Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy vte Wilson, and it's October three.
(00:22):
Italy invaded Ethiopia on this day in nineteen thirty five.
From the eighteen eighties until about nineteen fourteen, European powers
had divided up most of the continent of Africa into
colonial territories. This whole mad rush to try to claim
as much of Africa as possible was called the Scramble
for Africa. And after all this scramble, the Ethiopian Empire
(00:45):
also known as Abyssinia, was one of a very few
parts of Africa that was not under European colonial control.
Italy had tried to invade the Ethiopian Empire in but
it failed, suffering a massive defeat a year later. Italy's
military had been more advanced than Ethiopias was, but Ethiopia
(01:05):
had mustered a huge resistance force and had gotten support
from Russia. Ultimately, during this initial invasion in the eighteen nineties,
Italy had to fall back to Somali Land, which it controlled.
It took a while after this whole invasion for Italy
and Ethiopia to agree on a border between Ethiopia and
Somali Land was finally established in but then in nineteen
(01:29):
thirty four, Italy built a fort at the Wawa Oasis,
which was unquestionably in Ethiopian territory. This fort housed a
Somali force which was serving under Italian command. It is
not clear exactly what happened, but there was some kind
of dispute between the Somali force that was garrisoned at
(01:50):
the oasis and Ethiopian soldiers, and that happened in early
December of nineteen four. Each side said that the other
one made the initial attack, but each and Mussolini used
this as justification to invade ten months later. The invasion
into Ethiopia came from multiple directions, and it combined Italian
(02:10):
forces and forces drawn from their African colonies. The Italian army,
has had been the case before, was better armed and
better trained than the Ethiopian army, and it pressed toward
the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, which fell on May fifth.
Benito Mussolini proclaimed Victor Emmanuel the Third, who was King
(02:31):
of Italy, to be the emperor of the Ethiopian Empire.
The League of Nations had been formed in the end
of World War One with the goal of ensuring peace
after this point, and from the outset of this Italian invasion.
The League condemned what Italy was doing, but the League
of Nations also wasn't a military power, and its ability
(02:51):
to respond to something like this was really limited. The
League voted to institute economic sanctions against Italy, but the
major world powers didn't really do much to uphold these sanctions.
This really undermined the League of Nation's ability to do
what it had been designed to do, and it showed
the world that it was kind of toothless. It stood
(03:14):
out as an example of how the League just wouldn't
have much power without the backing of the most powerful
nations in the world. In the end, Italy declared this
victory after invading Ethiopia, but Ethiopia never actually surrendered. Consequently,
Ethiopia considers this to be a military occupation, not an
(03:35):
absorption into the Italian colonial empire, and this occupation was
really deadly. Ethiopia continued to resist against Italy throughout and
as many as a quarter of a million Ethiopians died
due to both conventional weaponry and gas attacks. This occupation
continued until World War two. Great Britain declared war on
(03:58):
Italy and ninety nine, and on April six one, a
combined British and Ethiopian forest drove the Italians out of
the capital and restored Ethiopia's last Emperor, Highly Selassie to power.
You can learn more about Highly Selassie in the February
two episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class called
The Last Emperor of Ethiopia. Thanks to Christopher Haciotis for
(04:21):
his research work on today's episode, Antatari Harrison for all
of her audio work on this podcast. You can subscribe
to the Stay in History Class on Apple podcast, Google Podcasts,
and wherever else you get your podcasts, and you can
tune in tomorrow for a famous way to travel