AHC: Berlin-Addis Ababa-Tokyo Axis

Mussolini isn't really a hardcore fascist, more like a Salazar. He is somewhat of an evangelist, pandering to a largely catholic base with a number of social wedge issues.

Religious intolerance towards Muslims causes Italy's relations with Albania to sour, and as a result Albania seeks greater autonomy from Italy. The search for a new ally, along with the increased sense of religious identity/awareness, results in Turkey being this ally.

Turkey is similarly unfriendly with Italy due to the latter's attempts to carve up Turkish land in the Treaty of Sevres. If the opportunity comes up, Turkey would love to take back the Dodecanese Islands, and possibly even Libya, which was taken from them by Italy in 1912.

After anschluss, Germany thinks of demanding the ethnically German province of South Tyrol from Italy.

In 1937, Italy invades Ethiopia. They use poison gas and commit other war crimes as they did in OTL.

Germany publicly demands South Tyrol once Mussolini's troops have been mobilized to Ethiopia, and as per a secret treaty, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Turkey simultaneously propose a measure at the League of Nations conference announcing a coalition to enforce Article X of the League Covenant, with Ethiopia's permission. Ethiopia agrees and the motion carries, as nobody condones Italy's actions.

The Coalition declares a punitive war on Italy in defense of Ethiopia, and accepts Germany's request to join them. All of these countries has agreed in a secret Treaty how the territories will be divided.
  • Eritrea and Somalia go to Ethiopia
  • South Tyrol goes to Germany
  • Fiume and other areas go to Yugoslavia
  • Dodecanese and Libya returned to Turkey
  • Sardinia is released as a Class A League Mandate

As a result, Ethiopia becomes more nationalistic, becoming a hero of blacks around the world.
Also, the League of nations has a much greater reputation than in OTL.
Germany declares the Ethiopians "Honorary Aryans"
This is a huge victory for the anti-colonial movement, emboldening leaders like Chandra Bose.
Ethiopia, with the support of Germany, sponsors all sorts of rebellions in French/British colonies in East Africa.
Turkey, with the support of Germany, sponsors similar movements in Egypt and the Levant.

Once WW2 starts, the Allies are completely spread thin, having to abandon much of their colonial possessions. They will likely have to settle for a negotiated peace of some sort.

Sorry and after Italy had finished to break every one of them what happen? Because this will happen.

Germany at the moment don't have an army or an air force and Anshluss happened in 1938 with Italian agreement due to the support (both economical and political during the invasion of Ethiopia), so not only what Germany have will attack a place that made a direct assault at the Maginot Line look like a party but also need to do get Austria earlier without Italy having any problem and hardcore fascist or not, Benny will have problem with that without a motive like OTL.

Turkey armed forces are not capable to attack Italy unless they have a strong desire of suicide, as they lack the mean, the equipment and the training.

Yugoslavia had almost have a civil war, a lot of unresolved internal problems and not really the most modern armed forces, doubt that they will do much against the fortified border.

Ethiopia at the moment is being beatean and at most hold the line, launching offensive is not really in her capacity...hell even before the war, except for raid she can't.



Frankly is like you launch an invasion of China by Birmania, Vietnam, Bhutan and Afganistan.
 
Sorry and after Italy had finished to break every one of them what happen? Because this will happen.

Germany at the moment don't have an army or an air force and Anshluss happened in 1938 with Italian agreement due to the support (both economical and political during the invasion of Ethiopia), so not only what Germany have will attack a place that made a direct assault at the Maginot Line look like a party but also need to do get Austria earlier without Italy having any problem and hardcore fascist or not, Benny will have problem with that without a motive like OTL.

Turkey armed forces are not capable to attack Italy unless they have a strong desire of suicide, as they lack the mean, the equipment and the training.

Yugoslavia had almost have a civil war, a lot of unresolved internal problems and not really the most modern armed forces, doubt that they will do much against the fortified border.

Ethiopia at the moment is being beatean and at most hold the line, launching offensive is not really in her capacity...hell even before the war, except for raid she can't.



Frankly is like you launch an invasion of China by Birmania, Vietnam, Bhutan and Afganistan.

Good point, the war would need to be pushed back to after anschluss. Basically my idea was to combine the allies tendency towards appeasement with the opportunity to legitimize the League of Nations.
I also think that the war could have garnered much support from movements like that of Marcus Garvey in America.

I thought the biggest issue with this was that having a strong pro-catholic movement would derail anschluss, and probably any plebiscite in South Tyrol.
 
Good point, the war would need to be pushed back to after anschluss. Basically my idea was to combine the allies tendency towards appeasement with the opportunity to legitimize the League of Nations.
I also think that the war could have garnered much support from movements like that of Marcus Garvey in America.

