Clash of Monarchies: The Second Italo-Abyssinian War

Today the Second Italo-Abyssinian War of 1935-36 is generally viewed as a prelude to World War II but, of course, no one at the time could view it in that way. It was a strange conflict in many ways that brought to light some rather strange bedfellows on the part of the nations of the world at that time. It was one of the last of the colonial wars that had been fairly common in the previous century and yet you had the largest colonial power on earth, Great Britain, denouncing this campaign of colonial expansion. On the other hand, you had the Empire of Japan, which was growing increasingly vocal in denouncing European colonialism in Asia, taking the side of the Italian colonialists. The officially atheist and egalitarian Soviet Union was cheering for Ethiopia, an officially Coptic Christian feudal absolute monarchy. The British, for that matter, who had long been at the forefront of the anti-slavery campaign, likewise cheered for Ethiopia in which slavery was both legal and extremely widespread.

Emp. Haile Selassie & King Vittorio Emanuele III

This conflict, which is today usually given little attention and simply mentioned as part of the build-up to the Second World War, one name on a list alongside the Mukden Incident, the occupation of the Rhine and the Sudetenland, the annexation of Austria and the occupation of Albania. However, at the time, it dominated world attention and had far greater implications and ramifications than most people think. It was the great test of the League of Nations, the existential threat to the post-World War I world order and, in a broader sense, it was the conflict which actually determined both the fate of the former monarchy in Austria and the alignment of the Fascist-ruled Kingdom of Italy with the National Socialist regime in Germany. Prior to this war, Italy was still aligned with France, Britain and the other World War I allies. Hitler had long idolized Mussolini but the Duce had until then kept his distance from the Nazi leader. The war between the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Ethiopia changed all of that.

Many misconceptions continue to be held about the conflict and many of the facts will doubtless come as a surprise to most people. Italy did not actually start the war, nor was it a pre-planned event. The Ethiopians were not a horde of ignorant primitives fighting with sticks and stones, despite what you may have heard. The outcome was not a foregone conclusion, indeed many in the international community expected the Italians to be defeated or at least that any victory would be so difficult to obtain that the Fascist regime would be brought down by a combination of a long, drawn-out war with heavy losses and the crippling effect of League of Nations sanctions on the Italian economy. Today, the war is often portrayed as an almost effortless military parade with the Italians crushing the backward Ethiopians like insects with the African natives having no hope for victory. That is certainly not how it looked at the time and the conclusion of the war, far from being preordained, took most people by surprise, certainly in how quickly events unfolded. It was the war which solidified the Fascist hold on Italy and which brought an end to the independence of the last un-colonized corner of Africa.

Haile Selassie on the day of his coronation

The war was first sparked, as many people may be at least vaguely aware, by the Wal Wal Incident in 1934 but this requires some background information. Much has been made of the fact that many Italians still seethed with indignation over the stunning defeat of the Italian colonial army at the Battle of Adowa in 1896 which brought down the Crispi government and, it is true, that loss to the Ethiopia of “King of Kings” Menelik II lingered in the Italian national consciousness but much had happened since then. Ethiopia had fallen into civil war, had briefly allied with the Ottoman Turks in World War I after which the ruling emperor, who had converted to Islam, was overthrown. An empress ruled the country but was ultimately surpassed by one chieftain Ras Tafari Makonnen who prompted another civil war with his efforts to centralize power, remove the power of the other chiefs and implement progressive taxation. After crushing the forces who tried to restore the empress, upon her rather mysterious death in 1930 Ras Tafari took the throne outright as Emperor Haile Selassie.

In 1932 Haile Selassie crushed another revolt in Gojjam and waged what some historians have called a genocide against the natives of Azebu Galla, the Oromo people having long been the victims of enslavement and persecution. Earlier, in 1928, Haile Selassie had signed a friendship and trade treaty with Italy but after coming to power made it clear that he was no more interested in friendship than Mussolini was. Some historians question whether his immediate campaign to build up and modernize the armed forces, particularly his personal troops, was intended to suppress internal rivals or to dominate the Horn of Africa and absorb the Italian colony of Eritrea in particular with its port facilities. The Italians, at that stage, had no designs on Ethiopia but simply wished to keep it out of the hands of any other foreign power. Toward that end, it was Italy which sponsored Ethiopia joining the League of Nations, a decision they may have come to regret eventually, because of their fear that the British would bend to the powerful anti-slavery societies in that country to launch an expedition into Ethiopia and annex it to the British empire. The British had no such plans but it was for that reason that Ethiopia, a tribal absolute monarchy that practiced widespread slavery, was brought in to the supposedly liberal and democratic League of Nations.

Ethiopian Imperial Guard unit

Once secure on his throne, Haile Selassie sought to modernize and strengthen Ethiopia as quickly as possible and invited in various European powers to help with this though it rankled in Rome that he made a point to exclude the Italians. The latest weaponry was purchased from the French, Belgians, Swedes, Czechs and Swiss. European military officers were brought in as advisors to train the Ethiopian military as Haile Selassie built up his own Imperial Guard that would be armed with the latest modern weapons and he sent Ethiopian officers for these units to train in the military academies of Europe. The colonial army of the Belgian Congo had a particularly formidable reputation and Belgian officers were hired to oversee the modernization of the Ethiopian army. All of this was going on long before there was the slightest hint of any actual trouble with Italy on the horizon. Unlike Hitler and his many speeches about the Germans living outside of Germany that preceded his annexations, one would be hard pressed to find Mussolini ever mentioning Ethiopia as an area of concern or even particular interest.

That only changed with the Wal Wal Incident of 1934. Several years before, the Italians had built a fort at this remote oasis and the Ethiopians said nothing about it. Then, on November 3, 1934 an Ethiopian military force of about a thousand men approached the fort and demanded its surrender, saying it had been built within Ethiopian territory. Why this was not mentioned at any time in the roughly four years since the fort had been built was not explained. In any event, the Italian commander refused. Tensions were raised but nothing immediately happened. That changed when a column of reinforcements for the tiny garrison arrived and on December 5, 1934 fighting broke out between the two sides. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the Italian colonial troops held their own and the Ethiopians retreated. Ethiopia protested to the League of Nations and before the month was out, Mussolini had dispatched one of the leaders of the Fascist “March on Rome”, General Emilio De Bono, to Eritrea to take command of the forces being assembled for an invasion of Ethiopia.

Italian soldiers establishing a defense line

This reveals the little-discussed truth behind one of the major misconceptions of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. It is usually stated or at least implied that the Wal Wal Incident was something instigated by the Italians with the sole purpose of serving as a pretext for Mussolini’s pre-planned conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). However, it is quite obvious that this cannot be true. The Italians did not initiate the engagement nor did it lead immediately to conflict. If this had all been staged, surely Mussolini would have had the Italian army already deployed and ready to attack. Instead, it would take the better part of the following year before the war actually started, before the Royal Italian Army could be transferred to Africa, deployed, equipped and supplied to begin the invasion. Clearly, this was not a pre-planned event. Mussolini did not set this up. However, he was certainly more than willing to take advantage of the situation and use this opportunity to conquer Ethiopia and take revenge for the past defeat at Adowa.

In January of 1935, Mussolini obtained the assurance of the French that they would not intervene in any conflict in East Africa. It was not until July of 1935 that Emperor Haile Selassie announced to his people that a danger of war existed. And, all the while, the League of Nations delegates and the assorted foreign ministers tried to work out some sort of compromise that would prevent the whole thing from happening. The British and French foreign ministers, Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, made a proposal that Mussolini seemed agreeable with which would have seen Abyssinia partitioned, Italy taking one portion and Haile Selassie retaining control of the rest. However, the Abyssinian crisis had become the fashionable cause of the day and public opinion in the liberal democracies of the west was solidly opposed to Fascist Italy and firmly on the side of Emperor Haile Selassie and the proposed agreement was leaked to the press. Immediately there was a huge public outcry and the public in France and Britain denounced this as a shameful caving in to the hated Fascists. The agreement was immediately dropped, Hoare and Laval were both forced by public pressure to resign (Laval would be shot after World War II for having participated in the Vichy regime). Compromise was off the table.

