Cyber Ethiopia

We saw last week that, during the early stages of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, the Fascist leadership was engaged in a fierce power struggle. Two of the principal contenders were Alessandro Lessona, the doctrinaire former Minister of the Colonies, now Minister of Italian Africa, and Rodolfo Graziani, the brutal Fascist Viceroy. The former, as the latter recalls on his memoirs, was constantly sending telegrams from Rome, containing "draconian orders", urging stronger repression. The first of these "draconian orders" dealt with the treatment of the Young Ethiopians whose execution, as we have seen, Mussolini had ordered as early as May 3, 1936. Graziani shared the Duce's aversion to these young men, most of whom had studied in France, where, he declares, they had become "imbued" with

modern "democratic and Voltarian ideas", which had made them a "hostile nucleus, and the more dangerous because capable of terrorist acts." On reaching Addis Ababa he had accordingly had the young men arrested, as a "precautionary measure", and had decided on placing them in a concentration camp at Danale in Somalia.  While carrying out what he calls this "normal police measure", he received "peremptory orders" from Rome, prescribing their "immediate summary trial". This command was embodied in a telegram of July 10 from Lessona. It recalled Mussolini's earlier command and declared it "necessary that such orders be executed completely", so that the Young Ethiopian be "eliminated without mercy." Graziani, however, refused to follow these instructions, and was supported in this by the local Italian Director of Political affairs, Carlo Avolio, who also "adopted an attitude of absolute opposition to these orders." The young men therefore remained in detention, but were not killed. "Bombarded with Such Orders" The Viceroy later recalled, in his memoirs, that he was "bombarded" with many such orders, which, as he points out, were later seized after the Fascist collapse by the American Intelligence Service. (Microfilm copies of them can therefore be consulted for example in the Library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies) "'I order you', said one of them, 'to apply a rule of terror.' 'Without the law of a hundred per cent retaliation it is useless to hope for a rapid submission and pacification,' suggested another. 'Take action that all prisoners, as soon as captured, are executed,' enjoined a third. 'I order that all chiefs, wherever captured, be immediately shot.' And again: 'I repeat to you that it is necessary to establish a regime of absolute terror.' And so on." Many of the telegrams sent to Graziani from Rome were indeed couched in such vain, as is apparent by scrutiny of the documents themselves. Less than Honest Graziani is, however, less than honest in remaining silent about his own apparently whole-hearted acceptance of the policy of terror, which is equally well documented. He was thus responsible in this period for the execution, on July 30, 1936, of the Ethiopian bishop Abuna Petros, news of which was, however, strictly excluded from the fascist press. On September 11, he ordered "reprisals without mercy in Lasta", where, he declared, "villages must systematically be destroyed in order that the people be convinced of the inevitable necessity of abandoning their leaders." On December 12 he likewise telegraphed one of his commanders, General Tracchia, to "disarm and liquidate without mercy and illusion", and, noting that the people of Shawa were now "obsequious," he added: "I ask you not to be moved." Gas Several of Graziani's telegrams also gave orders for the use of yperite and asphyxiating gases, while Poggiali tells in his diary of numerous executions of Ethiopians caught in the possession of arms. The Viceroy, apparently anxious to place himself in a favourable historical light, ignores such acts, merely asserting in his memoirs that he was under constant pressure from Lessona to adopt a policy of greater ruthlessness, and claims: "I asked, implored in vain that I be accorded full confidence, be allowed to act with freedom of action and decision. The Minister agreed in principle, but if I then resisted the application of some orders, the severity of which seemed to me absurd and dangerous, this sharpened the defeatist campaign against me who was accused of having lost my old bite, of being enfeebled and worse. Echoes of this campaign, destructive at least in its intentions, reached me from Rome through multiple channels, but did not succeed in making me depart from the principles of equity and equilibrium which I had traced." The Menilek and Lion of Judah Statues A further, somewhat bizarre, dispute between Graziani and Lessona arose out of Mussolini's decision to remove the pre-war statues of Emperor Menilek and of the Lion of Judah from the Ethiopian capital. Lessona, who was instrumental in giving Graziani the relevant orders, declared that the dismantling of the Menilek statue in particular had been decided upon "to give a manifest proof to the Abyssinians that the regime of the Negus was finished." The Viceroy, however, refused to comply with the command, which, the Minister complains, "terrified Graziani", who said that it would cause "all the Shawans to rebel." The Minister, on the other hand, refused to accept what he regarded as Graziani's prevarication. He accordingly repeated his orders, once again insisting that the removal of the statue would show "the Abyssinians that the regime of the Negus was dead." Graziani in his memoirs complained bitterly against such pressures from the Government in Rome, and declared: "In Rome things came to be considered in the reverse: instead of the difficult and displeasing reality an entirely euphoric dream; and accusations of incapacity and inertia against him who struggled on the spot against rebellions wherever they occurred, despite extreme lack of means and possibilities with which to confront them, scarcity of provisions and the urgency of resolving the problem of the internal occupation of the territory." The Military Situation "Serious" for Italy Behind this dispute between Graziani and Lessona lay the fact that the Italian military situation in Ethiopia, immediately after the "conquest", was for more serious for the invaders than was allowed to appear in their official press. A truer appreciation was made by Patrick Roberts, of the ex-British Legation, who noted that this period was "a very serious one for the Italian High Command", which "manifested unmistakable nervousness". He adds that the Viceroy had gone so far as to compare "his situation, in speaking with me, with that of Gordon at Khartoum". Graziani himself later recalled, in a letter to De Bono, the Italians' "weak military situation in the capital in May 1936", and frankly admitted that his policy was "consequently a policy of expediency". He claimed that this policy was tending to detach almost all the Chiefs from the rebellion. Later, in his memoirs, he complains that Lessona's policy towards the chiefs caused "the greater part" of them to "lose hope of recovering the government of the provinces," with the result that they "disinterested themselves" in the Italian government and "even turned to hostile and sabotaging acts." This development was particularly serious, Graziani claims, at a time when his principal concern was the "penetration of the western provinces"of Ethiopia, which was essential in view of Mussolini's desire to create the impression of a total and complete conquest of the empire. The situation was especially "delicate", the Viceroy adds, in Amhara province, where Pirzio Biroli had "stumbled into an intensely uncertain and chaotic situation," for the region "had been occupied by the [Achille] Starace column almost without firing a shot," as a consequence of which "the entire population had remained armed", with "weapons in the hands of the localchiefs." This, the Viceroy somewhat patronisingly added, was "avery delicate situation that only a very expert hand would have turned to our advantage, and certainly not Pirzio Biroli, a valourous soldier and a good commander experienced in campaigning, but not prepared for political action." Expanding Patriot Activity Ethiopian Patriot activity moreover expanded considerably in June 1936. Graziani admits that resistance then became "even bolder and more menacing," particularly around Addis Ababa, along the railway line, and on the all-important road to the north. The military situation was so serious for the Italians that Mussolini gave him orders to send reports by radio telegraph every two hours. Poggiali, then in Addis Ababa, confided to his diary on July 14: "the city is in confusion; we are still in a state of war. One is invited to return home at dusk because it is dangerous to travel about by night. Around the city there are threatening armed bands." The Patriots launched a full-scale attack on the capital on July 29. Foreign observers suggest that the Italian military authorities at this time displayed considerable incompetence. Patrick Roberts for example declared that "though the Italians were spared the humiliation in the eyes of the world and the set-back to their plans which failure to control Addis Ababa would have involved, the manner in which they handled the situation was such that the few observers of the event from within formed a scarcely less unfavourable impression of their military capacity than if they had failed to hold their own."