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Other than for personal aggrandizement, why did Mussolini invade a poor-resource country like Ethiopia in what was known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian war?
At the time of the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Italy had already made a colony out of the neighboring country of Eritrea. It served as the perfect base to launch an invasion of Ethiopia. Italy had some other colonies in Africa at that time. Perhaps, the most significant one was Libya.
Mussolini had a chip on his shoulder and felt that the Italians were considered "second rate" by other European powers like Britain, France, and Germany. At the time, these countries all had many colonies of their own in Africa. He was determined to prove that his fascist regime had created a "new Italy". This would be an Italy that was modern, industrialized, and militaristic like Germany was becoming. He had spoken many times of restoring the glory of ancient Rome to his country. If you remember, Rome built an Empire all around the Mediterranean that even extended into the British Isles. I'm sure Mussolini had that vision in mind when he cast his eye on Ethiopia. He craved equality with the other "great" nations of the world.
What is tragic about the invasion of Ethiopia is that it was one of only two or three places in Africa that had avoided colonization altogether. The Abysinnian Empire (as it called itself) was very ancient. Emperor Haile Selassie was the most recent of a long list of emperors who had ruled the area.
It is estimated the invasion and subsequent occupation of this independent country cost over 1,000,000 lives.
That's because they were, they failed at everything. They got their butts kicked in Libya and took 30 years to conquer a few Arabs in the desert. They had to resort to poison gas to defeat an almost medieval Ethiopian Army of which half it's weapons were relics from the late 1800s. They had to call Hitler to help them in Albania in 1939 and in Greece in 1940. They surrendered by the hundreds of thousands when the British sent Wingate and Gideon Force to recapture Ethiopia, and again in the North African campaign.
Some of the most iconic pictures of WWII are the ones where you see Italian soldiers marching off too a POW camp as far as the eye can see with only a few British soldiers on horses or an armored car or two escorting them. Talk about pathetic.
Hitler always said that the only brave Latin soldiers were the Spanish soldiers.
He had a poor concept of French, Italian and Romanian soldiers.
Italians also suffered some serious defeats during the Spanish Civil War, Guadalajara. They were torn to pieces when they tried to take Madrid by a "blitzkrieg" using a Michelin Map.
They had fine aircrafts, Savoia, Fiat.
They fought well under Spanish command.
To best understand the reasoning behind the invasion of Ethiopia, you have to look first at history from the Italian’s perspective, beginning with the “Scramble for Africa”. With the bulk of the choice territory having been snapped up primarily by Britain and France, the only places that Italy had been able to establish a foothold were Somaliland and Eritrea; territories she had obtained in the period between 1885 and 1891. Due to holding these two rather sizeable areas on the border of Ethiopia, it was agreed upon by the other colonial powers that Ethiopia fell within the Italian sphere of influence.
In 1887, a man named Francesco Crispi became the prime minister of Italy. Crispi was both a monarchist and an ultranationalist. He wanted nothing more than to see the Kingdom of Italy amass an empire comparable to those of France and Britain, and also replace France as the preeminent power in the Mediterranean. Crispi was determined to make Ethiopia the first building block of the new Italian empire. He ordered the governor of Eritrea, General Oreste Baratieri, to assemble an army capable of crushing Ethiopia. In December of 1895, the Italians marched into Ethiopia to much fanfare but no fighting. Finally, on March 1, 1896, the Italian forces and those of the Ethiopia’s emperor, Menelik II, met in battle at Adowa. When it was all over, the Ethiopians carried the day and not only handed Italy a crushing defeat, but also forced them to recognize by treaty, Ethiopia’s independence.
The next piece of the puzzle can be traced back to Italy’s entrance into the First World War on the side of the Triple Entente. Through the Treaty of London signed secretly between the Entente and Italy in 1915, the Italians had gained promises from the Entente powers which would have led to a significant increase in her territory. The list was rather lengthy: Trieste, Trento, Gorizia, Pola, Zara, several coastal towns in Dalmatia, the frontier area around the Brenner Pass, the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia, Albania, Valona, the Dodecanese Islands, possible concessions in German held African colonies, and parts of Turkey if the Ottoman Empire fell during the course of the war. However, when the victors met at war’s end at the Paris Peace Conference, virtually none of the promises given to Italy were kept. The Italians left the conference with what they referred to as a “mutilated victory”, and full of resentment toward Britain and France for their role in denying Italy what she believed she had earned.
When Mussolini came to power in 1922, the memory of the Italian “betrayal” at Paris was still fresh in everyone’s mind. So the central focus of his foreign policy from the beginning was the idea that Italy must obtain, either through negotiation or force of arms, all of those things she had been promised under the Treaty of London. Mussolini added another element, which was based on the concept that Italy was a “prisoner” in the Mediterranean, her right to expand constrained by the British and French holdings that surrounded her. Mussolini’s belief was that in order for Italy to become a truly powerful nation, she must “break the chains” that were holding her back. The means of achieving this was to “march toward the ocean”, in this case either the Red Sea or the Atlantic. Of course, the path in either of those two directions was blocked by British controlled Egypt and Sudan on the one side, and French Morocco on the other.
In 1935, Ethiopia then seemed to present Mussolini with an opportunity to accomplish several things at once. First and foremost would be the chance to avenge the defeat at Adowa, and erase the stain on Italy’s honor. Next, it would provide the crucial first step toward freeing Italy from her Mediterranean prison, since after Ethiopia, the plan was to go after Egypt and Sudan. With all three of those territories in hand, Libya could be linked with Italian East Africa and Italy would have an unimpeded path to the Indian Ocean. A successful campaign in Ethiopia would also be beneficial at home. The Fascist regime was then in it’s 13th year, and enthusiasm for it and Mussolini was beginning to wane. Mussolini believed that war was what kept a revolution fresh and a people inspired, so Ethiopia was seen as the spark needed to reignite Fascist passions once more. From the Italian point of view, the conquest of Ethiopia was seen as a great achievement. Britain and France could no longer deny that Italy had finally taken her rightful place among the great world powers. The dual humiliations of Adowa and the Paris Peace Conference were no more, and the ambitions of imperial dreamers like Francesco Crispi seemed to be on the verge of realization. Fascism was triumphant, and Il Duce’s popularity reached new heights.
In reality, the Ethiopian adventure cost Italy far more then she gained. The operation cost 40 million lira, seriously depleted precious armaments, and led to the military being bogged down fighting a guerrilla war that took 3 years to finally snuff out. Emboldened by “success” in East Africa, Mussolini committed Italian forces to fight in Spain in support of General Franco, which simply drained away more funds and arms which Italy could not readily replace. Thus, when Mussolini took Italy to war in June 1940, he led a country that was in a far weaker position then she had been in 1935-36, largely as a result of the Ethiopian invasion. The inability to establish the vital link between Libya and the East African possessions created a situation where the Italian colonies and forces there could not be reinforced in any way. While the Italians were initially stronger then their British counterparts in the region, that didn’t last long. The lack of war material flowing into the Italian side led inevitably to their defeat. Then, and only then, the invasion of Ethiopia was finally revealed for what it was; a colossal waste of Italian blood and treasure.
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