Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Between October 1935 and May 1936, Fascist Italy invaded and conquered Ethiopia, one of the last African states still independent of European rule. The campaign, often called the largest colonial war ever fought, was marked by Italian use of poison gas, and the failure of the League of Nations to stop it badly damaged the League's credibility in the years before the Second World War.

Italy had already tried to conquer Ethiopia once, and its army had been routed at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Italy kept the neighbouring colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, and under Benito Mussolini its colonial governors began pressing outwards. In 1930 Italy built a fort at the Walwal oasis in the Ogaden, well inside Ethiopian territory. A clash there on 5 December 1934 between Italian-led and Ethiopian troops became the pretext for war. Britain and France, eager to keep Italy as a partner against Germany, did little to discourage the military build-up that followed through 1935.

On 3 October 1935, without a declaration of war, a large Italian army under Marshal Emilio De Bono advanced from Eritrea, while a smaller force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Somaliland. Adwa fell on 6 October and Aksum on 15 October. Impatient with the slow pace, Mussolini replaced De Bono with Pietro Badoglio in November. Emperor Haile Selassie had mobilised a large but poorly equipped army; estimates range from 350,000 to 760,000 men, with only a handful of aircraft and tanks against Italy's hundreds.

An Ethiopian counter-offensive in December 1935 briefly stalled the Italians. Mussolini then authorised the use of mustard gas, which the air force dropped on soldiers and civilians in breach of the 1925 Geneva Protocol. From February 1936 the Italians won a series of decisive battles in the north, culminating at Maychew on 31 March. Haile Selassie left the country by train for Djibouti on 2 May, and Badoglio's motorised column entered Addis Ababa on 5 May. Four days later Mussolini proclaimed an Italian empire, and in June Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somaliland were merged into Italian East Africa.

The League had imposed economic sanctions on Italy in November 1935, but they did not cover vital materials such as oil, coal and steel, and Britain left the Suez Canal open to Italian shipping. On 30 June 1936 Haile Selassie addressed the League in Geneva, condemning the invasion and warning other members that they might be next. Days later, the League voted to end the sanctions. The episode broke up the Stresa Front, Italy's understanding with Britain and France, and pushed Mussolini towards Nazi Germany.

Fighting continued after the fall of the capital. An attempt on Graziani's life in February 1937 was followed by days of reprisals in Addis Ababa; Ethiopian sources put the dead at 30,000, Italian sources at a few hundred, and a 2017 study at about 19,200. Guerrilla resistance persisted, and after Italy joined World War II in 1940, British, Commonwealth and Ethiopian forces drove the Italians out. Addis Ababa was taken in April 1941, and Haile Selassie re-entered his capital on 5 May 1941, five years to the day after its fall.

Figures are disputed. Italian estimates put Ethiopian battle deaths at about 70,000, while the Ethiopian government in 1946 claimed more than 760,000 deaths for the whole war and occupation, figures the historian Angelo Del Boca considered exaggerated. The historian Enzo Traverso estimates around 250,000 deaths among Ethiopians. Del Boca counted 3,731 Italian soldiers and some 4,500 colonial askaris killed by the end of 1936.

Our 1930 map shows Ethiopia as an independent empire between Italy's colonies, and our 1938 map shows the conquered country absorbed into Italian East Africa.