Eritrea Campaign 1941 – map by Stephen Kirrage for Wikipedia “East Africa Campaign” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

(9) ITALO-ABYSSINIAN WAR / EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN

(3 OCTOBER 1935 – 19 FEBRUARY 1937 / 10 JUNE 1940 – 27 NOVEMBER 1941)

Yes, everyone forgets (or overlooks) this war when it comes to the Second World War (or before it) – or indeed forgets or overlooks that any part of the Second World War was fought in Africa apart from North Africa.

Even if the Italo-Abyssinian War – or more precisely the Second Italo-Abyssinian War (or Second Italo-Ethiopian War to use its more modern but decidedly less glamorous nomenclature) – was fought on a scale to rival the Winter War, at least in numbers of troops, and for substantially longer.

Okay, the Italo-Abyssinian War received substantial attention at the time and since, as the second act of Axis aggression after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and another stepping stone towards the breaking point of the postwar international order after the First World War – but not so much the details of the war itself.

Its sequel during the Second World War, the East African Campaign, is almost completely overlooked on the other hand, let alone in any detail, despite being “the first Allied strategic victory in the war” and not without its challenges.

I’m fond of quoting H.P. Willmott’s quip that, paradoxically, WW2 might be regarded as the last war of the 19th century and WW1 was the first war of the 20th century.

Whatever else you take that to mean, it seems most apt to describing the war in East Africa, as a throwback to the Scramble for Africa and contest between European colonial powers.

Indeed, the Second Italo-Abyssinian War was literally a throwback to the First Italo-Abyssinian War, that last gasp of the Scramble for Africa in which the only African polity to preserve its independence, Abyssinia, did so by soundly defeating Italy at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, one of the few African defeats of a European colonial power. (Yes, I’m aware of Liberia as the other “independent” state in Africa but it was effectively an American creation).

In the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, Mussolini’s Italy set out to use its massive superiority in weaponry to avenge – and reverse – its defeat in the First Italo-Abyssinian War, invading and occupying Abyssinia. The First Italo-Abyssinian War might have surprised the world (and inspired Africa) with an Abyssinian victory, the Second Italo-Abyssinian War did not with its Italian victory, albeit Abyssinian resistance and a government-in-exile under Emperor Haile Selassie persisted afterwards.

In the longer term, Italy’s choice to invade Abyssinia seems foolish, given how isolated and vulnerable even a victorious Italian occupation of Abyssinia would be to superior British and French naval power if war broke out. That perhaps should have been the case back in 1935 but certainly turned out to be the case with Britain’s East African campaign during the Second World War – which Britain won, against skilful and protracted Italian defense that is also often overlooked for a general and somewhat unfair caricature of Italian military competence during that war.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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