Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Italian Invasions of Ethiopia

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

Robert is joined again by Joelle Monique to continue to discuss why Italy is the Bastard of Ethiopia. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new

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you get your podcasts. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that is generally started with atonal grunting. I liked that intro. That was pretty solid. The language of kings. Thank you, Sophie. Exactly. Yeah, atonal grunting. That's the most based way to talk. This is a podcast about bad people. Tell you all about them, such and such, etc. I'm back with my guest producer, Joel Monique. Joel, say hello to the people. Hello, people. Thank you. Thank you, Joel. Thank you for saying hello to the people. Joel, in part one, we talked about Ethiopia a lot, and we talked about Italy a lot, specifically Italy as they are the bastards of Ethiopia's recent history. And part one ended on a pretty good note. We got a pretty rad king,

Menelik, who outsmarts some colonizers and beats them in a big war. And now part two, things are about to be a lot less pleasant. So strap in, take some happy pills or some sad pills. Just take some pills, whatever kind of pills you like to take. Take a couple of pills and let's continue the story. I'm going to have some vegetable vitamins. Exactly. I popped an edible right before we started this second recording. So I'm, let's do this. Sorry about some bad fucking people. Excellent. So the disastrous Italian defeated Adwa was one of the, was the largest loss of European lives during the scramble for Africa. It was such a disaster that the government of Italy under Francesco Cripsi or Crispi

collapsed as soon as the news was delivered. Many anti-colonialist Italians celebrated the defeat. So again, there's an Italian left wing that's like, we shouldn't be doing colonizing, you know, it's, it's, it's bad. And they celebrate the fact that their army gets wiped out in Adwa. Students from the University of Rome marched through the streets of Rome chanting Viva Menelik. So there's a lot of like in the Italian left support for this Ethiopian king who's like beat their army. Now this is a large part of why the battle of Adwa was a lasting success, right? Because you have other cases as we talked about where Africans will beat a European army, but it doesn't last, right? The Europeans always come back. The battle of Adwa is a lasting success.

And the reason why is because of the, there's like, you know, there's this anti-col, Italian anti-colonial movement, right? And they use the battle of Adwa and this disaster to force the government out. And it's kind of like a, see, this is, we shouldn't be fucking around there. Look at what you get from that. It's, you lose all your money. You lose this army. It's just, it's just stupid and it's bad. Prime examples. Now, yeah. And Italy did have in this period a pretty potent anti-colonial movement, which is why they're colonizing was kind of half-assed. That's another part of it. Is that like, they're not of one mind about this. A lot of Italians are like, no, this is a dumb thing to do. And part of why is because a lot of Italians,

there were people like living Italians who had remember, who remembered or had relatives who remembered when a big chunk of Italy was occupied by Austria. It's kind of the same thing you see with the Irish, right? When you've got a European people who endure some version of colonization themselves, they often express sympathy with other people's enduring the same thing. So there's, there's an element of that in, in this kind of Italian anti-colonial movement too. Oh, it's not something of empathy in Europe at this time. Like it existed. It was there. It wasn't thriving when they were trying. It's why at football games, the Irish bring out Palestinian flags, you know? So in the immediate wake of ADWA, the Italian

government did something that no European power, other European power did in Africa. They admitted defeat. Italy remained a colonial nation, but calling it a power would be a little bit much. It hung on to some, to its East African possessions for the next decade and change though. In the years leading up to World War One, the international situations fell into a relatively stable holding pattern. The Tsars of Russia acted alongside France to protect their interests and stymied the British Empire. Italy, meanwhile, lined up on the side of London, right? So you have these blocks kind of forming. The Tsars are Russia and France are on one side, Italy and England are on another. And in time, the Italians hash out a crude bargain with the

British. Italy will support British ambitions in Northeast Africa, and in exchange, the British would support the Italian dream of a colony in what is now Libya. And this is actually very fascinating, a little bit of a digression, but in I think 1911 and 1912, Italy invades Libya, which is an Ottoman possession. And this is actually the first, this little war that Italy fights in Libya includes the first use of an airplane for a scouting mission in a military conflict and the first use of an airplane to bomb enemy soldiers in the history of warfare. And the first example of an airplane shot down in the history of warfare by right. So it's a very, actually kind of an important little war and not really much talked about. And

the Italians technically win. They take basically a chunk of the Libyan coast, but they can't get off the coast, right? They're kind of harried constantly by this insurgency. It doesn't go great for them. They do kind of have a colony in Libya as a result of this. Rome then opposed France and Russia, right? So Rome is on the side of the British, France and Russia on another side. And there's a bunch of little diplomatic scuffles prior to World War One, which fucks absolutely everything up, right? Everything that had been kind of the standard in European diplomacy up until World War One, a lot of that gets thrown out the window. And very suddenly England and France are on the same side along with Russia. And they're all

pissed off at Germany because, you know, the Germans are scary sons of bitches when they want to be on paper by treaty. Italy should have backed Germany in this war because Italy had a treaty with Germany. But the Italians are an untrustworthy people and they switch sides fairly early on and wind up spending the war, sending their teenagers off to die in the Alps fighting Austria, which also doesn't go well to them. It sounds real bad. So the British lose about 750,000 men killed in World War One, if I'm remembering correctly. The Italians, it's about 650,000 people killed and they're in the war for a year less. Oh, fun. Like it goes bad for Italy. Italians. Really bad. Bad at fighting. Noted. Bad at fighting. Yeah, real bad at war.

And they spent all of World War One. Italy is basically standing in the same chunk of frigid mountains getting like murdering Austrians back in the Austrians aren't much better at war. Like they both just kind of hang around in the same positions the whole war, murdering each other in mass. It's horrible. Some of the worst fighting in the entire war is these these alpine battles, just real nightmare fighting. Because a lot of Italian trench warfare up there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it's like even worse than normal trench warfare because you're like carved into the ice in these trenches freezing all the time. And when bombs explode, they send ice shards shrapneling into people's bodies. It's a horrible, horrible war up in the

Alps. One of the worst theaters of a really shitty war. And, you know, this pisses off a lot of Italians because there was no reason Italy needed to be involved in World War One. They wanted to get shit, right? The Italians wanted more land. They wanted the spoils of war. So they kind of backed, you know, the initially backed the Germans, but then switched and backed the allies. And the World War One, they get very little as a result of this. They lose a lot of young men and they achieve almost nothing militarily. When the war ended, though, Italy was kind of optimistic because they had backed the winning side. And there was a widespread hope that this would finally bring them the colonial possessions they'd so long coveted. But Britain and France were like,

LOL, no, absolutely not. You're not getting shit. And Italy gets kind of screwed out of the spoils of war in their view, right? A lot of Italians feel like we got kind of fucked over by our allies in this. They didn't get much. Now, this resentment was combined with economic contraction and a lower birth rate, which altogether helped to fuel a general surge in right wing resentment that came to dominate Italian politics. In 1922, Benito Mussolini took power after his stupid march on Rome bullshit. The fascists are now in charge after 1922. And they, you know, murder a bunch of people on the left and suppress, you know, all resistance to their movement, yada, yada, basic fascist stuff. Now, these fascists or the leftists that these fascists are murdering also

oftentimes are the kind of anti-colonialist guys who had like marched through Rome after Ottawa. So when Mussolini comes to power, they stamp out not just the left, but this anti-colonial movement in Italian politics. Mussolini was very pro-colony. His stated goal was to more or less re-create the Roman Empire and make the Mediterranean an Italian lake again. I was going to make Italy great again. That's how the Romans refer to them. Yeah, he wanted to make Italy great again, right? All right. So, and for Italians in Rome, like during Rome, they would basically say the Mediterranean is an Italian lake, right? We're so powerful that like the entire Mediterranean is our lake because we own everything around it, which they did. And that's kind of the dream for Mussolini, right? So

obviously that includes you got to get all in North Africa for that shit or at least a lot of it, right? You want North Africa because that's like that's traditionally was Rome's possession. So Mussolini wants all this shit and his desire to, you know, as a result, kind of if you want to take North Africa and a big chunk of the Middle East and make it Italian territory, probably the first step towards achieving this is going to be to conquer Ethiopia. Now, this isn't because Ethiopia is the smartest strategic place to start or because there's a lot of money in conquering Ethiopia. And in fact, there were a lot of very real questions about whether or not conquering Ethiopia could possibly be worth the money required to do the job. This