Benito Mussolini

The aim of Hoare and Laval had been to keep Italy on side in a cordon of opposition around Nazi Germany and this, they reasoned, was more important than who ruled Abyssinia. They feared, and rightly so as events unfolded, that British and French opposition to Italy would drive Mussolini into the arms of Adolf Hitler. This would prove to be of particular importance to the British given that the Kingdom of Italy, possessing a powerful fleet, sat astride the primary artery of the British Empire through the Mediterranean to Asia. No one wanted war but all were willing to join in economic sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations. Events there also had a profound impact on world opinion with Emperor Haile Selassie addressing the delegates, appearing regal and dignified, while he was heckled by Italians who came off as childish and bullying. The sanctions were enacted, though oil was not included, and Mussolini was infuriated. The more force the League of Nations leveled, the more belligerent Mussolini became. He denounced the organization as a bunch of elite, liberal hypocrites, particularly singling out the British and French, rulers of the first and second largest colonial empires in the world, for suddenly condemning Italian colonialism. The coming clash would determine whether the League of Nations would govern world affairs or not.

General De Bono (with white whiskers)

By October of 1935 the Royal Italian Army was in position. The primary force was deployed in Eritrea under General Emilio De Bono. A secondary front was prepared in the south, out of Italian Somaliland, under General Rodolfo Graziani, known in Italy as “the Pacifier of Libya” and in Libya as “the Butcher of Fezzan”. De Bono was an affable, old fashioned old soldier, one of the ‘Quadrumvirs’ who led the Blackshirts “March on Rome” but also a fervent monarchist who only joined the Fascist Party when Mussolini made it clear that he would remain loyal to the King. He planned a cautious, traditional sort of colonial campaign that would be conservative with the lives of his soldiers, advancing slowly, establishing defensive positions as they went, using their superior firepower to decimate Ethiopian attacks on their lines. General Graziani was a highly experienced colonial soldier, had been the youngest colonel in the Italian army in World War I and had a reputation for being a hard man who got results. An ardent Fascist, he said bluntly that, “The Duce will have Ethiopia…with or without Ethiopians”.

On the Ethiopian side, Emperor Haile Selassie mustered his forces, conscripting all able bodied men. Newsreels of the day showed hordes of barefoot Africans wearing loincloths and waving swords and spears. However, Haile Selassie had forbidden his army from wearing shoes and had uniforms but reserved most of these for his personal troops, the Kebur Zabagna, or Imperial Guard which also had the latest weapons. Despite the popular image, most Ethiopians had rifles and the army was equipped with a fair amount of artillery and machine guns. They also had trained officers, European advisors and European officers fighting as mercenaries. One of the most prominent foreigners was the Turkish General Mehmet Wehib Pasha, leader of the Turkish advisory mission to Abyssinia, who referred to himself as the “hero of Gallipoli”. He served as chief-of-staff to Ras Nasibu, Ethiopian commander of the southern front and oversaw the construction of a fortified line nicknamed the “Hindenburg Wall” in reference to the famous Hindenburg Line of World War I. Wehib Pasha was of course a Muslim as were the vast majority of the Eritreans and Somalis in the Italian colonial army. However, he was happy to fight for Abyssinia as he had an intense hatred of Europeans and would fight them anywhere under any flag.

General Rodolfo Graziani

On October 3, 1935 the Italian invasion began, slowly and cautiously. The same day, Ethiopia formally declared war on Italy, Rome never having issued such a declaration. The following day, on the northern front out of Eritrea, Italian forces occupied Adigrat, Inticho and Daro Tacle while on the southern front, out of Italian Somaliland, Graziani occupied Dolo Odo and Maladdaie on the Genale (Jubba) River. On October 6, in a moment of particular satisfaction though no real military significance, the Italians marched into Adowa, site of their former defeat. That historic battle had an impact on both sides. The Italians were being careful, taking nothing for granted, having a healthy respect for the fighting ability of their enemy. The Ethiopians, on the other hand, because of their previous victory, tended toward over-confidence and underestimating their enemy. They reasoned that they had defeated the Italians before and could do so again, having an even larger and better armed army than before. Emperor Haile Selassie planned to let the Italians move in and then overwhelm them in a massive attack with his superior numbers. The Ethiopians did have the advantages of fighting a defensive war on their own ground, they had the advantage of numbers and outside support. However, the Italians had the more modern force, greater discipline and an arsenal which included weapons Ethiopia lacked. Their greatest advantage was the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian royal air force, which the Ethiopians had no answer for. The Ethiopian air force was miniscule and mostly served to move Haile Selassie from place to place.

Haile Selassie Gugsa with Italian officers

The international community largely favored Ethiopia. Military experts predicted that, due to Ethiopian superiority in numbers, the harsh terrain, lack of modern infrastructure and the opposition of the general public, it would take the Italians at least two years to conquer the large country, if they could manage it at all. By that time, they were confident that huge Italian losses and the crippling effect of the League of Nations sanctions would bring down the Fascist regime, removing Mussolini from power in much the same way that the defeat at Adowa had brought down Crispi. However, this war would be different from the first. The same day that Adowa fell, Italian forces in the south captured the fortress of Gedlegube and pushed up to the K’orahe minefield in the Ogaden Desert. On the northern front, Italy was handed a propaganda victory when Degiasmacc Haile Selassie Gugsa, son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie and commander of the Mek’ele sector, defected to the Italian side. He had been married to the Emperor’s second daughter and after her death the two had fallen out, the Emperor blaming Gugsa for the loss of his daughter and Gugsa resenting the Emperor for not giving him the title of Ras (chief) while a junior cousin was so honored. This was all the more a major event given that Gugsa was a prince of the Imperial Family, a great-grandson of Emperor Yohannes IV who had seized the throne in 1871 following the disgrace and suicide of Tewodros II.

Italian soldiers

Within five days of this stunning event, the historic capital of Abyssinia, Axum, was taken by Italian forces. The war was going good for Italy, progress was steady and casualties were, so far, minimal. However, it was not happening fast enough to please Mussolini. The sanctions were causing pain at home and the longer the war lasted, the worse things would get. At that point, there was no grumbling, only a shared sense of sacrifice and a determination not to give in to the demands of the international community. Following the example of their Queen, more than half a million Italians donated their golden wedding rings to the war effort, the government replacing them with a band of steel to show their sacrifice for the nation. The Catholic Church joined in as well with the Bishop of Civita Castellana handing over his gold pectoral cross to Mussolini personally, followed up with a Roman salute before a cheering crowd of 12,000. Eventually, however, the sanctions would begin to bite and such stop-gap measures would not be enough to maintain the needs of the country and the war effort.

Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio

Meanwhile, in the south, the Italian advance continued, helped by their Somali allies who often had a personal grudge against the Ethiopians. On October 21 the Sultan of Olol Dinle, commanding his own forces, occupied Geladi and by the end of the month Italian and Ethiopian forces were locked in battle along the Dawa River. In November, on the northern front, the Italians captured Mek’ele and then Salaclaca. Again, good progress, but things were still moving too slowly for the increasingly frustrated Duce. By the end of the month, De Bono was ‘kicked upstairs’ with a promotion to Marshal of Italy and replaced with Marshal Pietro Badoglio with orders to shift the offensive into high gear. De Bono had been methodical, certain that Ethiopian forces would soon attack in huge numbers but, while the fighting was fierce and almost constant, such a major attack never occurred. Soon enough, all would learn that De Bono had not been wrong in his estimation of the enemy. Haile Selassie had been massing his forces and planning a major offensive that would split the Italian army, conquer Eritrea and eradicate the Italian presence in the Horn of Africa. On December 15, 1935, with about 200,000 men, the Ethiopians launched what became known as the “Christmas Offensive”.

Massed attack was the preferred fighting method for the Ethiopians and as the offensive began, the Italians were overwhelmed. At the Dembuguina Pass the Italian Gran Sasso Division was forced to retreat and Ethiopian forces recaptured the Scire area. It looked as though the victorious onslaught at Adowa was being repeated on a larger scale. However, toward late December an Italian pilot, Tito Minniti, was captured by the Ethiopians, tortured, mutilated and finally beheaded. The Ethiopians have since denied this but mutilation of captives was an age old custom in the country (as photos of those captured in the first war after Adowa show) and such things doubtless occurred. This happened on the southern front and General Graziani ordered immediate retaliation. Later, this was also used to justify Italian use of poison gas, banned by international law, against the Ethiopians. However, Marshal Badoglio had requested and, indeed, already began using poison gas days before Minniti was shot down. In all likelihood, Minniti was tortured and executed, as were many other Italian and African colonial soldiers, however the use of poison gas also likely had less to do with this than with the ferocity of the Ethiopian offensive that Badoglio had to deal with.

Ethiopian machine gun unit

Despite attempts at justification (following denials), the Italians used poison gas for the simple reason that it gave them an advantage (or at least they thought it would), it would mean killing more of the enemy and sparing the lives of more of their own troops. It was ugly and it was brutal but not really different in principle from the British using Maxim guns against spear-tossing natives or the United States using the atomic bomb against the Japanese. If one side has a weapon that will give them an advantage over their enemy, especially a weapon that the enemy cannot defend against, chances are they will use it. When it comes to accusations of cruelty and war crimes in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, the truth is that neither side was blameless nor always guilty. The Italian claim that the Ethiopians used forbidden Dum-dum bullets was likely untrue and simply a reaction to poor quality ammunition. However, Ethiopians did break the rules, killing and mutilating enemy prisoners, trapping Italian soldiers in their tanks and building fires underneath to slowly cook them alive. The noted English Catholic author, Evelyn Waugh, reported that the Ethiopians did use Red Cross insignia to cover themselves and that other reporters, going on only what the Ethiopians told them, reported to their readers Italian attacks on hospitals that did not exist. It is also likely that many of the Italian colonial soldiers practiced the same sort of mutilation on the enemy as some of the Ethiopians did and the use of poison gas by Marshal Badoglio was something he requested, not something prompted by moral indignation.

In any event, while the Italians were being hammered by the Ethiopian “Christmas Offensive” in the north, in the south, General Graziani continued to make steady progress. In early November his forces intercepted and defeated an Ethiopian motorized column (a fact which will doubtless surprise those who think the Ethiopians had no modern means of transportation at all) near Hamaniei. In December, the Sultan of Olol Dinle set his warriors against the Ethiopians at Golle and Italian forces occupied Denan by the end of the month. A major breakthrough followed shortly thereafter when Graziani crushed the southernmost Ethiopian army at the Battle of Genale Wenz in a fight lasting from January 12-16, 1936. The Ethiopians did win a bit of a propaganda victory of their own in the aftermath though, when a number of Italian colonial troops deserted to the Ethiopian side. This was mostly done for religious reasons, African Coptic Christians feeling little solidarity with the largely Muslim Somalis and their Catholic Italian officers. However, by the end of January, the Italian forces had taken Borana and reached the Ethiopian military base at Negele.

HRH the Duke of Bergamo

In the north, Marshal Badoglio went back on the offensive with the first Battle of Tembien. It was not much of a success but did at least bring the Ethiopian offensive to a halt. The Ethiopians reacted adeptly, moving around to encircle the Italians at Warieu Pass, keeping up relentless assaults. However, before the end of the month, the Italians had fought their way back and the Ethiopian “Christmas Offensive” was stopped for good. Badoglio seized the initiative and intended to keep it. Amba Ardam was taken in early February and in a long and hard fought battle lasting until March 2, the second Battle of Tembien, the Italians captured Worq Amba. This was quite a decisive engagement, shattering the armies of Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum. Responsibility for the defeat on the Ethiopian side remains something of a controversial subject but it left Haile Selassie with only one army of his original four on the northern front. The remnant was crushed in the Battle of Shire under Ras Imru Haile Selassie, the Emperor’s cousin and one of his most trusted subordinates. A royal cousin was also present on the Italian side at the battle in the person of Prince Adalberto, Duke of Bergamo, fourth son of the Duke of Genoa, who commanded the Gran Sasso Division.

Ethiopian forces at Maych'ew

Witnessing the situation falling apart, Haile Selassie worked frantically to organize a counter-offensive to halt the Italian advance. On March 31, 1936 the Ethiopian chieftain threw all the forces available to him at the enemy in a desperate gamble known to history as the Battle of Maych’ew. This time, Haile Selassie commanded his troops himself and even committed his prized Imperial Guard to the battle. However, Marshal Badoglio had intercepted a message Haile Selassie sent to his wife, telling of the planned attack. This allowed Badoglio to call off his own planned attack and take up carefully prepared defensive positions. The Ethiopians would be walking right into his trap. The initial Ethiopian attack was bloodily repulsed in hard fighting, after which the main assault shifted to the Italian left flank which was hit repeatedly but all to no avail. Finally, Haile Selassie committed six battalions of his Imperial Guard but despite being the best armed and equipped, they fared no better. In desperation, Haile Selassie ordered all units to attack all along the line but the only result was that they were all wiped out, most already being greatly weakened by that point anyway.

The Ethiopian army broke and began to retreat and it was at that point that insult was added to injury. Prior to the battle, Haile Selassie had tried to buy back the support of the Azebu Galla (the people he had nearly wiped out prior to the war) with a cash bribe for each man and lavish gifts for their leaders. They pledged support but had remained on the sidelines during the battle. Then, when the Ethiopian army began to flee, they suddenly joined in, attacking the Ethiopians and cutting them down as they ran away, only intermittently deterred by Italian bombers who also joined in attacking the fleeing army. Haile Selassie, having seen his forces devastated, ordered the remainder to disperse and sent the Crown Prince to Dessie where he hoped to organize a new army to carry on the war. However, the Crown Prince later abandoned Dessie without a fight and the hoped for widespread resistance failed to materialize.

Italian colonial troops (Eritreans) at Dessie

Meanwhile, on the southern front, the Ethiopians attempted to regain the initiative with an attack they hoped would culminate in an invasion of Italian Somaliland. However, this offensive was bloodily repulsed at the Battle of Genale Doria. General Graziani adopted the policy of offense being the best defense and made heavy use of Italian control of the air, decimating the Ethiopian forces with attacks from the sky. Graziani came up with an operation he called the “Milan Plan” and within five days all of his attacking columns had reached their objectives. In the Battle of the Ogaden, the vaunted “Hindenburg Wall” of Wehib Pasha was broken through and the last organized Ethiopian resistance in the south was utterly destroyed, the survivors fleeing into the countryside to wage guerilla war against the invaders. Graziani pushed on for Harar but while he met little Ethiopian resistance, bad weather and a lack of modern roads delayed his advance.

