By the time Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, entered Addis Ababa triumphantly in May 1941, the military defeat of Mussolini's forces in Ethiopia by the combined armies of Ethiopian partisans and Allied troops (mostly from the British Empire) was assured. When General Guglielmo Nasi surrendered with military honors the last troops of the Italian colonial army in East Africa at Gondar in November 1941, many of his personnel decided to start a guerrilla war in the mountains and deserts of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Nearly 7,000 Italian soldiers (according to the historian Alberto Rosselli)[1] participated in the guerilla campaign in the hope that the German-Italian army of Rommel would win in Egypt (making the Mediterranean an Italian Mare Nostrum) and recapture the recently liberated territories. A portion of the Imperial War Museum website on the Italian defeat in East Africa notes that 'several thousand [Italian soldiers] escaped to wage a guerrilla war until September 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies.'[2]
Prelude
There were originally two main Italian guerrilla organizations: the Fronte di Resistenza (Front of Resistance) and the Figli d'Italia (Sons of Italy).[3] The Fronte di Resistenza was a military organization led by Colonel Lucchetti and centered in the main cities of the former Italian East Africa. Its main activities were military sabotage and collection of information about Allied troops to be sent to Italy in multiple ways. The Figli d'Italia organization was formed in September 1941 by Blackshirts of the "Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale" (a fascist organization of volunteer soldiers). They engaged in guerrilla war against Allied troops and harassed Italian civilians and colonial soldiers (askaris) that had been dubbed "traitors" for co-operating with the Allied and Ethiopian forces.
Other groups were the "Tigray" fighters of Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet in Eritrea and the guerrilla group of Major Gobbi based at Dessie.[4] From the beginning of 1942 there was a guerilla group in Eritrea, under the command of Captain Aloisi, which was dedicated to helping Italians to escape from the British prisoner of war camps of Asmara and Decameré. In the first months of 1942 (because of the August 1940 Italian invasion of British Somaliland), there were also Italian guerrillas in British Somaliland.[5]
While essentially on their own, the guerrillas occasionally received support and encouragement from mainland Italy. On 9 May 1942, the Regia Aeronautica staged a long-range twenty-eight-hour Savoia-Marchetti SM.75 flight over Asmara, dropping propaganda leaflets telling Italian colonists that Rome had not forgotten them and would return.[6] On May 23, 1943, two SM.75s made another long-range flight to attack the American airfield at Gura. One craft encountered fuel difficulties and instead bombed Port Sudan; both aircraft successfully hit their targets and returned to Rhodes, accomplishing a significant propaganda victory.[7]
There were several Eritreans and Somalis (and even a few Ethiopians) who provided aid to the Italian guerrillas. But their numbers dwindled after the Axis defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942.[8]
These guerrilla units (called Bande in Italian) operated in a very extended area, from northern Eritrea to southern Somalia. Their armament was made up mainly of old "91" rifles, Beretta pistols, Fiat and Schwarzlose machine-guns, hand grenades, dynamite and even some small 65mm cannons. But they always lacked large amounts of ammunition.[9]
Guerrilla war
From January 1942, many of these "Bande" started to operate under the coordinated orders of General Muratori (commander of the fascist "Milizia"). He was able to encourage a revolt against the Allied forces by the Azebo Oromo tribe in northern Ethiopia, who had a history of rebellion. The revolt was put down by Allied forces operating alongside the Ethiopian army only at the beginning of 1943.[10]
In spring 1942, even Haile Selassie I (who stated in his autobiography that "the Italians have always been the bane of the Ethiopian people")[11] started to open diplomatic channels of communication with the Italian insurgents, allegedly because he was impressed by the victory of Rommel in Tobruk, Libya.[12] Major Lucchetti declared (after the guerrilla war) that the Emperor, if the Axis had reached Ethiopia, was ready to accept an Italian protectorate with these conditions:
a total amnesty for all the Ethiopians sentenced by Italy
the presence of Ethiopians in all levels of the administration
the participation of Emperor Haile Selassie in the future government of the protectorate.[13]
Italian propaganda poster calling for revenge after their losses in East Africa
In the summer of 1942, the most successful units were those led by Colonel Calderari in Somalia, Colonel Di Marco in the Ogaden, Colonel Ruglio amongst the Danakil and "Blackshirt centurion" De Varda in Ethiopia. Their ambushes forced[neutrality is disputed] the Allies under William Platt with the British Military Mission to Ethiopia to dispatch troops with airplanes and tanks, from Kenya and Sudan to the guerrilla-ridden territories of the former Italian East Africa.[14] That summer, the Allied authorities decided to intern the majority of the Italian population of coastal Somalia, in order to avoid them possibly coming into contact with Japanese submarines.[15] In October 1942, the Italian guerrillas started to lose steam because of the Italian-German defeat at the Battle of El Alamein and the capture of Major Lucchetti (the head of the Fronte di Resistenza organization).
The guerrilla war continued until summer 1943, when the remaining Italian soldiers started to destroy their armaments and in some cases, escaped to Italy, like Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet,[16] (nicknamed "the Devil Commander" by the British) who reached Taranto on September 3, 1943. He requested from the Italian War Ministry an "aircraft loaded with equipment to be used for guerrilla attacks in Eritrea",[17] but the Italian armistice a few days later ended his plan.
One of the last Italian soldiers to surrender to the Allied forces was Corrado Turchetti, who wrote in his memoirs that some soldiers continued to ambush Allied troops until October 1943. The last Italian officer known to have fought the guerrilla war was Colonel Nino Tramonti in Eritrea.[18]
Rosa Dainelli, a doctor who in August 1942 succeeded in entering the main ammunition depot of the British Army in Addis Ababa, and blowing it up, miraculously surviving the huge explosion.[21] Her sabotage destroyed the ammunition for the new British Stensubmachine gun, delaying the use of the newly created equipment for many months. Doctor Dainelli was proposed for the Italian iron medal of honor (croce di ferro).[22] Some sources claim the date of attack was actually 15 September 1941.[23]
Segre, Vittorio Dan (1993). La guerra privata del tenente Guillet (in Italian). Milano: Corbaccio Editore.
Cernuschi, Enrico (1994). "La resistenza sconosciuta. La guerra in A. O. dopo il 1941". Rivista Storica (in Italian). VII (10): 54–61.
Rosselli, Alberto (2007). Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale (in Italian). Pavia: Iuculano Editore. ISBN978-8870727661.
Di Lalla, Fabrizio (2014). Le italiane in Africa Orientale. Storie di donne in colonia (in Italian). Chieti: Solfanelli Editore. ISBN978-8874978342.
Di Lalla, Fabrizio (2016). Sotto due bandiere. Lotta di liberazione etiopica e resistenza italiana in Africa Orientale (in Italian). Chieti: Solfanelli Editore. ISBN978-8874979325.
Ilari, Virgilio. “Francesco Di Martini. La resistenza italiana in AOI e il mancato appoggio all’insurrezione iraqena (1941)”, in Virgilio Ilari (ed.), Italy on the Rimland. Storia militare di una Penisola eurasiatica. Vol. II. Rome. Società Italiana di Storia Militare-Nadir Media. 2019. pp. 225-234.
ASMAI/III, Archivio Segreto. Relazione Lucchetti. 2 Guerra Mondiale pacco IV. (in Italian)
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