Sheba's Sons - Haile Selassie goes to Tokyo

Hagre · Sep 23, 2019

Sheba's Sons - Haile Selassie goes to Tokyo

Emperor Mikael Imru's decision to resurrect the likeness of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I, as a statue at the African Union's headquarters in Addis Ababa has been a controversial one, especially on the sixty-first anniversary of Haile Selassie's death in 1945. The rising tide of anti-Western sentiment and ultranationalism in Ethiopia has seen a wave of revisionism sweep the country as well, placing those Axis collaborators - such as HS himself, Araya Abebe, Afawarq Gebre Iyasus, etc. - on a pedestal for attempting to better their countries in spite of the means they went about doing it. This includes the creation of the Imperial Ethiopian Army from Ethiopian refugees fleeing Italian-occupied Ethiopia and its subsequent fighting under Japanese command, adopting tenets from Shōwa Statism and National Socialism in the Provisional Government of Free Ethiopia that was established by the Emperor in exile in 1937 with the assistance of the Ikki Kita government.

Emperor Haile Selassie I was a reformist ruler who'd spent much of his Regency - since 1916 - centralizing power in his hands, subverting Empress Zewditu and her reactionary supporters in the Imperial Court who were fervently opposed to Ras Tafari Makonnen's proposals on modernization on the basis that it would compromise Ethiopian independence. In spite of the challenges he faced, the close of the 1920s had left him in a dominant position in the Imperial government with the death of Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis in 1927 and Zewditu's deteoriating health that ended with her death in 1930. Eventually, he acceded to the throne as Haile Selassie I in early November and vigorously continued his centralization initiatives that were being complemented by the introduction of reforms intended to restructure the Empire into a modern state on the Japanese model. By 1935, the Emperor directly controlled almost all of Ethiopia (sans Tigray) and was dedicating himself to its modernization with the cooperation of the intelligentsia - however, its course was put to a screeching halt with Mussolini's invasion in early October and Ethiopia's subsequent struggle for independence in vain.

Despite some successes and even reverses in the Christmas Offensive in December-January, there was no doubt in the outcome - that the sheer manpower and firepower of Fascist Italy was to overwhelm the poorly-trained and ill-equipped armies of Africa's last Empire. Despite a successful counterattack by the Imperial Bodyguard at Maichew [1] that left Italian forces reeling, the northern front collapsed with the Ethiopian armies there disintegrating or multiple units reinventing themselves as guerrillas under men like Lij Haile Mariam Mammo in the mountainous terrain's safety. It allowed Haile Selassie to contact the Japanese over the possibility of seeking asylum in Tokyo, the Japanese government initially hesitant to grant him such. Tokyo was eventually convinced to in the face of massive pro-Ethiopia protests that were enraged at the Italians' invasion and even led Hirohito to personally intervene in order to sanction giving the Ethiopian Emperor and his Ministers asylum in the Empire of Japan.

It was in Tokyo that the Ethiopian intellectuals accompanying Haile Selassie, most notably Heruy Wolde Selassie and Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam, begun to absorb ideas from figures on the Japanese far-right, such as Ikki Kita and Seigo Nakano, and made contact with organizations like the Black Dragon Society. Considering the increasingly autocratic and militant nationalist stance the Ethiopian intellectuals had been gravitating toward, it is not exactly surprising to see them go even further right-wing but interestingly enough, contacts with Black nationalists through Japan's support for the former influenced them as well. It was through Malaku Bayan that the Ethiopian government-in-exile made contact with Marcus Garvey in Liberia [2] and Carlos Cooks in the United States, not to mention organizations like the Ethiopian Pacific Movement.

It was on this unfortunate path, in combination with the series of events that occurred from the Italian invasion and occupation, that led Haile Selassie and other Ethiopians on the path to collaboration with the Axis alliance through Ethiopian links with Japan that had evolved out of the marriage between Araya Abebe and Kuroda Masako [3] in 1936-37. With the outbreak of war with Europe in 1940, Haile Selassie had aligned himself firmly with his Japanese comrades and presided over the inauguration of the Imperial Ethiopian Army in 1941, a force of 40,000 Ethiopian soldiers gathered from the sizable Ethiopian community that had been settled throughout the Japanese Empire. It gained the unofficial name of "Sheba's Legion" when it was dubbed so by Marcus Garvey in 1941. It fought alongside the Indian National Army under Rash Behari Bose and then Subhas Chandra Bose under Japanese command in the Burma campaign where it managed to acquire a string of victories throughout 1942-43 before it was mauled in the attempted Japanese invasion of India and Allied reclamation of Burma.

Sheba's Legion - or Sheba's Sons, as His Imperial Majesty fondly referred to them - stands at attention in Tokyo, 1941.

Ethiopian tankers equipped with Japanese tanks stroll through Japanese-occupied Burma, 1942-43.

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[1] The Italian officer is killed before he can call in an artillery strike on his position and the Imperial Guardsmen successfully overrun the Italian position.

[2] Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association is able to establish themselves in Liberia in 1927, not suffering the same financial troubles and deportation of Garvey as they did IOTL.

[3] I have plans for the planned marriage ITTL.

Hagre · Sep 25, 2019

The Sun Rises over Judah's Empire

The Italo-Ethiopian War, in light of the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, had sparked Japanese interest in the colonial war and in the African Continent as a whole. It led Dr. Tomizu Hirondo to publish Afrikua no Zento, a short pamphlet that advocated for an expansion of Japanese influence and presence in Africa before it fell under complete European control. Tokyo established a commercial precedent with the Japan Mail Steamship Company traveling to Europe through the Suez Canal, followed up by the establishment of consular offices and official economic missions whose ultimate intention was to gain access to a steady and cheap supply of raw resources and captive markets. By 1899, Japanese silk was entering Ethiopia via Harar and by 1918, had completely outperformed the American-dominated cotton imports. However, it was not until the interwar period that Japanese penetration of the Horn of Africa was more successful, due to European fears of the Yellow Peril [1] and the European predominance.

The Ethiopian intelligentsia (whether from the Debtara [2] or educated abroad) greatly admired the quick Japanese modernization process, advocating for the emulation of the Rising Sun that would include the complete reorganization of the Ethiopian state along modern lines and state-led national development programs [3]. Ras Tafari Makonnen, the future Emperor Haile Selassie I, had been impressed by Japanese victory in 1906 and in lieu of his father's death, concluded that Ethiopia should adopt Japanese-style reforms and prove a non-White nation could stand on par with Europe. Shortly after Tafari came to power, a particularly prominent Japanizer by the name of Heruy Wolde Selassie [4] concluded a Treaty of Friendship in early November with Yoshida Isaburo, the Japanese minister in Turkey.

The Japanizers' influence could be seen in Ethiopia's 1931 Constitution, heavily inspired by the 1889 Japanese Constitution, that was drafted by Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam [5] and provided Haile Selassie's rule with a legalistic foundation. It also had the bonus effect of concentrating more power in his hands and generally reducing the hereditary nobility's power by reducing them to mere Members of Parliament in the upper Senate. The Japanizer faction spearheaded the attempts at establishing closer diplomatic relations with Japan, Heruy leading a mission to the country on November 5 and was welcomed by an ecstatic Japanese crowd waving around the Ethiopian tricolor alongside the Japanese flag at Kobe. It was there that Emperor Hirohito received the Ethiopian delegation, Heruy personally reaffirming Ethiopia's decision to mimic Japanese modernization and Hirohito responded positively to both this and His Imperial Majesty's decision to send a delegation from so far away. With the tour throughout Japan, Heruy later admitted that he couldn't help but keep admiring the progress Japan had made in the past few decades since 1868 and even made plans to reform the Ethiopian military along Japanese lines with the assistance of Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam.

Ethiopia's Members of Parliament, 1932.

Japanese merchants and the Zaibatsu were eager about the economic implications behind Heruy's visits, seeking to develop Ethiopian markets and access the rich resources its soil possessed. Japanese cotton already dominated in Ethiopia's domestic markets, the merchants planning to expand the pool of exports to the Ethiopians while Heruy begun negotiations with Japanese manufacturers. It was in those negotiations that Heruy arrived back in Ethiopia with two Japanese volunteers, the first being a tailor that only resided in the African country for a month and the other was Dr. Yamauchi Masao. Masao was an eager proponent of promoting close Japanese-Ethiopian ties, quickly picking up Amharic and alarmed Europeans with the ferocity that he pursued Japanese economic penetration. It only reinforced European saber-rattling about the Yellow Peril, especially on the part of Italy whose historical push for expansion into Ethiopia had been reinvigorated under Mussolini's government and the renewal of the peripheral policies [6] by the Italian colonial administration.

This received tacit support from countries like Britain and France who feared a repeat of the Great War, desiring to maintain Italy's neutrality and possibly bring it into war against a rapidly rearming Germany, as well as surprisingly from the USSR [7] who required external allies against the encroaching Germans and Japanese in the early 1930s. In spite of the difficulties placed before the two nations by the powers of Europe and because of said difficulties, the two independent empires would continue to grow closer as the zenith of Japanese-Ethiopian relations was reached with the marriage between Lij Araya Abebe and Princess Kuroda Masako in August 1934. It was in this process that skilled Japanese workers were brought into the country to facilitate proper assistance to Ethiopia's moves toward modernity, namely in the area of disseminating the needed information to a number of Ethiopians carefully handpicked by the Emperor himself, and were to cooperate with skilled African-American immigrants [8] in Ethiopia.

However, the budding program was put to a screeching halt with the Wal-Wal Incident in November 1934 that ended with 107 Ethiopian dead and 50 Italo-Somali dead, inevitably bubbling over into demands of apologies and compensation from both sides once Rome claimed Ethiopian forces had unlawfully attacked the oasis. Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations to settle the issue on 3 January but met the deliberating twiddling-of-thumbs as Britain and France hesitated to take action, even sending their delegates to Rome to hammer out an agreement to maintain Ethiopian independence under the auspices of an Italian mandate but this did little to prolong the inevitable. Addis Ababa repeatedly requested international arbitration and pushed for the arms embargo to be lifted so that Ethiopia might have some means of defending herself in the case of potential war but the Great Powers of Europe were seldom-moved by this small nation's valiant efforts.

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia occurred from Eritrea on 3 October 1935 without an official declaration of war and Ethiopia declared war shortly after, starting the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

Haile Selassie's officers await orders upon the announcement of Italy's invasion, 1935.

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[1] IOTL, Japanese influence and economic penetration into Sub-Saharan Africa during and after WWII led to the Yellow Peril becoming a popular concept among the colonial empires. See Japan, Britain and the Yellow Peril in the 1930s by Richard Bradshaw/Jim Ransdell and Mutual Interests? Japan and Ethiopia Before the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36 by Jospeh Calvitt Clarke for more.

[2] The Debtara are figures traditionally educated by the Orthodox Church, having historically been the source of the Likwanent or the Learned Men, the intellectuals of Ethiopia.

[3] See Evolution of Development-Oriented Ideas in Ethiopia, 1900-1991 by Kassa Belay for more.

[4/5] Heruy and Tekle were both prominent leaders of the Japanizer group, the former having been a Debtara educated at St. Raguel and the other having received his education in Tsarist Russia.

[6] Since the introduction of Italy into Eritrea in 1890, Rome had been meddling in Ethiopia via "peripheral policies" focused on the northern and southern regions adjacent to Italy's East African empire, mostly in Tigray and Ogaden in the late 1920s. Ultimately, Italy sought to establish direct control over the southwestern provinces and a protectorate of some sort over the "Amharic core" (Tigray, Gojjam and Shewa), expanding her East African territories at Ethiopia's expense. See A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde and Italian mandate or protectorate over Ethiopia by Alberto Sbacchi for more.

[7] Contrary to popular belief IOTL, the Soviet Union's support for Ethiopia during 1935-36 was mostly token and Moscow covertly supported the Italians throughout the conflict. See Soviet appeasement, collective security and the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-1936 by Joseph Calvitt Clarke for more.

[8] ITTL, the number of African-American immigrants present in Ethiopia has increased with Garveyite Liberia acting as a sort of funnel for African-American immigration into Africa. The Ethiopian government has made sure to place an emphasis on the need for skilled workers in the modernization of Ethiopia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even resorting to quoting Marcus Garvey in such affairs.

Hagre · Oct 2, 2019

Rally 'Round the Flag

De Bono's invasion of Ethiopia had met little resistance from the Ethiopian armies as Adigrat, Adwa and Axum fell into his lap with not so much as a gunshot. This was due to Haile Selassie's insistence on the presentation of Ethiopia as the innocent in spite of Italy's rapid advance into Tigray, ordering his commanders to move their troops away from Eritrea. This may have contributed to the League's declaration of Italy as the primary aggressor and the promulgation of economic sanctions but these were either slow coming or didn't restrict imports of valuable resources like oil. In spite of Italy clearly being the aggressor, Britain and France continued haggling with Rome to secure some sort of alliance. In a compromise, Italy was to be given huge chunks of northern and southern Ethiopia - 3/5 of Ethiopian land - and a mandate over a rump Ethiopian state in "the historical Amhara provinces" with the Emperor as a figurehead. However, the details of this "Hoare-Laval Pact" were exposed to the public via a French journalist and outrage on the part of their countries' respective populaces, as well as from the international community, forced London and Paris to rescind the offers officially.

Another interesting development unfolded on the northern front - the surrender of Dejazmach Haile Selassie Gugsa and 1,200 of his retainers to the Italians. The Italian Ministry of Propaganda had a field day with the surrender of the Emperor's son-in-law and took liberal doses of inflating the numbers of surrendering soldiers, one Ethiopian commander complaining to Haile Selassie that it set back the war effort a few months. To follow up the propaganda success, De Bono proclaimed the abolition of slavery only three days later in an edict but this found no support for him amongst the slaveowners nor even the slaves as Italian forces looted Axum and seized the Obelisk of Axum to be taken back to Rome. This seemed to elicit a reaction from the Ethiopians, with the mobilization of tens of thousands of men in the Mehal Safari and even more from feudal calls to action in Gondar and Gojjam.

Despite the mobilization of some 300,000 men by mid- to late October, the Italians' advance continued unabated and quite slowly, much to Mussolini's impatience. Meqele finally fell into Italian hands on 8 Nov. and De Bono now focused on the consolidation of the territory taken so far, fearing that the Ethiopian counterattacks might sweep their gains away as the Duce continued to grow impatient under the pressure of the League. He needed faster victories to end the war in a fait accompli to force the League to accept the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and be done with it, ordering De Bono to advance into Tembien to which he refused and pointed out that it'd leave the Italians' flanks exposed to Ethiopian counterattack. That finally did the trick and Mussolini relieved De Bono of command on the northern front after promoting him to the rank of Marshal of Italy on 16 November and was immediately replaced by Marshal Pietro Badoglio who'd been plotting behind the scenes to replace the old General [3] with Mussolini.

Ironically enough, the same thing that Badoglio had supported De Bono on and denied to Mussolini was the first thing he was faced with - an Ethiopian counteroffensive all along the frontlines and against his men who hadn't enough time to secure their gains. This would put him to the test with the string of Ethiopian victories on the Tembien front that occurred in Haile Selassie's Christmas Offensive.

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Dembeguina Pass, December 1935

A chorus of yelling and screaming filled the air when the tidal waves of Ethiopian soldiers collided violently with the Italian Blackshirts, Ethiopian bayonets and blades tearing into the flesh of unlucky Italian soldiers that hadn’t been able to prepare themselves. Soon, it devolved into chaotic hand-to-hand combat as soldiers desperately attempted to kill the man in front of him with anything he had on his hands, whether that be traditional Ethiopian weapons or European-made steel from the Great War. Someone bearing the flag of the Ethiopian Empire – or New Aksumite Empire, as Selassie’s officers had promised them – ran through the mess of it all, proudly flying the banner of the Conquering Lion of Judah across his shoulder.

It was nothing less than total hell but fortunately for them, the Ethiopians had thousands of years’ worth of experience with such affairs.

Makonnen’s arms shook with the effort to try and pull the rifle out of the Italian’s hands but managed to shove him to the ground with a great heave. Unsheathing his Jile [1] and straddling the Italian, Makonnen plunged the dagger’s curved blade into the European’s stomach repeatedly until the soldier under him fell limp and the light from his eyes gone, all the while the Italian struggled against his hold and grabbed at his neck in hopes of choking the Ethiopian. As he yanked his blade out of what remained of the Italian’s stomach, Makonnen saw the young American next him – wasn’t his name Michael? – bashing in an officer’s skull with his rifle’s butt and his eyes widened at an approaching Askari moving to thrust forth his fixed bayonet.

He lunged to push the boy out of the way and intercept the stabbing attack, grabbing the very bayonet itself to prevent it from burying itself into his gut. How ironic, seeing he’d done the same thing to the corpse lying behind him, but Makonnen couldn’t find it in him to appreciate irony at the moment. Michael stumbled in place for a minute, making eye contact with Makonnen before scrambling for his own rifle and aiming at the base of the Askari’s skull but with violently trembling arms as the Ethiopian groaned internally. In his admittedly basic English, Makonnen managed a “Shoot.”

. . . Why wasn’t the boy shooting the damned Hamasien [2]?

Despite it all, Makonnen couldn’t help but chuckle at the odd – albeit deadly – situation the trio was found in, even as the bayonet’s cold metal tore into his hands’ skin. He repeated the word in spite of the Askari before him attempting to gut him like a fish, “Shoot.” Still nothing and he swore to himself loudly in his native Amharigna, something the Askari smiled darkly at. To his luck, this seemed to spark a reaction out of the volunteer and he finally pulled the trigger, Makonnen grimacing when bits of the Askari’s brain landed on him. The body slumped to the ground and Makonnen hissed at the pain he felt in his hands, blood flowing freely from his palms but he simply ignored it as he snatched up his Jile and bellowed, “For God, Emperor and Ethiopia!”

This seemed to inspire inspiration in his men to sweep the Italians aside in one final blow, but not as much as the appearance of the Emperor's Guardsmen, with their European uniforms and modern guns. They joined their lesser-equipped brethren in battle to rally together and make a final push, sweeping aside their enemy in one final blow. The sheer manpower overwhelmed the Italian forces, forcing them to retreat and scramble out of their positions to safety in their rear, only for many of them to be gunned down by the Guard machine gunners. Makonnen hauled Michael up from the ground, patting him on the back in a silent congratulation on saving him and climbed out of the trench after pulling out a pistol, sprinting to join his eager men.

It had been done. The pass was theirs and by Christmas, no less. Perhaps God was looking down fondly on his Negro children after all. The Emperor would have his offensive, delivered on a silver platter.

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The Christmas Offensive had been much more successful than Haile Selassie had expected, especially with Ras Imru's complete encirclement of Major Criniti's 1,000 Eritrean Askaris and his advance across the Tekkeze River. In the process, Imru's troops had captured over 50 machine guns and Ende Selassie in Tigray, within the proximity of the holy city of Axum as the Ras considered an attack on these areas. In the meantime, Ras Kassa forced the Italians back from Abbi Addi and linked up with Ras Seyoum in the center while Ras Mulugeta marched on Meqele. Additional victories were won with the surrender of Italian forces at Warieu and Abarro Passes that provided the Ethiopians with more favorable positions on the Tembien front, threatening to not just reclaim Tigray but make a push into Eritrea. By January 1936, those same Ethiopian soldiers were launching regular attacks against their Italian foes and with startling artillery support from the Imperial Bodyguard detachments protected by the cover of the Highlands.

The Imperial Bodyguard's artillery supports their brothers on the ground, December 1935-January 1936.

In the Ogaden, Ethiopian forces had been faring surprisingly well against the overwhelming firepower of Graziani's troops and with the assistance of the torrential rains and difficult terrain of the country that prevented the Italians from exploiting the wide and open spaces of the arid desert province to their advantage. The Ethiopian troops under the command of Ras Nasibu Emmanuel had some professional training as a result of the Turkish Military Mission's tenure during the 1930s, having dug themselves in around Degehabur and Harar with the oversight of Wehib Pasha. Ras Desta's army was responsible for the planned invasion of Italian Somaliland, although this had little success of being achieved and the shock advantage was rendered useless with it being common talk at the market places of the south.

These losses enraged Mussolini who, ironically enough, threatened to replace Badoglio with De Bono or Graziani if he didn't get the Italian forces on the northern front back on track. Badoglio's requests for the use of mustard gas and other chemical agents were finally approved in the hopes of bringing the war to a sudden end. The Regia Aeronautica delivered their payload first at Ende Selassie, the initial aerial bombardments having already shaken the Gojjame troops and this one completely terrified them, with Ras Imru being unable to help and remarked, "I was completely stunned . . . I didn't know how to fight the terrible rain that burned and killed." The chemical warfare couldn't be kept a secret for long, despite Badoglio's rigid censorship, and news of the war crimes quickly traveled to Geneva where Haile Selassie filed a formal complaint with the use of mustard gas. It nearly caused an international incident with the gassing and subsequent deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of Americo-Liberian volunteers in the Garvey Legion.

It was at the Second Battle of Tembien that the strategic initiative passed back to Italy after the mass bombardment of Ethiopian forces under Ras Kassa and Seyoum that entailed the looming defeat of the Ethiopian armies, especially with Badoglio's creeping advance that took casualties in the thousands with the Ethiopians' staunch defenses and the safety of Amba Aradam. The Imperial Bodyguard's artillery was particularly damning with the direct fire being played and its anti-aircraft training being used to full effect against their technical superiority but it was only prolonging the inevitable, even as the Italians started seeing their casualties mount. Ras Mulugeta was killed in the fighting around the mountain, gunned down by an Italian airplane after hearing of his son's death and this is what caused the regular troops to break under the sustained pressure of the Italians, the retreat turning into a rout. The Imperial Guardsmen attached to the Mehal Safari were virtually wiped out to a man, what remained of them fleeing to the Emperor's base at Qorem to regroup alongside with Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum's armies.

On the northern front, disaster broke out for Ras Imru whose Gojjame forces had been forced back with the Battles of Enderta and Shire, collapsing with the unwavering chemical attacks that left them melting into the Ethiopian countryside as Imru fled to join his cousin at Qorem. It seemed Ethiopia was on the brink of falling to Italian control . . .

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[1] The Jile is a curved dagger commonly found in the Horn of Africa, most prominent amongst ethnic Afars and Somalis in northeastern and eastern Ethiopia.

[2] Hamasien was a term used to refer to Eritrean soldiers by Ethiopian soldiers throughout the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and Italian occupation, derived from the former region in central Eritrea.

[3] According to Jeff Pearce's Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941, Badoglio consistently discredited De Bono behind the scenes and denied the obvious in how exposed Italian flanks were - until he himself experienced said threat in December 1935.