Marshal Badoglio enters Addis Ababa

The climax of the war came in the north with what the Fascist propagandists touted as the “March of the Iron Will”. This was a rapid advance by a large mechanized column from Dessie to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. It may have been inspired by a similar advance led by the prominent Fascist leader, the “Panther Man”, Achille Starace on Gondor, covering 120km in three days. The advance on Addis Ababa was swift, powerful but also largely unopposed. Haile Selassie gathered his family and entourage and fled the country prior to the Italian attack and Addis Ababa fell into a state of anarchy and looting before order was restored by the arrival of the triumphant Italian army on May 5 (though advance units of the Eritrean colonial brigade arrived the day before). Marshal Badoglio staged a triumphal entry into the city and sent word to Rome that the war was over and Abyssinia was conquered. As soon as the news hit Italy, widespread celebrations broke out with cheering crowds calling Mussolini back to the balcony no less than ten times. A war that was supposed to be a 2-year long quagmire that would bring down the Fascist regime, which had set Italy against the prevailing international order of the League of Nations, had ended with Ethiopia being conquered in seven months.

King Victor Emmanuel III, Il Re-Imperatore

King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy was given the title of Emperor of Ethiopia and Mussolini crowed to his Blackshirts, “…lift on high, legionnaires, your standards, your steel and your hearts and salute, after fifteen centuries, the reappearance of the EMPIRE on the fatal hills of Rome!” Of course, the significance of this victory need not have been so great but the importance that the international community had heaped on it made it one that changed the course of history. More than just an Italo-Abyssinian War, the popular fervor for the Ethiopian cause made this a confrontation between the Fascists on one side and the League of Nations on the other. The League was defied by Italy and with the victory in Africa, the League was humiliated. The tragic figure of Haile Selassie went into exile in England, though King Edward VIII refused to meet with him, as he found the League of Nations more objectionable than Mussolini. Of course, he would soon give up his crown and never regain it while Haile Selassie would ultimately be placed back on his former throne by the Allied armies in World War II.

For the time being, however, the Italian victory over Ethiopia changed everything. Mussolini, stung by the opposition of France and Britain in the League of Nations, infuriated by their economic sanctions, broke from their anti-German front and finally accepted the extended hand of Adolf Hitler. On a visit to Germany, Mussolini told a stadium full of people that Italy would “never forget” how Germany had refused to join the sanctions regime when so much of the world had turned against them. His opposition to the German annexation of Austria evaporated and the plan of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg to restore the Austrian monarchy under Archduke Otto was stopped cold. Previously, Mussolini had approved of the plan, even talking about another Habsburg-Savoy royal marriage to cement their alliance but the reaction of the western powers to the war in Ethiopia changed all of that. In Italy, Fascism was more popular than ever and Mussolini more confident in the military prowess of the armed forces. Soon he would be sending tens of thousands of Italian troops to Spain to aid the nationalist forces of General Franco against the Spanish Republic.

Haile Selassie, perhaps strangely given how the system had failed him, doubled down on his support for collective security and international bodies. In his last appearance before the body, he criticized the League of Nations for not taking more forceful action to stop the Italians, effectively for not using force to see that their rulings were abided by. He ended with the ominous warning that, “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” Perhaps his words were remembered when the League of Nations was succeeded by the United Nations which could and has used military force to see its decisions implemented. However, the same United Nations which he had supported, including sending Ethiopian forces to participate in the Korean War, took no action to save him when he was overthrown and most likely killed in 1975 by communist traitors. It was largely the forces of the British Empire which, in World War II, had seen him restored to his throne after the Italians were defeated and by 1975 the British Empire was no more (and Haile Selassie himself had been more than happy to see it go at the time) and the Soviet Union could be counted on to block any UN move to take action against the Marxist clique that had seen Haile Selassie lose his throne the second time.

For a seven-month colonial war, the second clash of Italy and Abyssinia had proven to be quite consequential. The last un-colonized corner of Africa was conquered, Britain and France made an enemy, Germany gained an ally, the post-World War I world order embodied by the League of Nations was shattered and the last realistic hope for the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy was brought to ruin and Germany gained control of Austria all as a result of this conflict. It is also not a great leap to imagine that had the war ended differently, had Italy lost, there might have been no help for Franco in Spain and the Second Spanish Republic might have carried on, at least until the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Second Italo-Abyssinian War was a conflict that warrants greater study and understanding. It was far more significant and had many more far-reaching consequences than most people realize.

The Horror After Haile Selassie

It was on this day in 1974 that the last Ethiopian monarch, Haile Selassie, was overthrown by a communist ruled military clique, known as the Derg. Because this was the work of communists and because western media tended to ignore anything unpleasant that occurred in African countries after colonialism ended (which was supposed to solve everything) there is not much awareness about what followed but it was a living horror to put even the "Reign of Terror" to shame. After World War II, the Soviet Union made Ethiopia something of a priority and turned out massive amounts of propaganda in an effort to turn the Ethiopian people against their monarch. This was the same country that had backed Haile Selassie so long as he was fighting Italian Fascists, which had been allied with Haile Selassie in World War II and which had awarded him the military Order of Suvarov in 1959. Haile Selassie had himself also been cheering on the downfall of the European colonial empires in Africa, failing to appreciate the fact that most of the forces behind the movement were under communist control and would be no friend to him later. Likewise, when Haile Selassie was again overthrown, unlike the last time, in 1974 there would be no British Empire to set him back on his throne again. After a period of increasing unrest, instability and internal problems for the country, Haile Selassie was overthrown in a military coup and later murdered.

This military clique, known as the Derg, took absolute control of the country and was, of course, backed the whole time by the Soviet Union and their masters in Moscow. The emperor had certainly made mistakes which hurt his cause, however, he certainly cannot be held responsible for the treason of others and the issues they seized on in order to take power were almost invariably due to things far beyond the ability of the emperor to control (unless one assumes the King of kings should be able to control the weather or global oil prices). The mistakes he made shrink in insignificance compared to the mistake of his overthrow and the dismantling of the monarchy which was the only government Ethiopia had ever known in its entire, ancient history. Why was this so? A simple look at the subsequent history of the country proves it beyond all doubt. How did Ethiopia fare without a monarch? Well, there was one coup after another in this communist dictatorship that couldn’t even manage to agree on a single dictator. There were numerous rebellions, all of them bloodily suppressed, there was drought, famine, massive starvation and soon Ethiopians were fleeing their homeland in record numbers. Part of the country was even conquered by the Somalis and the Somali incursion was only beaten back with massive assistance from the rest of the communist bloc. I do not wish to sound too offensive here but, when you need the help of the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea and Cuba to defeat a country like Somalia -you are not doing very well.

The man in charge of all of this, the man who had taken the place of Emperor Haile Selassie, was Mengistu Haile Mariam. Remember that name. What Stalin was to Russia, what Choibalsan was to Mongolia, what Mao was to China, Mengistu was to Ethiopia. He instituted a reign of terror in Ethiopia on a scale that made even the French revolutionaries look like slackers. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred, hundreds of thousands were arrested and tortured and hundreds of thousands more were starved to death. All told, even by conservative estimates, Mengistu caused the deaths of more than two million of his fellow Ethiopians. Some believe he may have killed his former emperor personally and given what a vicious, hateful man he is, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. The Ethiopian people experienced a level of suffering under his rule that none of them had ever known before. No emperor, nor even any foreign conqueror, was so brutal and barbaric toward the Ethiopian people as Mengistu was. He intentionally murdered people by slow starvation and if there was one constant throughout his decades in power it was probably widespread starvation, some of it purposely inflicted and much of it the result of his idiotic, Marxist policies. He remains one of the most despicable villains in African history. Thanks to him, even today, when foreign people think of "Ethiopia" they tend to picture starving children.