I thought the biggest issue with this was that having a strong pro-catholic movement would derail anschluss, and probably any plebiscite in South Tyrol.

The biggest problem is that the nations you use don't have the military and economic capacity to attack Italy*, Germany is the exception naturally but there are a lot of problem, the first is that she need to rearm (things not gone good enough to invade Poland till the aquisition of Czechoslovackia) and second she face the alps a natural border that a infantry division can use to hold off the entire werchmatch.
If it done after the Anshluss, Ethiopia is already fallen and before Italy can simply say to Germany: Lol no; if Italy agree to let Germany get Austria is only because they had become allied and also resolved the South Tyrol question, otherwise Benny will simply say stop at the entire endevour and frankly there is not that Adolf can do about it.

* The Turkysh army in 1937 lack a lot of equipment, even rifles and in 1940 the British needed to supply them as what they have was a big mix of outdated weapons, the air force had 137 aircraft and just the half of them was relatevely modern and the pilot lacked training, the ships lacked AA defense and the coastal defence extremely lackying.
The Jugoslavian army, by the evaluation of the British attachè in 1937 was considered not capable to launch large operation outside his territory but had good capacity in a defensive war
 
Have Ethiopian Emperor said the same thing too and call for African Americans to throw the yoke of Jewish Slavemasters.

US end up crippled at the Domestic Front because African Americans starts both demanding Equal Rights, all while making riots directed against Jewish communities in America. US government thus need to thread carefully or they will end up with worse race relations than before.

Basically this does hinge on using African sentiments to cripple the US, which is unlikely but still possible.

I believe Ethiopians won't end up as morally repugnant as the Nazis though, and this scenario is highly unlikely.

If the African American communities tried anything like this they would have been beaten down and beaten down hard by the Federal government and the states, something that said Communities were well aware off.
 
If the African American communities tried anything like this they would have been beaten down and beaten down hard by the Federal government and the states, something that said Communities were well aware off.

Why would the US hinder Garvey's movement? Garvey intended to start a great migration of blacks OUT of America back to Africa, where they would use their relative wealth, education, and skills to fight for their new country's independence from white colonizers.
Why would the US give up the opportunity to export these people? This is exactly why they created Liberia, and here comes a man offering to do the very same thing WITH the support of the black community.

If anything, certain (pro-segregation) elements of the media would publish fluff pieces about what a great time Garvey's people were having in Africa, and how great their lives were in their 'ancestral homeland', with the intent of encouraging more to leave.

EDIT: My bad I thought this was a response to my idea from earlier
 
Why would the US hinder Garvey's movement? Garvey intended to start a great migration of blacks OUT of America back to Africa, where they would use their relative wealth, education, and skills to fight for their new country's independence from white colonizers.
Why would the US give up the opportunity to export these people? This is exactly why they created Liberia, and here comes a man offering to do the very same thing WITH the support of the black community.

If anything, certain (pro-segregation) elements of the media would publish fluff pieces about what a great time Garvey's people were having in Africa, and how great their lives were in their 'ancestral homeland', with the intent of encouraging more to leave.

EDIT: My bad I thought this was a response to my idea from earlier
If the UNIA is actually successful in establishing a foothold in Liberia during World War I or the early 1920s, you might see African-American assistance to Ethiopia come through there but I doubt it'll actually help much.
 
If the UNIA is actually successful in establishing a foothold in Liberia during World War I or the early 1920s, you might see African-American assistance to Ethiopia come through there but I doubt it'll actually help much.
If it happened in the vein of events I described in my post, it's not too crazy to think they might be used to help the war effort of other countries fighting Italy as volunteers
 
I would agree that Turkey + Yugoslavia + Albania really lack the power projection to do anything more than occupying the Dodecanese, parts of Istria, and temporarily ejecting the Italians from Albania (and may well be pushed back once Ethiopia is mostly over). A more evangelist/hardliner Mussolini will have Austria firmly in check, so the demand of South Tyrol probably doesn't happen.

And once it's clear that Germany is involved, France & UK will at least keep demands to a minimum.
 