Hagre · Oct 7, 2019

The Fall of Sheba's Kingdom

The Ethiopian successes from December to January of 1936 had been completely overturned with Italy's employment of chemical warfare that left Ethiopian forces reeling across the northern front and Italian forces quickly advancing toward the Imperial centre. In combination with the overwhelming might of Italian firepower that even the Imperial Guardsmen were unable to deal with, this had seen the Ethiopians retreat at Tembien and Shire as what was left of the Ethiopian armies and their commanders met with the Emperor at Qorem. Despite the pathetic state of the Ethiopian units before him, Haile Selassie was already planning a counterattack at Maichew and gathered his soldiers to spearhead an attack against the Italians' flanks on St. George's Day. The feudal levies of Ras Kassa and Seyoum were to be used in a series of attacks against the Italian centre in the hopes that their human waves could overwhelm their opponents, distracting Badoglio enough for some form of success with the assistance of the Azebu Oromo.

The Imperial Bodyguard prepare for the Battle of Maichew, March 1936.

On 31 March, the attack commenced and Italian soldiers were caught off guard by the sudden appearance of 3,000 screaming Ethiopian warriors [1] who were supported by the Bodyguard's mortar fire. This allowed them to push ruthlessly into Italian lines until the soldiers of the 5th Pusteria Mountain Division launched a counterattack, halting the Ethiopian advance. On the left flank, Ras Kassa led 15,000 men in an attack against the 1st and 2nd Eritrean Divisions on Mekan Pass, supported by what remained of the Imperial Bodyguard's artillery, and managed to briefly capture the pass before the RA bombarded Mekan Pass with mustard gas and bombs. On the right flank, the Imperial Bodyguard had made startling progress by virtue of their firepower and surprised the Italians expecting an easy victory with the mustard gas, only to face a massive horde of Ethiopian soldiers wearing makeshift gas masks [2] that barely protected them from the mustard gas, although it did horrible things to their skin.

To the surprise of Badoglio and his international observers, the Ethiopians had successfully pushed back the Italians from Maichew and inflicted a total of several thousand casualties, having virtually annihilated four battalions in the process and mauling a few others. The Azebu Oromo cavalry [3] was released for harassing the retreating Italians, keeping up the pressure as the Battle of Maichew ended in victory for the Ethiopians. Despite the victory at Maichew, Haile Selassie wasn't keen on losing more men to the horrors of chemical warfare and made the decision to withdraw his remaining soldiers toward Addis Ababa to see if they could be reorganized into guerrillas fighting in the Highland plateau, knowing that the complete collapse of Ethiopia was at hand. There was little complaint from his commanders and his soldiers who'd been exhausted by the near nonstop skirmishes and battling, all too happy to oblige the Emperor. On the road to Addis Ababa, the Italians followed and the RA's airplanes kept up the pressure on those same men, killing thousands more men of the disintegrating armies.

Exhausted Ethiopian soldiers begin the trek back to the capital, April 1936.

It was at Addis Ababa where Haile Selassie made a renewed call to arms for volunteers to join the ranks in guerrilla warfare and requested them to remember their brethren's use of guerrilla tactics in previous times, noting the brave men holding out on the plateau during Gragn's occupation. The Battle of Maichew and news of Lij Haile Mariam Mammo's guerrillas attacking the Italians saw a few hundred men join the remnants of the Mehal Safari while Haile Selassie convened an Imperial council on whether or not to go into exile to make Ethiopia's case at Geneva or stay and fight in the Highlands. Ultimately, it was put to a vote and the Emperor made the choice to go abroad to Geneva where he pleaded to the League of Nations in a fiery speech that raised emotions and ended with, "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." It had little effect on the Great Powers present at Geneva but something did come out of the trip to Geneva - the Japanese delegation approaching him with an official offer from Tokyo for asylum.

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia had sparked waves of outrage throughout Japan, allegedly even from Hirohito himself, and then excitement with the Christmas Offensive's advances. It led to the increasing popularity and prominence of Japan's pan-Asian nationalist organizations who'd already advocated for close Japanese-Ethiopian relations [4] and had been ecstatic when hearing of the news that Kuroda Masako had married Lij Araya Abebe in August 1934. To them, it seemed inevitable that the Ethiopians would replicate Adwa in December when the northern armies reclaimed land in Tigray and Ras Imru's Gojjame troops threatened to push into Italy's Eritrean colony. That was why it shocked them and the Japanese people when news of Italy's gassing of Ethiopian civilian and soldier alike made headlines across the international community, causing an international scandal when rumors of the Japanese-Ethiopian couple being subject to said gassing reached Tokyo. Fortunately, the royal couple were safe and Masako had begun taking advantage of her connections to Japan to assist the Ethiopians, although this would be in vain with the near complete collapse of the Ethiopian armies on the northern front.

The Japanese government was, understandably, hesitant about giving the Ethiopian Emperor asylum and attempted to maintain both a moderate policy toward Rome and somewhat favorable policy toward the Ethiopians with the outburst of pro-Ethiopia sentiment throughout the country. The Japanese ambassador to Rome, Sugimura Yotora, was trying to clam down on the rumors of Japanese armaments shipments to Ethiopia and on the growing fears of the "Yellow Peril" spreading to European Africa, especially with the Garveyite government's extensive network in West Africa. Ikki Kita was one of these nationalists who adopted not just a pro-Ethiopia stance with the royal couple's marriage in 1934 but the belief that the ruling classes of Ethiopia were connected to that of the Japanese Monarchy through distant ancestors in the Hebrew Solomonids. Expanding on that stance, Kita contemplated the possibility of achieving his Hakko Ichiu ideal as outlined in his An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan [5] through a Japanese-ruled East Asia uniting with an Ethiopian-dominated East Africa and even with an expanded Liberian state as imagined by Edward Wilmot Blyden [6] and Marcus Garvey.

Ikki Kita's influence amongst the IJA's junior officers saw an expansion of this concept to the violent radical nationalist factions, Kita being well aware of this and maintaining contacts with men like Sadao Araki and Jinzaburō Masaki who both led the Imperial Way Faction. Despite the former's resignation as Minister of War in January 1934, Araki continued to be an influential figure in the IJA and begun to listen to the advice of Ikki Kita, cooperating with him and beginning to plan out a coup to implement their respective ideas. Support from Prince Chichibu and even the Zaibatsu was forthcoming, making the Imperial Way's members confident enough to launch the coup on February 26 with the Righteous Army at the forefront. The Righteous Army launched attacks on the Prime Minister's home, Ministry of War building, General Staff Office, Makino Nobuaki's villa, Saito Makato's home, Admiral Suzuki Kantaro's home, Jataro Watanabe's home, the Tokyo Metropolitan HQ and finally, the Imperial Palace. It was there that the plotters of the coup dispatched a representative to the Emperor to deliver to His Imperial Majesty what amounted to an ultimatum of the implementation of a combination of the ideas advocated by Kita and Araki under a general Shōwa Restoration.

An officer of the Righteous Army issues orders to his men, February 1936.

Chichibu's accompaniment of the emissary and subsequent pressure on Hirohito managed to convince the latter to accept the demands outlined by the Righteous Army's leaders. Soon enough, the government was reorganized under the Shōwa Restoration and direct Imperial rule was imposed throughout the Empire. Kita's proposed "Socialism From Above" and National Reorganization Diet were instituted, although it came to blows with Araki's admiration of the Shogunate system and Bushido warrior code concept. In exchange for accepting this system, Araki was given a free hand in the purge of the Control Faction and the other moderates of the Japanese government, becoming Minister of Education in early 1937. Japan's moderate policy toward Italy was also reversed, Sugimura being recalled from Rome and Haile Selassie's application for asylum being accepted alongside that of his Ministers in June 1936, the Emperor having been languishing in British Mandatory Palestine in spite of his disgust with the British. Ethiopian refugees were also accepted and nearly 90,000 Ethiopians were accepted, settling in Japan and being subject to Kita's policies on the incorporation of multiple races into the Japanese Empire.

It was in Tokyo where an Ethiopian government-in-exile was formed under Haile Selassie but this time, it included a growing number of Ethiopian intellectuals that had fled Italian-occupied Ethiopia and noted the international community of Italy's purges of educated Ethiopians. It convinced many Ethiopians being educated in Europe to move to Tokyo where they met with prominent members of the Japanese intelligentsia and begun absorbing their more radical ideas, especially those involving the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and "National-Socialism". This allowed Haile Selassie to dismiss his more feudal Ministers, those that hadn't been killed like Ras Mulugeta, and promote the modernist intellectuals into high positions of government. The emergence of an Ethiopian government-in-exile had enflamed European press' anti-Asian sentiments, Mussolini becoming a particular proponent and accusing the new Japanese government of supporting the rising Ethiopian resistance movement in the Highlands around Ras Imru.

It didn't help that the rise of radical nationalist groups in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Gold Coast, Arabia and the colonial world had been a prominent feature of the 1930s, setting the scene for a global race war that seemed to be inevitable . . .

Haile Selassie being personally received by Hirohito, June 1936.

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[1] The Italians aren't tipped off by a deserter, thus making them suspect to the Ethiopian counterattack.

[2] "If Ethiopia would not be given gas masks, it would just have to make them. Lady Barton and Princess Tsehai started organizing again, and with sewing machines whizzing and chattering away, women in white overalls were busy throughout the spring, making masks for the soldiers out of flannel bags. They were crude but clever jobs - there were mica slits for eyes, and you exhaled through a rubber tube. By early April, Tsehai and Lady Barton's seamstresses had created eight hundred of them for the men going out to the northern front." -- Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941 by Jeff Pearce. IOTL, the gas masks that Lady Barton and Princess Tsehai produced were instead given to the Imperial Bodyguard, being utilized in the Battle of Maichew.

[3] The Azebu Oromos don't betray the Ethiopian troops at Maichew, the earlier successes convincing them to fight for Haile Selassie.

[4] ITTL, various Japanese nationalists and pan-Asianists advocated for solidarity with Ethiopia in the early '30s, especially during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Such organizations included the Black Dragon Society. See pg. 28 of Alliance of the Colored Peoples: Ethiopia and Japan before World War II by Joseph Calvitt Clarke for more.

[5] See this article for an English translation of the aforementioned work.

[6] Edward Wilmot Blyden was a prominent Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist who advocated for African-American emigration to West Africa, primarily Liberia, to assist in the development of a civilization in tandem with indigenous West Africans. He also pushed for an expanded Liberian Empire throughout West Africa. See Edward W. Blyden: Pioneer West African Nationalist by Hollis R. Lynch for more.

Hagre · Oct 13, 2019

The Continent's Destiny

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism [1] by Paul Gilroy

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War had inflamed anti-colonial sentiment across the African Continent, Egypt having been reminded of the British dominance and 6,000 South African Blacks gathering in Cape Town to organize amongst themselves a mercenary force that was to go fight in Ethiopia. There were widespread hopes that, despite her countless hurdles, Ethiopia could replicate the victory she'd gotten in 1896 as Italian columns pushed further into Tigray and these hopes were falsely raised with Haile Selassie's Christmas Offensive. Owing to Italy's overwhelming advantage in firepower and manpower, it was inevitable that the Ethiopians would've eventually collapse, although some entertain the notion that Ethiopia would've become "Finlandized" if Badoglio had made the decision to retreat in the face of the Ethiopian attacks and abandoned large quantities of Italian equipment in doing so. The fall of Ethiopia certainly crushed these hopes but ironically enough, led to a wave of radicalism sweeping the Continent and Garvey's Liberia was at the center of it.

On charges of mail fraud, Marcus Garvey had been deported in 1927 and made the fateful decision to not emigrate back to his Jamaican homeland, but to Liberia where he set up shop in Monrovia. The upper echelons of the Universal Negro Improvement Association joined him and so did the several thousand African-Americans that had been selected in the UNIA's Back-to-Africa program. The deportation had only radicalized Garvey, the man now fervently advocating for African repatriation and seeing Africa as the only place where the Negro race could prosper. It was in Liberia where Garvey gained ground against the hegemonic True Whigs Party by promising to the various tribes equity alongside their American brethren and delivering on said promise by establishing multiple national development programs. This earned the UNIA a near-universal support base that horrified the already-wary Americo-Liberian elite, guaranteeing the former an astounding victory in the 1931 Liberian general election and allowed Marcus Garvey to become the President of the Republic of Liberia.

Marcus Garvey and UNIA leaders observing the marching soldiers of the Universal African Legion, 1931.

Monrovia soon became a flurry of activity, especially in the UNIA's headquarters which was described by some as an army's camp where strategies were hashed out and reports constantly coming in. The UNIA had already established their own network that stretched to encompass West Africa [2] but was particularly influential in the Sierra Leone and Gold Coast colonies. Liberian nationalism also influenced the UNIA in the hopes that the former territories which had been a part of the newborn Liberia in the 1850s and '60s could be reclaimed under the guise of a Pan-Africanist movement. Marcus Garvey also entertained the notions of a West African Empire, one that was likely to be dominated by an Americo-Liberian aristocracy, built on the foundations of his Ideal State [3] and Black/African nationalism, but he was concerned with looking to the nations of East Africa. Primarily, that was to be Ethiopia.

The ascendance of Tafari Makonnen to the Ethiopian throne had been met with much fanfare in Liberia, especially by Marcus Garvey, where he had been viewed as the saving grace of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie's modernization programs had garnered him much favor amongst the Universal Negro Improvement Association, particularly the Emperor's decision to attract African-American immigration [4] to Ethiopia. This led to the formal establishment of relations with Liberia and attempts by the UNIA to establish an arm in Ethiopia, although this failed due to Addis Ababa banning any sort of political parties. Compensation was offered to the Garveyite government by providing the Negro Factories Corporation with economic concessions that would give Ethiopia the opportunity to overhaul its agricultural sector and form an industrial backbone as had been done in Liberia. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was to put a sudden halt to this, the Ethiopian government shifting its attention to the war effort and preventing Ethiopia from collapsing.

Garvey responded to the Italian invasion by denouncing Mussolini and organizing a volunteer expeditionary force to be sent to Ethiopia to fight for Africa's last independent Empire, whipping up pro-Ethiopia sentiments throughout West Africa and even in the Americas where the UNIA still maintained its links. The Black Star Regiment was sent to Ethiopia via the Black Star Line, consisting of the experienced officers of the Universal African Corps and the radical Black nationalists that had enlisted in the Liberian Frontier Force who were reminiscent of men like Charles Young. This was a convenient way of sacking those who were just a bit too radical and outspoken for the Garveyite government's taste, the future Liberian President Carlos Cooks having been a veteran of the war in Ethiopia. With the assistance of Nazi Germany in bribing French officials in the Somaliland colony, the BSR made its way to Addis Ababa on the Addis-Djibouti Railway and after its officers met with Haile Selassie himself, was dispatched to the frontlines on the beginning of the Christmas Offensive.

The Black Star Regiment arrives in Addis Ababa, November 1935.

The BSR was attached to Ras Imru Haile Selassie's Gojjame troops who spearheaded the Christmas Offensive, valiantly fighting at Dembeguina Pass and Shire. They too were subject to the mustard gas attacks and relentless aerial bombardments from the Italian Air Force but fought a rearguard action to assist the northern Ethiopian withdrawal toward Addis Ababa. The Black Star Regiment was also ferried to Djibouti, being picked up by the BSL to be shipped back to Liberia where they were well-received by Marcus Garvey himself for their efforts in fighting for Ethiopian independence. The experiences that they brought back with them were recorded by the UNIA, Monrovia exploiting this opportunity to not just exemplify what happens when an African nation fails to modernize but in Geneva where the Liberian delegates supported their Ethiopian counterparts in protesting the League's failure to react to the use of chemical warfare. To Garvey and the UNIA government, it showed exactly how much the Europeans cared about international diplomacy and the small nations of the world as well as their kowtowing to countries like Italy who threatened to begin another World War.

It is then not surprising that a wave of radicalism swept the entire Continent after the fall of Ethiopia and subsequent failures of the League of Nations to seriously punish Rome. In Egypt, the Young Egypt Party won an overwhelming victory in the May 1936 general elections due to the Wafd Party's inability to adequately deal with the Great Depression, failure to mobilize the discontent youth and the signing of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty that displayed the Wafd Party's complacency with its parliamentary predominance and willingness to collaborate with the British. In Tanganyika, the Tanganyika African Association begun advocating for further independence and the promotion to a Class A Mandate, exploiting its countrywide branches in both the countryside and urban areas to apply pressure on British officials. To up the ante, the Nazi German government had turned its eye to its former colonial empire in the Near East and dispatched a man by the name of Fritz Delfs to organize a base there, National Socialist ideals finding an ear amongst the White settler community and educated Tanganyikans. In occupied Ethiopia, the Black Lions movement combined influences from Japanese Fascist, National Socialist and Garveyist thought. The same was happening in the educated circles of Black Africans in the Union of South Africa, Belgian Congo and Cameroon as well.

Members of Young Egypt's Green Shirts on drill, May 1936.

Monrovia and Berlin were not the only ones covertly supported African independence movements - Tokyo was also privy to supporting such movements as well. Japanese support for nationalist movements was not necessarily restricted to Asia or Africa and this showed with the growth of pro-Japan Black nationalist organizations [5] in the USA. This can be seen in organizations such as the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, Nation of Islam and Peace Movement of Ethiopia who were directly supported by Satokata Takahashi who funneled financial support from the Black Dragons Society to these movements. The Ikki Kita administration also maintained close links with the Garvey government in Monrovia who resembled the Black Dragons Society and was similar in that it possessed an extensive network of agents pushing a pan-racial narrative. Quite a few in the UNIA liked the Hakko Ichiu ideal and sought to mimic it in the Pan-Negro Empire that Marcus Garvey had often spoke of in the early to mid-twenties. This call for an African Imperium was also a tenet of Imru's Black Lions Party and their foremost proponent was Malaku Bayan [6], a fervent Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist who would also become a close friend of Marcus Garvey, who was the representative of the Ethiopian government-in-exile in the affairs of Pan-Africanism.

Speaking of the exiled Ethiopians, Haile Selassie had been lobbying for the Japanese government to help train a force of Ethiopians to partake in the reclamation of Ethiopia and former lands from Italian rule. It was only answered with the Japanese invasion of China in July 1937, several thousand men from the Ethiopian emigre community being mobilized and organized into the Sheba Legion. They were to be sent to the Chinese front for the purpose of "gaining experience" and "any means of practice," according to Sadao Araki but the Provisional Ethiopian Government knew - they were rapidly becoming puppets of Japan's new government and integrated into the new totalitarian system that the Japanese intellectuals of the Shōwa Restoration had imagined.

A young Ethiopian receives training under the eye of the Imperial Japanese Army, early 1937.

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[1] Based off of OurSacredWar's Black Fascism TL and Paul Gilroy's Black Fascism. ITTL, it's instead a comprehensive book on radical ideology in Africa and this particular chapter focuses on African Fascism.

[2] The Universal Negro Improvement Association had firmly entrenched itself in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and to a lesser extent, the British Gold Coast. See The Garvey Movement in British West Africa by R.L. Okonkwo for more.

[3] In pg. 74-76 of The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Marcus Garvey describes the Ideal State as a model to replace the failed ideologies of the 1920s and '30s. In essence, it was intended to be a nationalistic and authoritarian state with proto-Fascist characteristics. For more, see the link.

[4] IOTL, Haile Selassie focused on attracting African-American immigration to Ethiopia in the hopes of gaining some skilled labor for modernization. See Ethiopia and Afro-Americans: Some Historical Notes, 1920-1970 by William A. Shack for more.

[5] IOTL, many African-Americans and Black nationalists looked on the Japanese modernization and nation as something to be admired as well as the Empire of Japan as something to emulate. For more, see Facing the Rising Sun: African-Americans, Japan and the rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity by Gerald Horne, When Japan Was "Champion of the Darker Races": Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism by Ernest Allen Jr. and "Champions of the Darker Races" - The African-American View of Japan (1905-1941) by Omri Reis and Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America by John Roy Carlson for more.

[6] See Ethiopia & Black America: The Forgotten Story of Malaku and Robinson by Ayalew Bekerie for more.

Hagre · Oct 21, 2019

Sheba's Lions

Ethiopian guerrillas in northern Shewa, April 1936.

Imru had not been idle at Qorem and Addis Ababa, speaking with his cousin on the use of guerrilla warfare in an asymmetric resistance after the Imperial Council advised Haile Selassie to leave the country. His success in the application of guerrilla tactics against Italian forces on the northern front and the knowledge that Ethiopian troops lacked the firepower to face Italian forces head-on in battle without suffering the same fate that the northern armies had made him confident in planning the strategic doctrine of the resistance movement. With the Emperor having appointed him to Prince Regent, he employed all advantages at his disposal that included the energetic Holeta cadets of the Black Lions Party that had joined him when he called for able-bodied men to join him on the plateau. They were young educated men, experienced in warfare from a combination of their training at Holeta and participation in the Battle of Maichew, also vigorous reformists who pushed for the establishment of an Ethiopian army on the Western model. They'd prove valuable to Imru's efforts in the reorganization and decentralization of his forces and it wasn't before long they became the commanders of various units in the Ethiopian Highlands.

Guerrillas on the move, June 1936.

Inspired by Lij Haile Mariam Mammo, Imru recruited Balambaras Abebe Aregai - a veteran from the Imperial Bodyguard - and promoted him to the rank of Ras, selecting him to oversee and coordinate the units being organized into small but compact guerrilla groups. Much to the Regent's pleasure, Abebe Aregai set to his task with the same energy that the Holeta cadets displayed, establishing a rudimentary system in which those units commanded by Imperial Guardsmen and Holeta cadets were to act as an elite core of a task force and recruit men into Imru's army, spreading the guerrillas' influence further. It was a success as it allowed Imru's officers to take control of isolated guerrilla bands spread throughout the country and place them under Imru's command, those same officers leading attacks against isolated Italian units and even provided the opportunity to overwhelm those units at the end of their logistical tether. By late December, these efforts yielded not just some 40,000 men coming under Imperial command at Menz but the constant pressure of Italian forces stationed in Addis Ababa.

To Rome's horror, Ethiopian resistance to its occupation was steadily mounting in an organized fashion and Italian forces proved ineffective in their pacification campaigns, said campaigns only serving to fill the ranks of those they called "shifta." Much of that resistance had been concentrated in the provinces of Begemdir, Gojjam and Shewa who have historically served as the centre for Imperial government and in the southern provinces, Desta Damtew and his commanders continued conventional resistance from the countryside. In Hararghe, Nasibu Emmanuel managed to preserve his men by ordering them to melt away in the countryside and "fight as shiftas" where he joined them in spite of being wounded when Graziani decided to unleash mustard gas on Jijiga itself. That had only served to rally the ethnic Somalis to Ethiopia's cause, leading to an increase of raids by Somali nomads around the eastern population centers and actively worked against Rome's plans to establish a Greater Somalia entity within its Empire. It was much the same situation, albeit to a lesser extent, in the peripheral provinces that had only come under direct Imperial administration in the early '30s under Haile Selassie and Rome exploited this to the fullest extent.