Now, most histories will tell you that the nightmare of Mengistu and his communist tyranny ended in 1991. Do not be fooled. The nightmare has not ended and will not until traditional government, the monarchy, is restored to Ethiopia. As the Soviet Union began to fold, the primary source of aid to Mengistu dried up and his regime was toppled. He fled to Zimbabwe and the open arms of his friend and fellow tyrant Robert Mugabe where he remains to this day, despite being indicted by an Ethiopian court for genocide. However, the party that replaced Mengistu was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a democratic socialist party. In other words, communism for slow learners. Unfortunately, this is not unique to Ethiopia as we have seen the same all over the world. When communist regimes fall, the party renames itself the social democrats or democratic socialists and continues on just as they did before. They took power and held on to it, giving the world some show-elections just to make everyone happy while continuing on the tradition of corruption, wars and poverty that characterized the preceding regime. It is still a country of starvation and repression.

What happened in Ethiopia, under communism, is not much remembered today but everyone would do well to learn from it. The misery, the mass murder, the oppression was on a scale such as was seen in Cambodia under Pol Pot with a death toll in the millions. In the "Qey Shibir" or 'Red Terror' alone the murdered numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The Derg tried to wash its hands of the matter but the bands of radicals who carried out the killings had been armed by them and organized by them as an instrument of punishment for "reactionaries". They only came to care about the horror when some of these radical groups began to target Derg officials and sympathizers as well in a way not too dissimilar from that of Mao's Red Guards in China. In the capital city alone, aside from the adults, well over a thousand young children were murdered and left in the streets. All of this would have been enough to retard the progress of even the most advanced countries and it certainly has in Ethiopia but recovery has been even more slow and painstaking since the government still, to a large extent, clings to the leftist policies of the communist era. This summer, protests broke out against the oppression of the government as well as demands for more wealth redistribution (a learned habit) and this resulted in a crackdown that has been more violent than the country has seen in decades.

Is there a way to end the cycle of misery? Certainly, and it is not difficult to see but it will require getting rid of the entrenched, ruling elite that has persisted since the days of the Derg. Ethiopia needs to take a "back to basics" approach, restore their traditional leaders, revive traditional values, end the policies that have proven so ruinous and adopt policies that have been proven to work around the world. It means an end to the culture of dependency and a revival of a healthy sense of national pride. It also requires an emphasis on faith as the Coptic Christians of eastern Africa are becoming an increasingly imperiled minority (see events such as the crackdown in Egypt, the horrors in the Sudan and the deportation of Ethiopian laborers from Saudi Arabia for evidence of the squeezing of African Christians). If that is done, Ethiopia is well placed to play an important part in pulling east Africa back from the brink of disaster and being, as she once was, an example for others to follow as a powerful and prosperous African state.

Soldier of Monarchy: Field Marshal Robert, First Baron Napier of Magdala

One of the most accomplished soldiers Britain has ever produced, Robert Napier had a colorful career that spanned the globe in the service of the British Empire. Born in Ceylon on December 6, 1810, the son of a British officer, he was educated at the Addiscombe Military Seminary before being given a commission in the Bengal Engineers in 1826. After further education he was posted to India in 1828 and did a great deal of good with the Royal Engineers there in improving the infrastructure for farming. He earned promotion to captain before being sent to England due to poor health but he was soon back again to participate in the First Anglo-Sikh War. Napier saw action at the Battles of Mudki, Ferozeshah (where he was badly wounded the first of many times) and Sobraon from 1845 to 1846. He received further promotion and was chief engineer at the siege of Kote Kangra in the Punjab. When, not long after, the Second Anglo-Sikh War broke out, he directed the siege of Multan in 1848 and was again wounded but still had enough fight in him to be on hand for the storming of the place and the fall of Chiniot. For his service at the Battle of Gujrat and the final surrender of the Sikh forces he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

After further service in more battles on the Northwest frontier of India he attained the brevet rank of colonel and was wounded again in the Indian Mutiny during the two efforts to relieve Lucknow, a desperate siege that captivated public attention in Victorian Britain. Once again, his injury was not sufficient to keep him out of action and he was on hand for the final victory at Lucknow in 1858. His star still rising, he was deputy commander of the march on Gwalior and commanded a brigade at the Battle of Morar. After the capture of Gwalior it was Napier and his men who pursued the retreating rebels and, with only 700 men, wiped out a force of 12,000 rebels at the plains of Jaora Alipur. Given the command of a division in the aftermath of this success he aided in the capture of Paori, totally defeated Prince Ferozepore at Ranode and secured the final victory for the Raj by forcing the surrender of Man Singh and Tatya Tope in early 1859. By the time the Indian Mutiny was over, Robert Napier had covered himself in glory and was one of the most respected officers in the British army with a reputation for doing much with little.

Having proven himself on the battlefields of India, his next assignment would see him win further victories in East Asia. After the First Opium War, Chinese attacks on the British and other westerners continued as well as the drive for the further opening of trade. This resulted in the Second Opium War or Arrow War which saw Great Britain and the France of Napoleon III teaming up to take on the Great Qing Empire. In January of 1860 Napier was given a divisional command with the main British expeditionary force in China and that summer fought with distinction at the Battle of the Taku Forts. This opened the way to Peking and the Chinese forts along the Pearl River fell like dominos in the aftermath. The following month Napier and his men fought their way into Peking itself and in response to continued resistance demolished the “Old” Summer Palace in October. Napier was raised to the brevet rank of major-general and shortly thereafter the permanent rank of colonel. (FYI: a “brevet” rank essentially means that one has the authority of a higher rank than you actually hold but not the salary!) Having further distinguished himself in China, Napier was soon back in India where he was given command of the Bombay Army and received further promotion to lieutenant-general. He even served as Viceroy of India for a short time after the death of Lord Elgin until his replacement arrived.

It was, however, his next assignment that would see General Napier rise to his greatest fame and which would usher him into the ranks of the aristocracy. Having won victories in India and China it was time to give Africa a try. A rather ugly scene had developed after a local scoundrel managed to usurp the throne of Abyssinia and declare himself “Emperor Tewodros II” (not an uncommon occurrence). However, rather than restricting himself to terrorizing his own people (though he did plenty of that), Tewodros II tried to gain recognition from the crowned heads of Europe and when Her Majesty Queen Victoria did not immediately reply to his letter, he took captive what Europeans he could get his hands on (an envoy and some missionaries) and held them hostage in barbaric conditions. The British had not the slightest interest in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) but a lesson had to be meted out lest every savage chieftain in all the dark corners of the world should get ideas. A rescue expedition was arranged and Lt. General Robert Napier was given command, setting out for the Ethiopian highlands in January of 1868.

Napier had at his command about 13,000 British and Indian troops, quite an expedition for the time, causing some to refer to the episode as the most expensive ‘affair of honor’ in British history. With a huge population to draw upon, Tewodros should have been able to swamp the Anglo-Indian force with numbers but this was not to be as, although he has achieved hero status today (God knoweth why), he was disliked if not reviled by a great many of his countrymen (even his wife couldn’t stand him). As a result, the Anglo-Indian force probably had more trouble simply with the rugged, wild terrain than they did with the Ethiopian army, many of whom fled from the ranks of the vicious and erratic emperor rather than confront the invaders. Napier also established friendly contact with numerous local chiefs, even enlisting some of them to help supply his army as Tewodros was extremely unpopular amongst most of the local potentates, most of whom viewed him as illegitimate and most of whom also wanted his job. When Napier informed him that the British Empire had no desire to add Abyssinia to their list of colonial holdings but were merely out to rescue the hostages and teach the upstart emperor a lesson, most were only too happy to cooperate with their invaders.