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As OurSacredWar can tell y'all, this happens in my non-fascist Pan-African/Ethiopia wins the Second Italo-Ethiopian War TL. Basically the maximum aid that the Liberian government, African Americans and UNIA factions in British colonies gives amounts to:

  • A Liberian based arms manufacturer under the umbrella of UNIA's Negro Factories Corporation establishing a domestic rifle industry in Ethiopia in 1930 producing slightly-inferior copes of the Krag rifle, the Gehwehr 98 and the Browning Automatic Rifles, all chambered in 7.92x57mm Mauser for logistic reasons and modified slightly for African conditions. This company is established in response to Liberia's mounting campaign against raiding interior tribes.
  • UNIA's paramilitary units, the Universal African Legions gain experience fighting the interior tribes in Liberia, and about 4000 of them, supplemented by 15,000 UNIA volunteers from other countries in the African diaspora end up joining the Ethiopians. However, the advantage of these volunteers is a bit overstated, with the exception a handful of former colonial troops & American Buffalo Soldiers none of them except the African Legions has any military experience. And the African Legions in my TL only have practical experience in fighting native peoples with spears, swords and pre-WWI rifles and muskets.
  • A railroad company under the Negro Factories corporation expanding Ethiopia's existing ITOL railroad to Jimma by 1934.
  • A decent sized (~30,000) group of technically trained "Back to Africa" Caribbean Blacks and African Americans who start up cottage industries and small factories in Ethiopia.
Anything more than that might be excessive.
 
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UNIA's paramilitary units, the Universal African Legions gain experience fighting the interior tribes in Liberia, and about 4000 of them, supplemented by 15,000 UNIA volunteers from other countries in the African diaspora end up joining the Ethiopians. However, the advantage of these volunteers is a bit overstated, with the exception a handful of former colonial troops & American Buffalo Soldiers none of them except the African Legions has any military experience. And the African Legions in my TL only have practical experience in fighting native peoples with spears, swords and pre-WWI rifles and muskets.
I believe Jeff Pearce points out that there were also volunteers from throughout North Africa (for example, Morocco and Egypt) which was surprisingly pro-Ethiopia - what role do they play?
 
I believe Jeff Pearce points out that there were also volunteers from throughout North Africa (for example, Morocco and Egypt) which was surprisingly pro-Ethiopia - what role do they play?
IOTL, Not any really as far as I'm aware. The Kingdom of Egypt controlled Ethiopia's central bank until the accession of HS, and the country was sympathetic to Ethiopia, but any volunteers didn't end up getting to fight. IOTL the number of volunteers that came to Ethiopia can probably be measured in the hundreds.
 
With the scenario I outlined above, it's not implausible to think that TTL's Ethiopian Army would be much better than IOTL and even able to rapidly overwhelm the Allies, if not just through sheer numbers by then.

How? How much money is Germany going to give a dirt poor BLACK AFRICAN country? Unless you give Hitler a complete personality transplant the answer is zero.

Ethiopia is dirt poor and begging for funds. It would take a huge transfer of cash for him to build it from being a complete walkover to taking some effort to walkover. Japan was stretching it but Japan was paying its own way. If it wanted to prop up its allies using cash it would prop up Romania or Hungry which were White European countries.
 
How? How much money is Germany going to give a dirt poor BLACK AFRICAN country? Unless you give Hitler a complete personality transplant the answer is zero.

Ethiopia is dirt poor and begging for funds. It would take a huge transfer of cash for him to build it from being a complete walkover to taking some effort to walkover. Japan was stretching it but Japan was paying its own way. If it wanted to prop up its allies using cash it would prop up Romania or Hungry which were White European countries.
A war that lasted two years IOTL is not a walkover by any meaning of the word. Also, the Nazis gave Ethiopia rifles IOTL, purposely to piss of Mussolini when Mussolini was still guaranteeing Austrian independence.
 
How? How much money is Germany going to give a dirt poor BLACK AFRICAN country? Unless you give Hitler a complete personality transplant the answer is zero.

Ethiopia is dirt poor and begging for funds. It would take a huge transfer of cash for him to build it from being a complete walkover to taking some effort to walkover. Japan was stretching it but Japan was paying its own way. If it wanted to prop up its allies using cash it would prop up Romania or Hungry which were White European countries.
When I wrote that, I was thinking it could be done through an exchange - Ethiopia offers Germany investment opportunities and access to her natural resources while Ethiopia gets material support and advisors in return.
 
A war that lasted two years IOTL is not a walkover by any meaning of the word. Also, the Nazis gave Ethiopia rifles IOTL, purposely to piss of Mussolini when Mussolini was still guaranteeing Austrian independence.

That was Italy, GB is a whole other animal.
 
When I wrote that, I was thinking it could be done through an exchange - Ethiopia offers Germany investment opportunities and access to her natural resources while Ethiopia gets material support and advisors in return.

That would be chump change, Ethiopia is poor for a reason.
 
People realize that Ethiopia was so backwards that slavery was still a thing right? You cant just money away deep rooted social problems, tribal divisions, hostile and entrenched religious privileges, famine, a corrupt government of sycophantic bureaucrats, slave holding elites etc etc etc. Ethiopia was backwards as fuck, they still had inter-tribal slave raids going on.