Over the course of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Mussolini had ordered the Italian Ministry of Colonies to outline what Ethiopia was to look like under Italian rule [1] and one recommendation was to partition the African Empire along ethnic lines. This was to include the incorporation of Tigray and Ogaden into Italian Eritrea and Somaliland respectively, the establishment of an ethnic Amhara state encompassing the provinces of Gondar, Gojjam and Shewa under a figurehead from the House of Solomon, the establishment of an ethnic Oromo state stretching to include most of central and southern Ethiopia under the control of the Sultan of Jimma and the direct administration of the rich southern regions. With Mussolini trusting Graziani to govern the new Italian East African colony, the Butcher of Fezzan set to work instituting that which was recommended by the Minister of Colonies and struck down the territorial divisions that had existed between the former Ethiopian polity and Italy's colonies.

Ras Hailu of Gojjam was selected to nominally govern the Amhara state with the assistance of Afawarq Gebre Iyasus and consolidate Italian rule in their northwestern territory. The inauguration of the National Ethiopian Army - a militia drafted from POWs and collaborators - only reaffirmed this, being placed under Afawarq's control but was led by Italian officers. However, it was a minuscule army that consisted only of 9,000 men in stark contrast to the region's guerrillas' total of 20,000 men and this owed to the overwhelming alignment of ethnic Amharas with the pan-Ethiopian cause. Meanwhile, to the south, Sultan Abba Jifar suddenly found himself ruling huge swathes of Italian-occupied Ethiopia with his Italian "advisors" and began to restore to ethnic Oromos the autonomy that Menelik had granted them and that which Haile Selassie had restricted in 1933-34. Similarly to his northern counterpart, the Sultan requested that the Italian colonial administration provide him the means to create his own army and establish institutions to allow him to establish an autonomous Oromo Empire, to which Graziani was happy to oblige him so long as it continued dividing up Ethiopia.

Soldiers of the National Ethiopian Army in Wollo, July 1936.

Rome's maneuvers to divide Ethiopia galvanized the Ethiopian resistance as Imru placed more of an emphasis on pan-Ethiopian nationalism, stepping up organization efforts in the peripheral regions to gain the popular support of those regions and fight against the Italian presence in southern Ethiopia. Speeches by the members of the BLP, Imperial Bodyguard and Holeta cadets did much to rouse nationalist sentiment amongst the people to continue giving their lives for Ethiopian independence for as long as possible. The rains gave Imru and the Black Lions some breathing space to finish the reorganization as well as attempt to establish a modern administration system that would help relieve the burden of the average Ethiopian peasant under freed rule. There was the distribution of stockpiled food, thalers and other supplies to the peasantry and some regulars - when not fighting on the frontlines - were put to work tilling the land for when the annual harvest was to come. However, relief came from outside when a myriad of organizations either sympathetic to the Ethiopian cause or just opposed to Italy began facilitating covert support to the Ethiopian resistance.

The Provisional Ethiopian Government was one such organization, dispatching Lorenzo Taezaz as the Emperor's representative to Imru's administration and asked him for reports on the resistance. The BLP was able to compile a series of reports on the situation in the country since Haile Selassie had gone to Tokyo in June 1936, sending them to Tokyo along with the Eritrean and Haile Selassie was able to remark that, all in all, the Arbegnoch (Patriots) weren't doing too badly. The Provisional Ethiopian Government worked with the Black Dragons Society in funneling financial aid to Imru's effort, even managing to smuggle the volunteers who had received training under officers of the Imperial Japanese Army into Ethiopia by way of French Somaliland and Aussa province. They proved particularly helpful with the formation of a modern nucleus around which Imru's Imperial officer corps could be grown after the conventional warfare of October 1935 to March 1936 had nearly depleted the officers' ranks, feudal and modern alike. Not to mention it led the Regent to begin contemplating the idea of training his own officer corps to remain as self-sufficient as possible and opened a rudimentary academy in Menz where a number of men were inducted into a training course under the oversight of the Imperial Guardsmen.

With the understanding that the Patriots' resistance was expanding and growing well, Haile Selassie commissioned Heruy Wolde Selassie to come up with a plan to reclaim the main population centers from the Italians while their authority there was still shaky and cut them off from their logistics in Italian Eritrea and Somaliland. This was a naively optimistic plan at best but Heruy was in no position to object, working out a plan that would entail a series of assassinations focused on important figures collaborating with and in the Italian colonial administration before a series of coordinated offensives were to cut off the Italian units in the population centers in the midst of popular uprisings. Upon receiving this plan, Imru had almost outright refused it, reluctantly accepting it when Abebe Aregai pressured him into doing so in fear of the Emperor simply cutting off their newfound support outsourced from Japan and issued orders to his officers on the ground. Quietly, an army under the command of the Kassa siblings was amassing around a besieged Addis Ababa and slowly tightening the noose around the Italian garrison based there, accompanied by their comrades around Gondar, Jimma, Harar and Dire Dawa.

Imru's men lie in wait, February 1937.

It seems that liberation was arriving unexpectedly early.

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[1] This is actually IOTL. See Italian mandate or protectorate over Ethiopia in 1935-1936 by Alberto Sbacchi for more.

Hagre · Oct 27, 2019

Our Destiny

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy

The wave of anti-colonial nationalism that swept Africa also touched the African Diaspora scattered throughout the world, first starting in the United States where the Harlem Renaissance had already redefined traditional Black identity and its African heritage along nationalistic lines. Here, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association had succeeded in advocating the cause of Black nationalism and the Back-to-Africa movement over the course of the Twenties, temporarily stopped by the imprisonment and subsequent deportation of Garvey in November 1927. Despite the fact that the UNIA's headquarters were now permanently in Monrovia, it continued maintaining its extensive network in the USA and North America at large, ensuring that the prominent voices of Black nationalism were heard in the Americas. It provided the opportunity for the UNIA to spread its ideology to the Negroes of the New World, exploiting the growth of ethnic nationalism.

Pro-Ethiopia protests in Harlem, January 1936.

In Haiti, there had been an American military presence since the USA's intervention in 1915, justifying it on the grounds that the Monroe Doctrine needed to be enforced in defense against the German presence and prominence in Haiti's economy and that American investors were threatened by the ongoing anti-American revolt. In reality, it was little else than a ploy to ensure that American investors retained economic hegemony over its economy and in the process, secure access to its plentiful resources and strategic position in the Caribbean. The failure of the Haitian military to offer any meaningful resistance to the blatant imperialism of the United States and subsequent disbanding had led to Haitian nationalism sweeping the populace as insurgent bands named Cacos rose up throughout the countryside. At the helm of resistance to the American occupation was Charlemagne Peralte, a soldier of the Haitian army and nationalist fervently opposed to Washington's objectives to transform Haiti into what amounted to what it had been under French colonial rule - a slave colony.

Peralte and the Cacos possessed little interest in seeing Haiti become another victim of European colonialism, launching attacks against American-Gendarmerie forces with the promise of driving them into the sea and restoring to Haiti native rule. Unfortunately, it was not to be - a Gendarmerie officer, alongside two American Marines, infiltrated into Peralte's camp and killed him but not before photographing Peralte with his corpse tied to a door. The image was disseminated throughout Haiti for the express purpose of demoralizing the Haitian resistance and pressuring the population into accepting the American occupation, although it had the exact opposite effect - it led to Haitian resistance stiffening and an increase in the attacks against American forces stationed in Haiti. Charlemagne Peralte had effectively become a martyr, a symbol of Haitian liberty and that same photo possessed an uncanny resemble to the crucification of Jesus Christ. However, Peralte's dream of Haitian independence was not to be realized when the Cacos made an attack on American forces at Port-au-Prince in January 1920 and incurred heavy casualties whereas Marine casualties were light, being 1 killed and 6 wounded in stark contrast to the Cacos' 116 killed and an undetermined number more wounded.

An elderly Haitian Cacos at the Second Battle of Port-au-Prince, January 1920.

Haitian resistance continued but it was much less organized and without one authoritarian charismatic leader to keep it in check, it begun succumbing to regionalist pressures and indisciplined troops. Combined with the USA's construction of a modern nationwide transportation system, the American forces could now maneuver quicker in Haiti to deal with the Cacos' attacks. With the death of Benoît Batraville in 1920, Haitian resistance disintegrated and Washington begun to pour money into Haiti in order to modernize the country and subsequently open it up to American investment for increased profits. Between 1921-34, it underwent a massive development campaign that had expanded both the country's infrastructure and economy, Haitian commercial agriculture expanding rapidly in the process. Despite the prosperity that Haiti had enjoyed in the 1920s, the Haitian elite and populace continued to clash with the occupying Americans over the exchange of their independence for American hegemony, the organized opposition now led by the - mostly - peaceful Union of Haitian Patriots who possessed links with organizations like the NAACP and UNIA.

The Great Depression set back the gains that Haiti had made, leading to a rise of discontent with the client Haitian government and against the American occupation as well as against Haiti's mulatto elite who'd been all too happy to cooperate with the Americans to preserve their positions and wealth. This led to the election of Stenio Vincent to power in 1930, a Haitian nationalist drawn from the ranks of Haiti's mixed elites and oversaw the transition to an independent Haitian government, extending his office term in the process. Although the withdrawal of the Marines in August 1934 by FDR formally ended the occupation of Haiti by the USA, Washington retained control over the country by directly managing its finances and continuing to support Haiti's mulatto elite in opposition to majority rule. Ostensibly, it was obvious that this led to a rise in Black Haitian nationalism and the message of the UHP became noticeably more radical in response, owing to the influence of the UNIA.

Black nationalists had taken an interest in Haiti after it had come under American occupation and Marcus Garvey was no different in dreaming of a campaign to liberate Haiti. It was during the American invasion when a number of Haitians had made contact with the Universal Negro Improvement Association, reading the Negro World paper and even joining the organization. It helped that by 1919, the UNIA possessed a well-established place in the Caribbean where it seized the opportunity to spread its message amongst Afro-Caribbeans when they were recruited for work in the Black Star Line and Negro Factories Corporation, its anti-colonialist and racial nationalist narrative making it attractive to them. By 1920, it had done the same in Haiti but was initially unable to do so owing to conflicts over the heterodox line enforced by UNIA elites in opposition to the American bishops [1] whose views of the African Orthodox Church were less than positive but this didn't prevent a surprisingly high number of Haitians from joining. In August 1924, a letter sent to President Louis Borno by Marcus Garvey [2] reaffirmed the UNIA's support for the Haitian struggle and this support was instrumental in the formation of factions within the Union Patriotique.

A Garveyist faction under Jean Prince-Mars [3] arose from the Union Patriotique, consisting of radical Haitian nationalists whose ideology closely coincided with that of militant Black nationalists from the 1850s, men such as Martin Delany, Robert Campbell, Alexander Crummell, Edward Wilmot Blyden and so on. These men were classical Black nationalists who advocated for an African Empire on the model of Victorian Britain, one that had "a high culture aesthetic, which admired symbols of imperial power, military might and aristocratic refinement," as Wilson J. Moses [4] has outlined. In addition to these models, Prince-Mars and his group were fervent admirers of early Haitian leaders like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines who governed the Black Republic where they instituted a series of revolutionary reforms which allowed for the oldest Black Republic to embrace the social reforms of the Enlightenment and even mimic Napoleonic France under Dessalines' First Empire. Jean Prince-Mars' group soon broke away to form the Haitian National Union Party in early 1935, quickly rallying Haitians from all over the nation into its ranks and swelled rapidly in the process as Haitians opposed to American dominance gathered in the HNUP.

Inspired by Garveyist rhetoric, the HNUP announced its intention to establish a Third Haitian Empire on the model of Garveyite Liberia and restore Liberia to Black rule after wresting away control of the country's institutions from the American-installed mulatto elite who only cared about their influence instead of national independence. It also claimed to support the establishment of a federation inclusive of the territories in the West Indies [5] and firmly establish the Third Empire as a true empire. It exploited the sympathies toward Ethiopia when Italy invaded in October 1935 and received assistance from the UNIA in preaching its pro-Ethiopia sentiment, joining the global anti-colonialist world in denouncing Italian imperialism once Ethiopia collapsed and Haile Selassie fled to Tokyo in June 1936. This allowed it to exploit the wave of Black nationalism that swept Haiti, riding into power during the 1936 general parliamentary elections as Jean Prince-Mars accused Stenio of being complacent with the American dominance of Haitian finance and enforcing Mulatto hegemony over the nation. Its position in power was further reinforced when the Dominican regime carried out the Parsley Massacre in early October of 1937, slaughtering as many as 12,316 to 35,000 Haitians residing within the Dominican Republic and sparking outrage on the part of the HNUP administration in Port-au-Prince. It was certainly one of the causes of the war that broke out only a week later, in addition to the pre-existing enmity between both countries and the competition over Hispaniola's resources.

A Haitian soldier on the frontlines, November 1937.

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[1] See Garveyism in Haiti during the US Occupation by Brenda Gayle Plummer for more.

[2] See the said letter in The Public's Archive's Marcus Garvey and Haiti for more.

[3] IOTL, Jean Prince-Mars was a Haitian nationalist who was also prominent member of the Negritude movement and would later become a member in Haitian government in the late '40s.

[4] This is a reference to Wilson J. Moses' Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey, particularly the introduction on Classical Black nationalism.

[5] Calls for a West Indies Federation by Haitian nationalists are also IOTL, see the first link for more.

Hagre · Nov 3, 2019

Sheba's Wrath

It was during the ceremony celebrating the submission of Ethiopian aristocrats to Rome and distribution of alms to the impoverished of Addis Ababa that two assassins - Abraham Deboch and Moges Asgedom - struck. In accordance with the plan drafted by Heruy Wolde Selassie, a total of 10 grenades were flung at Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani and the group accompanying him, a combination of Italian colonial officials and Ethiopian collaborators, who were unaware of the two Eritreans until it was too late. Shrapnel from the grenades' explosions turned the procession into chaos as Italians and Ethiopians alike bolted for safety as Graziani was torn into by approximately 365 fragments and would later bleed out while being rushed to the nearest medical facility. In the meantime, the Italian soldiers guarding Graziani wildly fired into the crowd and killed thousands, one Italian official going as far as to turn his revolver onto the aristocrats who had been observing the ceremony and order that Italian forces in Ethiopia be given a week to do carte blanche to the Ethiopian populace [1] to avenge Graziani. Using the chaos to their favor, Abraha and Moges fled the scene with the assistance of a sympathetic taxi driver with whose help they fled the city and eventually made contact with the units under Aberra Kassa, delivering reports of their success to the Regent, much to his grim satisfaction.

In Addis Ababa, Italian settlers and soldiers rampaged across the city where they killed countless Ethiopians, burned their homes to the ground, claimed the houses of wealthier Ethiopians and generally wreaked havoc on the Ethiopian populace to the cries of "Duce! Duce!" and "Civilta Italiania!" that mixed with the cries of Ethiopians as they were struck down. This violence was soon extended to the rest of Ethiopia where Italian forces pillaged and killed Ethiopians indiscriminately in spite of Graziani's attempts at appealing to the allegedly downtrodden ethnic and religious groups, driving more Ethiopians into the hands of Imru's movement and bolstering the offensive he commanded. By the end of the week, around 50,000 people had been brutally murdered at the hands of the Italian troops and their Askari companions, having completed the task of avenging Graziani with tens of thousands of lives and ridding themselves of any potential cooperation from Ethiopia's people whilst also unintentionally expanding the ranks of the Patriots. The Italians were also joined by their puppets in the National Ethiopian Army and Royal Army of Oromia in carrying out their own atrocities, further betraying their own populations. It had led the Patriots to grow from a mere 40,000 men to an entire field army of 100,000 men across the occupied Empire.

Graziani's assassination was followed by that of Hailu's during Yohannes Iyasu's attack on Gondar and Jifar narrowly avoided the same fate when Dejazmach Geresu Duki launched an all-out assault on Jimma. The only thing preventing the fall of these towns to Patriot control was the hasty relocation of Italian units from the southern front, the Italians bringing down their firepower on the advancing Patriot columns and forcing them back. The same thing was happening in Hararghe as Nasibu coordinated a series of attacks against the Italian garrisons in Dire Dawa and Harar, exploiting the anger of the nomadic Somalis at Italy's bombardment of several mosques in Harar and commanding them to support a rout. The Hararis themselves had been horrified at the looting, killing and destruction of their namesake city's mosques and upon Nasibu lending his support to help them, they happily accepted and rose up against their collaborating lords to drive out the Italian units occupying the city. This was at least successful as Nasibu's men marched into the heart of Harar and for a time, managed to hold onto the city and defend it against the repeated Italian attacks until the city was reduced nearly to rubble and eventually seized back by the Italians in late 1937 to early 1938.

Geresu Duki observes his men march across the Omo River, March 1937.

Harari volunteers on the outskirts of Harar, March-April 1937.

The February Offensive proved to be a failure despite inflicting relatively heavy casualties on the Italian and satellite forces, even making some gains. It failed to achieve most of its strategic objectives as the Italians reoccupied the bigger cities, leaving those units that'd taken them mauled and ruthlessly subjugated the natives of those population centers. It did have the effect of improving moral amongst the soldiers under Imru's command and the general populace who'd almost resigned themselves to the Italian occupation after Ras Desta's army had been wiped out and Desta himself nearly captured [2] in Sidamo province. In fact, the successful assassinations and subsequent reprisals had inspired resistance to the Italian presence, many coming to believe that the Imperial government and armies hadn't abandoned them to Rome and many more joining the ranks of those same guerrillas operating under the central command of Imru's movement.

Rome itself was shocked at the wave of assassinations that swept Italian-occupied Ethiopia and Mussolini was enraged at the death of the Butcher of Fezzan, replacing him with the more liberal Duke of Aosta, Prince Amedeo who set to work attempting to rectify the damages from the Patriots' attacks and in the pacification of the native Ethiopian populace. Under his tenure, there would be the release of hundreds of Ethiopian prisoners from the concentration camps in the Dahlak Archipelago and Somali coastline as well as the easing of the repression and the formulation of a new colonial policy toward the Ethiopian aristocracy in which they were to assist in the governance of the Italian East African colony. However, this was too little, too late - the Ethiopian population was overwhelmingly sympathetic toward Imru's Patriots and increasingly hostile to the Italian colonial administration who, despite Amedeo's overtures, had revealed their true colors after Yekatit 12. Not to mention, Rome had yet to figure out how to handle the Patriotic movement adequately, the pacification units in the Highlands coming back slaughtered while Imru oversaw the reorganization of his guerrilla armies and prepared them for the use of more unconventional means, having since shed the opinion that his men were capable of directly attacking the Italians without taking heavier casualties.

More importantly, the failure of the February Offensive had done nothing for the degrading relationship between Imru and Haile Selassie, the former angered at the glaring issues of Heruy's theoretical plan and more so at the presence of Ethiopian soldiers in China since Japan's invasion in 1937. It would be the beginning of the end between the two royals, especially as it begun becoming clear that the Emperor was becoming completely subject to the whims of Tokyo and that the supposedly free Imperial Ethiopian Army was under the command of the Japanese officer corps that had come to power with Sadao Araki's insistence. Perhaps it was this that contributed the most to the emergence of Imru at the forefront of Ethiopia when it regained its independence in the midst of the Second World War.

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[1] The Italian official is Federal Secretary Guido Cortese and that bit about him firing his sidearm into the group of Ethiopian dignitaries is IOTL but the extension of the period of Yekatit 12 is an addition on my part for the successful assassination of the Viceroy. See Haile Selassie's War by Anthony Mockler for more.

[2] ITTL, he's not captured and executed by the Italians, barely managing to escape and instead heading for the Ethiopian plateau to link up with Imru.

Hagre · Nov 8, 2019

Sheba's Panthers

The Duke of Aosta arrives in Ethiopia and is received by Amedeo Guillet, March 1937.

Upon becoming the Viceroy of Italian East Africa, Amedeo had inherited the many problems of Graziani's colonial administration and needed to deal with Imru's insurgents. He went with a more liberal approach, setting free the hundreds in concentration camps spread across the Italian colonial empire and repatriated them back to Ethiopia where they were supported by the colonial administration and closely monitored, regardless of their backgrounds. The Duke of Aosta was particularly interested in exploiting the submission of the Ethiopian aristocracy to relieve some of the pressures of governing a restive Ethiopia [1] with a realization that feudal culture in Ethiopia entailed the need for traditional leadership to oversee the populace. Although their influence and power was significantly curbed, the aristocrats were to act as agents of Italy and facilitate Ethiopian participation in their becoming subjects of Mussolini's New Roman Empire in the hopes that would rectify the worse of the February massacres. Amedeo's willingness to include those aristocrats, alongside indigenous cooperation, could be seen in the establishment of the Council of Empire [2] which was to be a political assembly of six members representing the six governorates and peoples that made up Ethiopia. Proposed members included Ras Hailu of Amhara, Sultan Abdullahi of Harar, Abba Jifar of Oromia, Ras Seyoum of Tigray and Ras Gugsa of Eritrea.

There'd even been plans to introduce an East African branch of the PNF in Ethiopia but the assassination of Hailu and hospitalization of Jifar led Rome to postpone the implementation of the Council of Empire as Italian forces rampaging in Ethiopia clashed with Imru's troops intervening. In Amhara, Afawarq replaced Hailu as "Meri" of the Amhara Kingdom and eagerly begun instituting his reforms, emulating Mussolini's own moves toward Italy's Fascization across the '20s and cooperated with Italy in what he saw as strengthening Ethiopia, starting with the Amhara nucleus. This led to Afawarq, interestingly enough, making an effort to encourage Amhara nationalism in a bid to increase his own support and granted clemency to captured Patriots, in direct opposition with Rome's orders to execute captured Patriots, in order to conscript them into the ranks of the National Ethiopian Army. In Oromia, the Sultan had finally recovered enough by the end of February to focus on governing his dominion and mimicked Afawarq in bolstering the ranks by issuing orders for conscription into the Royal Oromo Army to support the Italian pacification campaigns being carried out against Geresu Duki's men. All the while, these two nations clashed with one another over the atrocities that their forces committed against each other's populace, Rome's divide-and-conquer policies often running counter to the support role those unofficial Askaris were playing when combined.