After more of his army had ran away rather than face combat, Tewodros was only able to scrape together 9,000 men to confront Napier at the pivotal Battle of Magdala. The British did not think that Tewodros would be so stupid as to leave his defensive positions to attack their superior force but he was and the disciplined ranks of British and Indian soldiers cut them down in volley after volley of rifle fire. The horrific losses made Tewodros release two of the hostages with an offer of peace but General Napier was having no half-way measures and demanded the release of all the hostages and the unconditional surrender of the emperor. Being unwilling to humble himself, Tewodros refused and after an opening bombardment, Napier ordered his men to storm the enemy fortress. Resistance was crushed, Tewodros shot himself in a last act of cowardice and his remaining troops promptly surrendered. Nearly 2,000 Ethiopians had been killed or wounded while Napier’s army suffered only 20 men wounded, two of whom later died. The hostages were rescued, the town was razed to the ground, the locals learned never to cross the British Empire and General Napier was the hero of the hour. For his extremely successful campaign Napier was ennobled by Her Majesty Queen Victoria  with the title of First Baron Napier of Magdala in honor of his victory.

Civilian honors came his way as well and in 1870 Lord Napier was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India with the rank of full general. In 1876 he was made Governor of Gibraltar and, when stepping down from that post in 1883, was promoted to the rank of field marshal. Lord Napier had achieved fame in India, China and Africa, becoming one of the greatest military heroes of the Victorian age and a symbol of the military success of the British Empire around the world. In his old age he was made honorary colonel of the Third London Rifle Volunteer Corps, commandant of the Royal Engineers and was made Constable of the Tower of London in 1887. After a colorful life and very successful military career, Lord Napier passed away from influenza in London on January 14, 1890 and was buried, like a military hero, with all due honors in St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Ethiopian Mistake

It was on September 12, 1974 that the last Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, was overthrown in a Soviet-backed military coup that brought his more than fifty-year reign to an end. Not surprisingly, given the Bolshevik way of doing things in any country, the former Emperor was soon dead, probably murdered by the new government (they had already carried out a massacre of top imperial officials as soon as they took power). How could such a thing have happened? It comes down, as with many such events, to a combination of mistakes on the part of the self-made monarch and outside events that were totally beyond his control. No matter what policies the emperor enacted, for example, there was nothing he could do about the oil crisis or the treason of disloyal officers. Yet, looking over his reign, it can often seem that Haile Selassie, with the best of intentions, made every mistake that European monarchies made over a span of centuries over a span of just a few decades or even a few years. This includes taking power from and so incurring the resentment of the nobility and clergy at home as well as adopting an ambivalent foreign policy that left him with few real friends but many bitter enemies. The lesson should be learned as to what went wrong but the lesson is also even more clear and obvious that the real Ethiopian mistake was not anything the emperor did but was rather his removal.

One of the most baffling things that characterize the post-World War II reign of Haile Selassie (who was placed back on his throne by the allied British, French, Belgian and Ethiopian troops who drove out the Italians and their native forces) was his commitment to the idea of “collective security” and his unbounded admiration for the United Nations. One would think that, of any national leader in the world, Haile Selassie would be the last one to put his faith in collective security which had failed to prevent his country from being conquered by the Italians in 1936. Nonetheless, he had nothing but glowing remarks for the UN, the same organization which gave a security council seat to the country (USSR) that would ultimately bring about his downfall. A major problem with this, as would become only too clear later, is that the UN care nothing for legitimacy. An example of this was when the security council seat originally held by the Republic of China was handed over to Communist China. However, the same could be said for the international community as a whole, at least since World War I (the Paris peace conference was certainly no Congress of Vienna). The emperor might have recalled that the international community had eventually recognized the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and Haile Selassie was restored, not because of legitimacy, but because Italy was a member of the Axis and the Allies were the side that won.

Moving on, traditionally, in most countries, the twin pillars of support for monarchy have been the aristocracy and religious institutions. Haile Selassie had long had a contentious relationship with the Ethiopian aristocracy over his efforts, throughout his reign, to centralize power. There were, of course, reasons for this. Battles between feuding nobles had long troubled Ethiopia. This was partly how Haile Selassie himself had come to power, leading a rebellion of nobles in deposing the emperor in 1916, after which he was able to consolidate power further and ultimately the empress handed power over to him. Haile Selassie wanted to end all of that and was likely concerned that internal strife could be taken advantage of by foreign powers with designs on the country. As far as the Ethiopian Church was concerned, although they always remained largely supportive of the monarchy, tensions were certainly raised when the emperor made Church lands subject to taxation and claimed the right of the government to judge clerics whereas previously a cleric could only be judged by a church court. They, however, could be dealt with, but the nobles remained problematic, especially when they offered staunch opposition to his effort to enact progressive taxation in Ethiopia.

On the international front, Haile Selassie was an outspoken critic of European colonialism and supported anti-colonial movements across Africa. Again, this is not surprising but it also meant that the emperor sacrificed the support of the very foreign countries which had restored him to his throne; namely Britain, France and Belgium. This policy also failed to take into account the fact that in almost all of these anti-colonial movements the rebel factions were supported by either the Soviet Union or the United States, neither of which had a favorable view of monarchy in general. As these anti-colonial movements gained strength so did the influence of the Soviet Union on the continent of Africa. All of this was, of course, an outgrowth of the Cold War and Haile Selassie was determined to have nothing to do with that conflict. Most monarchies in the world took the side of the United States which, while certainly never pro-monarchy, was nowhere near as stridently anti-monarchy as the forces of international communism. By placing himself solidly in the non-aligned group, the emperor could expect little assistance from the United States but it in no way moved the Soviet Union to see him as anything other than an “enemy of the people”. His denunciation of the war against communism in Vietnam won him praise from the anti-war movement but, again, did not make the Soviet Union view him as anything less than an enemy of their entire world view.

It did not take long for the poison of communism to begin to take root in Ethiopia and when natural disasters, the oil crisis or famines caused immense suffering in Ethiopia the communists were quick to seize on each crisis as an excuse for turning people against the emperor even though, obviously, all of these things were quite beyond his control. The Soviet Union made Ethiopia something of a priority and turned out massive amounts of propaganda in an effort to turn the Ethiopian people against their monarch. This was the same country that had, in World War II, been allied with Haile Selassie and which had awarded him the military Order of Suvarov in 1959 (just as they gave King Michael I of Romania the Order of Victory shortly before deposing him). Realizing too late the danger of communist infiltration and communist subversion, the emperor tried to move against them but this, as usual, was seized upon by the communists and their fellow travelers as “proof” of what a harsh, reactionary autocrat the emperor was. Mutiny broke out in the army, led by leftist officers of course, and the emperor tried to placate them with land grants and higher salaries but, as usual, this did not work. Any effort to negotiate with communists goes the same way; you give them what they demand and they promptly demand more. In 1974 a small clique of army officers seized power and arrested the emperor, deposing him and, the following year, announced his death.

This military clique, known as the Derg, took absolute control of the country and was, of course, backed the whole time by the Soviet Union and their masters in Moscow. The emperor had certainly made mistakes which hurt his cause, however, he certainly cannot be held responsible for the treason of others and the issues they seized on in order to take power were almost invariably due to things far beyond the ability of the emperor to control (unless one assumes the King of kings should be able to control the weather or global oil prices). The mistakes he made shrink in insignificance compared to the mistake of his overthrow and the dismantling of the monarchy which was the only government Ethiopia had ever known in its entire, ancient history. Why was this so? A simple look at the subsequent history of the country proves it beyond all doubt. How did Ethiopia fare without a monarch? Well, there was one coup after another in this communist dictatorship that couldn’t even manage to agree on a single dictator. There were numerous rebellions, all of them bloodily suppressed, there was drought, famine, massive starvation and soon Ethiopians were fleeing their homeland in record numbers. Part of the country was even conquered by the Somalis and the Somali incursion was only beaten back with massive assistance from the rest of the communist bloc. I do not wish to sound too offensive here but, when you need the help of the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea and Cuba to defeat a country like Somalia -you are not doing very well.

