Mussolini has been very troubled lately, because his troops are still trapped in Abyssinia. Although he ended the war in 1936, he still pays for it to this day.

Around 1930, Italy was also hit hard by the economic crisis, and the domestic economy was on the verge of collapse. In order to get rid of the severe economic crisis at home, Mussolini's government vigorously promoted the militarization of the national economy, intensified the expansion of armaments, and attempted to expand by force, plunder the market and the production of raw materials, so as to serve his ultimate goal of leading Italy to become the world hegemon.

In order to re-divide the colonies of East Africa and North Africa, dominate the Mediterranean, control the shipping routes from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and thus weaken the ties between Britain and France and the Asian colonies, Italy formulated a war plan to invade Abyssinia (that is, Ethiopia).

Abyssinia was chosen for a number of reasons: first, Abyssinia was located halfway between the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somalia, and the capture of Abyssinia would open up the link between the two colonies. This would allow the Italian colonies in East Africa to be united, and would also sever the links between the British colonies of Sudan and British Kenya in the field, thus facilitating further Italian action in Africa in the future.

Secondly, Abyssinia is an Italian heart knot. Thirty-five years ago, in 1896, the King of Abyssinia personally led his army to defeat Italy in Adua, northern Ethiopia, and paid an indemnity of 10 million lire to Italy, and was forced to recognize the independence of Abyssinia, which was signed. This incident is an eternal pain for the Italians, so this time it can be regarded as a battle for revenge.

With these needs, it makes perfect sense to go to war against Abyssinia. All that remains is a question of the attitude of France and England. However, the good news for Italy is that France, in order to win over Italy, has secretly expressed its support for Italy's use of force against Abyssinia.

Without the support of the French, the British, initially fearing that Italy might shake its rule in East Africa and Egypt and the Sultanate, finally compromised against Italy's use of force against Abyssinia. Without the support of France, the British felt that it was too risky to go to war alone, and eventually made a vague statement to Mussolini that as long as Italy did not get too close to the Germans, then Britain would ignore Italy's actions in Abyssinia.

The United States, in order to weaken Britain's strategic purpose, secretly supported Italy's move, and then passed a neutrality law, stating that it would not export weapons to belligerents, but this bill did not restrict the embargo on production raw materials and strategic goods: for Italy, which was self-sufficient in weapons and equipment, this neutrality law was obviously more advantageous. Even Mussolini revealed in a personal letter to Accardo: "If the League of Nations sanctions Italy with an oil embargo, I will have to withdraw from Abyssinia in a week." ”

As a result of successful diplomatic operations, the international community's interest in the Abyssinian question was lacking from the outset. Germany's annexation of Hungary and the deterioration of diplomatic tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union and Poland focused the world's attention on Eastern Europe, and Italy's plan to fish in troubled waters was an unprecedented success.

In September 1935, when Germany was digesting the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the Italian High Command decided to concentrate more than 300,000 troops in Italian Eritrea and Somalia, under the command of General De Bono, commander-in-chief of the Italian army in Northeast Africa, to divide the northern, central and southern routes, with the northern route as the main route to carry out a centripetal attack on the hinterland of Abyssinia, in an attempt to occupy the country in one fell swoop. Abyssinia then began a counterattack, and the Italian army suffered slight losses, so on November 16 of the same year, Marshal Bardolio took command and began a full-scale attack on Abyssinia.

The Abyssinian Army is composed of about 10,000 royal guards and militia groups from various provinces and tribes, with a total of about 45~500,000 people. However, these units were poorly armed and poorly trained, but their morale was high. The Supreme Commander was Emperor Haile Selassie I of Abyssinia, and under his command the Abyssinian army fought hard against Italy.

The resistance plan of the Abyssinian Army High Command was to withdraw 30 kilometers from the border, hold the dangerous points, and carry out mobile defensive operations in the mountains, so as to create conditions for the subsequent counteroffensive.

On 3 October, Italy launched a full-scale war against Abyssinia, invading Abyssinian territory with the cooperation of a powerful air force. The Italian-Argentine War broke out, and the military and civilians of Abyssinia rose up to meet it.

The war went through several phases: from the outbreak of the war to the fall of the Abyssinian capital in May 1936, it was a regular war. The Abyssinian Army fought mainly against the Italians in positional defensive warfare. During the first five months of the war, the Egyptian army rebuilt its forces in the battles of Adwa, Gorakhai and Tampien. However, Italian reinforcements then arrived from the mainland, and the fierce attack of Italian tanks and the indiscriminate bombardment of aircraft saved the defeat, and soon the war entered the confrontation stage.