Imru had observed with bemusement when Italy attempted to exploit the Ethiopian aristocracy, promptly failing when he reacted with the necessary assassinations being applied and when they ended up being freeloaders dependent on hand-outs from Rome as a result of the confiscation of their landed estates. The pacification campaigns had done little to dislodge his men from their dominance of the countryside but inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, especially when they attempted to employ armored support and were unceremoniously destroyed by small squads. It led a Holeta cadet to say, "The Italians are good at digging trenches and we are good at converting trenches into graves. They, too, know this. We know each other very well." [3] when Italian positions were overrun. However, despite Ethiopian success in the expansion of the guerrilla networks and attacks against Italian forces, they were too ill-equipped and lacking in support for the task of reclaiming their dense population centers. It didn't help that much of what Haile Selassie had promised was stuck abroad - in Japan who'd become bogged down in eastern China and in need of more manpower to sustain their advance, turned to the Ethiopian community and called on them to "volunteer" so that they could loyally serve both Hirohito and Haile Selassie - with the ultimate aim of liberating Ethiopia, and potentially Africa, from European rule.

Ethiopian soldiers in China, August 1937.

Speaking of the Chinese, things had not been going well for Nanjing since the assassination of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek during the 1936 Xi'an Incident [4] and the ascendance of his son, Chiang Wei-Kuo, to power as the new President of the Chinese Republic. Chiang's death sparked the Kuomintang's factionalization, something that was only abated by the emergence of the Blue Shirts Society at the forefront of the Chinese government, owing to its control of the valuable Whampoa Military Academy and influential members that were already in office under Kai-Shek. Exploiting his father's martyrdom and corruption in all levels of Chinese government, Chiang Wei-Kuo managed to replace his father as President and begun to reorganize the Kuomintang along the lines of both Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. It wasn't too long before the new administration in Nanjing was asserting itself and reassuming the same position of dominance that Kai-Shek's government had after the Northern Expedition of the late '20s, turning towards the Fascist nations of Europe in order to receive assistance in the area of reorganizing the National Revolutionary Army. Still suspecting Tokyo of supporting Imru and angry at them for harboring Haile Selassie, Mussolini agreed to send advisors to China alongside those of the existing German Military Mission as a means of getting even with the Japanese.

Meanwhile, Marcus Garvey had denounced the Dominicans for the wholesale slaughter of their Haitian citizens and threw his support behind Jean Prince-Mars' decision to intervene. This was seen in the support that manifested in the form of shipments of much-needed arms and machine tools, accompanied by a combined team of veteran Universal African Corps officers. The small number of Haitian cadets that trained at the Martin Delany Military Academy [5] in Monrovia were hurriedly sent back to Haiti before they could finish their education, owing to the HNU government's need for Black officers to replace Mulatto officers in the midst of the war with the Dominicans. By the 1930s, the Dominican Army had evolved into a centralized, well-disciplined and well-equipped force that was under Trujillo's complete control, capable of the counteroffensives that followed the Haitians' initial attacks and successfully recovered all the land that had been lost up to the Haitian border by November. All the while, the Dominican National Police continued to root out Haitians hiding amongst the Afro-Dominican community and vigorously persecute them, either driving them out or outright killing them as the reorganization of the Haitian officer corps was complete by the time the support from Liberia arrived.

The Haitian counterattacks came all across the Dominican frontier, led by the more well-trained and well-equipped Haitian units who threw themselves at the Dominican positions with reckless abandon. For the first time in the war since October, the Dominicans were forced to retreat and Haitian forces commanded by volunteers from the African Universal Corps pursued them relentlessly, launching attack after attack, regardless of losses, into the Dominican Republic proper. It all came to an end with both countries having sustained relatively heavy casualties - the Haitians much more than their Mestizo counterparts - and its larger northern neighbor in the United States promising to intervene unless both agreed to peace, which they promptly did. After a month of negotiations in Washington, Port-au-Prince and Santo Domingo had agreed to return to the pre-November borders of 1937 as well as for Santo Domingo to repatriate all of its Haitians to Haiti and with a total compensation sum of $US 725,000. In Haiti, Jean-Mars hailed Haitian "victory" and expulsion of the "barbarous descendants of the genocidal Spanish Conquistadors" while Trujillo lavishly praised the Dominican soldiers for standing steadfastly and for saving the Republic from the "uncivilized Negroid hordes of the Dark Continent."

Despite total casualties numbering in the high thousands, the war was popular with Haiti's public in the defense of their downtrodden brethren in the east and when their same oppressor reared its ugly head in the form of the Dominicans' conquest and subjugation of Hispaniola's Blacks, the war of liberation was soon changed to that of a war of defense. The ongoing purges of the Mulatto elite were quickened as many came to see them as a third column, owing partly to Prince-Mars' ruthless criticisms of Stenio Vincent's connections to Trujillo's government [7], and pre-existing dissent toward Haiti's Mulatto bourgeoisie would boil over from fear into anger at the past injustices. It helped complete Port-au-Prince's program of supplementing and replacing the Mulatto officer corps with the cadets that had been trained in Monrovia while also allowing unemployed Haitians job opportunity in the areas of public works, expansion of the armaments industry, etc. as the economy somewhat recovered from the Great Depression. The compensation of the Washington Treaty was partially diverted toward the setting up of government programs that employed skilled instructors from the Liberian-owned Negro Factories Corporation and in spite of everything, the Haitian economy was making a gradual comeback to the economic boom it'd experienced in the Roaring Twenties as Port-au-Prince begun to invite Black businessmen over the New World to invest in Haiti.

Haitian artillery bombards Dominican positions, December 1938.

In Monrovia, the officers arriving from Haiti were received with pompous celebrations, although Marcus Garvey had noticed they seemed to be a bit muted in contrast to the Black Star Regiment. Although there had been much pride taken in Liberian troops fighting in Ethiopia and Haiti, many simply wanted their sons to return home and the internationalist orientation of Liberian nationalism started to swing to that of a more territorial-based nationalist stance that insisted Liberia focus on itself instead of overextending itself across the Negro world without resources to spare. This had usually been the stance taken by the UNIA members who'd lived much of their lives in their native Liberia and by Americo-Liberian elites integrated into the Garveyite government, most notably William Tubman. Tubman's famous quote shows this clearly when he states, "Have we not the right, in the face of all these difficulties, beyond and over our sacred rights to demand the unification of Liberia and her former territories so that we restore to ourselves living space which was so wrongly stolen from us? Europe has found living space for herself in the remote lands that constitute the Dark and Yellow Continents - even the Egyptians have found living space for excess population in the Sudan. Why should Liberia not have the right to demand not to be strangled in a strip of land that is too narrow for us, and how else shall we manage otherwise as time passes and our number doubles? Liberia has the right to aspire to become a Great West African Empire, the guardian of the Atlantic African Coast, to be the leader of Western African nations." [8]

This was partially facilitated by Liberian officers that had come back after serving in Ethiopia and/or Haiti, arguing that it was high time for the Liberians to secure their homes before any affairs overseas. These men were arguing for Liberia to instead focus her efforts primarily and almost entirely on that of West Africa or else they'd succumb to the same fate the Ethiopians had in '36. The extensive Garveyist networks in the British and French West African colonies were to be used to whip up the native populations into a nationalistic frenzy that would reverberate throughout the region and with Liberian officers at its head, its independence was to be enforced by West African bayonets. Seeing Nazi Germany as an act to follow, they were strongly in favor of the restructuring of Liberia along National Socialist lines and this was seen in men like Carlos A. Cooks who later admitted to admiring Hitler and would be all too happy to see Hitler declare war on the whole of Europe [9] to allow for the Africans to reclaim Africa. To a lesser extent, there was also admiration for Mussolini's Italy and even the suggestion that an alliance be made with Rome against the encroaching influence of Socialism on African intellectuals and in direct opposition to the USSR's promises to bring Communism worldwide. However, this was immediately shot down and there was no guarantee that Italy wouldn't backstab Liberia in the process and attempt to colonize her. The forming of a bloc such as this one would split the Universal Negro Improvement Association into Black internationalist and Liberian nationalist factions, something that alarmed Garvey and forced him to confront issues that came with the nature of the UNIA as 1938 came around.

Veterans of the Universal African Corps on drill, January 1938.

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[1] This was attempted by the Italian colonial administration and Ministry of Colonies but failed to have any positive result after Yekatit 12. See Italy and the Treatment of the Ethiopian Aristocracy, 1937-1940 by Alberto Sbacchi for more.

[2] This is all IOTL. See the above link for more.

[3] This is just really a modified quote from Samora Yunis during the Eritrean-Ethiopian War of '98.

[4] An errant shot from an eager army officer kills Chiang during the Incident ITTL.

[5] Mostly a reference to Martin Delany, the father of Black nationalism.

[6] See The Modern Military Under Trujillo for more.

[7] Stenio was not exactly popular IOTL when he came to power in '34, especially owing to his connections with Trujillo's regime and the Mulatto bourgeoisie. See Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict and Political Change, 1934-1957 by Matthew J. Smith for more.

[8] A modified quote from that of Muhammad Ali Aluba regarding Egyptian living space in Sudan in 1942. For the exact quote, see the World Future Fund article on Totalitarianism in the Islamic World and Nazi Germany for more.

[9] There was quite a bit of admiration for Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany on the part of Black nationalists during the '40s. See Under Cover - My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America by John Roy Carlson for more.

Hagre · Nov 23, 2019

When That Day Comes

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy

Ethiopia's collapse in '36 had left Liberia and Egypt as the sole independent nations of Africa and it was at that point that the Ethiopian example was made an important case for what happened to countries who failed to modernize in the face of European colonialism. It was with the example of Italian-occupied Ethiopia that the respective governments of Liberia and Egypt pursued extensive programs of armament that was intended to support their armed forces to defend against what was increasingly perceived to be rampant European imperialism. In Egypt, there still remained the vestiges of the continued British occupation which remained a sore reminder and Ahmad Husayn's government took steps to rectify this by placing pressure on London, playing up fears of Mussolini going mad and attacking the Suez Canal. The increasing presence of Italian soldiers in colonial Libya and occupied Ethiopia inadvertently reinforced this, especially with Mussolini's attempts to assure the British government that he had little intention to interfere in an affair that did not concern it. Although the pro-Italy Young Egypt Party maintained party-to-party links with its Italian counterpart, Husayn was aware of the Italians' designs on Egypt itself and this reinforced a widespread notion that Egyptian rearmament was necessary for the maintenance of Egypt's embryonic independence.

Meanwhile, in Liberia, Marcus Garvey had overseen the transformation of the Liberian Frontier Force from an ill-trained and ill-equipped militia into a respectable fighting force that actually outmatched the units defending the nearby British and French colonies. Appalled at the state of the Liberian military when he emigrated in 1927, Garvey had set to work expanding the existing Universal African Corps with assistance from the many African-American veterans of the Great War [1] into something rivaling the LFF itself and started integrating the former into the latter when he came to power in '31. These veterans proved to be invaluable in the service of the Garveyite state, properly reorganizing and reforming the Liberian Frontier Force in tandem with the UAC leadership and competent Liberian officers. In addition to the LFF's reform and expansion, Garvey personally oversaw the expansion of the Negroes Factories Corporation into the arms manufacturing and standardized the LFF's equipment, starting with making the 1903 Springfield rifle the standard rifle of the Liberian soldier. Although successful in the regular production of small arms to thoroughly equip the Liberian Frontier Force, the LFF was noticeably lacking in heavy artillery and armored units that the NFC was struggling to produce.

By 1938, the Liberian Frontier Force had grown to 9,772 men with many of them having served in Ethiopia or Haiti from 1935-38 and was considered a formidable fighting force capable of successfully taking on the British and French garrisons stationed in the colonies nearby, Charles Young [2] himself praising Garvey for the reform of the LFF. Despite being considerably slowed by Washington's restrictions, Blacks that had joined the Universal Negro Improvement Association continued to be recruited in the Liberian Program and continued immigrating to Liberia [3] which had effectively replaced Ethiopia in the Black Diaspora by the late 1930s. To a lesser extent, this was also happening with Blacks coming from the Caribbean (mostly Jamaicans) and South America. However, the Liberian Frontier Force now possessed a steady influx of able-bodied manpower that would be the basis of the African Liberation campaign that many of the UNIA's dogmatic officials continued to believe in, even as Garvey toned down his rhetoric. Interestingly, the Garveyite government took cues from Italy's demographic colonization of its Libyan colony under Italo Balbo and although it avoided much of the violence that had occurred under Graziani, Monrovia was willing to crack down particularly harshly on the historically troublesome ethnic groups like the Kru and expropriate them from their land in favor of Black settlers from the Americas.

Speaking of emulating Italian colonization, Marcus Garvey had done much to denounce it and side with the pro-Ethiopia sentiment reverberating through Africa but he continuing praising the Fascist powers that were Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany even in the Second World War. His infamous quote, "We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism." in 1937 seems proof of this and has been used by Garvey's critics to denounce him as little else than a "Brown Fascist." This could also be seen in other quotes made at the time and Garvey's open admiration of Hitler [4] that represented the disturbing growth of pro-National Socialist trend not just in Liberia but in the non-European world too. An example of this is Husayn's moves toward establishing party-to-party relations with the NSDAP in March 1938, at the height of Italo-German tensions over the German annexation of Austria, and praised both Hitler's support for Nationalist factions and General Franco's many accommodations particularly for his Moroccan soldiers. This may have been done to redirect Italian ambitions in North Africa to Central Europe where Mussolini saw Austria in the context of a grander New Roman Empire project. In the meantime of Italy's distractions in Spain, Austria and Ethiopia, Husayn stuck to Young Egypt's promises and begun vigorously expanding the Egyptian state's role in the economy to counteract British predominance and support Egyptian militarization.

Egyptian troops on drill in Sudan, March 1938.

Pro-Nazi sentiment could also be felt in the UNIA where some, like Carlos Cooks and William Tubman, concluded that another European War was inevitable and Germany would eventually emerge victorious in a long, drawn-out war of attrition that would see the Third Reich control most of Europe, sans the USSR. In the process, West European colonial empires would disintegrate with their homelands' focus on defense of its European frontiers and a Continent-wide uprising that would see Black Africans liberate themselves from the shackles of decades of brutal imperialism. It was only natural that the Germans would seek the cooperation of Africa's independent governments that would expel the Western Allies from Africa entirely and further cripple them by cutting off their access to their precious colonies. In coordination with Egypt, the British, French and Italian armies would be driven across the Mediterranean and destroyed by German forces, effectively ushering in German control over Europe. The Germans, tied down in pacification and integration of its new territories, would be too busy to subvert African governments while strengthening themselves, forming into a Pan-African Bloc to stave off the plans of organizations like the Reich Colonial League [5] to reclaim former colonies. Thus, the world would be divided into several spheres: German-controlled Europe, Japanese-dominated Asia and Liberian-led Africa.

The Liberian High Command was not as eager to embrace these proposals, Charles Young pointing out that Liberian forces might be able to successfully annex Sierra Leone, in addition to parts of the Gold Coast and Guinea but nothing else. Although the UNIA possessed an extensive network in West Africa, there was no guaranteeing that all or even most West Africans would rise up in favor of the Liberian "liberation," in which the Garveyites had done a fine job influencing West African nationalism [6] and potentially encouraged anti-Liberian nationalism in the process. Not to mention that the chapters in central and southern Africa were being cracked down upon with vigor in response to the wave of anti-colonialism and nationalism in Africa, the ones in British and French West African colonies doing better under liberal regimes. The LFF High Command also pointed out that the Liberian military was sorely lacking in heavy artillery and armor to support the well-trained and well-armed light infantry. This all meant although the LFF had surely improved and might've been capable of knocking out their European counterparts, it wouldn't be able to carry out much other than blitzkrieg and static defense when faced with a massive counteroffensive from the combined might of the Anglo-French empires.

Despite the LFF's protests, Garvey ordered that his commanders outline a plan but acceded to the protests that the LFF was incapable of conquering all of West Africa and focused on places where the Garveyite networks were the strongest and the LFF could count on local support. This was followed by the gradual dissemination of arms in that colony, in addition to Guinea and Nigeria where Garveyite cadres showed a willingness in favor of Liberian "intervention and liberation," as Liberian agents begun to join the ranks of the colonial garrisons. The escalation of the Spanish Civil War lends concrete evidence to the pro-Nazis, especially with Franco's push via Morocco and the Italo-German intervention against the Republicans in July 1936. Moscow's support for the Republican government only reinforces this further and the narrative of another European war on the horizon attracts more to their side as Europe seems ready to burst at the seams over this new conflict. Garvey gave the order to partly mobilize the Universal African Corps when the International Brigades were organized under Republican command in September 1936, the Nationalists threatening to overrun the Republican militias with the vastly superior Army of Africa's regulars.

Moroccan soldiers around Madrid, July 1938.

Excerpt from Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1945 by Jeff Pearce

Much of 1938 was spent rebuilding the units mauled or lost in the February Offensives, mobilizing and in isolation of Haile Selassie's Provisional Government in Tokyo. Imru was content to oversee the small-unit attacks that had become the norm but Lorenzo Taezaz had pointed out that not just the Emperor-in-exile was demanding larger-scale attacks but the restive population was too, desiring revenge. In the Ogaden and Sidamo, Nasibu Emmanuel managed to exploit the anger of local Muslims at the destruction of Harar's mosques and amass a calvary force of southern nomads. Under Imru's orders, Nasibu begun attacking Italian forces stationed in the Ogaden, personally leading a series of coordinated attacks by Somali calvarymen against the Italian-controlled towns in the east and struck Kelafo, the center of Sultan Olol Diinle's collaborationist administration. Diinle was killed by an errant bullet in the midst of the calvary charge and Kelafo was placed under Patriotic control within a day, Nasibu having kicked out the Somali levies. They soon attract the attention of the Somali Askaris positioned close to the former border with Italy's Somaliland colony located at Mustahil and they moved to retake the town, only to be wiped out in a pre-emptive strike as Nasibu withdrew into the surrounding countryside.

Oromo and Somali calvary in Bale, June 1938.

Although the town soon fell back into Italian hands, the loss of such a prominent collaborator dealt a heavy blow to the Italian colonial administration and its ties with the local Somalis. After all, Harar was to be considered Islam's fourth holiest city by them and the destruction it was subject to didn't present a positive image to them, already having isolated the Hararis. It was only through Diinle that the Somalis of the area had remained somewhat amicable to the Italian presence even when Italian soldiers rampaged in Jijiga and Dire Dawa but the Patriots' influence was growing by the day. Imru himself was reported to have made promises of delivering religious freedom and autonomy to the Ogadeni Somalis, noting that these Catholics had already betrayed Ethiopia's Orthodox Christians and slaughtered their fellow Muslims in that Libyan colony under the now-dead Butcher of Fezzan. Contrary to Italian propaganda, the Orthodox Christians had been willing to treat their Muslim brothers as fellow Ethiopians and Imru urged them to rise up against the "accursed Catholic infidels," daring to refer to play on the historical enmity between the Catholic Portuguese and Muslim Adal Sultanate. Who was to say that they wouldn't be next?

Besides the increasing anti-Italian feeling in the Muslim provinces and Nasibu's attacks, the Italian colonial administration was being hampered by the mounting losses that Italian forces were suffering and even more so by Mussolini's decision to commit Italian "volunteers" to Franco's Nationalists in July 1936. This meant that even with the rampant assassinations of officers and even generals like Guglielmo Nasi in the talks of March 1939 [7] and need for skilled manpower, Italy was actually withdrawing entire divisions from occupied Ethiopia and replacing them with conscripts from Italy proper or more colonial soldiers. They weren't exactly successful in achieving their colonization aims, having failed to settle the 35,000 Italians that had been encouraged to go to Ethiopia and forcing them to remain within the cities where Rome had planned they would come to replace the native Ethiopians in their grand redesign of Addis Ababa. The fertile lands that were promised to them were also spread across the Highlands and southern provinces, of which both were predominantly under Patriotic control. Not to mention the growing financial burdens of maintaining their presence in Ethiopia while simultaneously spending millions on the development of their colonial empire [8] and on supplying the Nationalists in Spain with adequate equipment that were showing just how worth attempting to make Ethiopia an Italian colony was.

Worse was growing international opinion against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, many countries in the League having refused to recognize, and against the atrocities that defined Rome's presence in Ethiopia as the Ethiopian and Liberian delegates continued showing evidence of said atrocities that Mussolini either tried to downplay or outright deny. This had led to isolation amongst the Western countries, even when they seemed to be supporting Italy against Germany in the Austrian crisis and led Italy to look toward Germany as a possible ally even with the Germans' support for Imru's movement. Hitler's anti-Asian stance and hardline anti-Communism had only reinforced Mussolini's increasingly positive perception of him as they both moved closer toward an outright alliance aimed at defending the Fascist powers of Europe from the Western democracies. This is what ultimately drove the final nail into the coffin of Italy's dream of a grand colonial empire as Germany declared war on Poland and subsequently defeated the Western Allies, joining the Axis in June 1940 when French collapse was confirmed inevitable by the German drive on Paris. This would finally convince the Allied Powers to take pity on the occupied Ethiopians and support Imru in his venture to restore Ethiopian sovereignty with British assistance, seeing Ethiopian troops march back into Addis Ababa exactly to the day that the capital had fallen into Italian hands.

Imru's Imperial Guardsmen poised to retake back the cities, September 1939.

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[1] Not a few African-American veterans of World War I joined the Universal Negro Improvement Association, often radicalized by Garvey's moving speeches after their experiences arriving back home from the egalitarian France and often turning to other radical nationalist organizations like the African Blood Brotherhood. See Vanguards of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post-World War I Militancy by Chad L. Williams for more.

[2] ITTL, Charles Young lives longer and eventually becomes a citizen of Garveyite Liberia, rapidly rising through the LFF's ranks.

[3] It was during the 1920s that the narratives of "African Liberation" and other related material begun to come to the forefront of radical nationalism amongst African-Americans. This included an identification of African-Americans and Blacks in the New World as a whole with their African brethren, more specifically Ethiopia under Haile Selassie. However, the rise of Liberia under Garvey and fall of Ethiopia in 1936 has allowed for Liberia to replace Ethiopia, leading increased immigration to Liberia with the support of the UNIA. See Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America by Nadia Nurhussein for more.

[4] Surprisingly, this was also IOTL. In spite of his supposed pro-Ethiopia sentiment, Marcus Garvey maintained a favorable view of the Fascist powers of Europe and even wanted to emulate them in some ways in his dream of a grand African Empire which would've already been proto-Fascist in essence anyways. See Marcus Garvey's views of Fascism as they relate to the Black struggle for equal rights: an analysis of commentaries from The Black Man, 1935-1939 by Francine M. King and Black Fascisms: African American Literature and Culture Between the Wars by Mark Christian Thompson for more.

[5] AKA the Reichskolonialbund.

[6] See The Garvey Movement in West Africa by R.L. Okonkwo for more.

[7] Negotiations and attempts to attract Ras Abebe Aregai to the Italian side were constantly made by the colonial administration, nearly ending in March 1940 when Nasi agreed to meet with Abebe Aregai and was tipped off by an Ethiopian informer that the guerrilla commander planned to ambush him with 20,000 men. These talks are bumped up earlier, owing to the mounting losses suffered by Italy and Nasi is actually killed during his approach to Abebe Aregai's base in Menz. See Haile Selassie's War by Anthony Mockler and Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941 by Jeff Pearce for more.

