In October 1935, Italy invaded the Empire of Ethiopia. The Italian invasion and the international reaction to it pushed Italy toward the Axis. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia is the point where the relationship between Italy and Germany is changed, leading to the creation of the European Axis. Prior to this, Italy was united with France against Germany; after this, Italy united with Germany against France.
Why does Italy want to invade Ethiopia?
In 1894, Italy invaded Ethiopia and was defeated by Ethiopian forces under Emperor Menelik II at Adwa in 1896. In the aftermath of the defeat, Italy was forced to sue for peace and recognize Ethiopian independence. The Battle of Adwa was the only instance of a modern European nation being defeated by an African nation. Italy’s defeat caused a stir in Europe and led major newspapers to question Italy’s status as a ‘civilized’ country, the ‘Whiteness’ of Italians, and whether Italy should be trusted with its existing colonies.
The loss at Adwa was a mark of shame that hung over Italy and other countries never stopped mentioning it. To Mussolini, Italian honor could not be restored without avenging the Battle of Adwa. The best way for Italy to demonstrate its transformation from a weak liberal country to a strong fascist state, capable of dominating the world, would be to conquer Ethiopia, the country that had beat liberal Italy.
Italy also felt ashamed of its small colonial empire, with only 1.3 million subjects, compared to Britain and France. Adding 10 million subjects would make Italy look like a powerful colonial power. Logistically, Ethiopia is a good choice because it is not a European colony, so it won’t trigger a European war, and Italy already has colonies in Eritrea and Somalia that it can use as staging points.
Why wait until 1935 to invade Ethiopia?
The main reason is the inability of Italy to effectively project power during the 1920s due to its large war debts, its weak military, and the fact that its limited financial and military resources were tied up fighting the Sanusi in Libya. The Sanusi are only defeated in 1932, freeing up Italian resources.
The 1930s are also an ideal opportunity for Italian expansion because its main competitors, Britain and France, are weakened by the Great Depression, whereas Italy, as a non-capitalist state, weathers the crisis well. Italy is thus well positioned to make aggressive moves against British or French interests.
The other power expanding during this period was Germany, which was rapidly rearming. Italy wanted to strike during a sweet spot when it was strong relative to Britain and France but before Germany was strong enough to take advantage of Italy’s involvement in Africa by invading Austria. The election of Hitler in 1933 and his success in revising the Versailles order also triggers an inferiority complex for Mussolini, who seeks to prove that he is the better fascist and the better dictator.
After considerable success against the bourgeois in the early 1930s, Mussolini perceives progress toward a fascist society as stalling in the mid-1930s. Corporatism isn’t going too hot. Despite the Lateran Treaty, the Church would still not shut up and retained its major role in Italian society and education. The monarchy was as strong as ever and inculcated those aristocratic values that Mussolini viewed as harmful to fascism.
The monarchy still worries about civil war and is unwilling to dismiss Mussolini, but Mussolini still doesn’t have the loyalty of the army or enough power to abolish the monarchy. Both sides decide to play a long game, with the monarchy hoping to outlive Mussolini and Mussolini promoting youth activities and general fascist indoctrination that will create a new fascist generation opposed to monarchy. In 1934, Mussolini introduced mandatory military training for men between 18 and 21, followed by a period of reserve duty. The hope was that, like fascist youth groups, this would promote fascist values and instill men with fascist values; it would turn weak Italians into strong fascists. From the very beginning it was clear that the mandatory military training was failing to make Italians more fascist. Mussolini had to try another method of making Italians more disciplined, militaristic, aggressive, and domineering. His next idea is that war will make Italians into fascists.
Ethiopia and Fascist Italy
Italy had actively pursued influence in Ethiopia since 1921 and Mussolini worked throughout the 1920s to increase the Italian presence in Ethiopia and keep other countries from having too much influence there. Mussolini’s original plan had been to destabilize the Ethiopian government of Emperor Haile Selassie, with the idea that Italy would then be given a League of Nations mandate over Ethiopia. This strategy was pursued during the 1920s, but despite many close calls from coups, Haile Selassie’s regime was secure by the early 1930s.