was about pride. The Italians had suffered the greatest defeat of any imperial power in Africa and they had to wipe away the stain of defeat. Yeah, it's never a good idea to base your military like a strategic plan on pride. That should not be nope. No, no, it really never works out very well. Yeah, I mean, there's this happens all throughout history. One of the funniest things to me is in Afghanistan, the furthest northern position of US troops in Afghanistan was and I believe it was the Corungal Valley. And the specific position they picked was chosen because it was something I think it was just like a hundred meters or so. But it was but it was they picked it because it was a little bit further north than the British had ever gotten

when they took Afghanistan. And that's why we put a unit there because we're like, well, we got to go a little bit further than the last guys. And you saw how well that worked for us, right? Not an intelligent plan. Oh, boy. Yeah. So there's more to it, though, than just pride, wiping away the stain of defeat. And this is something I've read a lot of different explanations about why this Italian invasion of Ethiopia happens. And this fact is missed in most of the different analyses I've read. And it's the fact that Benito Mussolini was terrified of the Japanese. After World War One, Japan became one of the surprise great powers of the world, right? They're seen as this kind of like backwards Asian people who aren't as good, you know,

not nearly as good as white people will colonize them one day, right? Then they beat the destroy the Russian Navy in 1905. And then during World War One, they take a bunch of German possessions that are like like islands and shit that the Germans have in Asia. And suddenly kind of by the time World War One ends, Japan is becoming a major world power. And in the early 1930s, Japan starts making trade deals with Ethiopia. These mostly focused around agricultural land, and they were part of a broader Japanese strategy of trying to free themselves from dependence on Western supplies and trade. After 1931, this was a particularly pressing matter for Japan. That year, they invaded Manchuria, otherwise known as a huge chunk of

coastal China and Korea, significantly larger than Japan. Now, the invasion of Manchuria could rightly be viewed as Japan doing what they had to do to colonize China, just like Europe had colonized Africa, right? That's kind of how Japan is looking at it, certainly. Like you guys are doing this over here, we're going to do this over here. Now, the way they justified the start of this invasion of Manchuria, Japan basically carries out a false flag incident to make it look like, oh, we've been attacked, now we have to attack Manchuria. And they claimed that this, you know, so they could claim it was a defensive war. Of course, immediately they went beyond anything you could justify as defense. They conquer all of Korea and a bunch of the coast of China,

besides, this was in massive violation of the rules of the League of Nations, of which Japan was a member. Now, the League was extremely new at this point, right? The League of Nations is a precursor to the United Nations. It's established after World War One. And the League had been created due in large part to Woodrow Wilson. He really thinks this is going to stop the next Great War from breaking out. He's a huge backer of the League of Nations. He lays out the points by which, you know, the kind of its guiding principles. And he envisioned it as a global governing body meant to sort out disagreements and stop another World War from breaking out. And so a lot of the League's rules had to do with when nations could and could not go to war.

When Japan invaded, China pleaded with the League of Nations to help them force Japan out. The League duly voted that Japan's actions had been illegal. They ordered it to leave Manchuria in February of 1933. Japan does not do this. They're like, make us basically like, what are you going to fucking do? You're going to come all the way over to my house, you know? Wow. Wow. Russia just tried to make us do something in Asia. And you know what happened? They all wound up on the bottom of the fucking sea. So come on, try your shit. Like that's basically Japan's attitude. And instead, instead of doing what the League tells them, Japan leaves the League of Nations. And this, the League of Nations has kind of left scratching their heads and trying to figure out

what do you do when a nation, now that international law is a thing, what do you do if a nation won't obey international law? So a number of League States, yeah, it's a big question, right? This is the first time anyone had ever really tried to do this in an organized way. So a number of League States sever trade ties with Japan, which did hurt, but Japan was already gripped by a depression at this point. And they'd actually invaded Manchuria to gain access to natural resources. And so they were like, yeah, I mean, the severing of trade ties hurts, but we were already hurting and we're going to benefit more by taking Manchuria than we will by trading with Europe, right? So they don't stop as a result of this. Now, this might have worked if the League had agreed on like

unified sanctions, if the whole global community had imposed sanctions on Japan, it might have done something, but they didn't. Number one, they couldn't come to an agreement. A big part of this, by the way, is that I just said Woodrow Wilson is why we had a League of Nations. The U.S. never joins because we're the United States. We didn't want to give up any sovereignty or whatever. It was a whole big fight politically, but we never joined. So number one, any sort of sanctions wouldn't have included the United States, which was a big trading partner of Japan. We gave them a lot of what they needed. So that meant that it didn't have any teeth, but also the League couldn't agree to go after unified sanctions on Japan anyway. And a big part of why is because a lot of the

heads of Europe at the time didn't have a problem with Japan taking over China because they saw what Japan was doing to China. It's like, what is what we're doing in Africa? Why would we have an issue with this? Right? If you start making laws against them, then those laws are going to cover us. And that's exactly like I don't want anyone to look too hard at what I'm doing here. Yeah. And to kind of embody that view, I want to quote from a letter by some guy whose no shit real title was the Master of Peter House at Cambridge University, because everything the British do sounds ridiculous. And this is a letter the Master of Peter House sent to the British Foreign Secretary about what was happening in Manchuria. Quote, I know this sounds all wrong,

perhaps immoral when Japan is flouting the League of Nations, but number one, she was greatly provoked. Number two, she must air long expand somewhere for goodness sake, let or rather encourage her to do so there instead of Australia. And three, her control of Manchuria means a real block against communist aggression. She could she could go off to the place we send our prisoners. No, no. Yeah, yeah, we don't want them to take Australia. And also fuck the communists. Yeah. Oh, we have a problem with this. In the end, the League failed to even pass a ban on weapons sales to Japan. Now, yeah, so they don't do shit. So the US, of course, keeps selling Japan fueling bullets, League of Nations and a big influence of like what happens here with the League is that

this is their first major test, like the Manchuria issue, and they fail badly, right? So not off to a great start, the League of Nations, they fail to completely in this. So the same year this all comes to a head in 1933 is the they invaded 31. 33 is when the big fight in the League of Nations happened. So that same year, 33, the Japanese start sniffing around Ethiopia. Even though they had kind of won in Manchuria, you know, the diplomatic shit had gone as well as possible for them. They were wary of the fact that their future plans for expansion in Asia would provoke a more concerted response from the international community. So they let us get away with Manchuria, but we're going to take more China. Like we're going to conquer more land. Eventually,

they might carry out a unified set of sanctions, right? And that's going to be a problem for us because Japan doesn't have shit for natural resources, right? That's like Japan's constant. It's why they're invading China is they need they need they need stuff. It's the same thing the British have, right? So the British actually have coal. So they're looking for ways to make themselves more independent of European resources in case mass sanctions do come down. Ethiopia, trade with Ethiopia is a part of this because they see Ethiopia is the place where they can grow shit to reduce their dependence on foreign countries. And the agreements between Japan and Ethiopia are never much more than a set of like kind of modest trade agreements. But the fact

that this starts terrifies Europe. And it's because Europeans are racist as hell. See, Ethiopia, I don't know if you're aware of this, not a white country, right? But they successfully famously not a white country, Ethiopia, Japan also famously not white people. Both of these non white countries had beaten white nations in wars. So the fact that they're talking with each other scares the white people really bad. They're Marilyn are not. I'm sorry. They're Manson straight out of prison when he sees the Black Panthers. And it's like, what the fuck? You know, these guys get guns. We're done for it. We are done for. It's got to start killing celebrities. It's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. They Europe goes full Manson on this. And you know who else will go full

