On this day 89 years ago, the Fascist bourgeoisie invaded Ethiopia, massacring hundreds of thousands of humans
archive.org
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2183070
Quoting Carl T. Schmidt’s The Corporate State in Action: Italy under Fascism, pages 135–6:
Yet despite the efforts of the Fascist régime to salvage property interests and promote recovery, Italy was in an unhappy condition at the end of 1934. For, after more than ten years of power. Fascism had been unable to solve Italy’s economic difficulties.
Mussolini was forced to admit: ‘We touched bottom some time ago. We shall go no farther down. Perhaps it would be hard to sink any lower. […] We are probably moving towards a period of humanity resting on a lower standard of living. We must not be alarmed at the prospect. Humanity is capable of asceticism such as we perhaps cannot conceive.’²³
Not long after, in inaugurating the Corporations, he announced: ‘One must not expect miracles.’²⁴ Industrial production remained at low ebb, foreign trade still fell off, unemployment was at a distressingly high level and efforts to combat it had had little substantial effect. All this was very harmful to Fascist prestige.
Continued economic troubles and the inner pressures of Fascism impelled the Dictatorship to seek escape in foreign fields. War might be a kind of public works vastly more effective in reviving industry than anything tried before. With their attention focused on the glories of the battlefield, the people might be diverted from an uncomfortable concern over their domestic misfortunes. And certainly a military victory would solidify the Fascist movement and restore its fading glamour.
In this crisis, the rulers themselves would learn that the machine they had built under whose dominion men must live in constant spiritual tension, in fear and uncertainty is above all an engine of warlike enterprise.
(Emphasis added.)
For many Africans, this was the real start of World War II, and Fascism’s reputation in the liberal régimes would never be the same. Ethiopia was the only nation‐state in Africa to have successfully resisted European imperialism up until this point, and the invasion was so shocking to the world that even many otherwise profascist Japanese were appalled (for a while).
It cost the lives of at least 350,000 Ethiopians, involved numerous unpunished war crimes, and brought Europe’s two Fascist empires closer together, serving as an important inspiration to the Third Reich. Its importance can hardly be overstated, but I suspect that many of us know little to nothing about his tragedy thanks to Eurocentrist education.
Now, concerning the documentary: it is a bit crude and archaic at times, and being made for television it inevitably suffers from time constraints, but it is still quite good for beginners and anybody who is more orientated towards visual learning. It also provides examples of U.S. attitudes towards Mussolini pre‐1935, something that antisocialists rarely discuss.
Alternatively, Lion of Judah is an hour longer and is lush with precious archived footage, but it almost feels like a stereotypical nature documentary with its painfully long pauses between narrations, its lengthy shots of almost everything that the Italians and Ethiopians were doing (from dancing to pedestrianism), and the subtitles are difficult to read, but beggars can’t be choosers. (There are a few modern, amateur documentaries available, but I am reluctant to recommend them given that the authors are centrist chumps.)
Further reading:
The Invasion of Ethiopia — Mussolini’s […] Plan For Restoration of the Roman Empire
My humblest request is that we not let the memory of this tragedy fade away. Where other educators have failed in their duty, we must not fail in ours.
Click here for other events that happened today (October 3).
1892: Sentaro Omori, Axis vice admiral, existed.
1894: Walter Warlimont, Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff of the Third Reich’s Armed Forces High Command, blighted the earth.
1904: Ernst‐Günther Schenck, SS doctor, joined him.
1932: Imperial luxury ocean liner Hikawa Maru departed Kobe for Seattle, her 13th round trip across the Pacific.
1934: The Fascists of Gil Robles entered the Spanish government, sparking four days of violence by the workers in Barcelona and Asturias.
1935: Brixia Model 35 light infantry mortars entered service with the Regio Esercito. 1937: Imperial flightcraft sank Chinese torpedo boat Hupeng at Jiangyin.
1939: Hans Frank ordered a ‘ruthless exploitation’ of occupied Poland.
1940: Vichy passed antisemitic laws that excluded Jews from positions in the army, government, commerce, industries, and the press (in other words, Vichy reduced France’s Jews to second‐class citizens). Philippe Pétain, Pierre Laval, Raphaël Alibert, Marcel Peyrouton, Paul Baudouin, Yves Bouthillier, Charles Huntzinger and François Darlan all signed this law.Meanwhile, the Axis assaulted London, Worcester, Birmingham, and Wellingborough through single‐bomber raids. The Allies suffered damage at the De Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield, while the Axis lost one Ju 88 bomber to ground‐based antiaircraft fire. Overnight, several small Axis raids targeted London again. Lastly, Prince Kotohito stepped down as the Chief of the IJA’s General Staff.
1941: At about 0001 hours, Axis submarine U‐431 sank Allied ship Hatasu east of Newfoundland, massacring forty humans, and only seven survived. Afterwards at the Berliner Sportpalast in Berlin, the Chancellery announced during a rally that the Third Reich had captured 2,500,000 Soviet prisoners of war, destroyed or captured 22,000 guns, destroyed or captured 18,000 tanks, destroyed 14,500 aircraft, and since 1939 had expanded by an area four times as large as Britain. The Chancellery stressed that the Soviet Union had been broken and would never rise again. Coincidentally in Russia, Panzergruppe 2 of the Armeeguppe Mitte captured Orel 220 miles south‐southwest of Moscow. Elsewhere, the Axis attempted to encircle the Soviet Bryansk Front.
1942: The Axis and the Eastern Allies both incurred heavy losses as the 6.Armee pushed the Soviet 62nd Army back to the Volga River at Stalingrad. Additionally, the first successful A4 test flight reached the altitude of 84.5 kilometers (52.5 miles) at Peenemünde.
1943: The Wehrmacht invaded Kos Island under a heavy air umbrella, and the Axis massacred ninety‐two civilians in Lingiades, Greece.
1944: The Third Reich’s Air Force III/KG 66 at Burg, near Magdeburg reported an inventory of thirteen Mistel unmanned glide bombs, of which tenwere serviceable. Five of the flightcraft took off on this night to attack the bridges at Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The weather conditions were poor and three of the vehicles crashed into the Teutoburger Wald; Oberst Horst Polster, the Staffelkapitän, died as did Unteroffizier Fritz Scheffler and Unteroffizier Paul Barinski. The other pilots could not find the target in the fog and yet another was brought down.Additionally, the Axis established the first Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter unit at Achmer and Hesepe near Osnabrück under the command of Austrian‐born ace Major Walter Nowotny. The unit had thirty flightcraft distributed among two squadrons and took the task of intercepting USAAF day bomber raids on the heart of the Greater German Reich. As well, an Axis V‐2 rocket hit the Hellesdon Golf Course near Norwich, England at 1950 hours, injuring somebody and damaging a glasshouse, five farm buildings or barns, several haystacks, and one acre of sugar beet. On the other hand, Axis troops evacuated Tiddim, Burma.