Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia

Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia
Part of the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of the Second World War
Date 27 November 1941 – October 1943 Location East Africa Result Allied victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom   Ethiopia	Italy
Commanders and leaders
William Platt Haile Selassie	Amedeo Guillet Francesco De Martini
Strength
	7,000 (including supporters)

The Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia was a conflict fought from the summer of 1941 to the autumn of 1943 by remnants of Italian troops in Ethiopia and Somalia, in a short-lived attempt to re-establish Italian East Africa. The guerrilla campaign was fought following the Italian defeat in the East African campaign of World War II, while the war was still raging in Northern Africa and Europe.

Background

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 honours 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) participated in the guerrilla campaign in the hope that the German–Italian army would win in Egypt (making the Mediterranean an Italian Mare Nostrum ) and recapture the territories. ^[1]

Prelude

There were originally two main Italian guerrilla organisations: the Fronte di Resistenza (Front of Resistance) and the Figli d'Italia (Sons of Italy). ^[2] The Fronte di Resistenza was a military organisation led by Colonello Claudio Lucchetti in the main cities of the former Italian East Africa. Its main activities were military sabotage and the collection of information about Allied troops to be sent to Italy. The Figli d'Italia organisation was formed in September 1941 by Blackshirts of the "Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale" (a fascist organisation of volunteer soldiers). They engaged in guerrilla war against Allied troops and harassed Italian civilians and colonial soldiers (askaris) who had been dubbed "traitors" for cooperating 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. ^[3] From the beginning of 1942, there was a guerrilla 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. ^[4]

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. ^[5] 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. ^[6]

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. ^[7]

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 65 mm cannons. However, they faced limitations in ammunition supply. ^[8]

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. ^[9] Indeed, during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Oromo (called also "Galla") nobility sided to Italy hoping to exercise their power and taking advantage to return their lands. The Italian appointed them as governors of their former lands. In 1935, Raya Azeboos Oromos attacked the Abyssinian armies during the Battle of Maychew. Also, in early 1936, Oromos in Jimma expelled Amharas officials to defy the colonial rule. Hence, the Oromo nobility in western Ethiopia declared an independent Oromia state called "Western Oromo Confederation" (WOC), expressing a request for a mandatory state to the League of Nations. They obtained autonomy when the Italian Governorate of Eritrea was created in 1937. After the end of Italian rule in 1941 and Emperor Haile Selassie return, the Oromos broadly contested the Abyssinian rule and started rebellion against the Shewa Amharan nobility, helped by general Muratori and instructed by his italian black shirts. However, such events were not mentioned in the Ethiopian historiography. ^{[10] [11]}

In the spring of 1942, even Haile Selassie I (who stated in his autobiography that "the Italians have always been the bane of the Ethiopian people") ^[12] started to open diplomatic channels of communication with the Italian insurgents, allegedly because he was impressed by the victory of Rommel in Tobruk, Libya. ^[13] 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:

1. a total amnesty for all the Ethiopians sentenced by Italy
2. the presence of Ethiopians at all levels of the administration
3. the participation of Emperor Haile Selassie in the future government of the protectorate. ^[14]

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 prompted the Allies under William Platt with the British Military Mission to Ethiopia to dispatch troops with aeroplanes and tanks, from Kenya and Sudan to the guerrilla-ridden territories of the former Italian East Africa. ^[15] 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. ^[16] Italian guerrilla efforts declined following the Axis defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein and the capture of Major Lucchetti (the head of the Fronte di Resistenza organisation).

The guerrilla war continued until the summer of 1943, when the remaining Italian soldiers started to destroy their armaments and in some cases, escaped to Italy, like Lieutenant Amedeo Guillet, who reached Taranto on September 3, 1943. ^[17] He requested from the Italian War Ministry an "aircraft loaded with equipment to be used for guerrilla attacks in Eritrea" but the Italian armistice a few days later ended his plan. ^[18]

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. ^[19]

Noteworthy guerrillas

De Martini in 1942 Dahlak

Of the many Italians who performed guerrilla actions between December 1941 and September 1943, two are worthy of note:

• Francesco De Martini, captain of the Military Information Service ( Servizio Informazioni Militare , or SIM) who in January 1942 blew up a depot of captured Italian ammunition in Massawa, Eritrea and later organised a group of Eritrean sailors (with small boats called sambuco ) in order to identify, and notify Rome with his radio, of the Royal Navy movements throughout the Red Sea until he was captured at Dahlak Kebir in August 1942. ^[20] De Martini received the Italian Gold Medal of Military Valor. ^[21]
• 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. ^[22] Doctor Dainelli was proposed for the Italian Iron Medal of Honor ( croce di ferro ). ^[23] Some sources claim the date of the attack was actually 15 September 1941. ^[24]