In November 1934, Italian colonial troops and Ethiopian soldiers clashed at Welwel over a disputed border, resulting in casualties on both sides. Italy demanded that Ethiopia apologize for the incident and pay an indemnity. Instead of giving into Italian demands, Ethiopia turned the dispute over the League of Nations, as both countries were members. The League then tried its best to get the Italians to negotiate. Italy participates in the League of Nations arbitration at the most superficial level, but Mussolini obviously plans to invade regardless, as Italian forces are built up in Somalia and Eritrea over the Spring and Summer of 1935.
Seeing that negotiations in the League of Nations were failing, Britain and France met with Italy in August 1935. They proposed that Italy would be given full economic control over Ethiopia and could impose any economic concession it desired. However, they were equally adamant that Italy could not annex Ethiopia, as it was a League of Nations member. France, in particular, was eager to strike a deal with Italy, avoiding disagreements in Africa and keeping the Stresa Front together in the aftermath of German rearmament. To this end, they had already signed an agreement in January 1935 that settled disputed colonial boundaries in Eritrea and Libya in favor of Italy. Both Britain and France felt obligated to protect the sanctity of the League of Nations, which meant protecting Ethiopian independence. On the other hand, they looked down on Ethiopia because it was African and were preoccupied with German rearmament, so they were eager to make the issue go away.
Mussolini rejected the British and French offer, saying that he would accept nothing less than annexation or significant territorial concessions from Ethiopia, the exact things that Britain and France were unwilling to grant. Mussolini rejected the British and French offer because wasn’t really interested in exploiting Ethiopia economically, he only cared about Italian prestige. He believed that Italian honor could only be restored by dominating Ethiopia, preferably by a war of conquest. He didn’t want a colony for economic gain, but for the reputation as a colonial power. Anything less than total control of Ethiopia wouldn’t fulfill his goals. Mussolini also preferred war because it accomplished his other political goal of creating the fascist ‘novus homus’ through war.
The Ethiopian War
On 3 October 1935, in defiance of the months of negotiations in the League of Nations, Italy invaded Ethiopia without a declaration of war. It marched in soldiers south from Eritrea and captured Adwa on 6 October. The first combat occurred in December 1935 around Mekelle. Most fighting during the war was concentrated on this northern front on the plateau in Tigray. Italian forces, bolstered by air support and permission to use poison gas, broke through Ethiopian lines in April 1936 and marched south on the capital. On 2 May 1936, Haile Salessie fled to French Somaliland (Djibouti), eventually going into exile in Britain. The Italians captured Addis Ababa on 5 May and announced they had annexed Ethiopia.
During the war, Italy deployed airplanes and heavy artillery to great effect against the less heavily equipped Ethiopian army. Italy deliberately bombed civilian settlements, killed civilians and POWs, and used illegal poison gas in combat and against civilians, including gas bombing Red Cross centers. The brutality of the Italian war effort and its attacks on civilians was not instrumental (to instill fear), but a goal unto itself. The goal of unleashing unnecessary violence against innocent civilians was to exercise overwhelming military power and have the novus homus of Italy experience domination.
By May 1936, Italy had successfully conquered Ethiopia and, in Mussolini’s mind, cleansed Italy of the shame of the Battle of Adwa. In the subsequent months, Italian troops spread out to occupy the rest of the country, incorporating Ethiopia as a part of Italian East Africa and subjecting it to colonial rule. Italy lost perhaps 10k soldiers in the war. Victory was very popular in Italy.
Despite controlling the major cities and forcing Haile Sailesse to flee, Italy failed to establish control over the Ethiopian countryside and, immediately following the conquest, faced an insurgency. Italy’s brutal reprisals against insurgents, including a massacre of 20k in Addis Ababa, were militarily ineffective and increased public anger, leading to a stronger insurgency. Italian rule in Ethiopia was challenged during the entire colonial period.
The role of the League of Nations
The Italian invasion took place after Germany announced its official rearmament program, which quickly became the main focus of French and British attention. Mussolini thought that Britain would be too distracted in Europe to act and that France would be too worried about Germany to break the Stresa Front. The defection of Britain from the Stresa Front in August 1935 only increased Mussolini’s certainty that France would be willing to ignore Italian aggression in Ethiopia, as it was now more desperate for allies.
The behavior of France and Britain during the negotiations over Ethiopia in 1935 convinced Mussolini that neither country would risk military confrontation to protect Ethiopia’s sovereignty. France and Britain clearly didn’t care about Ethiopia, as demonstrated by their offer in August 1935, so they likely would not commit resources to defending it.