In March 1936, the Italian army finally could not stand the endless war of attrition, launched a new offensive and massacres with massive poison gas. The Abyssinian army began to lose one after another. At the end of March, Emperor Haile Selassie I of Abyssinia went to the front to command the Battle of Maichou against the Italian forces advancing towards the capital, but his counterattack was unsuccessful and the remaining reserves of the Abyssinian army were destroyed.

On 3 May, Haile Selassie I went into exile. On the 5th, the capital Addis Ababa fell. On the 9th, Mussolini, the complacent de facto ruler of Italy, announced the annexation of the territory of Abyssini to the Kingdom of Italy. From then on, Abyssinia's struggle against the Italian invasion entered a new phase - the stage of guerrilla warfare.

A part of the Abyssinian Army was dispersed to the western and southern provinces and engaged in extensive guerrilla warfare with the local population in guerrilla units. The guerrillas often raided the Italian army garrisons, bombed warehouses, dismantled power lines, and sabotaged communications, and repeatedly smashed the Italian army's "liquidation operations", which bankrupted Italy's "colonial development plan."

The guerrilla war continued until November 1937, with no end in sight. The Abyssinian partisans, with the cooperation of the local population, brought endless trouble to the Italian army. Although during the entire war, more than 700,000 Abyssinian soldiers and civilians died, of which more than 290,000 died from chemical warfare agents. However, it also took a heavy toll of 140,000 casualties on Italy.

It is clear that Italy's unprecedented diplomatic success did not carry over militarily, and the low-powered Italian army did not fight as well as their diplomats. After seven months of intense war, Italy spent 12 billion lire on the operation, but failed to accomplish what it thought was a simple and unusual goal.

What made Mussolini laugh even more was that compared with Italy's attack on Abyssinia, a second-rate country in Africa, Germany challenged Poland, the largest power in Eastern Europe, and the gap between the two rivals was simply incomparable.

In fact, the results of the war are indeed not the same: Italy fought in Abyssinia for seven months and was still mired in the quagmire of war, while Germany attacked Poland in only 22 days and achieved an astonishing result that attracted worldwide attention, winning a brilliant victory in the battle of Poland.

Many times we think that Italy was the one who held the Germans back in World War II, and this is actually justified. However, few people know that in fact, before Italy cheated the Germans a few times, it was the Germans who cheated the Italians first.

In fact, Germany, Italy, and Japan even harmed each other more than they cooperated with each other in the real World War II: Italy originally hoped that Germany would start the war again in 1942, so that Italy could complete the preparations for war, but as we all know, Hitler started the war in 1939, and Italy was dragged into the war because of its lack of preparation, and naturally played very badly.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the world seemed to feel that the Soviets and Germany were about to go to war, and Japan was trying to go north to attack the Soviet Union, but Germany turned back to clean up France...... Of course, the consequence was that Japan was slapped by the Soviet Union and began to move south, not to mention the things going north.

If you count Italy's repeated attempts to trap its ally Germany in the Balkans and North Africa, Japan's sneak attack on the United States in the Pacific has trickled Germany, which does not want to fight the American army...... It seems that the whole of World War II was a spoof comedy between the three Axis powers that pulled each other back and pitted their teammates.

And in this time and space, the German Führer Accardo disrupted the entire course of history: Italy, not to mention the preparations, as an ally, Mussolini probably did not even have a plan to prepare for war...... In October 1937, however, Germany had finished Poland, which should have been eaten two years late, and now Mussolini was like a petrified and broken statue, completely messed up in the wind.

Germany slaughtered Poland with such a clean sword, disrupted the deployment of Britain and France, and frightened Mussolini as an ally: several important breakthroughs in his Italian revival plan had already been threatened by the Germans.

Italy has long considered itself the heir to the Roman Empire, and they are more interested in restoring the vast territory of the Roman Empire and turning the Mediterranean Sea into an inland lake of their own. But if this plan is to be accomplished, it should at least ensure that Italy has a say in North Africa, East Africa, and the Balkans.

But now that Africa is at war, Italy is still a long, long way from taking full control of Northeast Africa. On the other hand, the Germans were lightning fast, having annexed Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and half of Poland. Now that Romania, Bulgaria, and most of the Balkans are within reach of the Germans, how can the Italians not be in a hurry?-

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