Chapter 226: A Tangled Italy

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Recently, Mussolini had been feeling very troubled, because his troops were still bogged down in Abyssinia, unable to extricate themselves. Although he had ended the war in 1936, he was still paying the bill for it to this day.

Around 1930, Italy was also severely impacted by the economic crisis, and its domestic economy was on the verge of collapse. To escape the severe domestic crisis, Mussolini’s government vigorously promoted the militarization of the national economy, stepped up military expansion and war preparations, and attempted to plunder markets and raw material sources through military expansion, all in service of his ultimate goal of leading Italy to become a world hegemon.

In order to re-divide the colonies of East and North Africa, to dominate the Mediterranean, to control the sea route from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and thereby to weaken the connection between Britain and France and their Asian colonies, Italy formulated an operational plan to invade Abyssinia (that is, Ethiopia).

There were many reasons for choosing Abyssinia. First, Abyssinia was located between the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. If Abyssinia were occupied, the connection between these two colonies could be opened up. This would allow Italy’s colonies in East Africa to be linked together, and geographically, it could also cut the connection between the British colonies of Sudan and British Kenya, which would be convenient for Italy’s further actions in Africa in the future.

Second, Abyssinia was a sore spot for Italy. Thirty-five years ago, in 1896, the King of Abyssinia had personally led his army to defeat Italy at the Battle of Adwa in northern Ethiopia. Italy had been forced to pay an indemnity of 10 million lire and had also been forced to recognize Abyssinia’s independence, signing the Treaty of Addis Ababa. This incident was a constant pain for the Italians, so this time, it was also a war of revenge.

With these needs, a war against Abyssinia was very logical. The only thing left was the attitude of France and Britain. But for Italy, the good news was that France, in order to win over Italy, had already secretly expressed its support for Italy’s use of force against Abyssinia.

Without French support, Britain, which had initially opposed Italy’s move against Abyssinia for fear that Italy might destabilize its rule in East Africa, Egypt, and Sudan, ultimately chose to compromise. Because without French support, the British felt that the risk of going to war alone was too great. In the end, they gave Mussolini a veiled indication: as long as Italy did not get too close to the Germans, Britain would ignore Italy’s actions in Abyssinia.

The United States, with the strategic goal of weakening Britain, secretly supported Italy’s move. Subsequently, it passed a neutrality act, stating that it would not export weapons to belligerent countries. But this act did not restrict the embargo of raw materials and strategic materials. For Italy, which was self-sufficient in weapons and equipment, this neutrality act was clearly more advantageous. Even Mussolini revealed in a private letter to Akado: “If the League of Nations were to sanction Italy with an oil embargo, I would have to withdraw from the Abyssinian region within a week.”

Because of the successful diplomatic maneuvering, the international community had little interest in the Abyssinian issue from the very beginning. Germany’s annexation of Hungary, as well as the tense diplomatic deterioration between Germany, the Soviet Union, and Poland, all made the world focus its attention on the Eastern European region. And Italy’s plan to fish in troubled waters was ultimately an unprecedented success.

In September 1935, while Germany was digesting its annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Italian high command decided to concentrate more than 300,000 troops in Italian Eritrea and Somalia. Under the command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Italian forces in Northeast Africa, General De Bono, they launched a pincer attack into the heartland of Abyssinia in three columns—north, central, and south, with the northern route as the main force—in an attempt to occupy the country in one fell swoop. Subsequently, Abyssinia began to counter-attack, and the Italian army suffered minor losses. Thus, on November 16 of the same year, Marshal Badoglio took over command and began a full-scale offensive against Abyssinia.

The Abyssinian army was composed of the royal guard of about 10,000 men and the militias of various provinces and tribes, with a total of about 450,000 to 500,000 men. However, the equipment of these troops was backward, and their training was poor, but their morale was high. The supreme commander was the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie I, himself. Under his command, the Abyssinian army engaged in an arduous battle with Italy.

The resistance plan of the Abyssinian high command was for the army to first retreat 30 kilometers from the border, hold the strategic points, and conduct a mobile defense in the mountains to create conditions for a later counter-offensive.

On October 3, Italy launched an all-out war against Abyssinia, invading its territory on a large scale with the cooperation of its powerful air force. The Italo-Abyssinian War broke out in full, and the entire military and civilian population of Abyssinia rose up to meet the enemy.

The entire war went through several stages. From the outbreak of the war to the fall of the Abyssinian capital in May 1936 was the conventional warfare stage. The Abyssinian army mainly used positional defensive warfare to resist the Italian army. In the first five months of the war, the Ethiopian army had heavily damaged the Italian army in the battles of Adwa, Gorahai, and Tembien. However, Italian reinforcements then arrived from the mainland. The fierce attacks of the Italian tanks and the indiscriminate bombing by their planes turned the tide of defeat, and the war soon entered a stalemate.