Additionally, Japan had left the League of Nations in February 1933, after attacking another League member, China. There had been no military reprisals against Japan, nor were sanctions imposed on it, and Japan continued its war against China. Mussolini expected the League to similarly do nothing if he invaded Ethiopia.
Within a week of the Italian invasion, on 7 October 1935, the League of Nations voted to impose economic sanctions on Italy, prohibiting the sale of arms or war materiel, the giving of loans to Italian banks, and imports from Italy, beginning 18 November. Faced with the failure of the sanctions to stop the Italian war effort, they were abandoned in July 1936, a month after Italy announced victory.
The imposition of sanctions severed the ties between Italy and the rest of the Entente. Italy is furious at Britain and France for imposing sanctions and leaves the Stresa Front as a result. More broadly, Italy is now hostile to all of the other members of the League, putting it at odds with the Americas and most of Europe. This leaves Italy in an isolated position internationally, as it is hostile to Germany, France, Britain, and the USSR.
The Spanish Civil War
In July 1936, in the aftermath of a failed military coup, a civil war broke out in Spain. Within months, both Italy and Germany were involved in the conflict, which would last until 1939. The conflict, so soon after its invasion of Ethiopia, nearly bankrupted Italy and led it to pursue an alliance with Germany, its cobelligerent.
The background is that, in February 1936, Spain’s elections were won by the Popular Front, a coalition government of liberals, democrats, socialists, and communists. The Right worried that the socialists in the government, who had launched a failed revolution in 1934, would take over and turn Spain into a communist dictatorship. Seemingly confirming these fears, the Popular Front government amnestied prisoners of the 1934 leftist revolt and reinstated communist officials.
Rightists and fascists, most prominently the Falange, started street violence and terrorist bombings, to which the leftists responded. There were assassinations, murders, bombings, and church burnings throughout 1936, even before the civil war started. The immediate trigger of the July coup was the assassination of Jose Calvo Sotelo, a monarchist and the leader of the rightist parliamentary opposition.
On 17 July 1936, a rightist conspiracy within the army launched its coup, ordering the garrisons in Spanish Morocco to mutiny. Over the next 3 days, military units in the mainland also mutinied, bringing large parts of Spain under control of the coup plotters, although they failed to capture Madrid or any major cities except Sevilla. In these areas, army units remained loyal and the government armed the population. The Republican government refused to surrender and the coup plotters refused to negotiate, instead demanding that all power be turned over to them unconditionally. This set the country on a path to civil war.
Spain was an extremely internationalized conflict, with volunteers flocking (particular to the Republican side) from all over the world. On top of that, Italy, Germany, and the USSR all intervened in the conflict. It was perceived, globally, as either a conflict of democracy versus fascism or a conflict of socialism versus fascism. The Soviet and fascist interventions reinforced each other, as did German and Italian intervention, as the powers competed first to fight the other’s forces and, in the latter case, as a contest for influence in Spain and for international notoriety.
France, Britain, and the USA collectively agreed to remain neutral in the Spanish civil war. If they weren’t going to intervene, they didn’t want anyone else to intervene so they made a treaty to not export arms or get involved in the Spanish war. The Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy all signed it with no intention of actually doing that shit.
Already by 25 July 1936, Germany had been contacted by Nationalist forces and had sent planes to assist their cause; Italy was also contacted too after the coup was launched. German and Italian air and naval forces, sent at the beginning of the conflict in Summer 1936, were instrumental in cowing the Republican navy and allowing the Nationalists to transport their troops from Morocco to Spain. Italy and Germany also supplied the Nationalists with weapons and supplies. Already in Fall 1936, Germany and Italy had sent military advisors to the Nationalists. In November, Germany sent the Condor Legion to fight alongside the Nationalists, with 30k airmen serving on a rotating basis in Spain over the course of the conflict; and in December, Italy sent soldiers and Blackshirts to fight in Spain under the Corps of Volunteer Troops, eventually deploying some 50k soldiers in Spain by 1937, including armored divisions and artillery. On 18 November, Italy and Germany officially recognized the Nationalists, who had consolidated under Francisco Franco, as the legitimate Spanish government.
The participation of the Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil War gave the Luftwaffe more practice training and experience than any other air force in Europe. In 1939, its pilots were the most experienced and best trained. The Condor Legion and the Italian Legionary Aviation carried out massive bombing raids, often targeting civilian populations to create fear and decrease morale. The most famous of these was the bombing of Guernica, which was destroyed by the Condor Legion and Legionary Aviation. The Italians used both gas and fire bombs on civilian populations.
