By John Perryman
The rise to power in Italy of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini saw the resumption of a foreign policy aimed at expanding Italian possessions. In 1934 Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia, became the subject of world attention following the ‘Walwal Incident’. It was to prove the precursor of the Abyssinia Crisis and an early determinant of the failure of the League of Nations.
The Walwal Incident occurred when Ethiopian soldiers clashed with Italian colonial forces at a fort built by Italy at Walwal inside agreed Ethiopian territorial borders. From 5 – 7 December 1934 a skirmish took place that saw more than 100 Ethiopians killed along with approximately 50 Italian and colonial troops. Each side blamed the other for initiating the contact and in January 1935 Ethiopia lodged an appeal with the League of Nations to settle the dispute. In what was an early sign of the League’s impotence, the matter was dismissed as accidental in character and both parties were absolved of culpability.
Emboldened by the inaction of the League of Nations to take a firmer stand against the territorial incursion, Mussolini seized the opportunity to avenge an earlier Italian defeat and loss of face when a a previous foray to colonise Ethiopia in 1896 failed. In the years since what was known as the First Italo-Ethiopian war, Italy had completely modernised its military and it was by then far superior to the forces of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. On 3 October 1935, Italian armies invaded Ethiopia sparking the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The invasion was supported only by Germany, and Italy was to later return the favour by revoking objections to Germany’s absorption of Austria in 1938.
The League of Nations response was to condemn the attack and introduce limited but largely ineffectual economic sanctions against Italy in protest to its aggression. Both Britain and France were conscious that Mussolini had not yet aligned Fascist Italy with Nazi Germany and hopes were held that Italy might still be persuaded to side with them against the growing threat that Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler posed to the future of European peace. Hedging their bets, Britain and France sought to offer Italy concessions to bring about a swift end to the war (a deal).
On 8 December 1935 the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, met with his counterpart, the French Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Pierre Laval, to discuss how the matter might be resolved. They were courting disappointment, for on 9 December British newspapers leaked details of an agreement reached by the two men to concede large areas of Ethiopia to Italy to end hostilities. The proposal, seen by many as an act of appeasement, precipitated a groundswell of angry public opinion in Britain and France. In the British House of Commons, the leader of the opposition, Mr Clement Atlee pulled no punches moving:
That the terms put forward by His Majesty’s Government as a basis for an Italo-Abyssinian settlement reward the declared aggressor at the expense of the victim, destroy collective security, and conflict with the expressed will of the country and with the Covenant of the League of Nations, to the support of which the honour of Great Britain is pledged; this House, therefore, demands that these terms be immediately repudiated.[i]
The Hoare-Laval Pact, as it became known, was abandoned, both men ‘retired’ and the League of Nations was revealed as a Paper Tiger, having failed to convince Italy, a member state, from attacking a fellow member state.[ii]
Britain, wary of further alienating Mussolini and risking a crisis that might spread to Europe, later drew criticism for not restricting the Italian Navy’s access to the Suez Canal, an action that would have interrupted Italian sea lines of communication preventing men, hundreds of tons of ammunition, food and other supplies from reinforcing the Italian positions. The British Mediterranean Fleet, which at that time included HMA Ships Australia (II) and Sydney (II), although placed on high alert was ultimately not used to intervene.
In HMAS Sydney (II), Captain, J.U.P. FitzGerald, addressed his ship’s company likening Mussolini to ‘a maniac running around a powder magazine with a lighted candle’. He continued that ‘it would be the responsibility of the Mediterranean Fleet to make such a show of force so as to discourage the dropping of the candle and the blowing up of the magazine that was Europe’.[iii] Such was the gravity of the situation.
Undeterred, the Italians renewed their assault in Ethiopia in early 1936 infamously using mustard gas to break the will of Ethiopian resistance and take several key objectives. Ethiopia’s leader was to later recount in an address to the League of Nations that:
Special sprayers were installed on board aircraft so that they could vaporize, over vast areas of territory, a fine, death-dealing rain. Groups of nine, fifteen, eighteen aircraft followed one another so that the fog issuing from them formed a continuous sheet. It was thus that, as from the end of January 1936, soldiers, women, children, cattle, rivers, lakes and pastures were drenched continually with this deadly rain. In order to kill off systematically all living creatures, in order to more surely poison waters and pastures, the Italian command made its aircraft pass over and over again. That was its chief method of warfare.[iv]
The condemnation of Italy that followed what was a blatant breach of the 1925 Geneva Protocol against the use of asphyxiating chemical weapons made little impact on Mussolini whose victory was assured when Italian forces entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936. By then the Ethiopian army was completely overwhelmed and, following his defeat, Emperor Haile Selassie was forced into exile taking refuge in Britain in the city of Bath.
On 30 June 1936 Selassie denounced Italy in a speech made before the League of Nations in which he criticised the world community for standing by the aggressor. He also presciently cautioned:
I decided to come myself to bear witness against the crime perpetrated against my people and give Europe a warning of the doom that awaits it, if it should bow before the accomplished fact.[v]
Unperturbed, Mussolini joined Italian Somaliland with the colony of Eritrea and Ethiopia to form Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East Africa) on 1 June 1936.
Today the Second Italo-Ethiopian war is remembered as a precursor to World War II and an ugly example of fascist aggression and expansionism that would later characterise the actions of Nazi Germany and other Axis powers throughout the second great conflict of the 20th Century.
Emperor Haile Selassie’s foreboding prophecy concerning Europe’s impending doom was fulfilled on 3 September 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany following its military occupation of Poland. Within twelve months, most of Europe was occupied by German forces, the British Expeditionary Force and remnants of the French Army having been repelled across the English Channel.
Notwithstanding Germany’s successes during early 1940, Italy withheld formal allegiance to either side until France surrendered to Germany on 10 June 1940. At that time Benito Mussolini declared war against France and Britain, joining Nazi Germany and shifting the balance of power in the Mediterranean Sea in favour of the fascists.
The astute reader may have already drawn certain comparisons between the Abyssinia Crisis of 90 years ago and the current US proposal for a swift settlement of the Ukraine-Russia crisis.
[i] UK Parliament, Hansard, House of Commons, League of Nations and Abyssinia
Volume 307: debated on Thursday 19 December 1935.
[ii] A Paper Tiger – something or someone that claims or appears to be powerful or threatening but is actually ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge.
[iii] Ross, W.H, Lucky Ross, The Autobiography of an R.A.N. Officer 1934-1951, Hesperian Press, Western Australia, 1994, p.80.
[iv] Speech by the His Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, at the Assembly of the League of Nations, at the Session of June–July 1936, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_11602/?sp=2&st=image, accessed 7 July 2023.
[v] Speech by the His Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, at the Assembly of the League of Nations, at the Session of June–July 1936, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_11602/?sp=2&st=image, accessed 7 July 2023.