In March 1936, the Italian army, finally unable to bear the endless war of attrition, launched a new offensive and carried out a cruel slaughter with the massive use of poison gas. The Abyssinian army began to suffer one defeat after another. At the end of March, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie I, personally went to the front to command the Battle of Maychew, counter-attacking the Italian army that was advancing on the capital. However, his counter-attack was not successful and also cost the Abyssinian army its only remaining reserves.

On May 3, Haile Selassie I went into exile abroad. On the 5th, the capital, Addis Ababa, fell. On the 9th, the smug de facto ruler of Italy, Mussolini, announced the annexation of Abyssinian territory into the Kingdom of Italy. From then on, the Abyssinian resistance against the Italian invasion entered a new stage—the guerrilla warfare stage.

A portion of the Abyssinian army dispersed to the western and southern provinces and, together with the local people, formed guerrilla units and widely carried out guerrilla warfare. The guerrillas frequently attacked Italian garrisons, blew up warehouses, tore down telegraph lines, and sabotaged transportation, repeatedly thwarting the Italian army’s “mopping-up operations” and causing Italy’s “colonial development plan” to go bankrupt.

The guerrilla war continued until November 1937 with no signs of ending. With the cooperation of the British army, the Abyssinian guerrillas, with the cooperation of the local residents, brought endless trouble to the Italian army. Although in the entire war, the Abyssinian military and civilian population had suffered a total of more than 700,000 deaths, of which more than 290,000 were from chemical warfare agents, they had also inflicted the heavy price of 140,000 casualties on Italy.

It was clear that Italy’s unprecedented success in diplomacy had not carried over to the military. The low-combat-effectiveness Italian army had not been as good at fighting as their diplomats. After seven months of fierce warfare, Italy had paid 12 billion lire in military expenses for this operation but had failed to actually achieve the goal that they had originally thought was extremely simple.

And what made Mussolini feel at a loss for whether to laugh or cry was this: compared to Italy’s attack on a second-rate African country like Abyssinia, Germany was challenging the number one power in Eastern Europe, Poland. The gap between the two countries’ opponents was simply incomparable.

And the results of the battles were indeed incomparable. Italy had been fighting in Abyssinia for seven months and was still bogged down in a quagmire of war, unable to extricate itself. Germany, on the other hand, had taken only 22 days to attack Poland and had achieved a stunning result that had attracted worldwide attention, winning a glorious victory in the Polish campaign.

Many times, we feel that it was Italy that dragged the Germans down in World War II. This is actually reasonable. But few people know that, in fact, before the few times Italy screwed over the Germans, it was the Germans who had screwed over the Italians first.

In fact, in the real World War II, the three countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan had undermined each other even more than they had cooperated. Originally, Italy had hoped that Germany would start the war in 1942, so that Italy could complete its war preparations. As we all know, Hitler started the war in 1939. Italy was dragged into the war unprepared and naturally performed poorly.

And in 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The world seemed to think that a Soviet-German war was imminent. Japan had originally intended to go north to launch a pincer attack on the Soviet Union, but Germany had turned back to deal with France… The consequence, of course, was that Japan was slapped in the face by the Soviet Union, and it sheepishly began to head south, never mentioning the matter of going north again.

If you also count Italy’s repeated screwing over of its ally Germany in the Balkans and North Africa, and Japan’s sneak attack on the United States in the Pacific, screwing over a Germany that did not want to fight the US military… it seems that the entire Second World War was a farcical comedy of the three Axis powers constantly holding each other back and screwing over their teammates.

And in this timeline, the German Führer, Akado, had disrupted the entire historical process. Never mind Italy being prepared; as an ally, Mussolini probably hadn’t even drawn up a plan for war preparations… And Germany, in October 1937, had finished off Poland, which should have been eaten two years later, in one go. Now, Mussolini was like a petrified, shattered statue, completely disordered in the wind.

Germany’s clean and decisive slaughter of Poland had not only disrupted the plans of Britain and France, but had also scared its ally, Mussolini, silly. Several of the key breakthroughs in his own Italian revival plan were now threatened by the Germans.

All along, Italy had regarded itself as the heir to the Roman Empire. They were also more enthusiastic about restoring the vast territory of the Roman era and turning the Mediterranean into their country’s inner lake. But to complete this plan, they had to at least guarantee Italy’s say in North Africa, East Africa, and the Balkan Peninsula.

But now, Africa was engulfed in the flames of war, and Italy was still a long, long way from completely controlling Northeast Africa. And on the other hand, the Germans were as fast as lightning. They had already annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, and had also eaten half of Poland. Now, Romania, Bulgaria, and a large part of the Balkan Peninsula were within the Germans’ reach. How could the Italians not be anxious?