Manson? Oh, no. I hope it's not your advertisement. Yes. Yes. We are actually supported by Charles Manson's cult. It's incredible that the show has been on the air for so long. I am amazed. And I love it. I love those rebellious people here. The primary product we sell is that weird album. That's that's our that's our only backer is is Charles Manson's music. So my God. Yeah. Behind the Bastards is supported by Charles Manson's music and of course, the Unabomber Manifesto, which you can find on our T public store printed on T shirts. So let's go check both those out. Here's some ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated

the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and not in the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus,

it's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're back. And I'm just enjoying wearing my new industrial society and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race shirt, which you can get in our T-public store. Courtesy of friend of the pod, Uncle Ted. Jesus. What, Sophie? It's fine. It's fine. Look, I know he doesn't have abs as hot as Koresh did. They didn't give him that. God damn it. Oh, my word. What? What? For those for those listeners that have been playing behind the bastards bingo, there's your Koresh. God damn it. Yep. You get a Koresh and an Uncle Ted. This is a real bonanza episode. Yeah. I mean, if your board technically says Waco, I think that

counts. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're kind of, I mean, you know, poison gas is used in this episode and was used on those children in that basement at Waco. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Oh, no, it's going to get real dark. Look, we did one of those memes where it's the two hands meeting in the middle and it's like the FBI and the colonial Italian militaries and then the middle is poison gas on children. That's the only meme you like. You bring it up all the time. It's effective. I do. It is my favorite meme. All right. So the League of Nations, you know, fucks up Japan and Ethiopia start talking. This scares all of the white people because you've got these two non-white nations who have beat white nations and military conflicts.

Racists see this as a terrifying example of racial solidarity between two powerful colored peoples. Italy's Undersecretary of Colonies, Alessandro Lassona, claimed the birthrate, energy and spirit of sacrifice of the Japanese, the imperious necessity for always seeking new markets, all these combined to make Japan a very great danger for Europe. The more one restrains the Japanese expansion in the East, the more she will try to expand in other sectors and in other continents, as is proved already by the Japan's activity in Ethiopia. To draw the dark continent into Japan's orbit would deprive Europe of the possibility of using Africa for the defense of her civilization. Yeah, just a lot going on there. It's just a lot happening there.

Mental gymnastics just took, we won't be able to use this huge continent with multiple, multiple countries to defend our tiny islands. With tens of millions of people. To defend our very tiny island from that tiny island who might do the same thing we're doing. Oh no. They might steal Africa faster. Racism is so bonkers. It's so bonkers. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. You might say that Italian foreign minister thought Japan was too spicy, a meatball. God. I gotta get a bingo card. Very angry. Very angry. As are all the Italian listeners, but whatever. Angry, but kind of proud because you got it in there. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, ugh, he did it again. But also like, yeah, good job. At the same time, you know?

Yep. Very conflicted. I appreciate. I'm always trying to find spicy meatballs. So the second time was not necessary. Continue. So, well, all this is going on with Japan, right? Mussolini is paying attention. So he watches 1931 as Japan invades Manchuria. And by 1932, it had become clear that fuck all was going to be done about it. And again, the Italians are scared of the Japanese. They're scared of Japanese dominance. They don't like that Italy, that Japan is talking to Ethiopia, but they also are paying attention to how Japan gets away with conquering Manchuria. And they're like, well, fuck, we could probably do the same thing with Ethiopia. And I bet the League of Nations isn't going to do shit.

Right? That's also what he's thinking. So Mussolini in 32 sends a dude to Eritrea to see if it would be an acceptable base of operations for an invasion. Il Duce and his advisors concluded that an invasion would need to be carried out before 1936. Because of the tripartite agreement Italy had signed with France and England back in 1896, though, he would need to obtain the consent of his co-imperialists before doing anything, right? So he does have he thinks he can he knows he can he knows that the League of Nations won't stop him as long as he works things out with Italy and France with France and England first, right? Because that does matter. You don't want to fuck over France and England if you're Italy. Like, yeah, especially now that it's not going to go well

for you. That's that would be a hot mess for Italy. OK, I got it. Yeah, not going to go well for you. They actually are good at things. So that could be really frightening for Italy. They can fight. Sorry, Italy. Yeah, they they know how to do worse. So one thing that complicated matters was the fact that as soon as it had become a thing, Ethiopia, as soon as the League of Nations had become a thing, because Ethiopia has been a thing for 3,000 years, as soon as the League of Nations became a thing, Ethiopia made a point to join it. And this was a decision made by the new emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik is dead by this point, a fellow who you've probably heard of named Haile Selassie.

And Selassie seems to have been a true believer in the League of Nations. And before we get into that, we should probably have another digression, because we should talk about Haile Selassie more than we generally do for heads of state and episodes like this, because he's a really interesting guy. He's also an important guy. Haile was born Ross Tafari, which is again, where the name Ross Tafari is. Haile Selassie, when you become emperor, you take on a different name, right? That's kind of like a pope, you know, like Pope Benedict's real name wasn't Benedict yet, another name became the pope, they get a name. Ross Tafari was the name this guy was born with and he became Haile Selassie. Now, Ross is is actually not his name. Ross is his title. Ross

is an Amharic term and it's equivalent to Duke or Lord, because again, Ethiopia is a very kind of feudal monarchic society. So any Ross could become the emperor if shit broke right for them, right? When we talk about how there's these different nobles who are kind of like fighting for dominance, these are all Rosses, basically. So when Ross Tafari was young in 1906, Emperor Menelik brought him to his court to be a gentleman in waiting. And as best as I can tell, this was a mix of the, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer kind of thinking because he's like this kid is smart. I want to keep an eye on him, right? In case he's got any designs. But it's also the way Ethiopian statecraft worked. The emperor would surround himself with highborn

men and train them up so that they could govern the country and so that, you know, you could develop a sense of trust, right? That's how you that's how you work things in a monarchy. I would say and for like an insular society that has been able to like start off any enemy, any enemy invasion for quite some time, it makes sense that like everybody would sort of want to be of the same mind, especially now that they're facing so many enemies. Yeah. Now, when Ross was 16, he's given his first major responsibility as a local governor. He was also still in school. So this was basically a learn on the job sort of situation, but the job was really a sizable chunk. Yeah, he's 16 and he becomes governor.

Wow. And he's like still in school. So like in between classes, he's governing, you know, a sizable chunk of Ethiopia. During this time, he learned the important lessons he would need to learn in order to rule. Mainly, he learned how to bribe other nobles and government officials. He made connections to the country's ruling elite. And when Emperor Menelik started stroking out, the emperor's warrior wife, Tatu, took up more responsibilities and some other nobles schemed to take her down. Ross was in a pretty powerful position at this point. And so these nobles who want to take down the Empress go to him and he refuses to back their plot. But also, when the plot is found out, he refuses to narc on the conspirators. So he's kind of playing

both sides here. He's like, I'm not going to help you overthrow the Empress, but I'm not going to sell you out. Listen, I want to make no enemies. Just launched a new series of Gossip Girl. And I feel like this is the direction you need to take it. I want to see this version of Gossip Girl. They're in high school, but they're also governors and they're bribing people and they're taking over land. They're powerful bitches. Yeah, I would. I'm this definitely like this whole period. Yeah, there ought to be a fucking show about it. It's really interesting. So as this demonstrates, Rastafari was good at the sort of politicking that you need to be good at if you want to become the King of Kings of Ethiopia. He became a provincial governor next

and he proved himself a man of the people. His first big duty was he reformed the tax system to take the tax burden off of poor peasants, which is good. He marries into the royal family. He becomes friends with the crown prince. And when Menelik dies, the crown prince becomes emperor, so Menelik's son. But this kid, Yasu, is bad. Emperor Yasu's reign does not go well. So the first thing Emperor Yasu does is he immediately kicks the old Empress out of the palace. Then he makes a baffling decision to curry favor from the country's Muslim population at the expense of the Christian population, which is a really weird move since Ethiopia is more Christian than Muslim. It's a very strange decision that he made. I'm already predicting

a divide of the people who were helped by one man via taxes and who were shunned by the other via religion. Yeah, it doesn't. It proves he's not very good at being the emperor is the short of Emperor Yasu's reign. During the Great War, he makes the questionable call to side with Germany and Turkey. Britain and France put an arms embargo. Yeah, not a great decision. Britain and France put an arms embargo on Ethiopia as a result of this. And this terrifies the ruling class in Ethiopia because if they can't buy guns, any European country can come in and succeed where Italy has failed, right? So a lot of people are angry at Emperor Yasu by the time, you know, World War I shakes out. So because, you know, unhappiness at this guy, at the emperor builds and builds and

builds and eventually the Ethiopians have themselves a little war. And Rastafari turns on Yasu and sends an army in to beat him. And he basically forces Yasu off of the throne and he gives the throne to Menelik's daughter, who becomes the Empress next. And she makes Rast the regent. So the regent does all the stuff a king does, but he's not the king, right? It's somebody. It's the actual sovereign says you do the king stuff. I'll be a figurehead, basically. So Rastafari isn't the emperor now, but he's the regent and he's acting as the emperor. The Empress is like, she's very Christian. She's very religious. She doesn't really do much other than like religious stuff. And she doesn't want to. So she's like, you take you handle the rest.

