Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia


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 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 participated in the guerrilla campaign in the hope that the German–Italian army would win in Egypt and recapture the territories.

Prelude

There were originally two main Italian guerrilla organisations: the Fronte di Resistenza and the Figli d'Italia. 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". They engaged in guerrilla war against Allied troops and harassed Italian civilians and colonial soldiers 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. 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, there were also Italian guerrillas in British Somaliland.
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. 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.
There were several Eritreans and Somalis who provided aid to the Italian guerrillas. But their numbers dwindled after the Axis defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942.
These guerrilla units 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.

Guerrilla war

From January 1942, many of these "Bande" started to operate under the coordinated orders of General Muratori. 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. Indeed, during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Oromo 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", 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.
In the spring of 1942, even Haile Selassie I started to open diplomatic channels of communication with the Italian insurgents, allegedly because he was impressed by the victory of Rommel in Tobruk, Libya. Major Lucchetti declared 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.
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. 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. Italian guerrilla efforts declined following the Axis defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein and the capture of Major Lucchetti.
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. 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.
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.

Noteworthy guerrillas

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