[8] See Serendipitous Resistance in Fascist-Occupied Ethiopia, 1936-1941 by Charles Schaefer and Revisiting resistance in Italian-occupied Ethiopia: The Patriots’ Movement (1936-1941) and the redefinition of post-war Ethiopia by Aregawi Berhe for more.

Hagre · Nov 27, 2019

Sheba's Liberation

Excerpt from Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1945 by Jeff Pearce

Italy's invasion of British Somaliland in August 1940 saw the colony fall to Italian forces within weeks, forcing the British into the Red Sea and expanding the Empire at the latter's expense. It was followed up by the Italian incursions into Sudan that ended in Italian victory as Eritrean Askaris took Kassala, Gallabat, Qeissan, Kurmuk and Dumbode over the course of July. The string of victories was ended with the halting of Italy's advance in Sudan and the fortification of the towns that had fallen to Italian forces in such rapid succession. It was the volatile situation in East Africa that Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, approved the mobilization of three Free Ethiopian brigades from refugees spread across Sudan and Kenya. The few battalions formed in August 1940 in British Somaliland had fought alongside British units in their retreat to the Red Sea were moved from Aden to Kenya where they became the trained and experienced core of the Alula Legion, [1] or Free Ethiopian Forces. Their training ended in September 1940 as William Platt's Indian units started arriving and Alula's Legion was attached to the 5th Indian Division which stood poised to attack Gallabat and did so in November.

A deception campaign developed by Lt.-Colonel Dudley Clarke managed to trick the Italians into believing that instead of launching an invasion of Italian Eritrean and occupied Ethiopia, the British were going to utilize the newly arrived Indian divisions in the reconquest of British Somaliland. Although initially successful, it backfired when the Italians sent two of their divisions to Eritrea in the evacuation of Somaliland in November and caused delays in Platt's plans to invade in February 1941. Thankfully, Imru received word of those reinforcements and managed to arrange for Abebe Aregai to launch coordinated assaults on the reinforcements, tying down and spreading Italian forces thinner while British invasion from Sudan and Kenya was inevitable. The 1st Infantry Brigade of Alula's Legion took part in the opening salvo against their enemies' positions on the Sudanese border with Ethiopia and forced them back into Eritrea. Despite Agordat was taken relatively easily, Barentu doesn't budge as easily and only falls in early February when the Ethiopians, supported by Sudanese machine gunners, outflank the Italians and force them back towards Karen. It was there that the Italians exploited the mountainous terrain that, if left undefended, would see the colonial capital Asmara left open to the Allied advance and the loss of Italian Eritrea would surely force Italian capitulation in East Africa.

Ethiopian soldiers and a British officer pose with two captured Italian tanks in Eritrea, January 1941.

In the Ethiopian interior, Imru was ecstatic at Mussolini's decision to join the Axis and at the British agreeing to his demands through Lorenzo Taezaz in Khartoum, especially pleased with the explicit recognition of Imru's authority over Haile Selassie who bitterly protested this from Tokyo. There was a sharp increase in attacks against the Italian-controlled towns and the destruction of entire units patrolling the Patriots' territories in futile attempts at pacification, something the Duke of Aosta did not fail to notice and was forced to spread his men thin in battle with these wild guerrillas. The British counterattacks into Eritrea and the western provinces of Gondar and Gojjam were done in tandem with the renewed Patriot push on Debre Marqos and Debre Tabor under Dejazmach Belay Zeleke and Lij Yohannes Iyasu respectively. To Imru and everyone else's surprise, that troublesome Italian fortification had fallen and Debre Marqos had been returned to Ethiopian rule which meant that the road to Debre Tabor and Bahir Dar were open to Patriot forces with mounting British support. It also left the Italian colonial administration even more isolated from Amedeo when he ordered Italian forces to relocate to Gondar, Amba Alagi, Dessie and Jimma who had yet to fall to Allied forces and provided some modicum of natural defense with the local terrain. However, he also ordered that the city be surrendered to Imru to avoid a potential slaughter of the settlers.

It was on the day of Italian forces entering Addis Ababa in 1936 that Imru and his men marched into the city, formally accepting the surrender of the city's governor Agenore Frangipani and proclaiming to those who'd been under the Italian boot for the past five years that Ethiopia was free. The Italians were in retreat everywhere, under unrelenting attack from his commanders across the country - Nasibu's calvarymen were besieging Dire Dawa, Harar and Jijiga, Yohannes Iyasu was cooperating with Alula's Legion in the Battles of Culqualber Pass and Gondar, Ras Seyoum Mangesha supporting British forces in Amba Alagi and Geresu Duki's coordinating assaults on Saio with the Belgians. The liberation of Addis Ababa seems to have only strengthened the determination to take these sites and by extension, a willingness to take heavy losses, something that resembled the same resolve that Ethiopian troops displayed in the Christmas Offensive only five years earlier. This was especially true of the Free Ethiopian soldiers who'd been soldiers in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and then refugees in Sudan or Kenya, desiring to redeem themselves and their homelands as the British found a use for them in being shock troops assaulting the Italians. These men, with their formal British-style training and courage, were praised by their British officers and recommended by William Platt himself to Imru as they moved to Gondar.

Imru is welcomed back by Addis Ababa, May 1941.

In Kenya, the 1st South African Division penetrated past Italian defenses on the Kenyan frontier and pushed into Sidamo province with the support of the 11th and 12th African Divisions. They were supposed to meet up with Ras Desta at Negele, being well received by both Desta and the local population who'd been rallied to the call to arms since the Neqempte massacre of July '36. In spite of the annual rains, fighting continued in the southern provinces where the Patriots launched attack after attack on the Italian-controlled towns, anti-Italian sentiment on the rise and becoming more vocal in Jimma. Pietro Gazzera was also alarmed at the Patriots' growing numbers, realizing that a good amount of them were men from the colonial ranks and that he was cut off from the relocated command in Gondar when Duki's men severed their communications with them. This was shortly followed by a massive assault on Jimma that saw the Patriots employ artillery that had been captured from the Italians or supplied by the British to bombard the city into surrendering, Duki not wanting to waste his men on the costly house-to-house fighting. Sultan Jifar was killed in the fighting with stray shrapnel from a nearby explosion tearing into him and killing him. His death made many realize the utter uselessness of continuing to fight on against the Patriots, leading them to surrender en masse. Gazzera managed to break out with a small contingent of loyal Askaris towards Gondar where what remained of the Italian Army in Ethiopia was gathering to make a last stand.

It was at Amba Alagi where Amedeo was captured and at Gondar where the last remnants of the Italian forces under Gazzera were wiped out and Gazzera was killed in a British artillery strike. Although it didn't mean the end of Italian resistance which continued as guerrilla warfare until November 1943, conventional warfare stopped and Ethiopia was freed from Italy. Imru declared the establishment of a Regency and concluded the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement of 1941 that provided Ethiopia with assistance in reconstruction and organizing a modern military when the Imperial Ethiopian Army was established in June 1941. The agreement also formally brought Ethiopia into the Second World War as Imru issued a declaration of war against the Italians and Germans, establishing the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force out of 3,000 [2] men in June 1941 and dispatched it to the North African Front. However, Imru would find a new issue with European imperialism from a supposed ally: Great Britain.

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[1] Named after the famous Ethiopian commander, Ras Alula.

[2] IOTL, there were already plans to send 2,500 Ethiopian troops to the Middle East in late 1942 and was approved by the British War Office before Haile Selassie requested the withdrawal of the British Military Mission. See The Ethiopian Army: From Victory to Collapse, 1977-1991 by Fantahun Ayalew for more.

Hagre · Dec 1, 2019

Land of Gihon

Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia in World War II by Tom Cooper

Marcus Garvey had closely followed events in Europe since the Italo-German intervention in the Spanish Civil War as members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association like William Tubman predicated it would spark another Great European War and was surprised when the Western Allies finally declared war on Germany when it invaded Poland in 1939. It was that the Germans managed to overwhelm the Allies so quickly which surprised the Liberian President when the British were driven off the Continent twice, at Dunkirk in June 1940 and after the fall of Greece in June 1941. The Italian invasion of Egypt only served to portray the Allies on the cusp of collapsing with so many defeats, their only victories having been in liberating Ethiopia from Italy's occupation with Ras Imru's help in November 1941. Loss after loss on Allied hands did much to bolster the pro-Axis faction in the UNIA who begun to push for Liberia to seize its chance while it could and begin the liberation of Africa that Garvey had promised while he'd been in the USA, despite the Liberian Frontier Force's protests. Charles Young had already made the LFF's case to Garvey in 1938 wherein he pointed out that it might be able to successfully occupy all of Sierra Leone, as well as bits of French Guinea and British Gold Coast at best before the Allied war machine turned on them.

It was in late June that border incidents with Sierra Leone experienced an uptick as Liberian troops carried out raids against Royal West African Frontier Force units, probing the weakened lines. Two regiments'd been withdrawn from Sierra Leone to be sent to the East African and Burmese fronts, leaving it with a skeleton force as the Liberian Frontier Force massed on the frontier and upped the raids. Despite the report after report that showed that Garvey's Universal African Corps were set to invade, London ignored them in favor of focusing on the East African, North African and Asian theatres. Thus, Garvey's armies were set to launch their invasion when Monrovia, in a move reminiscent of Italy over the 1934 Wal-Wal Incident, accused the British of having failed to adequately control their men and penetrated into Sierra Leone with no declaration of war in August 1940. Employing the Universal African Corps as a shock force, the LFF tore through the RWAFF positions and marched along the Sierra Leone Government Railway with the intent to march all the way to Freetown as Freetown attempted to secure reinforcements from the British metropolitan. It was in the Sierra Leonean interior where the RWAFF was dealt defeat after defeat and where a slew of prisoners numbering in the thousands were taken for transportation to Liberia as a labor force and moreover, a bartering tool in post-war negotiations.

Liberian soldiers escort British and West African POWs to Liberia, August 1940.

Within a month, Liberian forces overran the entirety of the Eastern Province and chunks of the Southern and Northern Provinces, operating dangerously close to Freetown. Despite the rapid advance, the RWAFF had put a surprisingly staunch resistance and melted into the surrounding areas to fight as guerrillas sporadically attacking Liberian units. However, these guerrillas and RWAFF defenses were being undermined by Wallace Johnson's Garveyites [1] who served as a fifth column providing intelligence to Liberian forces as Johnson had supported the UNIA's ideas of a pan-West African nation but was jailed for it in June '36 after putting forward a scathing criticism of European colonialism at the time. This allowed them to strike without warning from areas thought to be safe and by the UAC's well-trained and equipped veterans, its Garveyite sources being put to good use by the Liberian High Command as the pro-Liberia Creole elite openly expressed pro-UNIA sentiments that had been present since March 1920 [2]. It was not long before Freetown fell into Liberian hands with the colonial authorities' surrender by the end of September and Liberian troops marched into the capital of British West Africa. To cheering crowds in Monrovia, Garvey now proclaimed that Sierra Leone was finally freed of European colonialism and eyed the neighboring British Gold Coast and French Guinea colonies who seemed to be next.

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy

Aware of European tensions and wary of Italy's growing army in Libya, Husayn pursued the expansion of the Egyptian Army that led to increase from its standing size of 23,000 men in 1936 to 100,000 by 1939 as Germany drove the Western Allies off the Continent by June 1940. The pro-Axis sentiment in Egypt and particularly the Young Egypt government grew with the slew of victories gained by the Germans in the West European campaigns and Italians in the Balkans with the popular opinion that the Axis would sweep into Egypt and restore to them their freedom from the British. This sentiment was not confined to Egypt but reached to encompass the Arab world where independence movements modeled on the Fascist powers - such as the Iraqi Al-Muthanna Club and Syrian Social Nationalist Party - had come to the forefront of the anti-colonialist struggle. With Young Egypt's determination to become the Arab world's leader, Cairo started fostering links with these movements who were often more than not involved in their government where they proved influential in Iraq who'd secured her independence in 1932. It may have been this which allowed for Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to become Prime Minister with the support of the Golden Square and establish a pro-Nazi government in April 1941, often including members of the Al-Muthanna Club and Party of National Brotherhood at the highest levels of Iraqi government.

When Britain invaded in May 1941, Rashid Ali ordered that an offensive be carried out against British forces at Habbaniya under the cover of night. Negating British aerial superiority, Iraqi soldiers attacked with no warning and with the close support of their artillery as British forces were taken off-guard and overwhelmed. Despite suffering heavier casualties than their British counterparts, Habbaniya fell to the Iraqis in a single night with British forces were unable to receive reinforcements from Shaiba and the Iraqis receiving their own from Baghdad. Meanwhile, operating from the airfields of Baghdad, German air units would launch bombing raids against the Abadan oil refinery in southwest Iran which was vital to the British war effort in the North African/Middle Eastern and Mediterranean theatres. However, owing to the lack of the much needed fuel and stores that were instead going to the future Operation Barbarossa, this failed and German bombers were either shot down by British planes operating out of Iran or forced to turn back. Its failure to give the German air units adequate support was the downfall of German efforts in Iraq, even if it did manage to prolong the survival of Rashid Ali's government who hadn't installed demolition charges at the bridge over the Euphrates at Falluja, ultimately doing little else than giving the Iraqi Army more time to defend these sites and Baghdad against the British.

Despite heavy Iraqi resistance and heavier British losses, Baghdad eventually fell into British hands by mid-June and military occupation naturally followed the fall of the Iraqi capital. However, even with Rashid Ali's decision to flee to Iran after the collapse of his National Defense government, the Iraqi Army continued resisting through the use of guerrilla tactics and interestingly, came into the orbit of the Al-Muthanna Club in the power vacuum that opened when so many members of Rashid Ali's government made the decision to flee the country. Material support from the Axis by way of Vichy Syria continued until the colony fell to Allied forces in July 1941 but covert arms support was also occurring from another unexpected source - Egypt, which had dedicated itself to the pan-Arab cause and maintained close links with exiled Iraqi government officials in Berlin. Iraq's valiant struggle was, in the eyes of many Egyptians, exactly what should be done in response to blatant European imperialism and this uptick in anti-British sentiments were eventually the cause behind the 1942 Abdeen Palace incident when Farouk was placed under pressure to replace the Young Egypt administration with a Wafd one and Ahmad Husayn with Mustafa el-Nahhas.

An Egyptian soldier mans his searchlight, 1941-42.

Excerpt from Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1945 by Jeff Pearce

Despite Ethiopian contributions to the East African Campaign and North African Front, Imru was faced with the issue of having to secure regained Ethiopian sovereignty against Britain's encroachment. Ethiopia's immediate situation after freeing itself of the Italian occupation necessitated the need for British assistance in post-occupation economic reconstruction and establishing a modern military. These requests on the Ethiopian government's part were answered with signing of the 1941 Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement in which the British government agreed to provide civilian advisors and military advisors at Imru's behest. These advisors were to assist the Regent in his administrative duties and creating a modern Ethiopian army under Major General Butler's British Military Mission, respectively. However, it was over the issue of the area that were the "Reserved Areas" that were the eastern regions bordering France's Somaliland colony, the Ogaden, the Addis-Djibouti Railway and the Haud that Imru came to blows with British officials. Imru had made very clear in the negotiations that it was his men on the ground responsible for liberating and administering much of the lands considered a part of the Reserved Areas, under the commands of Nasibu and Fitawrari Alimirah Hanfare [3] in Hararghe and Aussa provinces, respectively. Having spent the lives of tens of thousands of young Ethiopians in beleaguering Italian troops from 1935-1941, neither were exactly willing to abandon the regions to British rule and Hanfare lamented about the return of European rule - this time in the form of a supposed "ally."

It didn't help London's case that British officials were responsible for stewing up ethnic tensions in the areas and in an alarming move, Major Walsh - the Governor of Berbera - announced that the Somali people of the arranged Reserved Areas were no longer to be under Ethiopian jurisdiction in February 1942 and tried to rally support from Jijiga's Somalis. This attempt fell flat with Somalis reacting apathetically or with hostility to the British advances into the town, Imru's efforts during the Italian occupation to forge a common movement amongst all Ethiopians having seemed to pay off. Nasibu promptly reacted to the edict in overwhelming force, rallying support from his loyal Somali commanders and arrived in the city with 2,500 men welcomed by Somalis waving the Ethiopian tricolor and desecrating the Union Jack. This scene had shown the utter failure of London's attempt at implementing divide-and-conquer tactics in Ethiopia [4] and only served to isolate Britain when Imru reminded the British that they were signatories of the Atlantic Charter in August 1942 and turned to Washington for assistance. Having effectively been an Allied Power since June 1940, Ethiopia was now eligible for the Lend-Lease program and Imru used it not only for the purpose of equipping the Imperial Ethiopian Army and Ethiopian Expeditionary Force but to acquire the necessary tools and materials for developing the country.

Lorenzo Taezaz poses with Nasibu's Somali veterans in Jijiga, January 1942.

Seeing Great Britain as a post-war foe, Imru turned to Moscow in the spring of 1942 [5] where diplomatic relations were finally established between the two, having correctly surmised that the Soviet Union was to hold a dominant position in the aftermath of Allied victory. Although the Soviets weren't able to send much other than a sizable Soviet legation but there were negotiations about the arrangements of financial and technical aid to Ethiopia for the modernization of the African nation. This proved influential in the post-WWII period but Imru focused on moving Ethiopia away from its reliance on Britain when fears of their annexing of Tigray, Sidamo, Gamu-Gofa, Welega and Illubabor to nearby British colonies surfaced over more of Ernest Bevin's proposals on partitioning [6] Ethiopia. This worsened when London made overtures to Ethiopia about annexing the Eritrean lowlands to Sudan, annexing Eritrean Hamasien to an independent Tigray and annexing Ogaden to Greater Somalia [7] that was too reminiscent of the frontiers set by an earlier occupier. Imru upbraided the British for being no different than the Italians they were fighting, terminated the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement and turned toward Washington, Moscow and Monrovia.

Although it may have proved detrimental to Ethiopia's recovery, the termination of the agreement showed how willing Imru was to protect Ethiopian sovereignty and this willingness was seen in that recruitment of skilled Italians [8] in order to maintain the few industries left intact. Well aware of the Italians' propaganda that if abandoned, the Italian settlers in Ethiopia were to be slaughtered [9] by the Ethiopians so as to satisfy their thirst for revenge on the Italians for their occupation, Imru ordered that any man who hurt or killed an Italian to be put to the gallows and as many as 152 were hanged for such crimes. Imru had been aware of the need for proper government in Ethiopia, having outlined his own plans for reform and was willing to listen to the ideas proposed by the educated in the Black Lions Association. By the mid-30s the Ethiopian intelligentsia moved away from its liberal stances in favor of a combination of state-led national development programs, "Ethiopian capitalism," militant nationalism, rapid industrialization and their other radical stances [10] that had characterized the Japanizers. Led by Kidane Mariam and Bashaward Hapte Wolde, the Japanizers were fervent advocates for emulating Imperial Japan and Garveyite Liberia in the hopes of modernizing Ethiopia and with the onset of liberation, saw a fresh start for Ethiopia and pushed Imru to start anew.

These Black Lions were not the only ones to advocate for establishing an entirely new government from scratch - the period in between the Italian invasion of France and Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor would see a number of Ethiopians return to their freed homelands, many of them being educated and eager to modernize. This was led primarily by Lij Araya Abebe and Princess Kuroda Masako when they returned to Ethiopia in late 1940 and were attached to Alula's Legion when it pursued Italian forces in Gojjam, clashing with the Italians at Gondar in November 1941. The royal couple were personally received by Imru in a pompous welcome where Araya and Kuroda put forward their proposals to the Regent, often taking inspiration from the model of wartime Japan and urged him to establish a system based upon the Imperial Aid Assistance Association which he did in April 1942. It was intended to restore the centralized government that Haile Selassie established by early 1935 and to transcend ethnicity, religion and provincialism, all its ills which Italy had adopted to divide Ethiopians and something which remained even with the collapse of Italian administration. Thus, it was in April 1942 that Imru signed into existence the Union of Gihon, the state body that was intended to not just oversee the establishment of a modern Ethiopian government but supersede the BLA by absorbing the educated, promoting reforms and generally acting in a vanguard's role where there had been none for the intelligentsia.

In spite of the many difficulties suffered after World War II, the Union of Gihon seems to have stood the test of time and even outlived Imru himself, lasting to this day.

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[1] I.T.A Wallace Johnson was a prominent Sierra Leonean journalist and politician. ITTL, he's joined the UNIA and become the leading member of the Sierra Leonean chapter.

[2] See The Garvey Movement in British West Africa by R. L. Okonkwo for more.

[3] Alimirah Hanfare is the soon-to-be Sultan of Aussa and ITTL, he ends up joining the Patriots and overseeing the command of the Patriotic movement in the autonomous Aussa Sultanate.

[4] These tactics were used extensively in the Ogaden and other southern provinces by British officials during World War II and even into the early 1950s, laying down the problems that still destabilize the area to this day. See THE ROOT CAUSES OF POLITICAL PROBLEMS IN THE OGADEN, 1942-1960 by Tibebe Eshete for more.

[5] Although Moscow attempted to establish diplomatic relations with Ethiopia as early as December 1925, they were never established until April 1943. See The Soviet Union and Ethiopia: A Case of Traditional Behavior by Sergius Yakobson and Reds and Whites in Ethiopia before the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935 and 1936 by Joseph Calvitt Clarke for more.

[6] This was also a serious issue ITTL and was possibly the main cause behind the Ethiopian termination of the 1942 agreement, paving way for the talks of the 1944 agreement. See Ethiopia at Bay: A Personal Account of the Haile Selassie Years by John H. Spencer for more.

[7] This was actually planned IOTL. See A Modern History of Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde for more.

[8] This happened IOTL. See Haile Selassie and the Italians, 1941-1943 by Alberto Sbacchi for more.

[9] See Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941 by Jeff Pearce for more.

[10] See THE RISE OF ETHIOPIA’S EDUCATED ELITE AND RACIAL TENSIONS WITH FOREIGNERS IN ETHIOPIA by Joseph Calvitt Clarke and Evolution of Development Oriented Ideas in Ethiopia (1900-1991) by Kassa Belay for more.

