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Italian troops in Ethiopia
On the April 7, 1936, the Italian government announced the establishment of “Italian East Africa,” merging Italian Somaliland and Eritrea with Ethiopia and declaring Addis Ababa the capital of the new territory. The action came two days after Italian forces entered Addis Ababa and five days after Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie fled on a train to French-held Djibouti, carrying with him the contents of the Ethiopian central bank.
Speaking from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia on April 9, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini triumphantly told the crowd, “Italy finally has its Empire…It is a Fascist empire, an empire of peace, an empire of civilization and humanity.” Mussolini declared King Vittorio Emmanuel III of Italy the Emperor of Abyssinia, Field Marshall Badoglio was given the title “Duke of Addis Ababa and Viceroy of East Africa.” Pope Pius XI offered his blessings.
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The League of Nations, forerunner to the United Nations, lived up to the apt billing given to it by Lenin who famously described the organization as a “thieves kitchen” by verbally criticizing the Italian invasion but refusing to administer serious sanctions upon the aggressors. The sanctions eventually imposed by the League, some six weeks after the invasion, did not include materials like coal, oil and steel, vital to waging war, but instead included aluminum, of which Italy was a major exporter.
The US, Britain, and France, the major “democratic” imperialist powers, did nothing to oppose the rape of Ethiopia. The US continued to supply Italy with petroleum, and the British allowed the Italian military to use the Suez Canal to reach Ethiopia.
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