See also

• List of British military equipment of World War II
• List of Second Italo-Ethiopian War weapons of Ethiopia – list of Ethiopian equipment of the time which would have been supplemented by captured Italian weapons.
• List of Italian Army equipment in World War II

Notes

1. Rosselli 2007, p. 31.
2. Cernuschi 1994, p. 5.
3. Segre 1993, p. 11.
4. Cernuschi 1994, p. 18.
5. Rosselli, Alberto (Feb 18, 2012). "The secret Italian air raid Rome-Tokyo (1942)". Storia Verità. Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
6. Lembo, Daniele, gli ultimi voli sull'impero, Aerei nella storia n.23, April–May 2002.
7. Bullotta 1949, p. 35.
8. Rosselli 2007, p. 66.
9. Rosselli 2007, p. 82.
10. Gebissa 2002, pp. 75–96.
11. "Systematic Oppression in Ethiopia". Omna Tigray. 2022-11-11. Retrieved 2023-07-17.
12. Selassie 1997, Ch 25.
13. Sbiacchi 1979, p. 48.
14. ASMAI/III, Archivio Segreto. Relazione Lucchetti.
15. Cernuschi 1994, p. 36.
16. Bullotta 1949, p. 72.
17. Segre 1993, p. 26.
18. "La Storia siamo noi - Ricordare il passato per capire il presente e progettare il futuro". rai.it. Archived from the original on 20 August 2007. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
19. Cernuschi 1994, p. 74.
20. Alberto. "'Storie di uomini, di navi e di guerra nel mar delle Dahlak', di Vincenzo Meleca – 'Storia Verità'" (in Italian). Archived from the original on 2023-10-03. Retrieved 2020-04-12.
21. Rosselli 2007, p. 98.
22. Vita di Rosa Costanza Danielli (in Italian) Archived 2019-04-03 at the Wayback Machine
23. Rosselli 2007, p. 103.
24. Di Lalla 2016, p. 235.

Bibliography

• Archivio Segreto. Relazione Lucchetti. 2 Guerra Mondiale (Pacco IV)[Secret Archive. Lucchetti Report. World War II Part IV]. ASMAI/III [Analizziamo la Seconda Guerra Mondiale] (in Italian).
• Bullotta, Antonia (1949). La Somalia sotto due bandiere[Somalia under two flags]. Vita vissuta (in Italian). Edizioni Garzanti. OCLC   9422617.
• Cernuschi, Enrico (1994). "La resistenza sconosciuta. La guerra in A. O. dopo il 1941" [The Unknown Resistance. The war in A. O. after 1941]. Rivista Storica (in Italian). VII (10): 54–61. ISSN   0035-7073.
• Di Lalla, Fabrizio (2016). Sotto due bandiere. Lotta di liberazione etiopica e resistenza italiana in Africa Orientale[Under two flags. Ethiopian liberation struggle and Italian resistance in East Africa.] (in Italian). Chieti: Solfanelli Editore. ISBN   978-8874979325.
• Gebissa, Ezekiel (2002). "The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936" . Northeast African Studies. 9 (3): 75–96. doi:10.1353/nas.2007.0011. ISSN   1535-6574. Archived from the original on 2025-04-24. Retrieved 2025-07-10.
• Rosselli, Alberto (2007). Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale[Secret Stories. Unbeknownst or forgotten operations of the Second World War.] (in Italian). Pavia: Iuculano Editore. ISBN   978-8870727661.
• Sbiacchi, Alberto (April 1979). "Hailé Selassié and the Italians, 1941–43". African Studies Review. XXII (1). New Brunswick, NJ: African Studies Association: 25–42. doi:10.2307/523424. ISSN   1555-2462. JSTOR   523424. S2CID   143495345.
• Segre, Vittorio Dan (1993). La guerra privata del tenente Guillet[The private war of Lieutenant Guillet] (in Italian). Milano: Corbaccio Editore. ISBN   978-8-87-972026-7.
• Selassie, Haile (1997). My life and Ethiopia's progress, 1892–1937: The autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: Translated from the Amharic original. Vol. I. Translated by Ullendorff, Edward. Chicago, Ill: Research Associates School Times Publications. ISBN   978-0-94-839039-5.

Further reading

• Di Lalla, Fabrizio (2014). Le italiane in Africa Orientale. Storie di donne in colonia[Italian women in East Africa. Stories of women in the colony.] (in Italian). Chieti: Solfanelli Editore. ISBN   978-8874978342.
• Ilari, Virgilio; Castelli, Viviana, eds. (2019). Storia militare di una Penisola eurasiatica[Italy on the Rimland. Military history of a Eurasian peninsula]. Vol. II. Roma: Società Italiana di Storia Militare, Nadir Media. pp. 225–234. ISBN   978-8-89-413259-5.