Haile Selassie and the Italians, 1941-1943

When Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia he used the Italians to insure his own survival. During the war period the Ethiopians began to appreciate the Italians. They demonstrated this attitude by not taking revenge for the crimes committed during Rudolfo Graziani's 1936–1937 administration. Instead, they aided the Italians to escape to safety when pursued by the occupying British military authorities. The Ethiopians even went so far as to espouse the Italian underground movement against the British, in a strange form of Italo-Ethiopian collaboration (Wingate, 1973: 206). For Haile Selassie the battle of El Alamein was the turning point in the relations with both the British and the Italians. Until this time, he was concerned with securing his own position, something he could not do until he had a clear reading of who would ultimately win the war. Italy's colonial efforts in Ethiopia from 1936–1941 failed for lack of organization, incompetent colonial personnel, and high costs. Yet, the most important hindrance to Italy's progress in East Africa derived from the Patriots and the hostility of the Ethiopian farmers. Italy was neither able to obtain adequate food supplies in Ethiopia, nor obtain enough land for demographic colonization. Nevertheless the success of new agricultural methods and modern forms of government could not be accomplished in Ethiopia in a short time. Therefore when Italy entered the Second World War, on 10 June 1940, the Italians in Ethiopia were in the midst of experimentation, and the Ethiopian people had barely begun a period of transformation in their lives.