By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
We saw last week how Mussolini and his fascist aide De Bono planned
to invade Ethiopia, and how the French Government, preoccupied with the
rise of nazi Germany, withdrew its earlier opposition to Italian
expansion at Ethiopia’s expence. Now read on:
Fascist War Preparations
Fascist Italy, aware that there would no longer be any significant
French opposition to an invasion, then embarked on massive war
preparations, both in Italy and its East African colonies. Activity in
Eritrea was personally supervised by De Bono, first as Minister of the
Colonies, and, after January 1935, as the colony’s High Commissioner.
Massawa harbour installations were vastly expanded to handle the arrival
of troops and war material. The road from the port to Asmara
was
broadened, and those to the Ethiopian frontier rendered suitable for the
passage of soldiers and military supplies. Airports were constructed or
expanded for the use of fighter and bombing ‘planes, and hospitals
built to cater for the probable wounded.
The Wal Wal Incident
The Italian pretext for invasion came with the Wal Wal incident which
took place little more than a year after Mussolini’s above-mentioned
talks with De Bono. On 23 November 1934 an Anglo-Ethiopian boundary
commission, which had been surveying the frontier between British
Somaliland and Ethiopia, arrived at Wal Wal, 100 kilometres within
Ethiopia. There they were confronted by an Italian force, which had
earlier arrived from Somalia. The British members of the commission
protested at the Italian presence, but then withdrew to avoid an
“international incident”. The Ethiopians on the other hand faced the
Italians for about a fortnight, until a shot of indeterminate, but
probably Italian, origin, precipitated a clash.
The Italians responded by despatching an ultimatum to Ethiopia. They
demanded 20,000 in damages, a formal apology, a salute to the Italian
flag, and the punishment of the Ethiopian troops involved. These terms,
which would have constituted recognition of Italian sovereignty over Wal
Wal, were considered unacceptable by the Ethiopian Government. Haile
Sellassie therefore sought arbitration in accordance with the
Ethio-Italian Treaty of 1928. Mussolini rejected this proposal. The
Emperor thereupon took the matter to the League of Nations, which spent
the next eleven months in fruitless discussion, during which fascist
Italy accelerated its preparations for war.
Anglo-French “Disinterest” in Ethiopian Independence
During the critical months prior the opening of hostilities the
French and British Governments carefully reviewed their interests in
relation to the forthcoming conflict. In the evening and night between 6
and 7 January 1935 the French premier, Pierre Laval, held a
conversation with Mussolini in which he gave the dictator the
encouraging information that France was from the economic point of view
“disinterested” in Ethiopia.Five months later, in June, a British
Government committee, headed by Sir John Maffey, came to the conclusion
in a secret report, leaked to the Italian press, that there were “no
vital British interests in Abyssinia or adjacent countries such as to
necessitate British resistance to an Italian conquest of Abyssinia”. The
report added that, ‘in general as far as local British interests’ were
concerned, “it would be a matter of indifference whether Abyssinia
remained independent or was absorbed by Italy”.
Obviously Unfair
The French and British Government, having thus formulated similar
attitudes of “disinterest” towards the projected invasion, decided on a
joint policy of “neutrality”. To this end they decided to ban arms
exports to both potential belligerents.This restriction ran counter to
the international arms agreement of August 1930, in which both powers,
as well as Italy, had agreed that the Emperor had the right to import
arms and ammunition for purposes of defence. The obvious unfairness of
the new Anglo-French move was noted by the Emperor, who exclaimed in an
interview with the London “Sunday Times”:
“Italy is a great manufacturing country working day and night to
equip her soldiers with modern weapons and modern machines. We are a
pastoral and agricultural people without resources and cannot do more
than purchase abroad a few rifles and guns to prevent our soldiers from
entering battle with swords and spears only”.
Notwithstanding the manifest logic of these remarks the United States
likewise passed a Neutrality Act, on 24 August, which placed an embargo
on the supply of arms to either side.
Laval and Hoare “Instantly in Agreement”
The French and British Governments also developed identical views on
how to react to the opening of hostilities. Laval met the British
Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, on 10 September 1935 to discuss the
matter secretly. He later told the French Chamber of Deputies that he
and his British opposite number found themselves:
“instantaneously in agreement upon ruling out military sanctions, not
adopting any measure of a naval blockade, and never contemplating the
closure of the Suez Canal – in a word, ruling out everything that might
lead to war’”
Publicly, however, Sir Samuel spoke in very different vein. On the
day after his talks with Laval, he declared, in an address to the League
of Nations Assembly:
“His Majesty’s Government and the British people maintain their
support of the League and its ideals as the most effective way of
ensuring peace… this belief in the necessity of preserving the League is
our sole interest in the present controversy … The ideals enshrined in
the Covenant, and in particular the aspiration to establish the rule of
law in international affairs, have appealed… with growing force to the
strain of idealism which has its place in our national character, and
they have become part of our national conscience… The League stands, and
my country stands with it, for the collective maintenance of the
Covenant [of the League] in its entirety, and particularly for steady
and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression… This is
no variable and unreliable sentiment, but a principle of international
conduct to which they [the British people] and their Government hold
with firm, enduring and universal persistence”.
There would have been “a tempest of boos and hisses”
The Italian anti-fascist historian Gaetano Salvemini later commented
that, if the secret agreement of 10 September between Laval and Hoare
had been known, the latter’s speech “would have been greeted with a
tempest of boos and hisses”, but, not being known,”met with an immense
ovation”
The Attitude of Nazi Germany
In sharp contrast to the position of the British and French
democracies was that of nazi Germany. Hitler, its dictator, had adopted
an ideology akin to that of fascist Italy. He saw that Mussolini was,
however, unwilling to counternance a German annexation of Austria, which
would have brought the nazi state to the Brenner pass, on the very
borders of Italy. The German dictator, who was determined on expanding
southwards into Austria, his birthland, reasoned that Mussolini, if
victorious in Ethiopia, would be in strong position to oppose Germany’s
ambitions, but would be unable to do so as as long as his army was
embroiled in an Africa war. The nazi ruler was therefore only too
anxious to stiffen Ethiopian resistance. He responded favourably to
German requests for aid, brought mainly by David Hall, an envoy of
Ethio-German origin. Nazi Germany was thus virtually the only country to
come to Ethiopia’s assistance, and without Mussolini knowing, supplied
Haile Sellassie’s army with three aeroplanes, over sixty cannon, 10,000
Mauser rifles, and ten million cartridges.
The Invasion Begins Mussolini, aware that he would encounter no
significant opposition from either Britain or France, and in the dark as
to Hitler’s secret intentions, adopted a bold posture. In an histrionic
speech, on 2 October 1935, he cried out, “To sanctions of an economic
character, we will reply with our disclipine, with our frugality and
with our spirit of sacrifice. To military sanctions, we will reply with
military measures. To acts of war, we will reply with acts of war”.
On the following day the fascist army began its long expected
invasion, without any formal declaration of war. That same day Italian
airmen bombed Adwa, in symbolic revenge for their compatriots’ defeat
there forty years earlier. The invading army was five times larger than
that employed by the Italians in the previous war, and now, for the
first time, enjoyed overwhelming superiority of armament, as well as
complete control of the air.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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