MUSSOLINI’S ARMY
Mussolini envisaged building an empire to rival Ancient Rome. Once he’d established his grip on Italy, he set his sights on Abyssinia as the place to begin
‘Fascism repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. The Fascist conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest.’
By the time Benito Mussolini wrote these words in 1932, he had been in power for less than a decade. In that short time, however, he’d both expanded Italy’s armed forces and established a cult of militarism at the heart of national life.
When the self-styled Duce first grabbed power in 1922, Italy was in turmoil. It may have ended up on the winning side during the First World War, but the conflict had almost broken the country. Its society was deeply polarised and its economy was in free fall. By pumping up the military, Mussolini hoped to reduce unemployment and boost national pride. In the short term, it would help him crush opponents of his regime at home and enforce a greater sense of unity. In the longer term, his aim was to use it to transform Italy into a colonial superpower to rival the Roman Empire over which he’d preside as its black-shirted Caesar.
By October 1935, Mussolini was ready to turn his vision into a reality and sent half-a-million Italian troops to invade Abyssinia in modern-day Ethiopia. The armies that crossed the border from Eritrea in the north and Somalia in the east brought with them hundreds of tanks and aircraft as well as thousands of artillery pieces. With Mussolini also ordering the widespread use of poison gas to destroy Ethiopian resolve, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War would be one of the most one-sided in history. Within seven months, the Italians had conquered the entire country, killing as many as 500,000 Ethiopian soldiers and civilians in the process.
Among the force the Italians used to conquer Ethiopia were thousands of troops belonging to Italy’s Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali (RCTC). This corps of African troops recruited in Italy’s existing colonial possessions in Eritrea, Somalia and Libya had been part of the Italian armed forces since the late 19th century.
Commanded by Italian officers and NCOs, the RCTC was primarily made up of cavalry, camel-mounted and infantry divisions armed with modern European weapons. By the time of the invasion of Ethiopia, light artillery and armoured car units had also been added to their ranks.
Perhaps to avoid high casualties among the Italian ranks these RCTC troops were frequently used to lead the attacks