So while the Empress is the figurehead, Rastafari centralizes power behind the scenes and starts sending loyal young men abroad to get educated and then come back to help him rule, right? Which is very smart. He's like, I want to send you guys to Europe. I'm gonna send you wherever you can go to like learn statecraft so that because I'm going to be the emperor soon. And I want I want a deep bench and deep motherbuckers. You know what they're doing. So when World War I ends, Rastafari sends his congratulations to Woodrow Wilson and furthermore expresses Ethiopia's sincere willingness to join the League of Nations. Now, the fact that this thing is the League of Nations becoming a thing and the fact that a black nation might want to join the community of nations

was extremely controversial among the leaders of the European nations who are all howling bigots. Just just however racist you're thinking like twice that racist is like and that's the least racist of them. Sometimes racism looks like caricature, but it's you're actually looking at racism and it's baffling. Yeah, they are real racist. So they're not happy with this idea. And so for several years, Rastafari campaigns for Ethiopia's membership in the League without success. When they applied in 1923, England turned them down on the basis that Ethiopia still allowed slavery, which is true. Ethiopia was one of the latest nations to have slavery codified in law. Now, I should note that while this is a very valid criticism of the Ethiopian

state, slavery is always a bad thing. The British ambassador in Ethiopia also owned slaves. So it's a little bit rich. Wait, wait, one moment. Wait a goddamn minute. And I know a lot of Brits like profited off of slave labor after and and then shunned America by putting America off or still having slaves and be like, y'all are still trading. The entire industrial revolution does not happen without slave cotton. Yeah, like even all of Europe's like, yeah. The goal, I want to say, but they also just were not allowing themselves to be checked by anyone. So I get it. Unlimited powers to create some city movement. A huge justification for British land grabs in Africa throughout the entire period where

they're taking Africa is we're ending slavery. That's why we have to go into these different countries and because we have to stop slavery, you know, like they justify a lot of fucked up shit that way. They're no different from the North of America. So I get it. No, everybody's everybody's terrible. I mean, everyone's always terrible. That's history, baby. So anyway, the cause of Ethiopian membership in the League of Nations seemed hopeless by this point. But then when all seemed lost, a hero appeared. You want to guess who this hero's name is this this this good man who went to bat for Ethiopia joining the League of Nations. I'm afraid. But is it Hitler? No, but it is Mussolini.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So in 1924, Mussolini's Italy officially sponsored Ethiopia's request for membership in the League of Nations. Now, this seems baffling because, number one, Mussolini definitely wants to beat Ethiopia in a war. He hates Ethiopia because they embarrassed his country. And he was on record, as having said, Ethiopia absolutely should not be a member of the League. However, he changes his mind because Britain and France are split on the matter of Ethiopian membership. The French supported Ethiopia joining the League of Nations, which good for France, you know, I'll give them give it to them. The British opposed Ethiopia joining the League of Nations.

And Mussolini backed Ethiopia because he assumed the British would keep resisting their membership. And then he could win a diplomatic victory without letting black people into the League. It was all just a bunch of stupid in fighting. But as soon as Mussolini backs Ethiopian membership, the British decide it's not worth fighting anymore and they withdraw their opposition. So because of a diplomatic flu fluke, Ethiopia joins the League of Nations, even though Mussolini didn't actually want them to. Italians not going to war. Why? Because now you've given essentially the land you want to take over protection. One would assume. Yes. Yes. Yes. One would assume. Now, Rastafari may have suspected that Mussolini was not doing this out of the

goodness of his heart, but publicly, right? You have what you suspect if you're a smart regent. And Rastafari is a very smart man, probably knows Mussolini was trying some fuckery, didn't really want Ethiopia in the League. But publicly, Mussolini backed the League's the Ethiopia's membership. And so publicly, he has to go thank Mussolini. So Rastafari is yeah, as Regent of Ethiopia, Rastafari travels to Rome to meet with Ilduce and give him thanks. The two sit down face to face for the first and last time. And Tafari would later write that he was immediately impressed by Benito's quote, powerful face, his enormous eyes, his projecting jaw. Ross asked for an outlet to the sea through Italian territory and Mussolini said, sure. And

in fact, I already have a treaty that includes that ready. And I'll you just sign it now. It couldn't possibly be a bad treaty with poor translations, could it? Rastafari is not an idiot. He knows what Italian treaties are worth. So he says, oh, cool, a treaty. Sweet. Oh, this is just what I wanted. I'm going to take this back home, and I'm going to think real hard about it. Now, the treaty was, of course, filled with the same kind of bullshit or the last treaty had been filled with. And Tafari rejected it. You might think this would have made him anti Mussolini. But at this point, the Italian leader was still Rastafari's favorite European leader, because Benito had at least sat down face to face with him, which meant

he showed the region of Ethiopia more respect than anyone else in Europe did. So Ross had also visited France during this time, and the French gave him a tour of Paris, but they wouldn't let him meet with anybody or talk about international business. The British were even worse. Before he crossed the English Channel, an article in the Manchester Guardian wrote that on the continent, Ross had received a kiss on the cheek from a little girl. The Guardian wrote, quote, A kiss for a Negro king is more than all the wealth of England can afford. Yeah. What the fuck? That's some high-grade racism from the Guardian. I knew white people were really into, you know, the purity of white women and the benevolence

of them. But the idea that worth an entire, at that point in time, particularly England's entire treasury, the fuck out of here. I am, I understand why he has to do all the things he's about to do. Disrespect is insane. So he goes to England and King George V refuses to allow Rastafari and his wife to stay at Buckingham Palace. He wouldn't even greet the regent at the train station. And so it's worth noting that in spite of all of the horrible things Mussolini was about to do to Ethiopia, he showed more respect to their leader than any other European head did. I don't know what message you should take from that because I don't think there is a message, but it's a thing that happened. There we are. I think it's a sad message.

Yeah, it's not a great message. That's devastating. Now, of course, Benito Mussolini was a racist piece of shit. He just wasn't above meeting with somebody he thought was subhuman to try to trick them into a treaty. It's more that he's like a pragmatist, right? Like if you're the king of England, you don't have to be pragmatic, you can just be a racist asshole. Mussolini, he's got to do what he's got to do to make shit happen. And so he's willing to do this. While Ross was still in Europe, Il Duce was exchanging messages with the British ambassador wherein he promised to back London's plan to get land on Ethiopia's Lake Tana and let the British build a road to that land through Italian

territory if the British would help Italy get rights to build a railroad through Ethiopia to connect its two colonies. So while Mussolini's meeting with Rastafari, he's secretly carving up Ethiopia with the British while it's still an independent nation that's just joined the League of Nations. Motherfucker. Yeah, I mean, they're all motherfuckers. But you know who's not a motherfucker, Joelle. Oh, the products and services that support this podcast. Perfect. I'm so glad. Yeah, not not motherfuckers. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI,

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. And having a great time just talking about Ethiopia. So, um, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Sorry. Let's go. What? I don't know. I thought you were going to say evil. I thought it was a very exaggerated evil. And then I was like, well, we are really talking about Ethiopia. So that makes sense. We should actually. I thought you were going to say evil, too. I was that it's wrong. Thank you, Sophie. No, just Ethiopia. So Ethiopia is, you know, Ross does this tour of Europe and the leaders of Europe, like he meets with Mussolini while Mussolini is planning to cut up Ethiopia with England. And, uh, yeah. So when, you know,

Ross gets back to Ethiopia via the British and the Italians send him a letter that basically said, Hey, here's what we agreed to do with your land. Um, and Rastafari was really angry at this. Uh, and he used his newfound membership in the League of Nations to go before the international community. He made a big speech about how fucked up this was and people smiled and nodded and the Italians gave him an award. Uh, and then they started offering arms and money to one of his rivals back home in Ethiopia. So he says, I'm not going to let you to come into my country and, and build these roads and shit and take this lake. Uh, and they're like, Oh, you're so brave. Here's an award. And also we're going to give guns to the guy. Somebody wants to kill you.