Hagre · Dec 4, 2019

Over There

Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia during World War II by Tom Cooper

Encouraged by the wave of popularity that swept Liberia, Marcus Garvey turned to the British Gold Coast and begun preparing for an invasion. However, the Royal West African Frontier Force had also started to prepare for Garvey's invasion, learning from its failings in 1940 and the domestic situation there was not as favorable there as it was in Sierra Leone. Garveyism there had fostered a genuine African nationalism that was staunchly opposed to any sort of Liberian "liberation," coming to see Garvey as the personification of African-American imperialism [1] or "the Black Man's Burden." The sight of Liberian soldiers singing George M. Cohan's "Over There" during their march into Sierra Leone didn't help to dissuade this notion nor to garner any more favor like which the UNIA had enjoyed in Sierra Leone. It was both the failures of the UNIA in the Gold Coast [2] and to adequately plan for this aforementioned Gold Coast campaign that would lead to the relatively heavy losses that the Liberians sustained in their attempted invasion and the British counterattack which threatened to extend to Liberia proper. Despite Charles Young's warnings and protests from the Liberian High Command, Garvey went on to approve this invasion that was demanded of him by the ecstatic UNIA officials and even the public at large with the euphoria of "liberating Sierra Leone from the accursed Anglo-Saxon" still in the minds of millions by December 1940.

The initial Liberian thrust was rapid, resembling Germany's Blitzkrieg in West Europe and European Russia, and punched through the RWAFF's defenses on the Liberian frontier where it threatened to move to its capital in the same way it had to Freetown. Unlike its counterparts in Sierra Leone though, the RWAFF brigades put up a staunch resistance that saw entire battalions get wiped out to a man and the Liberians in front forced to halt to receive their reinforcements, often being skeleton garrisons holding down the fort. These men were veterans from Ethiopia and Burma who'd been faced with the worst of the worst that its Axis opponents had to offer either in the midst of Italian veterans raining down hell from the Ethiopian Highlands or fanatic bayonet-wielding Japanese soldiers from the Burmese jungle. Although Liberian troops too were experienced and often on par with other colonial West African soldiers, the men spearheading the thrust were Garvey's dogmatic "African Legionnaires" and on average, consisted of men that had been recruited not on ability but of their devotion to Garvey. They were also subject to coordinated guerrilla raids coordinated by British intelligence officers - attacks that were proving too effective for Liberian troops to react sufficiently enough to heavy casualties. This often led to Liberian soldiers going about committing atrocities, massacres and wanton looting, doing nothing but garnering support for the British.

Back home, the reports of mounting losses was being censored by Monrovia but news steadily filtered to the home front about the fine young men that went to die in another land. It didn't help that the Liberian conquest of Sierra Leone was followed by periodic bombardments of the coastal cities by the Royal Navy who'd outmaneuvered the pitiful excuse that the Liberian Navy and patrolled the waters of the Atlantic in order to prevent the Liberians from receiving outside assistance or from exporting its raw materials and finished products. It impacted not just civilian morale but the effectiveness of Liberian industry which was already under heavy pressure when Garvey ordered the relocation of Liberian industries and workers from the coast to the safety of the interior. It forced Monrovia to turn toward Vichy France, the only one that was willing to move Liberian exports across its West African colonies - the same that Garvey had promised to liberate - and export arms shipped in from German-occupied Europe, pressing the Liberians for cash in such duties. Even while pretending to be pro-Liberia with its positive remembrance of African-American and African soldiers in World War I that played such a prominent role in its propaganda [3] by then, the Vichy government was only interested in seeing the Liberians and British bleed each other white so it could retake the colonies under Free French control at the right moment.

By mid-December, the wide gap between Britain and Liberia was beginning to show with British forces launching the ironically named Christmas Offensive, completely expelling the Liberians from the Gold Coast and driving the Liberian Frontier Force back into Liberia in early January 1941. It was at that point that there was mounting pressure on Garvey to end the war with Britain from the public, LFF and UNIA when it seemed that Britain's West African army were going to overwhelm the Liberian heartland and colonize it just as the Italians had done in Ethiopia. Thus, Monrovia dispatched a team of diplomats to London where negotiations were started for a conclusion to the war, opened with the hopes of Liberia holding onto Sierra Leone and financially compensating the British for her troubles. Although the final terms were tweaked and Liberia was forced into sending a regiment to the North African front, Monrovia got what it originally bargained for at the negotiating table in London and managed to retain Liberia under the Allied facade. It was most likely due to the opening of Japan's Centrifugal Offensive after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Japanese conquest of nearly all of Britain's colonies in East Asia and the Pacific that made the British more favorable to Liberian offers - or really, more opposed to the idea of wasting more manpower on another guerrilla-ridden hellhole that was going to be another Iraq.

Liberian soldiers defend against British offensives, December 1941.

The failed campaign in the Gold Coast also had ramifications on Liberia's home front where Marcus Garvey's popularity begun to ebb when it was made known that several thousand Liberian lives were lost in its advances and thousands more wounded. Monrovia's commitment to North Africa and later, Italy were lackluster and owing to the shortfalls of Liberian industry that were compensated for by American help, had relied on either British or American-produced equipment to arm its men there while they were attached to the 92nd Infantry Division or "Buffalo Soldiers." Garvey himself seemed to recognize this, handling that issue by handpicking his successors and ultimately choosing the (relatively) moderate William Tubman, a Liberian-born Americo-Liberian formerly apart of the pre-UNIA government, who was to be supported in his administration by Carlos Cooks, the fiery American-born orator who'd been a veteran of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Garvey was also aging, distributing day-to-day tasks amongst his subordinates in the Association and laying down the foundations for a more collective system of governance by the UNIA in the future. In this, he turned to foreign events where he was successful in re-establishing links with Addis Ababa after Allied forces liberated the country in November 1941 and fostered not just economic cooperation but Pan-African coordination with the 1944 Pan-African Conference being held in Addis Ababa.

Excerpt from A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the commencement of the Centrifugal Offensive had now drawn His Imperial Majesty's Provisional Government and Imperial Ethiopian Army into World War II onto the side of the Axis and this did not sit well with many Ethiopians. Many had accompanied him to Japan in 1936 not just to escape the brutal atrocities committed by Italian forces but in the hopes that Haile Selassie would figure out some way to free Ethiopia with Japanese and German assistance [4] in a war of liberation. They'd put up with Sadao Araki's requests for "volunteers" when it was apparent that China was not going to roll over in 1937 and was resolutely defending its positions past the Yellow River, leading Araki to declare that able-bodied Ethiopians were to join the Imperial Ethiopian Army in China. It was now apparent that Haile Selassie was willing to submit to Tokyo and send his loyal subjects across the sea to get involved in some Asiatic venture that Sub-Saharan Africans had no business in, simply because the Japanese would fail to conquer the weakened Chinese state when Chiang Kai-Shek was assassinated and his son, Chiang Wei-Kuo, came to power in 1936.

The IEA was first deployed to serve in the general Shanghai-Nanjing area that the Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA) transformed into a battlefield resembling World War I on the French front. The IEA fought reasonably well, having been drilled and raised to the standard of the average Imperial Japanese Army unit which was often leagues above its average Chinese Central Army counterpart. When it came to the NRA's German-trained divisions, the Imperial Ethiopian Army was roughly on par with these elite soldiers and soon sustained heavy casualties whilst making contact with it, especially in winter where African soldiers were unsuited to the climate. The IEA was withdrawn from the frontlines in the winter of 1939-40, subsequently committed to the Burmese front where it fought alongside Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army and partook in the failed Japanese invasion of India in junction with it. Haile Selassie was noted to have held positive views of Bose's Azad Hind (Free Indian government) and supported his desire to establish an independent Indian state on combined National Socialist and Stalinist lines, reflecting his own moves toward establishing an independent Ethiopia on the wartime Japanese model.

The Imperial standard is presented to Haile Selassie in China, July 1939.

Excerpt from The Black Circle: A History of Negritudean Haiti by C.L.R. James

Jean Prince-Mars observed the Second World War with wariness, having already proclaimed Haiti neutral in the conflict but maintained friendly relations with the Axis. He possessed little interest in joining a war that was mostly between the Eurasian powers but took a friendly stance toward Japan who'd been willing to grant loans to Haiti in keeping with their policy of supporting Black nationalists. Port-au-Prince was to also continue to support an unofficial alliance with Garveyite Liberia and sent more bright Haitians to Monrovia on subsidized scholarships to establish a Haitian elite of Negro background. The HNU government's desire to rid itself of the "Mulatto menace," as Prince-Mars referred to it, was often one of the main reasons behind the avid pursuit of development because it saw Haitian Mulattoes in much the same way Hitler saw European Jews. The Haitian-Dominican War in 1937 facilitated the popularization of anti-Mulatto sentiment when Mulattoes were implicated in possessing close links to Trujillo to whom Haiti's Mulatto elites, especially those like Stenio Vincent or Elie Lescot, were in debt to and this is what allowed the HNU government to purge Mulatto elites after it was found out that Stenio's backing was coming from Trujillo.

Negritudean Haiti was quite similar to Garveyite Liberia in admiring and emulating aspects of Fascist regimes in Europe, especially on the issue of "the Mulatto Question," as some called it. Prince-Mars admitted to agreeing in many areas with Mussolini and Hitler that wasn't necessarily limited to dealing with ethnic minorities. It often included an admiration and desire to emulate particularly the Nazis and Garveyists in the area of establishing a racial empire, as well as pursue large-scale public works project and develop modern infrastructure for Haiti. This tended to translate into a pan-Caribbean Empire dominated by Blacks and governed in much the same way that Liberia was by the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Jean Prince-Mars pushing for an expanded Haitian Empire to encompass the area and calling upon Haitian memory of Bishop James Theodore Holly [5] in doing so. However, it is unlikely that Holly would've been happy with Prince-Mars' decision to adhere so rigorously to the African Orthodox Church and promote its syncretic Orthodox Christian denomination that combined with Voodoo in the process. It led some to refer to the Haitian National Union's plans to expand to include a racial empire as the "Black Circle." It would only be after World War II that the Black Circle idea was to lead to the establishment of the West Indian Federation as decolonization left Haiti the most vibrant state and led others to link arms with her.

However, Haitian sympathies with the Axis faded away when the Japanese made the decision to attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and drew the United States of America into war with the Axis members as they declared war on Washington in support of their Japanese ally. Although Haiti continued to maintain a friendly disposition toward Germany and Japan, it was placed under pressure to declare war on them in tandem with the United States, a decision that Prince-Mars utterly despised and opposed until pressure from his own Cabinet and the Haitian National Union Party forced him to issue a declaration of war. Haiti's actual contribution to the Allied war effort would be little else than Port-au-Prince's export of raw materials to the United States while she received a full package of modern equipment that allowed the Garde its own modern kit of arms in stark contrast to the World War I surplus it'd been fighting with. The American aid not only allowed the Haitian Garde to become one of the stronger states in the region but also went toward the development of Haitian infrastructure to facilitate economic modernization and bolstered the burgeoning industrial sector as the NFC suddenly found itself competing with American investment.

New Haitian Shermans on parade on Independence Day, January 1941.

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[1] Since the appearance of Black nationalism in the 1850s, a dominant focus has been on the repatriation of African-Americans to West Africa where they could establish for themselves an independent republic free of the rampant discrimination that characterized race relations in the United States. This often included themes of the well-known civilizing mission, blatant expansionism, etc. as can be seen in the writings of men like Alexander Crummell and H.B. Parks. See "The Black's Man's Burden" - African-Americans, Imperialism and Notions of Racial Manhood, 1890-1910 by Michele Mitchell for more.

[2] IOTL, the Universal Negro Improvement Association never really managed to gain much traction in the Gold Coast as it did in Sierra Leone or Nigeria and that may've been due to the lack of attention that Western Blacks like Edward Wilmot Blyden paid attention to as well as the failure of the Black Star Line to capitalize on opportunities there in stark contrast to Nigeria where both flourished.

[3] The contribution made by African soldiers to the defense of France and her Empire in WWI/WWII was a prominent feature of Vichy propaganda in West Africa. See Marshal Petain Spoke to School-Children: Vichy Propaganda in French West Africa, 1940-1943 by Ruth Ginio for more.

[4] During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Berlin would be one of only two countries to successfully supply Ethiopia with much-needed arms that came in the form of rifles, machine guns, submachine guns and grenades up until Italy's recognition of the German annexation of Austria in 1938. The only other country to supply Ethiopia with anything was Japan, although that was primarily medical supplies for Red Cross missions in wartime Ethiopia.

[5] An American-born Haitian Episcopalian missionary, Bishop James Theodore Holly was determined to bring Haitian Protestantism to the forefront of Haitian religious life in stark opposition to the Catholicism and Voodoo that was so heavily prevalent at the time. Holly also desired to install in Haitians an "Afro-Saxon" character and advocated not just for African-American emigration to Haiti but for the formation of a pan-West Indian state under American tutelage. See Garveyism in Haiti during the US Occupation by Brenda Gayle Plummer for more.

Hagre · Dec 8, 2019

Sheba's Peace

Securing Ethiopia's sovereignty by 1942, Imru turned to the task of consolidating Imperial rule from Addis Ababa and started with the provinces already under his direct control. Although the new Imperial Army came into existence in June 1941, this consisted of the Free Ethiopian brigades and his Gojjame troops which altogether made up 24,000 men. However, there was also the issue of the guerrillas across Ethiopia by then and this necessitated either an expansion of the existing Imperial Ethiopian Army (IEA) or the creation of an entirely new force to accommodate them. Thus, the Territorial Army was established in 1941 with the intention to reaffirm Imperial control over all those units by relegating them to a reservist force meant to supplement the IEA, placed under Ras Mangesha Jimbari's command. It had the added effect of placing "all men with guns" under Addis Ababa's control and with the stroke of a pen, gave Imru the means to enforce Ethiopian rule in the historically troublesome periphery in provinces like Tigray and Ogaden as the Regent finished Haile Selassie's centralization. However, the issue of the Ethiopian 1st Infantry Brigade in Eritrea came up when he included it in his campaign to centralize control of Alula's Legion and its men, arguing that it should be placed under the Imperial High Command in Addis Ababa and once again, was at odds with London.

Imru's determination to incorporate the 1st Infantry Brigade into the IEA stemmed from several reasons. This included his inability to control one of the only European-trained Ethiopian units, to use the brigade as a means of pressuring the British in the periphery and to seek the union of Eritrea to Ethiopia. The termination of the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement had also led to the withdrawal of the British Military Mission's personnel and left Addis Ababa to resolve the issue of organizing a proper army, turning to the Americans and Swedes to help where necessary. The brief period between the Liberation and Japan entering WWII on the side of the Axis also allowed some Ethiopians with Japanese training to arrive home and Imru eagerly seized the chance to recruit them into the new army, brushing over the fact that they'd served in the enemy's army. Alongside the Holeta cadets and others who possessed professional training, they were recruited to train cadets in the few military academies and often appointed to high ranks. Although it was a chaotic process that faced staunch British opposition whenever the Japanese-trained Ethiopians were dispatched to the Ethiopian frontier, it did help to treat the worst symptoms of the new Ethiopian military.

Japanese-trained Ethiopian officers train a recruit in the use of a mortar, December 1941.

Speaking of the Ethiopian frontier, the Imperial government observed with alarm as the Somali Youth League was founded in 1943 and expanded rapidly through the Ogaden's borderlands that were adjoined to the former Italian Somaliland colony. Worse yet was Britain's tacit support that allowed it to gain traction in the Reserved Areas, flagrantly defying Ethiopian authority in a campaign to establish Greater Somalia by stirring up dissent and launching attacks on the non-Somali communities in the province. Imru confronted London about the issue, only to be met with feigned ignorance and shrugging as the "Klub" received more and more support from Britain, who'd advocated for a Greater Somali state. Angered, the Regent ordered Nasibu to carry out ruthless purges of the SYL branches in the Ogaden's urban centers and for the 31st, 21st and 12th battalions at Jijiga, Dihun and Degehabur respectively to be reinforced to ensure that an Imperial presence was felt. To accompany these reinforcements was Nasibu's own overtures towards the Ogadeni populace that was aimed at providing them with opportunities to rise through the ranks, as well as more concerted campaigns to absorb the local authorities and traditional means of government. It was facilitated through expanding Union of Gihon's existing presence in Jijiga and Dire Dawa whilst also mimicking Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam's reforms in the 1920s [1] in Hararghe.

Another peripheral province that there were issues with was Tigray where in 1943, rebellious peasants demanded more autonomy and less taxes. Imru personally led the campaign against the rebellion and had ruthlessly suppressed it by unremittingly bombarding the peasant militias with artillery and then bringing in the Imperial Bodyguard. In Meqele, the UG presence was expanded to encompass the entire province as Imru addressed the problems that'd caused the rebellion in the first place and called together a congress of those who'd participated in it. Many Tigrayans had been shocked at the indisciplined nature of TA's troops in the province and more so at the moves by Imru's government to establish a fixed land tax rate that seemed to threaten the traditional Rist system [2] in northern Ethiopia. Imru compromised on these and with assistance from Araya, inaugurated the Kebele system [3] to accommodate Rist that was a combination of the principles of the wartime Japanese neighborhood system and Blood and Soil in Germany's Nazi Party. It allowed the Imperial government to closely monitor Tigray particularly with a traditional leader (or leaders) being integrated into the Union of Gihon, subsequently being established elsewhere. The Territorial Army in Tigray was dealt with by Imru through summary executions and regular rigorous training exercises under IEA officers to tackle the issue of indiscipline.

Imru's troops march into Meqele, October 1943.

The issue of the 1st Infantry Brigade in Eritrea continued to come up in Addis Ababa, often mixing with Ethiopian irredentism over the stolen province. Even in the '30s, many in Ethiopia considered Eritrea to be Ethiopian even under Italian colonialism and this was usually argued on the basis of shared culture, religion and ethnicity with the people of northern Ethiopia. Imru seemed to have shared the same opinion, his decision to subsidize the pro-Ethiopia Eritrean Unionist Bloc [4] against the Independence Bloc who was already wracked with diverse opinions on what an Eritrea separate from Ethiopia should look like. It often was unable to actually agree on much other than wanting to be separate from Ethiopia - this ranged from a Greater Tigrayan state to joining metropolitan Italy [5] - and that fundamentally undermined it but its Unionist counterpart was relatively homogenous. Not to mention that it was very popular with the predominantly Orthodox Christian Tigrayan-speaking majority and even with some Muslim lowlanders that were to join the pro-Ethiopia Independent Muslim League of Massawa, though only with the guarantee that Muslim Eritrea's interests. In response to the British-backed groups that called for dividing up Eritrea on the basis of ethnicity, Imru pushed for the Tigrayan-speaking and Afari-speaking lands unify with Ethiopian Tigray and Aussa respectively, arguing that Eritrea's ethnic minorities would receive autonomous rights.

This back-and-forth between the Unionist and Independence Blocs, and by extension, Addis Ababa and London, culminated in Ethiopian victory when Roosevelt responded positively to Imru's overtures over the question of Eritrea at the January 1943 Casablanca Conference (after promising to him the American use of Italian radio station, Radio Marina, in Eritrea) and supported Ethiopian claims to the lost province. Its British ally seemed to take less precedence in East Africa after the conclusion of the East and North African Campaigns - in which Ethiopian troops had served valiantly for four years - that made the presence of so many Indian, RWAFF, KAR and South African divisions redundant. These experienced units, Imru mused, would be better spent in Italy - where he reminded them Ethiopian troops were also serving valiantly and had been the first to penetrate Monte Cassino - or in France and Burma, to which Roosevelt agreed. The British attempts at retaining some sort of influence in Ethiopia were rapidly diminishing with WWII's end seemingly around the corner as the Western Allies pushed past the Rhine and the Soviets took Berlin where the Fuhrer killed himself in April 1945. In the same year, Emperor Haile Selassie I died in a tragic airplane crash that had been caused by engine trouble and the Provisional Ethiopian Government disintegrated at the seams without his authority to keep it together, relegated to governing Japan's Ethiopians.

Students-protest-in-Addis-Ababa-Ethiopia-September-17-1974-against-the-military-committee-that-seized-political-power-last-week..jpg

A Unionist rally in Asmara is monitored by Ethiopian troops, April 1945.

Finally, the 1st Infantry Brigade was placed under the Imperial High Command in Addis Ababa in 1947 as London attempted to ease the cost of maintaining tens of thousands of men in the Horn. This paved the way for Ethiopia to gain greater influence in Eritrea where the Unionists were gaining ground, supported by Imru's government. The Unionist Bloc argued with the Independence Bloc in debate, pointing out that Addis Ababa would grant the Eritreans equal rights in the Empire instead of the "Shewan Amhara dominance" narrative that they parroted (and which was usually a remnant of Italian colonial propaganda). This type of debate between the various organizations usually came out in the favor of the Unionists who exploited the extreme division in the Independence Bloc to push union with Ethiopia. The same narrative that proclaimed, "Ethiopia was dominated and controlled by Shewan Amharas under Selassie. Who's to say Imru won't do the same with his Gojammes?" was rendered worthless with the elevation of Araya Abebe to Emperor in 1946 with the blessing of the Patriarch in Alexandria (as well as Imru's) and Araya selected Imru to become the Minister of Defense in Abebe Aregai's stead. However, both would have much more to worry about with the results of the 1947 Juba Conference - the union of Sudan with Egypt proper. Suddenly, the issue of acquiring Eritrea became more pressing with Ethiopia sharing a border with Egypt.

Husayn proclaiming the union of Sudan with Egypt, June 1947.

Although the Ogaden was officially recognized as Ethiopian territory in the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, there was no such guarantee for Eritrea. With Washington pushing for Eritrea to become part of Ethiopia, Moscow for the independence of all in the Horn, Britain for its partition and France for the status quo, the Four Powers were unable to agree and shifted the decision to the United Nations in 1948. Five delegates from Burma, Guatemala, Norway, Pakistan and South Africa were commissioned to ultimately decide whether or not Eritrea was to join Ethiopia and analyzed pro-Ethiopia sentiment's extent in Eritrea. They had decided that there was strong support for union with Ethiopia in the majority, recommending that there be a federation between the two and an Eritrean-Ethiopian Federation was inaugurated in December 1950 when UN Resolution 390V was adopted. For the first time in centuries, Ethiopia controlled all of Eritrea, possessing direct access to the Red Sea and could complete what Ethiopian leaders failed to do in ages - it could finally reaffirm Ethiopian independence and secure for Ethiopia a prominent position in the Horn of Africa like that of Ezana or Amda Tseyon. Kebede Mikael, a prominent Ethiocentric intellectual and author who led literature in the 1950s, claimed that the restoration of Eritrea to Ethiopia was comparable to the American annexation of French Louisiana and it was inevitable for Ethiopia to become a Great Power.