The USSR intervened in the war by instructing the Communist Party of Spain to organize volunteers into the International Brigades and raise militias. In October 1936, it began sending weapons to the Republicans, including airplanes and tanks, fearing that if it did not send direct military aid, the Republicans would lose Madrid before 1937.
Italy had both positive and negative aims for its intervention. It wanted to prevent the establishment of a communist state in Spain, but Mussolini also saw the war as a great opportunity to turn Spain into a puppet state under Italian influence. Mussolini also has his larger goal in mind of using war to forge a fascist novus homus and rid Italians of the weak traits he despised. The Ethiopian war was good, but more war was needed and would produce better results.
Germany intervened because the Nationalists asked for assistance at the beginning of the conflict. Hitler saw it as an opportunity to fight Soviet influence in Europe and also hoped that a Nationalist Spain would join him in an invasion of France.
The USSR became directly involved later, initially only focusing on internal rivalries amongst the Republicans. Its primary goal was preventing a fascist victory in Spain. Stalin had larger strategic concerns that a fascist Spain would focus French attention away from the German border, which could potentially unleash Germany on the USSR without its French ally (its only ally). From the victory of the Popular Front, Stalin was intently focused on purging the Republicans and the Spanish Left of any elements not totally loyal to the Comintern. Soviet involvement often took the form of secret police operating in Republican areas.
France was initially interested in intervening and did send 50 airplanes, having its own Popular Front government, but felt that further involvement would be a distraction from its larger problems with Germany and Italy. For Britain, it was simply the wrong time and the wrong place. As the influence of the USSR over the Republicans increased, Britain and France became more concerned about supporting that side. As the fight transformed into communism versus fascism, the democratic powers resolved to sit out the fight.
The Pact of Steel
The Spanish civil war only ended in April 1939, only months before the start of WWII. Over that period, Italy financed the deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers in Spain and outfitted the Nationalist army, while continuing to garrison a restless Ethiopia. Its military adventurism means that Italy is broke, internationally isolated, and stretched thin militarily. Mussolini recognizes that, in 1936, Italy is in a bad strategic position. It has no allies and has hostile relations with Germany, France, Britain, and the USSR. There is the potential for war with Britain in the Mediterranean and with Germany over Austria.
Italy is flatout broke and its military cannot effectively fight another war, especially one against a major power, while maintaining its commitments in Ethiopia and Spain. Italy’s military adventures are costly, particularly Ethiopia. The occupation of Ethiopia generates essentially no tax revenue and has no benefit to the Italian economy. All of Italy’s colonies were drains on the national budget, even more so after Mussolini began pouring money into Africa in 1935. Ethiopia alone takes up 25% of the entire Italian budget!
Italy is forced to choose between renouncing its expansionist aims in Africa and the Mediterranean to repair relations with France or abandoning its commitment to Austrian independence to befriend Germany. Mussolini chooses to throw Austria under the bus and ally with Hitler.
Why do Mussolini choose Germany over France? For Mussolini, Italian expansion in the Mediterranean was an existential question: either Italy would achieve its destiny of pushing aside weaker powers in its expansion or it would die, resigning itself to a fate as a weak state conquered by a stronger people. Austria did not hold similar importance and Hitler was fine with Italian expansionism in the Mediterranean.
On 6 November 1937, Italy cemented its new orientation toward Germany, and against Britain and France, by becoming a member of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Signing the document committed Italy to nothing concrete, but it confirmed Italy’s new foreign policy of friendship with Germany and Japan. A condition for Italy’s accession to the Pact was its acquiescence to union between Germany and Austria. With Italian agreement, this eventually occurred in 1938. Although the Anti-Comintern Pact never comes into force, and dies after Hitler’s 1939 alliance with the USSR, Italian accession is the first instance of all three Axis powers being aligned. This alliance will persist from this point onward, eventually becoming the Tripartite Treaty of 1940.
Why is Mussolini willing to give up on Austrian independence? Italian fears over Austria always came from anxiety over Tyrol. Mussolini extracts a guarantee that Hitler wouldn’t agitate among the Germans of Tyrol, something he had never planned on doing anyway because his priorities lay elsewhere, allowing Italy to abandon Austria without jeopardizing its own security.