Now this culminated in a revolt against Rastafari's government in 1930, which he brutally put down with the help of a French biplane and a lot of explosives. That same year, the, the Empress died and Rastafari, the regent became highly Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia. And I think that more or less brings us up to speed to 1932, 1933, with everyone getting anxious over Japan and Benito putting plans into motion to get Britain and France on board with his invade Ethiopia scheme. There's a lot of detail to get into here. I know they've been jumping back and forth and stuff. There's a lot you have to set up because this is a year's long process, but the short of it is, and like there's a whole, you could read a whole book on all of the different negotiations between

France and England and Italy that lead to him, Mussolini invading Ethiopia. The short of it is that France and Britain were both willing to let Italy invade Ethiopia if they got something out of it in response. And the thing that they really wanted was an ally against Nazi Germany. So 33 Hitler's taken power, right? And obviously France and England are worried because World War One wasn't that long ago. Hitler has been talking for a long time before he came to power about annexing Austria, which was crucial to his ambitions of greater European dominance. Italy or France and England don't want Hitler to annex Austria. France and England don't want Hitler to annex Austria. Now Mussolini was the first fascist leader and Hitler looked up to him in a lot of ways,

but the two men were not friends and they did not particularly like each other. So Britain and France tell Italy, we're not going to complain about if you do whatever you want with your military to Ethiopia as long as you stop Hitler from taking Austria because obviously Italy is right, Austria is right above it, right? So this reasoning is why the Soviet Union, who you might expect to have supported Ethiopia against a fascist oppressor, also backed Italian ambitions in Ethiopia. So the Soviets support the fascists in Ethiopia initially because they think these fascists will stop the other fascists from gaining more territory in Europe. You cannot kill something really bad bet. Everybody makes a terrible fucking bet here.

Why would you go fascism to get a hold in Northern Africa anyway? Like it's just it don't make no sense. Yeah, it's it's not. I mean, it makes sense in that Italy has the geographical position to oppose Germany. But yes, like looking back at it with hindsight, clearly backing the Italians against the Nazis was not a good move for anyone. And it's interesting to me that both England and France and the Soviets make the same mistake at the same time. And I want to quote from a write up on the website libcom.org. Giving force to Italy's new role as a defender of the status quo against Germany, Mussolini promised a million bayonets by the end of June. Roman Paris had signed a pact of general military cooperation over Austria and these good relations permitted the

French army to plan for withdrawing 17 divisions from Southeast France and North Africa to reposition them above the Maginot line. All this drew favorable comment from Moscow and the Kremlin had good reason to hope that collective security could continue to work as in the summer of 1934, when Italy had moved its troops to the Brinner Pass and forced Germany to back down over Austria. So in November of 1934, everyone's committed like, oh, Italy's gonna back the not gonna stop the Nazis from taking Austria for us. Great. And because everyone is so grateful to Italy for forcing the Germans to back down over the Brinner Pass, Mussolini feels comfortable that he can get away with provoking a war in Ethiopia. Now, the actual causes belly, right? The cause for war,

the legal justification. This is another like in Manchuria. It's a false flag, right? It starts in a place called Wall Wall, an oasis in the Ogaden desert. Now, this was about 60 miles inside Ethiopian territory. According to treaties, they'd signed with Italy. You'll hear some debate about that. The treaties are never quite the same, right? Because Italians. But it's inside Ethiopian territory. And the Italians, though, have maps that say it's in their territory. And in 1933, they start occupying it with soldiers. The Ethiopians eventually march at a detachment of soldiers into Wall Wall, and there's a gunfight. And by the end of it, 150 Ethiopians, two Italians, and several dozen local Italian auxiliaries are dead. Emperor Haile Selassie goes to the

League of Nations after this and is like, the fuck, guys? The League courageously ruled that, courageously ruled that no one was at fault and exonerated both nations. They're like, you know what? There was some violence on both sides. One side was being invaded, sure, but there was violence on both sides. It's great. This is what happens when you try to do business with the oppressor, which obviously Haile learns later, but wow. Yeah. So, I mean, he doesn't have a lot of options, right? He's doing what he can. Now, at this point, Haile Selassie realizes what's about to happen. This is the pretext for a war. Italy's going to invade, so he's got to get ready. So, he mobilizes his army, which is about half a million men, and they are not well armed. Most of

his army has bows and arrows and spears. They do have firearms. They have divisions with firearms, but a lot of most of those guns are obsolete. They have very few modern weapons. They have barely any artillery, anti-aircraft or or aircraft for that matter. Italy, meanwhile, had assembled 12 infantry divisions, somewhere around 600,000 troops with rifles and machine guns, heavy artillery, ground vehicles and airplanes. And as the war drums beat, the League of Nations took another action to try to stop war. They announced an arms embargo on both sides. Now, this was a problem because Italy already had a huge army with plenty of guns. The Ethiopians did not. We're going to stop both of you from buying guns. The guy with all the guns, the guy with none of the guns,

neither of you can buy guns anymore. This is what equality looks like and not equity. So, this makes it impossible for Ethiopia to have any chance of arming herself to an equivalent degree, although they don't really have the money. So, it's kind of debatable as to whether they'd have been able to if there hadn't have been this embargo. One of the things that's happening internationally at this time is there becomes this big, again, because the Battle of Ottawa was such a thing for the Black Liberation Movement worldwide, there's this big racial conflict between the Italians and it's kind of embodied by a boxing match that happens around this time. There's this massive Italian boxer called, his nickname is the Ambling Alp, because

he's like his biggest American. He has a very, I think it's in 34, this happens. He's a very famous boxing match with a guy named Joe Lewis. Oh, this is Rumble in the Jungle. Yes? Probably the best boxer there's ever been. No, that's all Lee. The Rumble in the Jungle was decades later. So, Joe Lewis is the longest running heavyweight champion of the world, which means for 25 straight years, no one could beat him in a fight in the world. Like, Joe Lewis is fucking incredible. He also beats Max Schmeling, who was the best Nazi boxer. I think in 1936, he beat Schmeling. And this big fight he has with the Ambling Alp takes on these big dimensions of like there's this massive conflict between the Italians and the Ethiopians.

