Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia - Societa italiana di storia ...

Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia 137
were finally abandoned, under pressure from the Foreign Office, whose support
the Ethiopian Government considered essential for its claim to Eritrea.
Ethiopia’s diplomatic and legal initiative in respect of Italian war crimes had
continued for almost a decade, from the liberation in 1941 to the abandonment
of prosecution efforts in 1949. Failure was not due to weakness in the case
against the accused, or to inability to marshal evidence and affidavits, but to
dogged Italian opposition, as well as to the prejudices of Ethiopia’s allies.
Post-war Italy was unwilling to face the fact that war crimes had been committed
by its nationals in Ethiopia. It was symptomatic that General Guglielmo
Nasi, who had been listed as a war criminal, was nominated by the then Italian
Government as governor of the Italian Trust territory of Somalia in February
1950, and that this appointment was only withdrawn as a result of international
complaint. It was no less symptomatic that it was not until 1996, 60 years
after the event, that the Italian Ministry of Defence was finally brought to
admit that the Italian Royal Air Force had used poison-gas in Ethiopia. 83
The European leaders of the post-World War II international community, for
their part, were likewise unprepared to see fellow Europeans punished for
crimes against non-Europeans half a decade earlier, and preferred a miscarriage
of justice.
Notes
1. A. Gingold Duprey, De l’invasion à la libération de l’Ethiopie, (Paris, 1955), I, 340,
365–6, 572, 596, 627, 630–1, 647–52.
2. E . U l l e n d o r f f , The Au t o b i o g raphy of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: “My Life and
Ethiopia’s Progress,” 1892–1937, (Oxford, 1976), pp. 301–2.
3. UNWCC, History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the
Development of the Laws of War (London 1948), pp. 189–90.
4. UNWCC, History, pp.89–90.
5. The Times, 22 August 1942.
6. The Times, 8 October 1942.
7. The Times, 18 December 1942.
8. FO 371/ 37307, R666, S. Hoare to FO, 20 July 1943.
9. FO 371/ 37307, quoted in FO memo of 26 July 1943.
10. CAB, Vol 39, minutes of 103 rd meeting, 26 July 1943.
11. FO 371/ 6774, R666, W. Churchill, “Thoughts on the Fall of Mussolini,” 26 July
1943.
12. The Times, 29 July 1943.