Britain and France were understandably worried about Italy’s alignment toward Germany and tried to convince Italy to rejoin the Entente power against Germany. France, which Mussolini believed was weak and vulnerable, failed to successfully negotiate with Italy. Britain did manage to restore its relations with Italy, but failed to prevent its alliance with Germany.
The final attempt of Entente diplomacy to sever the ties between Italy and Germany were the Easter Accords, signed on 16 April 1938. In the Accords, Britain and Italy pledged to not challenge each other’s interests in East Africa or the Arabian Peninsula, Britain upheld free passage for Italian ships through Suez, and Italy promised to withdraw its troops from Spain. At no point did Italy actually intend to honor any of its commitments, keeping forces in Spain until the end of the war in April 1939 and continuing to plan for the eventual seizure of the Suez Canal. Both Britain and Italy thought that the limited provisions of the Accords were the start to a larger geopolitical realignment, Britain wanting to split Italy off from Germany and Italy wanting to split Britain off from France. Neither country changed alliances, so both were disappointed.
Italy and Germany officially become military allies, obligated to join one another in war, with the signing of the Pact of Steel on 22 May 1939. It is under this agreement that the countries will go to war against the Entente. Unlike the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was explicitly against the USSR, the Pact of Steel is oriented against Britain and France. For this reason, Japan does not accept the German and Italian offer to join, believing the focus should be on the USSR and that peace should be maintained with Britain. The signing of the Pact of Steel cements the alliance between Germany and Italy. This marks the end of British and French attempts to prevent Germany from gaining allies. This also confirms Italy’s stand with Germany against Britain and France.
The basis of the German-Italian alliance
Italy allies with Germany because it is the only major nation in Europe to not condemn the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Italy had scarce choice of allies and decided to ally with Germany against France and Britain, rather than the other way around. The experience of Italian and German troops fighting alongside in Spain also did a lot to build trust between Mussolini and Hitler and convince Italy that Germany was a firm ally against Communism.
Germany has wanted to have an alliance with Italy since the early 1930s, as Italy is the only major power both hostile to the USSR and willing to support Hitler’s revisionist goals. Austria had been the only stumbling block preventing an earlier alliance. Hitler’s desire for an Italian alliance only becomes more intense as time passes, as Germany steadily becomes more internationally isolated and the likelihood of war with France increases.
The relationship, and even the eventual alliance, between Germany and Italy is always pragmatic rather than ideological. Germany and Italy both intend to use the other country to support their separate foreign policy goals. Italy and Germany, even in 1939, will craft independent and uncoordinated foreign policies. This should be held in mind looking at Italian and German behavior, that they want the other party to get involved in their largely unrelated conflicts. In practice, the Second World War in Europe really starts as two wars: an Italian war in the Balkans and a German war in eastern Europe. Their foreign policies only begin to align when Italy, after repeated failures in the Balkans and North Africa, gives up and allows its foreign policy to be dictated by Germany around 1941.
Germany sees Italy as a useful ally against Britain and France. Hitler’s hope is that Italy will fight France, taking the pressure off Germany. Eventually, Hitler hopes that Italy will join it in the final fight against the Soviet Union. To achieve its goal of defeating France by provoking it into an aggressive war, Hitler starts shit in eastern Europe, much to chagrin of Italy, which has no interests there.
Mussolini believes he can leverage the alliance into getting German support, or German protection, for Italian ambitions in the Mediterranean. With this in mind, Mussolini uses the cover of the Pact of Steel to become more aggressive in pursuing its expansionist aims. Confident in German assistance, Italy will invade Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia, much to the annoyance of Hitler, who believes these conflicts distract from the main goal of destroying the USSR.
Fascist gains in Italian domestic politics
The same international isolation that led Mussolini to ally with Germany also bolstered his power domestically, as an isolated Italy was more willing to look to Il Duce for guidance. Alliance with Germany further strengthened the power of Italian fascists, leading to more reforms. Mussolini is still in a position of competition with the monarchy over the future of Italian society and takes all the opportunities he can to strike against the Right and advance fascist goals.