And like this fight embodied by Joe Lewis fighting the Ambling Alp is a big deal for a lot of people. There's actually a really good song about Joe Lewis by the Yesayers called Ambling Alp that I recommend. But one of the things that's interesting is that like, you know, this is framed as like, you know, the fascist is embodied by the Ambling Alp or, you know, the free people, colonized peoples of the world is embodied by Joe Lewis. But actually, number one, the Ambling Alp was not a fascist. He was a mob guy. But he and Joe Lewis got along really well. It's the same thing with Max Schmeling, right? Max Schmeling was not a member of the Nazi party. He refused to join. And he and Joe Lewis were very good friends their whole lives. In fact,

when Joe, Joe Lewis died poor, and Max Schmeling paid for his funeral decades later. So another interesting dimension that like the even though these guys embody these conflicts of nations, they actually got along as human beings, even though they were like punching each other in the face a bunch. I mean, they're probably they're commiserated around the same sport and probably felt in a lot of ways the same outcast nature, I think, which tends to run deep in the boxing community. One thing I have to mention about the Ambling Alp name deserved. He would have definitely been recruited as a linebacker because he's like six foot six. He's fucking huge. Yeah. Two hundred and sixty five pounds. And I'm looking at him as muscle. That is in the 30s,

which is because in the 30s, I always think of those like barrel chested, like kind of like not potbellied, but, you know, they're just not as defined as what we know. Like a lot of our bond builders fighters are today. Yeah. And Joe Lewis was two fourteen. So, you know, he's not a he's not a small guy, but he is a significantly smaller than the. They definitely had him stand on a box. Incredible fighter. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's an amazing fighter. Again, for 25 years, no one on earth could beat him in a fist fight. You don't want to have with that. No. So, yeah. So, OK, back to the what's happening in Ethiopia. So, right, the League of Nations puts this arms embargo and they make it impossible for Ethiopia to arm herself. Now, the USSR is

not in the League of Nations and they could have sent guns in to help Ethiopia resist fascist aggression, but they were too busy sending a shitload of resources to fascist Italy. See, the USSR had conducted economic negotiations, which concluded in June of 1935, right before Italy started to mobilize for war to keep Mussolini happy and to keep blocking Austria from the Nazis. Russia sent 40 freighters of wheat, oats, barley, coal, timber, coal tar and gasoline. So when Mussolini's war machine rolled into Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, his armored cars would be filled with Soviet fuel, which is fun. And it's made funner because the Ethiopian army did receive some last minute help, a crucial shipment of thousands of guns,

dozens of artillery pieces and a shitload of ammunition from an unlikely benefactor. Nazi Germany. So the Soviets are backing Fascist Italy and the Nazis are backing Ethiopia. It's a weird war. World wars make weird bedfellows. Obviously, Hitler thinks black people are subhuman. He's a racist. But he hated not owning Austria more. And his thinking was every dead Italian in Ethiopia is one less Italian blocking the passes into Austria from my army, right? That's why Hitler does this, you know? Now, matters were incensed a bit more in mid-July when Japanese Foreign Minister Kobe Hirota undermined the efforts of Japan's ambassador, a guy named Sugimura, to reach some sort of public rapprochement with the Italians. Italy's press went ape shit over this and accused

Japan of trying to start a race war and quote, using Africa as a bridge over which the yellow race would attack Europe. Something we would never do. Something we would never do. Now, obviously, a few years after this, Roman Tokyo wind up allied. But according to a write up in libcom.org quote, for the moment, however, Italo Japanese tensions continued well into August and September. For example, Japan's acting minister to the League of Nations insisted that an Italo Ethiopian war would mean a conflict between the white and black races, although he added war could be prevented with great hopes for assistance and to grand public fanfare and Ethiopian representative visited Japan. Many Japanese nationalists asserted

that a racial unity bonded Japan with Ethiopia. Although these were mostly private citizens who embarrassed the government, their blandishments lent credence to Italy's racial alarm. So did Japan's newspapers. The Co-Cumen of July 25, 1935, editorialized that Italy, guided by racial prejudices towards Ethiopia, had even criticized Japan from that warped racial viewpoint. The paper added that even if they settled the immediate issue, the racial problem would remain and Italy was responsible. The Nietzsche Nietzsche added that Italy's attempt to wrap the Ethiopian issue in racial cloth would fail. The Huchi on August 7th wrote that Italy intended to make Ethiopia its protectorate. The imperialism and sense of racial superiority common among

right, whites had led Italy to take such an ambitious policy. The paper concluded that the Japanese had to make the white race see its injustice and errors. That same day, the Osaka Asahi wrote that the Italo-Ethiopian dispute had aroused the colored peoples against Italy and whites. If racial reconciliation proved difficult, Mussolini, Italian papers and their use of the yellow peril would have to bear the consequences. So Japan is trying to stir up like, if you do this, it's gonna, you're gonna, you're starting a race war, right? Like that's how a lot of the Japanese media does it. Now, they drum all this up and they make a big stink about it before the war. But when the war comes, Japan does nothing to defend Ethiopia. So why would they,

so the question is like, why would they make a big deal about this? Because their whole policy, the reason they were saying all this shit had nothing to do with stopping Italy from fucking with Ethiopia. They wanted a better diplomatic relationship with Italy and they were kind of playing hardball, right? They were like, this was, you know, they're kind of like doing bad cop, good cop shit here, like, but diplomatically. And that's why they're like drumming all this shit up. They want to make the Italians concerns that the Italians like, hey, no, let's, let's, let's make a deal and be friends. You know, that's what they're trying to work out here. I feel like that might have worked on Britain, but would not work on Italy. Like,

why are you coming at me like this? Because of like Japan doing all this, they wind up in negotiations with Italy and the negotiations that start here kind of eventually lead to the alliance between the two countries. And there were observers at the time who's, because again, fascist Italy, fascist Japan, they're on the same side of World War II, right? So, and there were, there were observers at the time who recognized what was going on, right? There were a lot of people kind of more casual observers who were like, especially like among sort of the Black Diaspora community who were like, oh, Japan is, it has our back in this. But there were people who recognized, no, no, no, the Japanese are just playing a political game.

And one of them was a guy named George Padmore. George was an American communist and editor of the Negro worker, which was a black communist newspaper. And he wrote, quote, it is to be hoped that the Ethiopians have no illusions about the Japanese imperialists, who in their internal and external policies are quite as ruthless as the white imperialist nations. The Japanese ruling class, like all other capitalists, are no respecters of race, color or creed, although it might suit their present needs to pose as the defenders and champions of the darker races. Their record, however, has been too dramatically written in the blood of millions of Koreans and Chinese for us to have any doubts about their true character. I think it's important because you have here kind

of the USSR backing very much the wrong side in this. But you have American, particularly American black communists, realizing like these people are just playing a fucking game with us. Japan doesn't give a shit about Ethiopia. Japan doesn't give a shit about fighting imperialism. They're imperialists, too. We're getting you're getting played, right? You got to always be vigilant as a black person. People just use you as chess pieces in a board game. Yeah. Yeah. And George Padmore writes eloquently about that. And that is, broadly speaking, kind of the story of every country but Ethiopia in this mess. Anyone who actually came in on on Ethiopia's side, like Nazi Germany, was just pursuing a political end of their own, right? Nobody, nobody gives a shit

other than how it can affect their bottom line. Well, on a national scale, nobody gives a shit. So as the Battle of Adwa had become an international symbol of black resistance, the looming war between Mussolini and Ethiopia also became symbolic. It was, in its own way, an international anti-fascist event not dissimilar from the Spanish Civil War. W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robison addressed a Harlem League against war and fascism rally. One speaker tied Mussolini's invasion to, quote, the terrible repression of black people in the United States. A People's March for Ethiopia in Harlem drew 25,000 people, a mix of black Americans and anti-fascist Italian Americans who showed up in an admirable gesture of solidarity. And as in the Spanish Civil War,

men volunteered to fight. In Chicago, 8,000 black men started drilling for battle. 5,000 in Detroit, 2,000 in Kansas City. Most of these men never made it over to Ethiopia, right? Because it's illegal to do this, right? And the law was, you know, the law was more willing to enforce this law against black people than it would against white people trying to fight and say the Spanish Civil War, right? Not that that was even... Yeah, that tracks. Yeah. There were, however, some black Americans who made it over, including a black American pilot and engineer who helped Ethiopia build and train a small air force. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some guys who come over, and the most significant gesture of support from black America probably came from the Harlem

