory march). As the Italian army advanced toward the Ethiopian capital, Mussolini, learning of the looting which preceded the seizure of the city, despatched a further telegram, on May 3, instructing his commander to embark immediately or a policy of unrestricted terror. "Your Excellency", he declared, "must give orders that: (1) All those who are caught in the city or surroundings with arms in their hands shall be summarily shot. (2) All the so-called Young Ethiopians, barbarous, cruel and pretentious persons morally responsible for the pillage, shall be summarily shot. (3) Those who have not surrendered their fire-arms and ammunition within 24 hours shall be summarily shot. I await a word," he concluded, "confirming that these orders have, as always, been executed." Badoglio, who was slated to head the new Italian military government of Ethiopia, duly occupied Addis Ababa two days later on May 5. He was, however, apparently unwilling to execute the Duce's brutal orders to the full, with the result that, though many looters were summarily executed, the shooting of the so-called Young Ethiopians was not carried out as instructed. On the subsequent proclamation of the empire, on May 9,Badoglio was officially appointed as Italy's first Viceroy of Ethiopia. Two days later received his first governmental instructions from the Duce. The latter, who was determined as far as possible to eradicate all trace of the old Ethiopian regime, gave orders that the Ethiopian term Nagusa Nagast, i.e. "King of Kings", should under no circumstances be applied to King Vittorio Emmanuele of Italy. "Qesara Etiopia" In a telegram of that day the Fascist dictator declared: "The title...of the chief of the defunct Ethiopian empire is evidently not such that can be given to His Majesty the King [of Italy], not even in the indigenous languages. Your Excellency will see to it that in official acts the title of Emperor assumed by His Majesty [i.e the King of Italy] is translated in Ethiopian as Qesara Etiopia [an allusion to the Caesars of ancient Rome]. Likewise in Arabic the title will be Qaisa al-Habashah." Badoglio's Little Comprehension Badoglio, though accepting this directive, seems to have had little comprehension of the Fascist philosophy behind it. His approach was one of military convenience rather than of political doctrine, for his experience in the campaign, which had included the use of poison gas, had led him to favour a more pragmatic policy, at least in the initial phase, based on temporising with the chiefs. His ideas, which had parallels with the British colonial system of "indirectrule", were formulated in a long telegram which he despatched to Mussolini on May 16, only eleven days after the occupation of Addis Ababa. In this telegram, which we will consider also next week, Badoglio declared that "the problem of the political organisation of the vast conquered territory" had acquired "urgent and maximum importance." There were, he declared, essentially two methods of governing: "that of direct relations between our political organs and the [native] populations, and that of making use of local chiefs as intermediary organs." Both systems, he continued, had their "merits and defects", but the latter was clearly the one he preferred. He argued that a policy which "neglected families and persons connected with the millennial-old system of Ethiopian feudalism", would "create furnaces of discontent and disorder", and that a system making use of local chiefs would "more rapidly achieve a satisfactory order on which later to found an organization corresponding more to the objectives of our occupation." He had, he says, decided, however,"not to follow rigidly either one system or the other","but to apply whichever seemed more suitable in particular circumstances, with the object of achieving "a satisfactory political situation as soon as possible", even if this necessitated "concession to the old state of affairs" when that could more rapidly assist the "normalisation of internal conditions".