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Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia 107 account of the high Generals and Ad m i rals with whom he has dealt so f a i t h f u l l y. I repeat you are responsible for his honourable security. 3 5 This letter leads us to suppose that the British Government, which sought to protect Badoglio from his own Government, would not allow him to be tried for crimes committed, half a decade earlier, in far-off Ethiopia. Revelations in the New York Times Interest in Italian war crimes was minimal throughout 1944. Britain and its European allies, primarily interested in the question of German war crimes, awaited the successful termination of the conflict in Europe, in 1945, before instituting trials. The Ethiopian Government, under strict British control imposed by the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 31 January 1942, was necessarily also fairly inactive. The country did not regain freedom of action until the second Anglo-Ethiopian agreement, on 19 December 1944. Though unable to take much action while under British control, some members of the Ethiopian Government were seething with anger over the war crimes issue. This found expression in an article, in the New York Times, on 31 January 1945. Its author, Sydney Gruson, had apparently been in contact with the Ethiopian Legation in London. He reported that the Ethiopian authorities were complaining of “British refusal to hand over Italians and others guilty of war-crimes,” and re f e r red specifically to Mussolini, Badoglio, and the Emperor’s collaborationist son-in-law Haylä Sellasé Gugsa. 36 Gruson’s article, which seemed likely to interest America’s pro-Ethiopian Black community, was considered so sensitive by the British Embassy in Washington that the ambassador, the Earl of Halifax, that day sent a “Secret” telegram to the Foreign Office. After summarising Gruson’s charges, he wrote: “Could you please supply me as rapidly as possible with the facts.” 37 The Foreign Office, replying on 6 February, reverted to its old arguments. It contended that the commission’s terms of reference were “confined to crimes committed by our enemies during the present war.” It nevertheless added, for Halifax’s “own information,” i.e., not for disclosure to the Americans, the delicate matter that the commission’s responsibility might be extended “in the case of China to the beginning of hostilities against Japan.”
108 Richard Pankhurst Outlining Fo reign Office policy, designed to exclude Ethiopia, the letter c o n t i n u e d : Representation on the Commission has . . . , for practical purposes, been confined to the Four Major Allies, the Dominions and European exiled governments, though this of course would not prevent its considering any information within its terms of reference which any United Nations Government, including Ethiopia, might wish to submit to it. There is, however, no logical ground for extension of activities of this United Nations body to investigation of crimes committed during the Italo- Abyssinian war or subsequent period down to the outbreak of the present wa r. Such extension would seem to invo l ve consideration by the Commission of crimes committed during all previous warlike operations by our enemies, which is clearly inadmissible. The Foreign Office concluded by arguing that any extension of the period covered by the commission would “require consent, not only of His Majesty’s Government, but also of all the other Governments represented on the Commission, who would not in fact be likely to agree.” 38 The Pamphlet Italy’s War Crimes in Ethiopia The question of Italian atrocities acquired new focus two months later, in mid-April, when New Times and Ethiopia News in London published the pamphlet Italy’s War Crimes in Ethiopia. It contained excerpts from reports of the Graziani massacre, and photographs of executions, taken by the fascists themselves, found in Ethiopia after the Liberation. The pamphlet was widely circulated, to British MPs and others, and was almost immediately reprinted. 39 The London Agreement, Ethiopian Accession thereto, and the Ethiopian War Crimes Commission With the end of World War II, in the summer of 1945, interest in war crimes came at last to the fore. On 20 June, the Fo reign Office, though still trying to shield Badoglio and opposing the trial of Italians for crimes in Ethiopia, drew up a revealing “Biogra p hy of Graziani.” It noted that in the Addis Ababa massacre
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