Hospital, which collected enough money to send a 75-bed hospital and two tons of badly needed medical supplies to Ethiopia. That said, none of this stops the Italian war machine from amassing on Ethiopia's borders, right? Of course. As the war drums are beating, as things are getting ready to start, Emperor Haile Selassie takes the unprecedented step of speaking before the League of Nations. He is the first head of state to speak in the assembly, which was not how the League was supposed to work. So this is like a really significant gesture. He tells the heads of Europe, quote, there is no precedent for a head of state himself speaking in this assembly, but there is also no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and being at

present threatened by abandonment to its aggressor. Also, there has never before been an example of any government proceeding to the systematic extermination of a nation by barbarous means, in violation of the most solemn promises made by the nations of the earth that they should not be used against innocent human beings, the terrible poison of harmful gases. It is to defend a people struggling for its age-old independence that the head of the Ethiopian Empire has come to Geneva to fulfill this supreme duty after having himself fought at the head of his armies. What reply shall I have to take back to my people? The reply came on October 3rd, 1935, when Italian General Emilio Di Bono marched his troops over

the Marib River. This is not a military history podcast. I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow. The Ethiopians fought hard and they won several battles, but the Italian military was a 20th century army. Even the Ethiopians with rifles tended to carry shields too. They had no armored vehicles, they had almost no air force, and they were beaten in due time. On May 5th, 1936, the Italians took Addis Ababa. Emperor Selassie had fled to Palestine and then to England, ahead of his advancing foes. Selassie took again to the international stage to condemn Italy before the League, but as this write-up from E-International Relations makes clear, the outrage he stirred up generated nothing but token objections. Despite the fact that Italy's actions in Ethiopia were in

clear violation of international rules, Ethiopia's appeal to the League of Nations did not work. Britain and France, concerned about the nascent power of Germany, did not want to alienate Italy by strictly following League rules and formed the biggest obstacle to arbitration. After some shrewd politicking with the Ethiopian delegation, the League considered Ethiopia's requests. But the Italians deflected the issue to bilateral arbitration, allowing themselves to simply ignore Ethiopian demands and continue preparations for war they knew was imminent. Further League action on Ethiopia was subordinated to German treaty violations, which were of much greater concern to France and Britain. France would even go so far as to offer its approval for an Italian

invasion in the Mussolini Laval Accords of 1935. As Strang writes, quote, no important power outside of Ethiopia saw preservation of Ethiopian sovereignty as a vital interest and thus the conflict was largely ignored. Weak sanctions which failed to embargo oil and coal were applied eventually, but only after the Italians committed acts of brutality. Mussolini predicted this in action, saying that, until there is proof to the contrary, I refuse to believe that the authentic people of Britain will want to spill blood and send Europe to its catastrophe for the sake of a barbarian country unworthy of ranking among civilized nations. Damn! Oh, Mussolini. Wow. Wow, insult

to injury. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And it's this bet that a lot of authoritarians around the world have made recently. Nobody's going to. I can kill however many people I want because nobody wants to have another war. So who's going to stop me? It's the authoritarian bet and they usually win. So during the invasion, despite the fact that it was banned by international law, Italy dropped poison gas on Ethiopian soldiers and civilians. Whole villages were obliterated with chemical weapons to clear the way for the Italian advance. One woman, Yetemingu, passed on her experience of surviving one of these bombings to her granddaughter. Quote, The town had emptied of people and then one day finally an answer. Six specks in the sky,

specks moving faster and faster and straighter than any bird growing bigger and bigger until she could hear the roar. The streets ran with women, children, clergy, the infirm as the thundering drew near they threw themselves into ditches huddled against walls behind trees. A dark rain fell from them, a hail of metal that exploded with the terrible noise as it hit the ground. How many huts caught fire and the women and children inside them? Now, aerial bombing was a primitive science at this point. Italian strategy was to fill up giant barrels with poison, which would aerosolize upon breaking open on the ground and contact with the air. One Ethiopian officer at the time recalled, a few hundred of my men were hit,

their feet, their hands, their faces were covered with blisters. I did not know how to fight this rain that burned and killed. Despite the fact that Ethiopia was functionally unable to resist the Italian army in any comprehensive way, Mussolini declared total war upon them. Gas was not just used on soldiers or even civilian populations, but on pasture, cattle, lakes, and rivers. They poisoned gas rivers in order to deny people food. The ability of the country to support its people was systematically gassed by the Italian Air Force. At least 382,000 Ethiopians were massacred during eight months of war, and the high count you'll hear is more like 750,000. Jesus, war crimes. Because a lot of these people die a year or two later from starvation, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, wow, wow. Yeah. And that's not the end of it, because though they were defeated by 1936, Ethiopia continued to resist. There were guerrilla bands, there were insurgent strikes on convoys, and women again played a major role in fighting the fascist occupier. From historian Bahru Zwedi, quote, not only were there Ethiopian women warriors, but they played a major role in the very strong resistance movement after the Italians took over the government. By reason of their capacity to arouse less suspicion, they played a predominant role inside the enemy's organizational network, passing on crucial information about enemy strength, troop movements, and planned operations. Now, once they were in command, Mussolini appointed a

colonial dictator, a fellow named Graziani, to rule Italy's new possessions. Graziani, something like that. Graziani, Graziani, that spicy meatball man, whatever, fucking Italians. In February of 1937, a resistance cell carried out an assassination attempt on Graziani. The fascist retribution was horrific. And I'm going to quote from a write up in the Economist here. Led by the local black shirts, Mussolini's paramilitaries officially granted carte blanche, regular soldiers, carabinieri, which are like their elite, and perhaps more than half of Addis Ababa's Italian civilians took part in this ghoulish massacre. Witnesses reported crushed babies, disemboweled pregnant women, and the burning of entire families. Mr. Campbell,

who's the historian who studies this particular act of massacre, argues that this was a methodical effort to wipe out Ethiopian resistance to Italian rule, more like later Nazi war crimes than early colonial massacres. He charges both Graziani and the local fascist party leader Guido Cortesi with personal responsibility. The one conscious when the killing began, Graziani took control of the subsequent reprisal executions aimed in particular at eliminating the Ethiopian nobility and intelligentsia between 20 and 30,000 civilians were massacred in a matter of days. Graziani was never prosecuted for his crimes after the war ended. Yeah. And one of the long term consequences of this is they massacre all of not all, but most of the Ethiopians who know how

to run a government, who know how to do like the things. Of course. The functional things. You're like, people wonder like, why was Ethiopia white? Like all that starvation and shit that was like, you know, the latter part of the 20th century. There were a lot of calamities in Ethiopia. Yeah. Well, some of it goes back to the fact that all of the people who knew how to run a country get fucking massacred by the Italians. And that makes it hard to have a country afterwards. Jesus. I'm trying to, it's obviously impossible to imagine this because I don't think the human brain can eat. I forget what the limit is, but after so many numbers, you can't conceive of it in your mind, right? Yeah. But 20 or 30,000 people in a couple of days just got my hometown

growing up with 22,000 people. And the whole town just dead in like three days. Yeah. Oh. Oh. So Graziani, who yeah, the architect of this is not prosecuted for anything he doesn't in Ethiopia. He was briefly imprisoned for working with the Nazis after the war, but the British didn't want to prosecute him for killing 30,000 people because if they prosecuted him for murdering colonial subjects, that would have set a bad precedent because the British did that shit too. We can't prosecute this guy. He did the same shit we do. You know? Please get rid of your mass murders. I promise your society will be okay without them. And probably more importantly, other people's societies will also be okay without them. Yeah, there's a couple of benefits.

A couple of benefits of getting rid of your mass murders, you might say. God damn it. The only good news, if there can be good news in a story like this, is that Ethiopia played a major role in changing the Western world's mind about Fascist Italy. Before the invasion, Mussolini was like a celebrity. He was seen as an economic miracle worker, which is not true. The Italian economy was a disaster. That's part of it. But they were able to lie, right? They're Fascists. Oh yeah, we just wanted to do something similar here. Yeah. But he was very popular. There were a lot of Americans who were like, that's what we need is a guy like Mussolini. He could whip this country into shape. Deal with these layabout socialists. All that kind of shit. People loved

Mussolini. He was extremely popular, especially in the United States. I love your American person accent. It's great. That's how all Americans, that's how we talked in the 1930s. This is the voice. This is the only way white people sounded. It's delightful. So Mussolini, celebrity in the United States in like the late 20s and 30s, and he's part of why a lot of Americans were Fascism curious in the early 30s, because Mussolini seemed to be so good at what he was doing. Why don't we try that? We just need our Mussolini. Italy's massacre in Addis Ababa carried out, which was, you know, the story of this massacre was carried over the wire by courageous journalists on the ground and broadcast put throughout through a newspaper owned by a former suffragette,

Sylvia Pankhurst. And as a result of outrage over the killings, Time Magazine declared highly salacy their man of the year in 1936. Previously, Time had swooned over Mussolini. So Time Magazine, big fans of Mussolini, they get horrified by this massacre. They make highly salacy man of the year in 36, right? I was ready to speak after his time and then immediately I was like, oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah. But it's also worth doing that. Following the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the far right foreign editor of Time Magazine, who'd been such a fan of Mussolini, is fired. He gets forced out of the magazine. And he actually, he doesn't, he doesn't fire. He leaves because he loses a fight to nominate Mussolini for a Nobel Peace Prize. Sir? Yeah, I know. Real douchebag.