The man in charge of all of this, the man who had taken the place of Emperor Haile Selassie, was Mengistu Haile Mariam. Remember that name. What Stalin was to Russia, what Choibalsan was to Mongolia, what Mao was to China, Mengistu was to Ethiopia. He instituted a reign of terror in Ethiopia on a scale that made even the French revolutionaries look like slackers. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred, hundreds of thousands were arrested and tortured and hundreds of thousands more were starved to death. All told, even by conservative estimates, Mengistu caused the deaths of more than two million of his fellow Ethiopians. Some believe he may have killed his former emperor personally and given what a vicious, hateful man he is, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. The Ethiopian people experienced a level of suffering under his rule that none of them had ever known before. No emperor, nor even any foreign conqueror, was so brutal and barbaric toward the Ethiopian people as Mengistu was. He intentionally murdered people by slow starvation and if there was one constant throughout his decades in power it was probably widespread starvation, some of it purposely inflicted and much of it the result of his idiotic, Marxist policies. He remains one of the most despicable villains in African history.

Now, most histories will tell you that the nightmare of Mengistu and his communist tyranny ended in 1991. Do not be fooled. The nightmare has not ended and will not until traditional government, the monarchy, is restored to Ethiopia. As the Soviet Union began to fold, the primary source of aid to Mengistu dried up and his regime was toppled. He fled to Zimbabwe and the open arms of his friend and fellow tyrant Robert Mugabe where he remains to this day, despite being indicted by an Ethiopian court for genocide. However, the party that replaced Mengistu was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a democratic socialist party. In other words, communism for slow learners. Unfortunately, this is not unique to Ethiopia as we have seen the same all over the world. When communist regimes fall, the party renames itself the social democrats or democratic socialists and continues on just as they did before. They took power and held on to it, giving the world some show-elections just to make everyone happy while continuing on the tradition of corruption, wars and poverty that characterized the preceding regime. It is still a country of starvation and repression with a government that continues to denigrate the monarchy that went before it.

None of these facts are in dispute. The important thing to remember is this; Emperor Haile Selassie may have made some mistakes that hurt his own cause. His overthrow (and probable murder) was a mistake that hurt every last Ethiopian man, woman and child in the entire country, and many in surrounding countries for that matter. The loss of the monarchy brought about a nightmarish era of murder, starvation and misery. Since 1991 things have improved somewhat but actually quite little. There is still no real freedom, no prosperity and no true connection with the ancient history of Ethiopia which can only happen when the monarchy is restored and sacred, traditional authority resumes its rightful place.

Monarch Profile: Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

The last Emperor of Ethiopia was born Lij Tafari Makonnen on July 23, 1892 in Ejersa Goro, Ethiopia to Ras Makonnen Woldemikael Gudessa and Weyziro Yeshimebet Ali Abajifar. His father was the governor of Harar province and he was related to the royal line through his maternal grandmother through whom he would base his future claim to the throne. At the time of his birth Ethiopia was still only a loosely organized collection of tribal states ruled by local feudal chieftains with the “King of Kings” holding the supreme place of honor more than anything else. At the time of his birth the “King of Kings” or Emperor was Menelik II who himself had taken the throne against the wishes of the previous emperor who had named one of his many “natural” sons as his heir. For the most part, power resided amongst the powerful chieftains and influential clerics of the country with some emperors having more direct control than others depending on how well they were able to suppress their enemies or win the allegiance of those on the ground. At the time of his birth there was no thought of Lij Tafari ever ascending the throne but his father, Ras Makonnen, was an important man and a major figure in the First Italo-Abyssinian War who played a key role in the crucial victory over the Italian colonial army at Adowa.

In 1906 his father died and in that year Ras Tafari (“Ras” being a title of leadership) became governor of the minor province of Selale. Around 1910 he was given the more prestigious governorship of Harar after the previous overseer proved incompetent. In 1911 he married Menen Asfaw of Ambassel, niece of the heir to the throne Lij Iyasu, later Emperor Iyasu V. During World War I the Emperor, who had long had a difficult relationship with the local chieftains, did something dramatic which opened a way to national power for Ras Tafari. The Emperor converted to Islam and made an alliance with the renegade Somali leader Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd Allah Assan (aka the “Mad Mullah”) who had been waging a guerilla war against the British and Italians on the coast. He was supported by the Turks and Iyasu V also hoped for such an alliance and offered to place Ethiopia under the spiritual authority of the Ottoman Sultan who was also the Caliph of Islam. The Coptic clerics declared him excommunicated for this and his throne forfeit and many believed he had gone insane. However, it is more probable that this was not entirely genuine but an effort to unite the Somalis and the Muslim Galla tribes of eastern Ethiopia in crushing the power of the nobles, solidly unifying the country under his control and driving out the European elements on the coast to dominate East Africa with the help of Turkish forces in southern Arabia and German troops in what is now Tanzania.

Whatever his true motives, it was an opportunity for Ras Tafari who led a powerful coalition of local rases to topple the emperor in September of 1916. However, the whole coup was not well organized and turned into a bloody mess with the deposed emperor escaping to join his allies and civil war broke out. In a move that was to have long-lasting consequences, during the ensuing chaos Ras Tafari took his personal army to Harar and massacred most of the Muslim population, which included many Somalis, as all were seen as actual or potential supporters of the deposed Iyasu V. Although not realized at the time, the bitterness and resentment this created would come back to haunt Ras Tafari in the future. In the end, the Christian chieftains were victorious but, at the age of 25, Ras Tafari was considered too young to take the throne himself and so the daughter of Emperor Menelik II, Zauditu, was proclaimed Empress with Ras Tafari as her ‘heir apparent’ and regent. Although they held nominal power in the capital, the chieftains held actual control in the provinces but in this Ras Tafari was ahead of most. He was ambitious, forward-thinking and determined to modernize as his father before him had been.

After World War I, Ras Tafari traveled extensively across Europe and the Middle East as his position in Ethiopia was relatively weak. He lacked funds and other chieftains had more powerful forces than his own. However, he worked to remedy this by making many agreements with European powers to develop his country, equip at least his own troops with the latest weaponry and put Ethiopia on the international stage. Initially Italy supported him in this and was the sponsor for Ethiopia entering the League of Nations in 1923 which was allowed after Ras Tafari promised to end slavery in his country. However, this was something virtually every emperor had promised to do, going back to the nineteenth century but without effect, mostly because power remained in the hands of the local chieftains who had no desire to get rid of the practice. Ras Tafari, however, was determined to change all that by centralizing power. But, he did not yet have that power and a civil war broke out in the northern province of Tigre as the nobles rebelled against the program of modernization and centralization Ras Tafari was implementing. Those opposed to the new order took the side of Empress Zauditu but refused to submit to Ras Tafari. This civil war, effectively between Ras Tafari and his Empress, went on for many years but Ras Tafari had the better organized and better-armed forces and by 1928 he was victorious and the Empress was forced to crown him King, cementing his place as her successor though effectively it meant that Ethiopia had two monarchs; one held the nominal position of Empress but her nominal vassal the King held the real power.

