Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [13]
The Italians had tried to take over Ethiopia (Abyssinia as it was then called), in the 1890’s. Their army had been ambushed and destroyed at Adowa in 1896, and they had never gotten over it. Not even the takeover of Libya in 1911 had assuaged their humiliation, so now Mussolini tried again. The Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, protested to the League of Nations, which found itself caught in a bind. Eventually, the League voted economic sanctions against Italy and cut off supplies of everything except those things, especially oil, which she needed to win her war. The British did not close the Suez Canal, which was the lifeline of the Italian war effort. Haile Selassie protested in vain.
The problem was that Britain and France wanted Italian support against the growing power of Hitler, and though they could not condone his takeover of Ethiopia, they did not wish to antagonize him any more than was absolutely necessary. They did not dare fight to stop him, as they were all too conscious of their own weakness. Italy had oil reserves for no more than a couple of days’ steaming for her fleet. The British did not know that; all they knew was that their own Mediterranean fleet had ammunition in its lockers for fifteen minutes’ firing. Anxious to offend no one, the Western Powers inevitably ended by alienating everyone. Haile Selassie lost his country, the League lost its credibility, assorted French and British politicians who tried to make deals with Mussolini lost office, Britain and France lost both prestige and the friendship of Italy.
The whole sorry story ended with Mussolini on his balcony proclaiming to a cheering crowd—a few of whom cared—that King Victor Emmanuel III was now “Emperor of Ethiopia” as well as King of Italy. Muscular, virile fascism, with the aid of tanks, bombers, and poison gas against tribesmen with antiquated rifles and a touching belief in the sincerity of the League of Nations, had fulfilled its destiny.
Conquest awaits those who are ready for it. Two months after the Ethiopian War ended, civil war broke out in Spain. In 1931, a republic had been set up in Spain, on the collapse of the monarchy of King Alfonso XIII. The new regime was too radical for the conservative forces in Spain—the landowners, army, and Church—and not radical enough for the masses—the urban poor and the landless peasants. There were constant risings and attempted coups from both right and left. In 1936, army officers in Spanish Morocco rose up against the leftist government, and the country burst into a full-scale civil war. Liberals and leftists not only in Spain but around the world rallied to the republic. Russia supported the Communists and, to a much lesser extent, the official Republican forces. Volunteers from Britain, France, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere went to Spain to fight. The rightist governments of the world supported the generals, or the Nationalists as they called themselves. Mussolini was the chief intervener. Italy eventually sent more than 50,000 troops to Spain. They were called volunteers, but they volunteered with their tanks, aircraft, and artillery.
The war became the great ideological battle of the thirties, not unlike the Vietnam War for the United States in the sixties. The western democracies refused to get involved and set up embargoes, nonintervention agreements, and neutrality patrols. The Russians were the main prop of the republic, though their selective support of only its Communist element may have done as much harm as good. The Italians and later the Germans were the chief support of General Franco and the Nationalists. The Italian contribution was probably greater, but as was by now coming to be normal, the Germans stole the limelight. It was they who tested their tactical concepts, by bombing undefended towns such as Guernica, and perfected