The first opportunity that Mussolini gets is the sanctions briefly imposed by the League of Nations. He uses the excuse of League of Nations sanctions to further nationalize core parts of the Italian economy and begin a general push toward autarky. Mussolini’s allegation is that the sanctions have exposed how vulnerable Italy is as long as it depends on international markets. Accordingly, Italy should guarantee self-sufficiency in key sectors, including war industries. Since economic autarky doesn’t exist because it is not cost efficient or economically competitive, Mussolini nationalizes more Italian industries to achieve this goal, including all war industry, heavy industry, and most of the agricultural sector. Already in 1935, Italy had the second largest public sector after only the USSR. By the late 1930s, all major Italian industries will be state owned and most goods are distributed rather than sold on markets.
In 1937, the PNF was officially written into the Italian Constitution. Not only is Italy now a one party state, but the PNF is now recognized as the only legitimate political force in the country. In 1939, the Italian Parliament, which had been a rubber stamp body controlled by the PNF anyway, was dissolved and replaced by the ‘Chamber of the Fasci and Corporations’. The Parliament had been a symbol of the bourgeois democracy that Mussolini despised, even if he had stripped it of function. Creating a corporate form of representation had been a longtime goal even since D'Annunzio had introduced a similar legislature in Fiume back in 1919. The members of the Chamber were a mix of leaders of the PNF and representatives of the workers and owners of each sector of the Italian economy. Representatives of sectoral interests had already been selected as part of the corporatist labor reforms introduced in the 1920s; the same men were elevated to being part of the legislature.
As a result of these reforms, the King is still the leader of Italy, but he rules over a country with radical different institutions, and economic and political organization. Mussolini’s hope is that these fascist institutions will reshape society and allow fascism to outlive both the monarchy and Mussolini himself.
What does Italy do now that it has conquered Ethiopia?
Mussolini’s plan for Ethiopia, to the degree that he thought about it before the act of conquest, was to transform it and all of Italy’s other African possessions into settler colonies. Mussolini wants to resettle Italian peasants in the African colonies. This is meant to take care of two problems at once: reducing landlessness and population pressure in rural Italy and establishing a loyal settler population in Africa.
What is a ‘settler colony’? It is a colony that is expected to support a large population of the colonizing people, with the aim of their eventually becoming a majority of the population. Examples include European colonies in the Americas and British colonization of South Africa.
Rural Italy, especially southern Italy, experiences a massive land shortage. There is not enough fertile land to support the peasant population. On top of that, land distribution, especially in the South, is very unequal, leaving many peasants entirely landless. Mussolini views this as a travesty, as it reduces Italians to the status of serfs, inculcating a servile attitude. He wants to create a freeholding peasant class, which he believes will be responsive to fascist values. Unfortunately for Mussolini, the landlords of southern Italy are aristocrats and politically empowered by the monarchy, so he is largely unable to remove them without risking open confrontation with the monarchist army. He decides to create a freeholding peasant class in Africa because he cannot create one in Italy. The settlement of Italian peasants in Africa is meant to install a population loyal to Mussolini and to Italy in areas with large populations hostile to Italian colonialism. These populations will pacify the Italian colonies, make them require less money and smaller garrisons.
Although his focus is on turning the African colonies into peasant farming communities, Mussolini also wants to exploit the African colonies for natural resources and as potential markets for Italian goods. Many Italian merchants do start operating in the colonies, but this boom is built on government contracts related to Italy’s massive infrastructure investment programs in Africa. Mussolini directs a huge portion of the Italian budget, 25% to Ethiopia alone, to investments in the colonies. This includes public buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural improvement. Mussolini invests so much in Africa because he has a very different idea of colonialism from other European powers. He doesn’t see colonies as ‘something over there’, but as a place that will someday host large Italian populations and be incorporated into a larger Italian Empire. Accordingly, it is important to prepare the colonies as the sites of future Italian settlement.
Why does Mussolini want settler colonies? Mussolini’s preference for settler colonies was an expression of his belief that the strong will expand and push out the weak; by colonizing Africa, Italians are literally displacing weaker people. The settlement of Italians abroad was also crucial in realizing Mussolini’s ambition of creating an Italian Empire based on the supremacy of fascist Italian culture and politics. He didn’t want the Italian colonies to be separate, but instead to eventually become integral parts of an expanded Italian state.