This notion of Ethiopia becoming a regional power as it had been in Biblical times, the Aksumite era and the Solomonid Middle Ages was growing in tandem with the independence movements in European Africa as the Cold War begun in earnest with the Berlin Airlift's success. Though most African countries wouldn't become independent until the '60s, Libya's independence in December 1951 marks the beginning of the process of decolonization and many were eager to finally see Europe go. Still holding onto the Garveyite links that spanned Western, Central and Southern Africa, Monrovia was elated at the idea that Africa was going to finally be liberated as the militants in the UNIA and its African chapters called for war against Europe until it was forced back across the Mediterranean. Although Garveyism'd been cracked down on and the European colonial empires determined to repress it, it remained alive and well in those colonies where it was preparing to fight. In Cape Town, the South African government had tried to stamp out Garvey's movement (who'd been at home there since 1922) but it continued coordinating with the African National Congress and Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union [6] for freedom. The same was replicated with Felix Eboue's "Gaullist-Garveyites" who were responsible for providing covert support to Patrice Lumumba's Congolese National Movement in the late '50s and paved the way for the rise of African independence in the 1960s.

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[1] This included (but not limited to) enlightened administration, constructing a fort, drawing up administrative divisions, drafting a town plan, digging wells, encouraging agricultural practices, setting fixed land taxes, rewarding high productivity, etc. with the ultimate intention of making Hararghe a model province. See Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century by Bahru Zewde for more.

[2] Rist, in short, was/is a communal hereditary landed estate system in which land is seen as sacred and inviolable. It was often the reason behind many peasant rebellions in the late '60s when Haile Selassie continuously tried to push through a fixed taxes on land and was rigorously exploited by local aristocrats when possible, usually in opposition to national reforms. See A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde for more.

[3] ITTL, the Kebele system is introduced earlier and with modifications that take inspirations from OTL's Ethiopian intelligentsia's agrarian corporatist proposals, Japanese national syndicalism and Nazi German Blood Soil principle, as stated above.

[4] This also happened IOTL. See ITALY AND ITS RELATIONS WITH ERITREAN POLITICAL PARTIES, 1948-1950 by Tekeste Negash for more.

[5] In OTL's Eritrea, various factions in the Unionist and Independence Bloc demanded very different things. In pg. 182 of A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991, Bahru Zewde describes it:

"The issue of Eritrea, though more complicated, was resolved some four years before the restoration of the Ogaden to Ethiopia. The Paris Peace Conference in 1946, which concluded World War Two, while it forced Italy to renounce its former colonies, had postponed its question of their disposal. That proved fertile ground for the growth of competing groups vying for attention and consideration. The demands were polarized into union with Ethiopia versus independence. The Unionists constituted the single largest political group in Eritrea. The Independence Bloc, as it was known, was a conglomeration of different groups only united by their opposition to union. It included the Muslim League, which had its stronghold in the Muslim-inhabited lowlands; the Liberal Progressive Party, which campaigned for the independence of an Eritrea united with Tigray; and a group of Italian settlers, ex-Askaris and people of mixed race who opted for independence as a camouflage for the continuation of Italian influence."

[6] See 'Sea Kaffirs': 'American Negroes' and the Gospel of Garveyism in Early Twentieth-Century Cape Town by Robert Trent Vinson for more.

Hagre · Dec 12, 2019

Liberty, Fraternity, Negritude

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy

France's surrender to the Axis was followed by nearly its entire overseas empire aligning itself with the puppet Vichy government. Charles de Gaulle refused to surrender to the Germans, being joined by a small group of French government officials, high-ranking officers and soldiers that'd made it to Britain after Petain's ascendance. It was in London where de Gaulle established a French government-in-exile and where he made his appeal to Frenchmen the globe over to not hand over their nation to the Vichy puppets and Berlin but it was here he had little success. Most French soldiers that'd escaped with the rest of the Allied troops wanted to go home and many in the French military considered Petain's government to be far more legitimate to de Gaulle's ragtag committee in London. It was worse with the French colonial empire, as almost all colonial governors moved toward Vichy and in the process, brought the vast resources and manpower of the colonies under its control. The only French colonies willing to join the Free French cause by August 1940 were French Polynesia, New Caledonia, French India and French Equatorial Africa who proved vital in backing de Gaulle's initial efforts to support the Allied war effort.

Prior to becoming the Governor of Chad in January 1939, Felix Eboue had served in colonial administration in French Ubangi-Shari for two decades and then in Martinique before being appointed the Governor of Guadeloupe in 1936 - the first Black man to be selected for such a position. With war already breaking out in September over Germany's invasion of Poland, Eboue had been chosen to become Governor of Chad and even with the fall of France in June 1940, Eboue remained staunchly loyal to France and supported de Gaulle's Free French. It was under his leadership that the rest of French Equatorial Africa rallied to Free France's cause in August, providing not just the resources necessary to building the Free French forces but a strategic position which could strike against Vichy France's colonies. However, victory was still a long ways off, something that become evident with the failed raid on Dakar but as shown at the Battle of Gabon in mid- to late November, the Free French forces were still capable of striking down Vichy forces. After the fall of Libreville, French Equatorial Africa was completely under the control of Brazzaville who proved that Free France was capable of contributing to the Allied war effort with its contribution of French troops to the East African Campaign and the Syria-Lebanon Campaign by July 1941.

Free French Chadian infantryman, August 1940.

Chad served as a springboard for Free French operations in Italian Libya as seen with General Philippe Leclerc's invasion of Cyrenaica province in February 1941 and advanced into Fezzan in 1942. Leclerc joined into Tripolitania in late 1943 where he met up with British Commonwealth forces at Tunis, the Free French successes by then having emboldened de Gaulle's French Committee of National Liberation and serving to showcase French Equatorial Africa's contributions. Although Vichy's Army of Africa continued to fight on until April 1943, many of its soldiers joined the Free French and came to constitute the basis for French forces fighting in Italy before the French Expeditionary Corps was withdrawn and dispatched to France proper. Over 80,000 Black African soldiers served in France with roughly 20,000-30,000 coming from AEF's pool of experienced veterans - many of whom were snubbed when the Allied High Command requested that the French force entering Paris be all-White despite the large numbers of Black and Arab Africans that made up the basis of much of France's forces by then. Nonetheless, Equatorial African troops continued serving up until the end of the war in May 1945, returning home with the subsequent demobilization.

They were well-received by Felix Eboue [1] who'd become very popular amongst Equatorial Africans by the end of the World War, particularly the 15,000 Chadian veterans coming home. Eboue's efforts towards the reconciliation of traditional African governance and regulated modernization could be seen in his 1941 memorandum [2] as well as in his investments with Lend-Lease support from Washington. Eboue's own insistence on not just utilizing indigenous African leaders as he had done in Ubangi-Shari [3] but educating them, serving to establish and entrench an educated African middle class. Controlled industrialization's example in rural Chad provided a case for the rest of the AEF colony where Eboue begun to replicate this case with the ultimate intention of transforming French Equatorial Africa into a model French colony. The Governor also seemed content to emulate Marcus Garvey's rapid development of Liberia over the 1930s and was even inspired by the Liberian President's rhetoric demanding for African independence or at least an upgrade to Class A Mandates when the League of Nations had previously existed.

Eboue's vigorous campaigning for African representation in Paris might've been the reason that the 1946 French Constitution finally granted the Empire's Africans limited representation through local elections in which the Territorial Assembly sent its own representatives to French bodies like the National Assembly, Council of the Republic and Assembly of the French Union. More reforms in 1946 also proclaimed colonies to be overseas provinces and Africans French citizens but this remained largely superficial in practice. French personnel continued not only to dominate the AEF's administration but interfere in Eboue's aims that were to promote more indigenous involvement in said elections and his attempts to train African civil servants. Eboue was outraged at this, harshly scolding French officials and pursuing the recruitment of Black personnel to offset the influence held by the French officials as they arranged for indigenous personnel to either be dismissed or relocated to distant posts where they couldn't harm French dominance of the AEF administration. Despite his advanced age, Eboue vigorously campaigned for the relinquishing of French overbearing in the governance of not just French Equatorial Africa but all of French Africa, decrying France and its insistence on the continuance of "the civilizing mission," making him even more popular and supplanting the rise of Black nationalism in the AEF colony.

However, the question of independence came up with that of succession, especially with Carlos Cooks succeeding Marcus Garvey as President of Liberia in 1956. Eboue knew this and was unwilling to see French Equatorial Africa plunge into civil war over who would succeed him or God forbid, be recolonized by the French Republic or become Socialist. Garveyism and Black nationalism had swept the independent nations of Africa, having swayed Eboue, this veritably Black Frenchman, away from the same country he'd advocated for so fervently during the Second World War and to embrace nationalism for the AEF. With Algerian resistance flaring up in the late 1950s and mounting nationalism in AEF, Charles de Gaulle made the fateful decision to grant French Equatorial Africa independence in February 1959 and in the same month, the Governor chose to declare Barthelemy Boganda - that popular "Gaullist-Garveyite" - his successor. In Brazzaville, Boganda was sworn in as President of the Republic of Equatoria with de Gaulle endorsing him to lead this great colony to freedom, fondly reminiscing about those first days in Chad after Eboue joined the Free French struggle. Speaking of Felix Eboue, the former Governor lived long enough to see Equatoria become an independent nation with a bright future before passing away peacefully in his sleep in early March at the age of 75. A statue was erected in his honor, still standing proudly in Brazzaville to this day.

Felix Eboue's statue in Brazzaville, March 2019.

Eboue's death led millions to mourn him and Boganda remarked that Equatoria was Eboue's legacy, "A legacy of Liberty, Fraternity and Negritude." With that being said, Boganda sought to transform Equatorian independence into Equatorian power, seeing for her a prominent role in African affairs. He looked to Central Africa's Latin states and desired to unify them into one [4] federation, seeing a chance in the Congo's Crisis - or really, civil war - in 1960 when the southern secessionist province of Katanga broke away with Belgian support. Denouncing Belgian imperialism, Brazzaville declared its support for Patrice Lumumba's Congolese National Movement after Chief of Staff of the Army, Joseph Mobutu, seized power in early 1961 and that same support - combined with that of Liberia and Ethiopia - changed the fate of Central Africa forever.

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[1] Instead of succumbing to the stroke he had while in Cairo in '44, Eboue manages to survive and goes on to continue governing French Equatorial Africa.

[2] See The Eboue Memorandum, 1941 for more.

[3] See Felix Eboue and the Chiefs: Perceptions of Power in Early Oubangui-Chari by Brian Weinstein for more.

[4] IOTL, Boganda supported the United States of Latin Africa concept - the union of all Romance-language-speaking Central African countries - and continues to support it ITTL, though whether or not he's at all successful in my TL is definitely up for debate.

Hagre · Dec 19, 2019

Wind of Revolution

Even as he somewhat successfully pinned wartime Egypt's problems on el-Nahhas, Farouk's decision to sack Husayn was proving disastrous and showed that he was a British puppet. El-Nahhas not only showed that his corruption but reinforced the popular notion of the Wafd's complacency and incompetence which ironically enough, led to the Egyptian masses rallying around the King. Husayn was outraged at Farouk's decision to dismiss him and more so at the sexual debauchery which followed the Abdeen Palace Incident, declaring that the young man was a degenerate in no state to govern the country. A Republican faction under Gamal Abdel Nasser came to the forefront of Young Egypt, Nasser making comparisons between the Egyptian situation by 1942 with that of Fascist Italy's in 1943 and proclaiming that the King's interests laid not in preserving Egyptian sovereignty but in selling out to foreign powers. Though Republicanism had little sway with much of the Egyptian population at large, it started to take hold in the educated whose dissatisfaction with Farouk and the Egyptian elite was beginning to shine by the late 1940s.

One of the first questions that popped up in post-WWII Egypt was that of Sudan's future in 1947. In Young Egypt, the overwhelming opinion was that Sudan should be annexed to Egypt proper to restore Ism'ail Pasha's grand dream of uniting the Nile and that Sudan serve as Egyptian living space. The Juba Conference of 1947 ultimately decided Sudan's fate with the heavily Arabized and Islamized north joining Farouk and his Kingdom whereas the Nilotic Christian south was to become an independent state known as the Republic of Juwama. The results of the Juba Conference were met with positivity on the Egyptian people's part who were pleased to see a historically contested area between Egypt and Britain become Egyptian, thus extending their Empire's frontiers further into the Nile. The propaganda promoted by the Wafd would do some good in playing up historical Egyptian aspirations not just to Sudan but to the rest of Northeast Africa, deeply disturbing the respective governments of Juwama and Ethiopia. However, the popularity of Farouk's success in this arena wouldn't last, especially when it became apparent that north Sudan's landowning classes were to reinforce their counterparts in Egypt with Farouk still unwilling to change.

Sudanese representatives at Juba, June 1947.

In addition to Farouk's unwillingness to implement reforms, his lavish lifestyle and spending did little to gain him any support from his people who were becoming increasingly attracted to either the Young Egypt Party or the Muslim Brotherhood, joining both in droves. Promises of revolutionary reform to genuinely better the lives of the Egyptian and Sudanese peoples were only serving to bolster Young Egypt's ranks for what seemingly inevitable - Ahmad Husayn's Young Egyptians rising back to power. The one thing that would ultimately break the back of Farouk's regime was Egyptian defeat at Israeli hands by March 1949 by which thousands of Egyptians had either been wounded or died in the Arabs' attempt to strangle the Jewish state in its cradle. This supposed Arab victory that Farouk heavily played up in the first months of war was not coming and the peace that it, and several other Arab nations, were forced to conclude were met with indignant outrage from the Egyptian masses. The Egyptian military itself wasn't exactly happy when Farouk made the decision to conclude a peace with Israel, not least of all the Young Egypt circle in the officer corps that was going to be responsible for ousting the King in June 1952.

The June 1952 Coup saw pro-Husayn forces, led by Muhammad Naguib and Nasser, surround the Montaza Palace at Alexandria and deliver an ultimatum to Farouk. It demanded that the King dismiss the Wafd's government in favor of a Young Egypt administration under Husayn and he abdicate the throne in favor of his newborn son, Fuad. In Fuad's place, Egypt was to be governed by a Royal Regency Council until the young King came of age to govern the country, though members of Young Egypt would act as his "advisors." Under the threat of pro-Husayn troops storming the Palace and executing him, Farouk acceded to all the demands put forward by the "Young Officers," and formally abdicated the Monarchy after which he would spend the rest of his life under close surveillance of the Young Egypt government. It was to cheering crowds of ecstatic Egyptians that Husayn and his Young Officers were welcomed, beginning that which Farouk had neglected for so long - the question of reform. It started in September when Husayn declared a land redistribution program to be rigorously pursued, effectively destroying the power of the landed gentry that'd backed Farouk and making him ever more popular amongst his own people.

Pro-Husayn Egyptian soldiers surround Montaza Palace, June 1952.

However, Husayn's peak in popularity was to end with his ambitious reforms when he was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood in October 1954 and Nasser took his place. Nasser himself had been aiming to succeed Husayn and managed to seize an opportunity, outmaneuvering Naguib after accusing him of being implicated in the assassination. Naguib was sacked and the RRC selected Nasser to replace him as PM, overseeing the shifting of focus from Husayn's Fascist-oriented faction to that of Nasser's left-wing faction that closely resembled Mussolini's Social Republic. The Muslim Brotherhood was banned as prisoners in the thousands were taken to concentration camps and the rest simply fled Egypt en masse for the safety of Saudi Arabia but the Muslim Brotherhood was not the only one to suffer purging. The Egyptian Army's was subject to such treatment as well when over 140 officers considered loyal to Naguib were "dismissed" and Communists ruthlessly executed. Having secured his position, Nasser looked abroad where he now unabashedly promoted the Pan-Arabist cause with dreams of an Egyptian-led Arab Federation and started with his restless Iraqi brethren.

Despite Britain's prolonged presence, Iraq continued to be a headache for British forces garrisoning her and the client government under 'Abd al-Ilah started negotiating for the withdrawal of British forces in '47 in the hopes of lending more legitimacy to the government. The last British soldiers left Iraq on January 15, 1948 but that did not necessitate the ending of British influence in the country at whole with the joint Anglo-Iraqi defense board overseeing the planning of Iraqi military strategy and what was in essence British control of Iraq's foreign affairs. These ventures didn't endear 'Abd's government to the Iraqi peoples, especially to the upper class and educated Iraqis who retained their pro-Fascist stance even under the occupation. The Party of National Brotherhood and Nadi al-Muthanna Club had established a coalition which was intended to coalesce in the future, coordinating the political resistance as the Iraqi Army's guerrillas continued launching hit-and-run attacks on Baghdad's forces. In the years under British occupation, Nadi al-Muthanna had come to despise the Hashemite Monarchy and embraced republicanism as a part of its overarching Fascist Pan-Arab thought, looking to the Egyptian example when Young Egypt ousted Farouk.

'Abd al-Ilah's attempts to establish control of an independent Iraqi state were hampered by various issues excluding the ongoing insurgency sapping Baghdad's resources. Firstly, Iraq had been destroyed during World War II and emerged from the war in a pitiful state. To add to this, the Regent consistently found himself at odds with his Prime Minister, Nuri al-Said, and educated elites - particularly those who had been a part of Dr. Sami Shawkat's al-Futuwwah [1] - or, Youth Movement. On top of it all, Iraq's economy and infrastructure was in shambles with nothing being done as 'Abd and Nuri continued to squabble over the economic policies Iraq should follow for reconstruction. Another point of contention between the two was that of Pan-Arab nationalism that'd swept the Middle East along with decolonization in the wake of World War II, with Nuri and elites eagerly supporting an Arab Federation constituting of autonomous states but not necessarily in the Nasserist fashion. This led to the creation of the Arab Federation in February 1958, a loose bloc consisting of the Hashemite Kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq, in response to the threat posed by Egypt who'd done a fantastic job in mobilizing pan-Arab sentiment and positioning itself as leader of the Arab world in the 1950s.

To 'Abd's alarm, both the Iraqi people and elite were quite sympathetic not just to Pan-Arab nationalist ideology and Nadi al-Muthanna's insurgency but to Nasserist Egypt as well. These ideals were popular with the Iraqi officer corps opposing Nuri's reservations about Pan-Arabism and disillusioned with the Hashemite Monarchy, even with the rise of Faisal II to power in May 1953 who showed promise with his choice to vigorously endorse development works. However, this only served to isolate Iraq's peasantry and expanding middle class but not as much as the 1956 Suez Crisis and Iraqi support for the anti-Egypt coalition to weaken Egypt. It failed, leading to Arabs rallying to the Egyptian cause and denounced European colonialism, highlighting the issue of continued British hegemony and Faisal's backing of the intervention with an Iraq that was a member of the Western-backed Baghdad Pact which only served to strain Iraqi-Egyptian relations and expose Western support for the Iraqi Hashemites. It may have provided the final catalyst in which pro-Nasserist army officers, led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif, seized power in 1958 in the infamous July Revolution and killed Faisal, 'Abd and al-Said. The removal of the Hashemite Monarchy culminated in the establishment of the Iraqi Republic under Qasim's leadership who was quickly superseded by the Party of National Brotherhood that'd supported Arab nationalism in Iraq's Mosul during the 1959 Mosul Uprising.

Nadi al-Muthanna's guerrillas proudly show off their Arabic standard, July 1958.

There was much debate over the choice of whether or not the embryonic Iraqi Republic was to join the United Arab States, the federal union that'd been established between Egypt and Yemen in March 1958. It, being the primary cause behind the Mosul Uprising, caused considerable strife within the ranks of Qasim's government who'd managed to suppress it with support from Moscow. Led by Sati al-Husri, the Party of National Brotherhood absorbed the Nadi al-Muthanna Club before Qasim personally invited the leading political and military figures of the PNB to solve the issues of existing ideological disputes. Despite the Iraqi officers in government holding a pro-Nasserist position, infighting between various factions continued and threatened to tear Baghdad asunder as Qasim attempted to outline an authoritarian nationalist ideology with social democratic overtones to unite Iraq. A precarious balance between right-wing pan-Arab nationalists, Communists and Ba'athists was maintained in order to prevent the stratocratic administration from disintegrating at the seams and plunge the country into civil war. In this, Qasim enlisted the support of the Iraqi Communist Party and attempted to demoted Arif, the leading figure of the Nasserist faction, who reacted to this just as well as anybody would - he made contact with Rashid Ali, who'd been in exile prior, and the Party of National Brotherhood with plans to oust Qasim by December.

Iraq was not the only country to be wracked with instability with the opening of the 1960s as the Congo was plunged into civil war with the Belgian-backed secession of Katanga and Joseph Mobutu's coup in the city of Leopoldville, dividing the Congo into several competing factions. Lumumba managed to escape the city and flee to Stanleyville [2] where Vice President Gizenga had established a separate government of fervent Lumumbist nationalists who controlled all of Kivu province, the eastern parts of Kasai and Orientale provinces as well as northern Katanga. It wasn't long before Lumumba's charisma earned him not just the popular following of the Lumumbist territories' peoples but the backing of Nikita Khrushchev's administration who proved vital in securing the diplomatic front by preventing a UN intervention. It also had the effect of turning the Congolese Civil War into a proxy war in the Cold War between Washington and Moscow - Kennedy favored Mobutu and Khrushchev Lumumba. Khrushchev provided Stanleyville with a set of generous loans, financing the formation of a regular army that could oppose the ANC while training a guerrilla force operating in Leopoldville province. Even with a growing insurgency, Mobutu scored many wins in the opening months of the war and had annexed South Kasai by October 1961.

ANC artillery bombards South Kasai's forces, October 1961.

However, the USSR wasn't the only nation to support the Lumumbists and ensure that they held their positions. Though the international community recognized Stanleyville as the only legitimate authority, they were hesitant to furnish concrete financial and material aid to any side in the Congo, several African nations did - Liberia, Ethiopia and Equatoria. Monrovia, known for possessing an extensive Garveyite network and unafraid of using it to further national interests, denounced the American decision to support the upstart Mobutu and Carlos Cooks [3] threw his support behind Lumumba. Courtesy of Garvey's paranoia, an extensive arms industry had been developed with the fear in mind that the European colonial empires would get rid of all pretenses and launch an invasion of Liberia proper with the intent of annexing it. Garvey had most likely been correct and was proven right with attempted British incursions during the negotiations of Christmas during 1940-41. Cooks was all too happy to exploit it and simultaneously "lost" the LFF's stockpiles of World War II equipment that'd either been indigenously produced, captured from British forces and/or acquired via American Lend-Lease which ended up in the hands of Lumumbist soldiers.

Even as the Ogaden War [4] raged on and had since '64, Ras Imru would place an emphasis on supporting the rightful Congolese government at Stanleyville. Ethiopia didn't only send WWII-era surplus but also advisors to help form a regular army capable of staving off the ANC and assisted in organizing the many pro-Lumumba Congolese veterans, establishing the Lumumba Military Academy at Stanleyville. Ethiopian veterans that had fought in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, North Africa and Italy proper made up the majority of the team of advisors that were nicknamed the "Black Lions Brigade," after the political party. It was vital to Stanleyville's war effort, as did Equatoria who deployed its own arms support and veteran advisors who were often Chadian officers who dominated the officer corps of the Army of Equatoria after its independence in '59. Barthelemy Boganda, although pro-Western and anti-Communist, was a pan-Africanist and Black nationalist who made the decision to support Lumumba in staunch opposition to the French neocolonialism that was so rampant in the former French West Africa and became determined to support Lumumba to the end. Ethiopia and Equatoria also acted as funnels for aid from the Soviet Union, with its Eritrean port of Assab acting as a focal point where the Soviets unloaded shipment after shipment which was moved through the sympathetic Juwama to the Congo while Soviet weaponry was smuggled through Equatoria's Ubangi-Shari province and made its way to Lumumbist guerrillas in Leopoldville.

