Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 marks the true start of World War 2. Yes, I know, all the history books state the beginning of that conflict in 1939. However, the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia was characterised by all the elements of the global conflagration – a colonial conquest motivated by racist ideology, new and improved (chemical) weapons of mass destruction, and pusillanimous behaviour by the major powers.

The crimes committed by Italian forces in Ethiopia foreshadowed the savagery of the wider global war. The current Italian government of Giorgia Meloni, who heads the ultranationalist Brothers of Italy party, has been rewriting not only the history of the Ethiopian conflict, but recasting fascist Italians as the victims.

Italy had done its share of empire-building in Africa prior to the rise of Mussolini and his fascist party. Somaliland, neighbouring Ethiopia, was under the control of Italy. However, Mussolini’s government, anxious to take its place as one of the ‘great powers’, launched a war of conquest against Ethiopia, a campaign marked by genocidal violence.

To be sure, the imperial powers, namely Britain and the United States, welcomed and admired Mussolini for reputedly ‘saving’ Italy from Bolshevism. The fascist dictatorship he constructed was portrayed as an efficient, smoothly-humming machine reviving Italian industry. Churchill, Roosevelt, and numerous global politicians joined in admiring the revamped fascist government. Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of extreme right wing Zionism, and the ideological forerunner of Netanyahu’s right wing coalition partners, was an ardent admirer of Mussolini.

The 1935 attack on Ethiopia – Abyssinia as the latter was then known – presented a problem for the fascist-admiring Anglophone academia and political establishment. There were voices in the West denouncing the violent and oppressive practices of Mussolini’s dictatorship. However, the anti war voices were drowned out. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was a direct violent of international law. The genocidal violence unleashed by Italian forces was plainly evident in Ethiopia.

Italian forces used all the means of mechanised violence at their disposal. Facing resistance by the Ethiopians, Italian military commanders resorted to mass reprisals and collective punishment – tactics which other colonial powers had used in their African colonies. One weapon which Italy used liberally was mustard gas, a chemical weapon. The Italian fascist regime was uninterested in the outraged reactions of foreign powers, and deliberately targeted ambulances and medical personnel with this gas, among other civilian targets.

In February 1937, the military governor of Ethiopia and viceroy of Italian East Africa, General Rodolfo Graziani, was standing at a podium along with various officials of the Italian-imposed administration. Two Ethiopian resistance fighters lobbed grenades Graziani’s way, seriously wounding him and killing other officials. This assassination attempt, while unsuccessful, demonstrated that the Ethiopians had not been defeated. The Italian authorities were thrown into a panic.

Over three days, February 19 – 21, the Italian forces, backed up by armed settlers, went on a killing spree. Ethiopians were butchered, hacked and bayoneted to death. Incendiary bombs were used, crops burned, and houses destroyed. Estimates of up to 20000 Ethiopians were killed, including women and children. This gruesome massacre in Addis Ababa was carried out by the Italian fascist authorities. Italian civilians who sympathised with the fascist cause participated with axes, knives and makeshift weapons.

Foreign diplomats expressed their horror at the atrocities they witnessed, relaying information about the orgy of violence occurring in the city. The Italian government never made a secret of the methods they used, yet this massacre has faded from memory, along with the Italo-Ethiopian war.

There were demands in the League of Nations to censure fascist Italy. There were European supporters of the Ethiopian resistance, and they bravely condemned the atrocities committed by Italian troops and their civilian Blackshirt accomplices. African Americans demonstrated their racial solidarity with the Ethiopian insurgents in the United States. Time magazine declared Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie Man of the Year in 1936.

The victims were African, and the European powers participated in the fiction that Mussolini was the ‘good’ dictator, as opposed to the evil Hitler. Africa was a place populated by savages in loincloths, a continent to be carved up by the imperialist powers. Their suffering did not matter in the halls of Washington and London.

The Ethiopians continued to resist, waging a classic guerrilla war against the Italian invaders. It is worth noting that the Ethiopian forces comprised people from all the different ethnic and tribal groupings in the country – Ethiopian nationalism is not a fictional concept.

The Ethiopians won in the end, and Italian fascism was defeated as much by Ethiopian rebels as by Yugoslav partisans. Graziani was arrested by Allied forces and tried, not for his crimes in Ethiopia and Italian-occupied Africa, but for his role in the short lived Nazi collaborationist Italian Social Republic.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has engaged in a deliberate attempt to recast the Italian fascist party of the 1930s as victims, rather than perpetrators. The Yugoslav partisans, in Meloni’s twisted vision, committed ethnic cleansing by shooting Italian fascist officers, police and Blackshirts. Berlusconian politics, pushing the Italian electorate right wards, influences our understanding of Italy’s fascist past.

By remembering the crimes of the colonisers, we can finally achieve justice for the victims, and honour those, such as the Ethiopians, who resisted.