World War II Day by Day

Rome, Italy • October 3, 1935

On this date in 1935 Benito Mus­so­lini’s Italy invaded the North­east African King­dom of Abys­sinia (present-day Ethi­o­pia) without a declara­tion of war, and for doing so the League of Nations (fore­runner to today’s United Nations) in­structed its mem­ber states to impose limited econo­mic sanc­tions on Italy. (Neither the U.S. nor Germany were mem­bers of that inter­na­tional body.) The next year, after Ital­ian forces had van­quished Empe­ror Haile Selas­sie’s feu­dal kingdom using modern Euro­pean wea­ponry, including air­planes, tanks, heavy artil­lery, machine guns, and poi­son gas, Mus­so­lini crowed to an audi­ence in Rome’s Palazzo Venezia on May 9, 1936, the day Ethio­pia was for­mally an­nexed, that “Italy has at last her Empire—a Fas­cist Em­pire.” Fas­cist East Africa con­sisted of Ethi­o­pia, Eri­trea, and Ital­ian Somali­land, the latter two possessions acquired by various treaties in the 1880s. In the piazza below his palace balcony, Musso­lini’s worshiping crowd roared their approval over and over again: “Duce, Duce, Duce!” (Leader, leader, leader).

Years earlier, in 1925, Mussolini (1883–1945) had stated: “I want to make Italy great, respected, and feared” through­out Europe and the rest of the world. His words brought to mind the past glory of the Roman Empire, with its impe­rial reach through­out the ancient Medi­ter­ranean basin (Mare Nos­trum, Latin for “Our Sea”) and deep into Africa. But militarily over­whelming an ill-prepared and badly equipped Afri­can army was a long way from Mus­so­lini’s vision of pro­jecting Ital­ian supre­macy among her modern-day Medi­ter­ranean neighbors, and for that he needed a strong ally.

Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was an easy mark. In 1936 Musso­lini made his first refer­ence to a “Rome-Berlin axis” in a speech in the northern Italian city of Milan, for­malizing it in a treaty of friend­ship his nation signed with Germany on Octo­ber 25 of that year. (The “Rome-Berlin axis,” in the sense used by Musso­lini, envi­sioned a Europe wherein neigh­boring states revolved around a geo­polit­ical pole con­necting both Cen­tral Euro­pean capi­tals.) The two dicta­tors with their “ideo­logical affin­i­ties”—a phrase used by both National Social­ists and Italian Fas­cists in offi­cial and un­offi­cial com­mu­ni­cations—had met for the first time in June 1934 in Venice, Italy. The Octo­ber 1936 “Treaty of Friend­ship” recog­nized each coun­try’s spheres of in­ter­est: Germany’s north of the Alps, where the nations of Austria, Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Poland lay, and Italy’s to the east and south: to Alba­nia, Yugo­sla­via, Greece, Tur­key, the Medi­ter­ranean islands of Malta and Cyprus, and North Africa. To com­mem­o­rate the 1936 pact, Germany issued a post­age stamp depicting the two dic­ta­tors standing shoulder to shoulder, at the top of which was written: “Zwei Völker und Ein Kampf” (“Two Peoples and One Struggle”).

Il Duce: Wave Maker in Italy’s Mare Nostrum

Left: Benito Mussolini at a National Fascist Party rally. During the 1920s and 1930s, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler fre­quently paid homage to Fas­cism and its supreme party leader Il Duce. Both dicta­tors used the poli­tical par­ties they founded to seize and con­soli­date their power at the national level, Hitler more bru­tally than Musso­lini. Musso­lini ruled Italy con­sti­tu­tionally from 1922 to 1925, when he dropped all pre­tense of demo­cracy and set up a one-party dic­ta­tor­ship that ruled the coun­try until he was toppled from power by his own Fas­cist Party in July 1943 shortly after Anglo-American amphib­i­ous landings in Sicily (Oper­a­tion Husky). Hitler, “der Fuehrer” (the leader) of Germany’s Nazi Party, was appointed chan­cellor (head of govern­ment) by German Presi­dent Paul von Hinden­burg in late Janu­ary 1933 and solidified his dictatorship after Hindenburg’s death in August 1934.

Right: As the self-anointed heir to the Roman Caesar, Musso­lini fre­quently used props, mili­tary uni­forms, and settings that evoked power and pres­tige. In this photo from 1929 he is seen addressing an audi­ence in Northern Italy mounted on horse­back. On another occa­sion he addressed Italian troops from the top of a tank, arms akimbo.

Left: Mussolini and Hitler appear on this German stamp com­memo­rating the 1936 Ital­ian-German Treaty of Friend­ship. Trans­la­tion of text at the top: “Two Peoples and One Struggle.”

Right: The term “axis” was first used by Musso­lini in Novem­ber 1936 when he spoke of a Rome-Berlin axis arising out of the Ital­ian-Ger­man Treaty of Friend­ship of Octo­ber that year. Later, in May 1939, this relation­ship morphed into a mili­tary and eco­no­mic alli­ance, which Musso­lini referred to as the “Pact of Steel.” The term “Axis powers” for­mally came into being after the Tripar­tite Pact was signed by Italy, Germany, and Japan in a gala cere­mony (shown here) on Septem­ber 27, 1940, in Berlin, Germany. Member­ship in the pact expanded later that year and the next with the addi­tion of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. In its heyday (1941–1943) nine nations were united in a pact whose value chiefly benefited Hitler’s propaganda machine.

Fox Movietone News: Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935