There was one further rebellion by the consort of the Empress and other allied nobles but these were crushed in 1930 and immediately thereafter the Empress died. So it was that on November 2, 1930 Ras Tafari was crowned Haile Selassie I (“Holy Trinity”) the “Elect of God, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and King of Kings of Ethiopia”. The coronation was an extremely lavish affair, attended by dignitaries from around the world and the following year Emperor Haile Selassie put his modernizing attitudes into effect with the first written constitution in Ethiopian history, establishing the framework for democracy but initially putting power directly in the hands of the Emperor. Haile Selassie also limited the succession to his own descendants, which angered many of the other princes of the previous imperial lines but these were easily controlled. In 1932 the Kingdom of Jimma was easily occupied and annexed to Ethiopia and the country was developing rapidly. Military experts were brought in from various countries to train and modernize the Ethiopian army, starting with the Imperial Guard. Many foreign countries participated but the Emperor made a point of excluding Italy, wishing to keep them at a distance.

Tensions came to a head after a clash at a small oasis called Walwal in 1934. The following year, after a build-up of forces, Mussolini ordered the invasion of Ethiopia and Emperor Haile Selassie ordered all able-bodied men and boys to mobilize to defend their country. The initial Italian advance was successful but slow and the Emperor hoped that he could amass overwhelming numbers to defeat the Italians. However, his great “Christmas Offensive”, while it succeeded in putting the Italians on the defensive, did not destroy them. Fascist amateurs were replaced by Royal Army professionals and the Italians renewed their attack with greater speed and success. Native forces in the Italian colonial contingents, particularly the Somali Muslims, were eager for revenge and fought with great tenacity while many Christian natives in the Italian colonial units abandoned them to fight for Ethiopia. However, this was not a religious conflict. One of the most effective commanders on the Ethiopian side was a Turkish general who was anxious to fight Europeans wherever he found them. Ultimately, the weapons, tactics and discipline of the Italians proved decisive and within seven months the Ethiopian armies were destroyed and the country brought entirely under Italian control.

Emperor Haile Selassie left for Djibouti (a French colony) and was given transport by the British to Jerusalem. After visiting the Holy places, Haile Selassie went to Europe where he made his famous appeal to the League of Nations at Geneva. He spoke in his native tongue, reprimanding the League for their failure to take aggressive action against Italy and calling upon the principle of collective security to protect the underdeveloped nations of the world, arguing that without such international military action, treaties were meaningless. Although he was a defeated and deposed monarch, with that speech, Haile Selassie I became world famous and a living symbol of all who opposed Fascism. His speech and his example were invoked by many in the future to counter those who argued against going to war. The Emperor himself settled into a comfortable life of exile in England though he always considered it a temporary relocation and he was justified by events in doing so. Although his appeals for action by the League of Nations continued to be ignored, after the outbreak of World War II, Italian East Africa was invaded by the Allies and Emperor Haile Selassie issued an appeal calling upon the Ethiopians to rise up and fight. British Imperial forces, Free French troops and forces from the Belgian Congo along with Ethiopian irregulars played a part in defeating the cut-off Italian forces and on May 5, 1941 Emperor Haile Selassie I returned in triumph to his palace in Addis Ababa after five years of exile.

This was the high point in the reign of Haile Selassie who was never so revered by his own people and so widely respected around the world. The following year he ordered the abolition of slavery and after World War II, in the re-drawing of the map by the Allies, Ethiopia was awarded the Ogaden region (which had been claimed by Somalia) as well as Eritrea as an autonomous protectorate. Still, the local nobility blocked some of his efforts such as forcing the Emperor to enact a flat tax rather than the progressive tax system he preferred. Efforts to increase taxation on the nobility were usually passed on to the peasantry. Nonetheless, modernization efforts went forward as the Emperor was at the height of his personal prestige. Through his efforts the Ethiopian Orthodox Church gained independence from the Patriarch of Egypt, clerics were made subject to secular law for the first time and Church properties were subject to taxation like all others. The Emperor remained a firm believer in collective security (though he had certainly had ample reason to give up on the idea) and sent a battalion of Ethiopian troops to fight in the Korean War.

In 1955, as part of the festivities surrounding his Silver Jubilee, constitutional amendments were passed which increased democracy while still upholding the “indisputable power of the monarch”. Funds from the United Nations poured into the country and new schools were established, making education more widely available and greatly improving the infrastructure of the country. In the aftermath of World War II, Emperor Haile Selassie also became a vocal champion of African unity and a leading figure and powerful symbol of the anti-colonial movement in Africa. However, many of these anti-colonial groups were or contained communist factions and in the modernization of the country, revolutionary ideas began to spread amongst the student population and many educators. In 1960 this led to an attempted coup by the Imperial Guard which was not supported by the people and was relatively easily suppressed. To keep the military and police firmly on side a land reform act was passed which granted property to these groups. The anti-colonial movement also had an effect on Ethiopia itself which in 1961 saw the beginning of the decades long guerilla war for the independence of Eritrea. The Emperor responded to the outbreak of violence by closing down the Eritrean government and formally annexing the region to Ethiopia in 1962.

None of this, however, dampened his desire for African unity and in 1963 the revered Emperor oversaw the creation of the Organization for African Unity (later the African Union) and he was the first to propose all of the peoples of the continent coming together to create a “United States of Africa”. As the leader of the oldest, continuously independent African state, and one which had shaken off European rule, there was certainly no better qualified candidate to make such a case. The Emperor also remained a prominent figure on the international stage and in 1963 addressed the United Nations General Assembly, calling to mind his earlier appeal to the League of Nations and he spoke of the UN as “the best, perhaps the last, hope for the peaceful survival of mankind”. Admired all around the world, Emperor Haile Selassie continued to have trouble at home though. In 1966 he finally obtained the progressive tax he had long sought but the enforcement of it was discontinued when it sparked a rebellion in Gojjam province. Communism also began to increasingly spread its poison web of unrest and disloyalty to everything Ethiopia was based on, primarily the monarchy and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Communist infiltration and communist subversion grew in the following decades, preventing the Emperor from enacting all the changes he wished and forcing him to suppress radical leftist groups. His opposition to these far-left ideas which were becoming increasingly popular around the world and the actions taken to suppress agitators, began to erode the widespread popularity of the Emperor. Much of domestic policy was left in the hands of the prime minister while the Emperor, always a man of “big ideas” focused on “big picture” issues but the insidious influence of the traitors continued to spread. Discontent was greatly aggravated by a devastating famine in the north of the country that cost tens of thousands of lives. Foreign aid poured in but corrupt local officials often prevented it from reaching those most in need and the Soviet Union itself began to spread slanderous propaganda about the Emperor, eager to make a communist Ethiopia one of their puppet regimes in Africa. The 1973 oil crisis also hit Ethiopia hard and the communists were always reliable in portraying the Emperor as the cause of every misfortune in the country. Finally, in February of 1974, revolution broke out with much of the army turning against the monarchy. No amount of concessions from the Emperor were able to pacify the revolutionary frenzy and on September 12, Emperor Haile Selassie I was deposed and arrested by rebel military forces. The fallen monarch died the following year in captivity on August 27, 1975, allegedly from complications following a surgery though most believed the communists simply killed him.

Those who believed the propaganda that abolishing the monarchy and deposing the Emperor would bring prosperity to Ethiopia learned the hard way how they had been deceived. A brutal communist dictatorship was established which presided over a period of intense poverty, starvation and oppression for decades afterward. Decades later the communist regime did finally come down but overall there has still been relatively little improvement. The same social democratic coalition party has held power ever since that time. A costly war with Eritrea further weakened the economy and international observers have often dismissed the elections as blatantly fraudulent. These are often violent affairs and those who oppose the government are frequently arrested. Few countries have suffered so much from the loss of their monarchy as Ethiopia has.