Also Germany can't just "invest money" in the country, they're going broke trying to rearm themselves, where is that money coming from? Ethiopia needed an entire government constructed for it, they needed to negotiate or break the slave holding elite, they needed to end the inter-tribal rivalries that would flare up into violence on a regular basis, they needed to educate a largely illiterate populace, they needed to build infrastructure from scratch in some of the harshest terrain (hell the country's railways were different gauges depending on where you were), they needed to build an army out of people still using spears.

I'm seeing people argue Japan is a comparison, but Japan was very unique and had institutions in place that could modernize over a long period and it still took them almost a century to reach a point where they could be considered a Great Power. Ethiopia is starting way further back and needs decades of investment and support.

Nazi Germany simply don't have the capacity to uplift a country who's economy is literally a century behind to a point where they can stand up against the other Colonial Powers.

Also Hitler hated black people... Like a lot... There's this fantasy persisting in this thread that he could make an exception or praise Africans despite the simple fact he couldn't even stand to watch a black guy win a race at the Olympics. Sending rifles to piss off Mussolini is one thing, but modernizing and uplifting an African state and then forming an alliance with them? That simply isn't going to happen.

Ethiopia needs a POD much further back a much more committed patron than Hitler could ever be. I wanted to write TL like this once but the more you read about Ethiopia, the more you realize how backwards the country was and how much of a deluded idiot Selassie was. The war against Italy was more of a reflection of how bad a shape the Italian Army was in rather than how strong Ethiopia was.
 
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Even if Ethiopia somehow backed the Axis, they'd be quickly overrun by British, French, and/or Italian forces and end up as a curious historical footnote at best like the pro-Axis governments of Iraq or Thailand.
 
People realize that Ethiopia was so backwards that slavery was still a thing right? You cant just money away deep rooted social problems, tribal divisions, hostile and entrenched religious privileges, famine, a corrupt government of sycophantic bureaucrats, slave holding elites etc etc etc. Ethiopia was backwards as fuck, they still had inter-tribal slave raids going on.
That wasn't for lack of effort on the part of the monarchs' parts, Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, Menelik II, Zewditu and Haile Selassie all banned the slave trade, and *meant it* (there's this revisionist line of argument that originated from fascist historians that these were token laws, but that's crap.) Menelik was particularly against it, punishing slave traders with amputations and execution.

hell the country's railways were different gauges depending on where you were.
Factually incorrect, they were all French-built meter-gauge track made by the same company.

I'm seeing people argue Japan is a comparison
That's because that's the model Ethiopian intellectuals and modernizers saw as the most suited for their country. Heruy Welde Sellase, theForeign Minister of Haile Selassie said, after his visit to Japan, comparing the two counries:
Both had been ruled by long and uninterrupted founding dynasties: Hirohito was the 124th monarch of the Jimu dynasty while Hayle Sellase was the 126th ruler of the Solomonic dynasty. He compared Emperor Menilek to the Meiji. In the entire world, only Ethiopia and Japan had preserved that long the title of “emperor” to designate the chief of state. Both countries had experienced roving capitals in their histories. He compared the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Zamana Masafent: the only difference was that while the overlordship of the Yajju lords had been confined to Bagemder, the Tokugawa exercised authority over all of Japan. The manners of the two peoples were similar.

how much of a deluded idiot Selassie was.
...where do you get that conclusion from? That characterization is quite unorthodox, and does not represent the mainstream view at all. It also to be quite honest doesn't make much sense, as one does not run a country as fractious (by your own admission) as Imperial Ethiopia for 58 years and suppress literally dozens of rebellions without being a canny political operator.
 
Also Hitler hated black people... Like a lot... There's this fantasy persisting in this thread that he could make an exception or praise Africans despite the simple fact he couldn't even stand to watch a black guy win a race at the Olympics. Sending rifles to piss off Mussolini is one thing, but modernizing and uplifting an African state and then forming an alliance with them? That simply isn't going to happen.

Ethiopia needs a POD much further back a much more committed patron than Hitler could ever be. I wanted to write TL like this once but the more you read about Ethiopia, the more you realize how backwards the country was and how much of a deluded idiot Selassie was. The war against Italy was more of a reflection of how bad a shape the Italian Army was in rather than how strong Ethiopia was.
Ethiopia also has Jews IIRC. Maybe the natives accuse the jews of collaborating with Italy, whether or not they actually are. Would Hitler be able to get over his dislike of blacks if it was framed as jew-vs-gentile conflict? I'm sure Goebbels would love to use this for propaganda, as it makes their narrative look universally true, across cultures and continents.
 
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