What the hell? Oh, no. You know, who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize? This man who killed 30,000 people. Nothing's more peaceful than the dead. Make better choices is all I have to say to that. What? I mean, in fairness, they did. They made highly salacy man of the year. They got, they got their head on straighter. Oh, my God. And kind of, you can see what happens to Time Magazine after, as a result of the invasion, is kind of emblematic of more broadly what's happening in American culture, right? The shift against fascism against fascist Italy is where it starts because of how brutal this is. I'm going to quote now from a write up by Jacob in Magazine. As James Dugan and Lawrence LaFour point out in Days of Emperor and Clown, the old liberal tradition

of sympathy for fascism still lingered towards the end of 1935, but it had begun to change. In November of that year, the New Republic proposed a more sophisticated explanation of the war, one that showed a much clearer and more hostile understanding of the nature of fascism. And by January of 1936, it gave great prominence to an article by Salvemini and Maxus Scoli, excoriating Mussolini. The strange destiny of Ethiopia had begun to realize itself, at Dugan and LaFour. It was paradoxically creating the Rome-Berlin axis, making it terrifying and therefore strong, but it was also commencing the work that would eventually invoke the conscience of the west and bring it into fascism. So Italy wins this battle, but they lose the war in part because

this starts galvanizing people against fascism. This is really the first mass scale fascist crime against humanity. What do you think it was? Because people, we've already said I was saying here about black people. So was it just the numbers that were horrifying? Like, is this what people love? Yeah, it was the numbers and it was the, you know, even a lot of racists, they might not want, they might be pro-segregation, but there's a line between being pro-segregation and wanting to see babies beaten to death in the street, right? Like, you can be pretty racist and not be cool with mass murder. Yeah. Not that that exonerates, like, but I think a lot of Americans who are so pretty racist were like, oh, fuck, that's too far. You know, that's not okay. Yeah,

we should not be ripping babies from pregnant mothers. That's freaking weird. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Oh, the whore. Yeah. Now, of course, yeah, I should note that once the war actually got going and Italian atrocities, the poison gassing of civilians was obvious to everyone, the USSR and the rest of the international community registered token complaints about the violence. They stopped dealing with Italy after this, the Soviets do. Most of all, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia spells the final end of the League of Nations. What Italy did was so blatant and the uselessness of the body to stop it was so apparent that no one could take the League seriously anymore. This is what kills the League of Nations is Ethiopia, really, more than any other single factor.

How could anybody trust you after that shit? Yeah, of course. Like, what is your, what are you even doing if you can't stop this shit? For your own members. Yeah. Yeah, for a member nation. One cartoon in Punch Magazine, which kind of visualized Britain and France as characters in a musical singing to Mussolini read, we don't want you to fight, but by Jingo, if you do, we will probably issue a joint member random suggesting a mild disapproval of you. It's not the catchiest song, but it's right. Yeah. In 1966, historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote, the League died in 1935. One day it was a powerful body imposing sanctions. The next day it was a useless fraud. Everybody running away from it as quickly as possible. Hitler watched. 11 years later,

historian A. P. Adam Thwaite added, Manchuria demonstrated that the League was toothless. However, the blow to the League was not a mortal one, and the decisive test came two years later in the Abyssinian crisis. The Abyssinian crisis delivered a death blow to the League. It was already weakened by the departure of Japan in March 1933 and Germany in October. Italy left in 1937. While Britain and France were distracted, Hitler made his first major territorial move, sending a force of 22,000 men into the demilitarized Rhineland. Dictators are watching. They test the waters. They know you don't want war. They know they can get away with a bunch. And if they get away with enough, they'll get away with everything.

That's why they keep pushing. That's the story that keeps getting repeated throughout history. It's the thing that people don't ever learn from or deal with effectively. It just keeps happening over and over and over again. And it happened. You can draw a direct line. And it's not just... Hitler is looking at the League's failure with Ethiopia. And by the way, Abyssinia is with the Europeans called Ethiopia during this period. I call it Ethiopia because that's the term they... What they called it. Yeah. But there's other dimensions of this, right? So Hitler's watching. Oh, they didn't... Mussolini watches. Oh, the Japanese took Manchuria. Nobody stopped them. I'm going to take

Ethiopia. Hitler watches that. And he's like, okay, well, I'm going to go take the fucking Rhineland. And everything that happens in World War II, a lot of it comes out of that. And you could draw in a similar way the Armenian genocide, which takes place during World War I, which is the Turkish government massacring about a million Armenians. The international community does nothing about it. And when Hitler was talking with his guys, with his other leaders of Germany about what they were going to do to the Jewish population, there was a lot of worry that like, well, if we actually go all the way with this genocide thing, like, that's going to be a problem. People are going to try to stop us. Like, they're not going to let

us do this. This is going to cause an issue. And Hitler's response to that was, who now remembers the Armenians? You don't hear anyone talking about Armenian. Nobody gives a shit. I can kill whoever the fuck I want. They're not going to do anything. They don't want another war. Well, he wasn't wrong until he was. No. Uh, eventually he was eventually. But it was probably still was not so much about the murder and death. You know, it wasn't so much about who was being murdered. But you know, you were fucking up traditional lines of things and people didn't like that. Like, yeah, if Hitler had stuck to just murdering all of the Jews in Germany, he probably would have

been able to do it. But we don't know what's going on in Germany. That's crazy. The Germans who can manage him. We're over here in Britain. We're fine. Don't bother us. Do you want another war? No, sir. Yeah. No, no, not at all. Oh, my gosh. Humanity is is a disease unto itself. It's a pickle. It's all so bad. It's a real dilly of a pickle. I always come here and I try to understand the pickle we're in and just end up more mystified, more troubled by it all. That's what that's what learning history teaches you. It's kind of like the lesson of like the only person who wasn't racist to highly salacy was Mussolini. What does that teach us? I don't fucking know. It's just a thing that happens. Humans are chaotic and awful beings. Chaotic and awful. Yeah.

Yep. Shit just happens. Anyway, disturbed. Here's some shit that happened. That was the story today. Joelle, you got any pluggables you want to plug? Oh, man. You guys, you know, you can find me all over the internet at Joelle Monique. It's J-O-E-L-L-E-M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. I'm pretty sure there is a Hyundai video out where myself, Zach Braff, Donald Faison, DJ Daniel, who I know this fanbase is prominently aware of. We're in a Hyundai and we get a tour of LA with Zach and Donald. It is stupid, funny, ridiculous. We re-enact a scene from Clueless, which was obviously my favorite part. And if you would enjoy watching such things, you can do that. I believe it's going to be on Zach's YouTube page, but I'll definitely have a link posted by now. So try that. Yeah.

All right. Well, I'm Robert Evans. I have a book after the Revolution. It's a novel. You can find it in podcast form if you want to listen to the audio presentation of it at After the Revolution, wherever you find podcasts. There's also the text of the book uploaded as epubs to atrbook.com. So check out atrbook.com. Check out the reddit at r slash after the revolution and listen to the podcast and, you know, fuck Italy. Sure. I'll go on a fuck Italy with you. Fuck Italy. Fuck everybody, really. Fuck like everybody. Yeah. Just kind of fuck everybody. Okay. Yeah. Also that too. That's the message of the story. Fuck everybody. Me. Except for Joe Lewis. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not telling you. Joe Lewis, you're fine. You're fine. I didn't say anything about you or your mother.

You don't want to start shit with Joe Lewis. No, not at all. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to

go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.