Abstract
Although Italy had ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol against the use of asphyxiating chemicals in war on April 3, 1928, Mussolini was willing to incur international condemnation by allowing the use of gas to expedite the conquest of Ethiopia. The Italian army’s deployment of chemical weapons facilitated its final victory by wearing down the Ethiopians and breaking their will to fight. In addition to the 1925 gas protocol, Italian troops violated other international pacts by freely bombing Red Cross ambulances, hospitals, and civilian targets.
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Notes
George Lawther Steer, Caesar in Abyssinia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936).
Pietro Badoglio, La guerra d’Etiopia (Milan: Mondadori, 1936), 101;
Antonio Perria, Impero mod. ‘91 (Milan: Il Momento, 1967), 180, n. 3;
Angelo Del Boca, Gli Italiani in Africa orientale: La conquista dell’impero (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1979), 440, 486, 488.
Rodolfo Graziani, Il fronte sud (Milan: Mondadori, 1938), 220; author’s personal interview with Alessandro Lessona, former Minister of Colonies, October 27, 1972.
Herbert M. Hanson and Delia Hanson, For God and Emperor, 35 (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1958).
Interview by Del Boca with General Faldella: Angelo Del Boca, La guerra d’Abissinia, 1935–1941 (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978), 76.
Alessandro Lessona, Memorie (Florence: Sansoni, 1958), 292.
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© 2005 Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller
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Sbacchi, A. (2005). Poison Gas and Atrocities in the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1936). In: Ben-Ghiat, R., Fuller, M. (eds) Italian Colonialism. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8158-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-8158-5_5
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