Mussolini’s plans for the African colonies were almost all unmitigated failures, as they failed to attract peasant settlers and cost enormous sums of money. Despite land shortages in Italy, Italian peasants were largely unwilling to move to Africa. Violence meant that settlers were particularly unwilling to move to Ethiopia. Most Italian colonies saw fewer than 10k settlers and Ethiopia had fewer than 1k. The only colony to receive significant settlement was Libya, where around 10% of the population was Italian. Moreover, almost all settlement was in cities, not freeholding peasant communities. In Ethiopia, the establishment of a settler colony faced the additional obstacle of the fact that, like Italy, Ethiopia faced a shortage of arable land. There was very little land to redistribute to peasants.
The project of preparing the colonies for Italian settlement, through public works and infrastructure, was massively expensive. Additionally, these projects were meant for that Italian settler population than never appeared. None of the Italian colonies produced, or had ever produced, a profit. None of Italy’s colonies had significant natural resources, as Libyan oil had not yet been discovered. Unrest and poor administration also meant that Italy received virtually no tax revenue from its colonies. Even the hope that Ethiopia would prove a breadbasket that would assist Italy in being self-sufficient in grain cultivation was wrong, as distributions due to the insurgency meant that Ethiopia remained a net grain importer during the period of Italian occupation. In summary, Italian policy in Africa was extremely costly, generated no revenue, and failed in its political goal of establishing settler colonies.
Italy’s racial laws
The other major innovation in Italian colonial policy after the conquest of Ethiopia was the promulgation of the racial laws in October 1938. These laws established a segregationist regime in the Italian colonies as well as stripping Jews of Italian citizenship.
Prior to the fascist takeover in 1922, Italy, like all other European colonial powers, premised its governance on White supremacy. Unlike the liberal democratic colonialists, however, Mussolini was entirely uninterested in race. Mussolini was an Italian chauvinist, but he did not believe in race science and stated that Italian superiority would be the result of culture rather than biological race. Importantly, culture, unlike race, could be changed. This both created the possibility for Italians to improve themselves through the adoption of a fascist culture and allowed Africans to become Italian through immersion in Italian culture. Mussolini’s plan for the native population of its colonies, prior to 1938, had been to inculcate in them the same fascist culture he wanted the Italians to adopt. He hoped that by enrolling them in fascist organizations and encouraging the settlement of fascist Italians amongst them, the native Africans would adopt a fascist culture that would make them into Italians.
The 1938 racial laws established apartheid in the Italian colonies, prohibiting Italians from intermarrying or engaging in sexual relations with either Africans or Jews. The laws further banned Africans and Jews from any work other than manual labor, reserving the professions and trades for Italians, and likewise prohibited Italians from performing manual labor. They also stripped Africans and Jews of citizenship. It is almost certain that the provisions on Jews were added under pressure from Hitler, as a display of Italian goodwill toward the antisemitic Nazi regime. They strongly resembled the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.
Mussolini introduced these racial laws because an apartheid system was intended to acclimate Italians to the experience of being masters. Unlike every other segregationist system in history (European colonies in Africa, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba), this one wasn’t motivated by racism, because Mussolini didn’t believe in race. War had failed to make Italians into fascists, as demonstrated by the fact that Italians were still servile, lazy, generous, tenderhearted, etc. Mussolini decides to try forcing Italians to assume the position of master, to get them used to the experience of being totally dominant. The core experience of fascism is being strong, domineering, and the master, so Mussolini creates a social system where Italians will be the masters in every interaction. Mussolini hopes that the laws will accustom Italians to their new role as the masters of the world by having them practice lording it over Africans. They will develop fascist attitudes in Africa and retain them when they leave.
Like the other aspects of Italian colonial policy, the racial laws are a total failure. They are never effectively enforced and Italians ignore and violate every single one of the laws. The laws are at least partially accepted in Italy itself, largely because they conform to the racist and White supremacist views dominant in Europe at the time. They are totally rejected by Italians in the colonies. Italian settlers were used to intermarrying with Africans (and to a lesser extent Jews), working alongside them, and performing manual labor. Italians continued doing just this regardless of the law. Violations of the racial laws, particularly the laws prohibiting miscegenation and reserving manual labor for Africans or Jews, were so widespread that the Italian colonial governments gave up, admitting that they simply could not jail all of the violators.
The racial laws were widely considered an embarrassment in Italy, as it was well known they were ineffective. Many fascists considered it contrary to their values and an act of submission to Hitler. The Catholic Church strongly objected to the racial laws, as they contradicted Catholic doctrine. Criticism from one of the most powerful groups in Italy made the laws even more of an embarrassment.
— Eunice Noh, July 2020
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