Congolese recruits are taught how to fire artillery by Chadian advisors, 1963-64.

Although the Congolese Civil War stalemated after the conquest of South Kasai, it would not remain that way for much longer by 1964. The wave of decolonization had done much to isolate support for Katanga, though it wasn't comparable to the untenable domestic situation that Tshombe's government was facing after three years of civil war. Tshombe didn't secede with popular support but rather, had done it to save Belgian interests in the mineral-rich province and that was, to say the least, unpopular with the Katangan people who weren't exactly happy with the fact that Belgian colonialism continued to rule. It led to their overwhelming alignment with the Lumumbist administration in Stanleyville who exploited the unrest to establish a guerrilla force quite to utilize it alongside the conventional forces beginning to hammer away at the mercenary force Tshombe paid for. Eventually, Lumumba ordered that Tshombe's illegitimate state be wiped out and Lumumbist forces carried out a large-scale offensive that tore through the Katangan line and with the coordination of guerrilla raids that made quick work of Katangan forces' supply lines and rear guard, reclaimed the entire province by November 1965. In the meantime, Mobutu did away with all of the pretenses of democratic governance in favor of absolute rule and consolidated power with a series of ruthless purges aimed at literally wiping out the opposition, initiating a program of indigenization.

The Lumumbist government turned its eyes west where it started to prepare for the reclamation of Leopoldville, commencing in December 1965/66 with a noticeable uptick in guerrilla operations. It seemed the people of Leopoldville had had enough of Mobutu and were rising to oust him, leading to Mobutu stripping the front for available units for a counterinsurgency campaign. Lumumbist troops, closely supported by Soviet-supplied aerial and armored forces, shredded through the ANC's lines at several focal points and achieved not just a breakthrough but the capture of nearly 100,000 men too. Despite fierce resistance on the part of ANC soldiers, the namesake city of the province was seized by late January and pro-Mobutu fighting largely melted away when news of his capture and very public execution was announced. Even as holdouts by committed Mobutists continued fighting in the Congolese jungle until early 1967, it was clear that Lumumba was victorious and was eager to spread his reforms from his initial holdings to all Congo, even welcoming UN forces to monitor the planned elections. Not surprisingly, Patrice Lumumba and his Congolese National Movement won the largest number of votes in the electorate - 30-40%, roughly - that catapulted Lumumba and the MNC to national prominence where the Lumumbist government took up the mantle of rebuilding their country.

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[1] See Arab Nationalism in Interwar Period Iraq: A Descriptive Analysis of Sami Shawkat's al-Futuwwah Youth Movement by Saman Nasser for more.

[2] ITTL, Lumumba manages to barely avoid getting captured at Lodi, successfully making his way to Stanleyville.

[3] A fiery orator and popular nationalist veteran, American-born Carlos Cooks was personally chosen by Marcus Garvey to succeed him as the next President.

[4] ITTL, the border war with Somalia started over its support for insurgents in the Ogaden and subsequent attacks by Somali regulars in the region in February 1964 is instead escalated into full-on war.

Hagre · Dec 25, 2019

Stand Up and Stride

Excerpt from A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde

After World War II, Ethiopia was still weakened from the Italian occupation but possessed a bright future that started with the reforms instituted by Araya and enforced by Imru. Resistance by the peasantry and nobility alike hampered Addis Ababa's attempts at reform but the Imperial Ethiopian Army and Imperial Guardsmen proved instrumental in enforcing the Emperor's reforms, as could be seen in Tigray. Economic reforms instituted in November 1941 begun the process of dismantling the feudal structure of Ethiopia's various land tenure systems and American Lend-Lease assistance was helpful in the task of overhauling a moribund feudal economy. Although it would prove a costly endeavor with how much money needed to be paid back to Washington, it ultimately ended up being fruitful and gave Ethiopia a chance to modernize its overwhelmingly agricultural economy while also paving the way for Ethiopian industrialization. It provided Ethiopia with a higher crop yield annually, allowing to exploit post-war Europe's immediate situation, especially with the need for food by several European countries torn apart by the war and Araya, seemingly unknowingly, established a series of parastatal corporations to regulate Ethiopia's foreign trade [1] as a means of yielding the highest profits possible.

Revenues acquired from the exports to western Europe were turned toward the construction of infrastructure to support the budding modernization project that Emperors Tewodros, Yohannes, Menelik and Haile Selassie outlined to bring Ethiopia to pace with the colonial empires surrounding her. The now destroyed road system that Italy tried to construct to consolidate its shaky hold on Ethiopia provided a basis for the newly formed Imperial Highway Authority to begin the gradual process of rebuilding them and to link all of Ethiopia to the Imperial center in Shewa. The same process was replicated for the Ethiopian railways in the eastern provinces, especially with the railway that linked Addis Ababa with the French port of Djibouti in their Somaliland colony which was superseded with the acquisition of Eritrea. Sultan Alimirah Hanfare advocated for the construction of roads and railroads stretching from Assab to Asaita, the Aussa Sultanate's capital, to Addis Ababa in that it would not only bring Eritrea further into the Ethiopian sphere but the Eritrean Afars into his domain, and profits to modernize Aussa too. Hanfare dreamed of extending the predominantly Afar Aussa Sultanate to encompass all lands inhabited by ethnic Afars and to group all Afars, inside and outside of Ethiopia proper, into an autonomous sultanate under Ethiopian rule.

Road construction in Asaita, May 1951.

Speaking of pan-ethnic nationalism, the Ogaden continued to remain an irredentist target not just for Somali nationalists but the Italian colonial administration in Mogadishu as well. The post-war government in Rome was mandated a trusteeship over Italian Somaliland to prepare it for independence, though it differed little from the previous colonial policies by Italian governments in trying to instigate conflicts between Christians and Muslims, non-Somalis and Somalis, etc. [2] so as to expand at Ethiopia's expense. Even with the UN General Assembly telling Addis Ababa and Rome to establish a border between the Ethiopians' and Somali frontier, Italy continued supporting the Somali Youth League's ambitions and subsidizing pro-Italy chieftains in the Ogaden. Nasibu, still Governor of the Ogaden, would have none of it and continued expanding the 3rd Division with reinforcements from the Central Command [3] for the demarcation of the Ogadeni frontier when he received reports of Italian penetration into the Ogaden. Ethiopian troops were to be dispatched to Kelafo, Werder, Dolobay, Godere, Ferfer and Dudub to "convince" Italy to halt its raids and financing of rebellious chieftains. Simultaneously, the ensuing purges of the SYL in the frontier had been relatively successful and negotiations started in 1955 but went nowhere were started again, especially as independence for the former colony came closer.

Despite the issues in easternmost Hararghe, the Ogaden's western regions closer to the Imperial center were much more loyal to Addis Ababa and had been since the late 1930s. The reforms issued in Ethiopian provinces to the north were quite popular here too and reminded many of Tekle Hawariat Tekle Mariam's administration, especially when Tekle was restored in his capacity as civilian governor. Similarly to Addis Ababa and Ethiopia's dense population centers, Hararghe was subject to a rigorous program of public works and national-development projects planned by the Union of Gihon. This contributed to the burgeoning industrialization taking place in the cities of Harar, Dire Dawa and Jijiga (as well as a number of smaller towns) that was partly facilitated with the arrival of "veterans" who'd manufactured Japanese arms during the Second World War and those trained at new academies opened by friendly nations like Liberia or Soviet Russia. Ethiopia's Five-Year Plan in 1957 quickened the pace, leading to provinces like Shewa, Eritrea, Hararghe and Wollo taking the lead in becoming model provinces as was planned under Haile Selassie over the course of the 1920s. However, Italian Somaliland's independence and its unification with its British counterpart to the north by July 1960 would mark a turning point in the modern history of the Horn of Africa.

The Ethiopian government was well aware of Mogadishu's refusal to adhere to the colonial frontier and its decision to dedicate itself to establishing a pan-Somali state, especially with Article V of the Constitution of the Republic of Somalia. The constitutionalization of Somali irredentism alarmed Addis Ababa, particularly the Imperial High Command who'd been preparing plans for the possibilities of a Somali invasion that included expansion of the IEA from its current number of 16,832 troops to 28,000 men by 1961. Even as Imru approved the expansion and worked with the Imperial High Command to outline more plans, Araya pursued a diplomatic solution within the framework of the Organization of African Unity and Deputy Premier Aklilu Habte-Wold [4] argued passionately that Somalia wouldn't exist without the frontiers set by the colonial powers and Ethiopia had historically controlled the Horn when Somali president Aden Daar accused Ethiopia of seizing Somali territory without considering Somali self-determination at the OAU Heads of State Summit in Cairo [5] in early 1964. However, rebellion in Eritrea, outbreak of insurgency in eastern Hararghe and blatant Somali interference in the Ogaden forced Imru's hand in February.

Mechanized IEA unit on patrol in Eritrea, September 1961.

Even with the union of Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1951, there was still much debate between the Unionist and Independence factions over the union. The abolition of political parties did not sit well with the Eritrean General Assembly's urbanite delegates, especially with the Independence Bloc's members who decided that enough was enough and that the time for peaceful negotiation was over. It was in July 1960 that Idris Mohammed Adem, former President of the Eritrean General Assembly, founded the Eritrean Liberation Front in Cairo with other Eritrean exiles and with Egyptian support, much to Addis Ababa's alarm. Ethiopian troops were dispatched to Eritrea on Imru's order where they occupied the federal state as the Eritrean General Assembly was dismissed, though its delegates were integrated into the Eritrean branch of UG who superseded the EGA and entrenched Ethiopian rule in the region. Interestingly enough, Imru didn't make the decision to establish Eritrea as yet another province but divided it along ethnic lines - Tigrayan areas in the central Highlands were merged with Tigray and the Afar-speaking regions of southeastern Eritrea with Aussa while ethnic groups like the Tigre, Saho, Kunama, Bilen, Hedareb, Nara and Rashaida received their own provinces that correlated roughly to the areas they inhabited in western Eritrea.

The effects of the ethnic partition on the Unionist and Independence Blocs were immediate. The Liberal Progressive Party's pan-Tigrayan aspirations were achieved and the Muslim League was torn asunder with Araya decreeing Arabic an official language in Muslim schools but these were simply examples of the factionalization that'd come to characterize Eritrean politics. The ELF was subject to it too, though to a much lesser extent that was due to their predominantly urbanite and Muslim composition but also had the effect of isolating potential Christian support. With the assassination of Woldeab Wolde-Mariam in 1953, they seemed to be doomed to succumb to the same fate the rest of the Independence Bloc in fracturing but Ibrahim Sultan Ali would successfully take up the mantle and rally the Cairo exiles. Word was sent to their armed comrades in Tigre province to start the uprising there and Hamid Idris Awate was to command the first attacks on the Ethiopian forces there, in spite of his complaints about the obsolete equipment their few men had. Nonetheless, Awate would make do with what he had, just as he'd done under the Italians and commence attacking in early September 1961. However, it would prove a disastrous decision as the Eritrean independence movement later lamented on their failures at Adal, as well as openly accepting assistance from Egypt and rest of the Arab world.

The Battle of Adal was a decisive Ethiopian victory with what initial advantage the Eritrean force may've had in shocking the Territorial Army troops there was lost and they were brutal in their response. Awate's men were slaughtered and the veteran himself was mortally wounded in battle as the ELF fighters were forced to withdraw. The confrontation at Adal was one of many in the counterinsurgency operations which Imru ordered after learning of the ELF's increasingly Arab backing, particularly vigorous in Tigre province where Ali was from and in the Eritrean lowlands where the ELF drew its support from. This was exploited to its fullest extent, especially with the rumors that accompanied the influx of Sudanese refugees into western Ethiopia in what seemed to be Arab apartheid as Egyptian Arabs were granted land and resettled in northern Sudan - particularly in Darfur, where there was a growing insurgency over Arab rule. Addis Ababa didn't hesitate to portray the Egyptians as no different than the Europeans they claimed to oppose, for they too were pursuing land to resettle their excess population from the Nile Valley and seeking to displace the indigenous peoples without even compensating them! It was of course the rumors of the atrocities in Darfur that led to Tigreans adopting either an apathetic stance towards the ELF or even a hostile one as they were forced to consistently move through lowland Eritrea.

Ethiopian troops defending against ELF raids, September 1961.

It was much the same case in the Ogaden where an insurgency had also broken out with direct support from Mogadishu in spite of border negotiations and whatnot. Ogadeni guerrillas that were not only trained and equipped by the Somali National Army but Egypt as well begun launching attacks on Ethiopian forces in eastern Hararghe, near Wal-Wal. Suspecting Mogadishu and remembering all too well what happened the last time someone had tried to start a fight there thirty years earlier, Nasibu dispatched the 3rd Division to mete out the punishment and pursue the 3,000 or so Ogadeni guerrillas operating there. August in particular saw much frustration for Ethiopian forces, no thanks to the tendencies of Ogadeni guerrillas to attack and melt away either into the general populace or beyond the frontier with Somalia by June 1963, leading to the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force upping the ante. Air strikes launched against Galkayo and Feerfeer convinced the Somali government to start supporting the guerrillas even more as Somali forces had partook directly in blatant attacks on Ethiopian positions in February 1964, failing to force out Ethiopian troops spread over the border. It was at Gode where Somali casualties were high and PoWs admitted that they were regular soldiers of the Somali National Army as this was reported back to Nasibu's command at Jijiga, then to Araya who was so outraged at this that he declared war in the midst of negotiations.

Ethiopian mobilization was quickly underway and owing to an efficient provincial mobilization system with its roots in wartime Imperial Japan, was able to call up 20,000 men by March. The IEA swelled from the peacetime size of 16,000 men to 36,832 who were placed under the Eastern Command's control at Jijiga just as Mogadishu rushed its troops to the Ethiopian border. Ethiopian jets pummeled them ruthlessly as they were joined by Ethiopian artillery coordinating closely from Gode, Ferfer, Geladi and Domo as a defensive line was formed. It linked the area between Dolo Bay and Aware which became the main theater of the Ogaden War in those first months with the commencement of war as Nasibu also tried to focus on the defense of northeastern Ethiopia and looked into the possibility of launching an invasion of the northern Somali lands [6] after exploiting anti-Mogadishu sentiment. A plan was outlined by Nasibu and General Asfaw Wolde Giyorgis, commander of the 3rd Division, to pin down Somali forces at the border and launch an invasion of northern Somalia with the intention of seizing Hargeisa and driving to the coast to capture Berbera and Zeila to cut Somalia in half - Imru and the Imperial High Command approved it.

However, neither Nasibu and Asfaw nor the Imperial High Command anticipated the arrival of General Daud Abdulle Hirsi, the father of the Somali National Army, to the frontlines. Despite Ethiopian attempts at maskirovka, Daud saw clearly what his Ethiopian counterpart was trying to do and prepared to counteract it with a pre-emptive blitzkrieg of his own that would see a mechanized column of SNA troops seize the cities of Dire Dawa, Jijiga and Harar not just for the purpose of "reclaiming stolen Somali land" but to cripple the Ethiopian economy before its resources could be brought to bear against Somalia. It was in April that the invasion preparations were completed in time for 20,000 SNA soldiers to blitz through eastern Ethiopia with the support of hundreds of armored vehicles and artillery pieces, something that alarmed the Imperial High Command as Ethiopian units across the northeastern front started falling back. Reports starting coming in about mass encirclements, hasty retreats and a rapid Somali advance towards the city of Jijiga before the Eastern Command clamped down on it and ordered units either retreating without permission or cut off to fight on. The Imperial government issued directives for national conscription while unit after unit disintegrated in a fight to the death, buying time as millions of young men answered the traditional call to arms and fight against the "accursed Mohammedan hordes," - to stand up and stride.

An encircled Ethiopian machine gun position prepares to fight, April 1964.

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[1] This is OTL. See the following excerpt from A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde for more below:

"Apparently taking their cues from the Italians, Ethiopia's rulers set up a series of parastatal organizations which controlled the country's foreign trade. The first of such organizations created was the Ethiopian National Corporation (ENC). Created soon after 1941 by the Minister of Commerce and of Agriculture, Makonnen Habte-Wolde, the ENC made substantial profits from the sale of cereals to war-torn Europe in the years between the liberation of Ethiopia and the end of World War II. In 1944, its profits were estimated at £1.2 million sterling. A parallel organization, the Ethiopian Society for Commerce and Transport (popularly known as the Mahbar Bet or Self-Help Association) enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the import of cotton goods. The latter-day National Coffee Board, Livestock and Meat Board and the Grain Corporation could be viewed as successor organizations to the ENC, designed to control the three most important export commodities: coffee, hides and skins, and grain."

[2] See Toward Northeast African Cooperation: Resolving the Ethiopia-Somalia Disputes by Daniel D. Kendie for more.

[3] The Central Command consists of the standing forces and command in the provinces of Shewa, Welega and Gojjam. See The Ethiopian Army: From Victory to Collapse, 1977-1991 by Fantahun Ayalew for more on the provincial division of OTL's Imperial Ethiopian Army.

[4] ITTL, Aklilu is appointed to the Deputy Premiership and is reliant on Imru for his rise through the ranks in Ethiopian government, originally having been a member of the Union of Gihon as an Ethiopian with an education gained abroad (in France) prior to Italy's occupation and a prominent position in Imru's government as charge d'affairs to Free France after June 1940.

[5] See The Unsettled Southern Ethiopian-Somali Boundary on the Eve of Decolonization: Political Confrontation and Human Interactions in the Ogaadeen Borderland by Antonio M. Morone for more.

[6] IOTL, there were plans to defend the Ogaden and launch an invasion of northern Somalia if Somalia attempted another attack after 1964. They were respectively referred to as Operations Lightning, Wall and Bunker. See The Ethiopian Army: From Victory to Collapse, 1977-1991 by Fantahun Ayalew for more.

Hagre · Dec 30, 2019

Brave Warrior

Excerpt from A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde

Despite the ruthless Somali advance into eastern Ethiopia, the SNA faced vicious resistance from retreating Ethiopian troops who possessed a tendency to launch suicidal counterattacks. Although Somalia would see the encirclement of 3,867 Ethiopian soldiers and stand outside of Jijiga by early June, it did so after incurring heavy losses and with considerable delays. The Imperial High Command could amass its reserve units and bring in 50,000 men from the interior commands, allowing the IEA to reach 78,000 as plans were made to counterattacks and to drive the SNA out of Ethiopia entirely. These plans were interrupted by the sudden attacks on Kombolcha, Jijiga and Harar with Daud's intention to seize the cities not just to deny reinforcement to Ethiopian units there but to cripple the Ethiopians' war economy. Despite advantages enjoyed by Somali troops, their offensive was halted in its tracks by Ethiopian troops across the line with close aerial support from the IEAF and the Imperial Bodyguard's timely intervention which allowed for its defenders to beat back its SNA counterparts with a counterattack. However, a renewed Somali drive would see some success at one particular city - Jijiga.

It was at Jijiga where the Ethiopian defense, though valiant, buckled under Somali pressure and yielded for Somali soldiers to make it into city. However, it was that valiant defense which bought time for troops from Kombolcha to arrive and erect a hasty defensive line encompassing the city's eastern districts. From there, the prosperous city was reduced to waste and became the main site of fighting that saw both the sides commit tens of thousands of men in order to hold onto their part of Jijiga as the city earned the nickname of "Africa's Stalingrad." It was with the shift to the Battle of Jijiga that Imru and the Imperial High Command could start outlining a cohesive plan of counterattack that revolved around employing the use of overwhelming manpower and firepower in the Ethiopian offensive. Daud had relinquished the initiative to Imru who would exploit this strategic lull to carry out the planned counterattack all across the frontlines, exploiting the issue of Somalia's inability to fight a war of attrition by spreading its manpower and war material ever thinner. It would begin at Jijiga, Degehabur, Aware and Werder from which the Imperial High Command wanted to utilize as operating bases to attack from.

Ethiopian soldiers at Degehabur in the preparations for the offensive, July 1964.

In mid-July of 1964, the Imperial Bodyguard spearheaded Operation Yaqob [1] and collided with the Somali forces to the west of Jijiga, successfully defeating them and encircling the 10,000 or so Somali troops fighting in the city without hope of reinforcements. To the north, the IEA retook Aysha and reopened the Addis-Djibouti Railway as to the south, Somali soldiers were pounded by Ethiopian jets and artillery alike before finding themselves facing down screaming hordes of fanatic Ethiopian soldiers who retook Degehabur. The pressure was kept up across the frontline as Ethiopian forces seized back vast stretches of lands that encompassed the arid desert between Dolo and Geladin, followed by unrelenting counterinsurgency campaigns that wiped out the pro-Mogadishu Ogadeni guerrilla auxiliaries. By August-September 1964, it seemed Ethiopian victory was in sight with the reconquest of the Ogaden by 90,000 Ethiopian troops but that would satisfy neither Araya nor the Ethiopian people as to Daud's alarm, the Ethiopian Emperor now promised to avenge the losses of life and damaged infrastructure. General Asfaw's proposed invasion of northern Somalia was to be carried out to its fullest extent and under Araya's oversight.

Operation Tseyon [2] was commenced in December 1964/65 when 100,000 well-trained and well-equipped Ethiopian soldiers penetrated into northern Somalia, supported closely by means of artillery and air. It was helpful that the Somali National Army had been crippled in the Ogaden but more so with the frequent bombing raids launched into Somalia proper that killed Daud when Hargeisa became a target. Ethiopian forces occupying northern Somalia didn't hesitate to exploit the anti-Mogadishu sentiment that had been a part of the rebellion only three years earlier nor the clan tensions, supporting the Isaaq over the Darod clans who were perceived to dominate Somalia. Araya was eager to play up the anti-Mogadishu sentiments of the Isaaq, hoping to rally them in a grand alliance against Somalia alongside that of Kenya who had been alarmed when Somali forces occupied Moyale and sparked a series of border incidents. By January 1965, Ethiopian forces had taken Hargeisa and were rapidly thrusting towards the port towns of Zeila and Berbera as Araya invoked the names of Ethiopian Emperors like Amda Tseyon, Dawit, Yeshaq and Zera Yaqob who'd all been victorious over the "Somali horde."

Ethiopian soldiers off for the front in northern Somalia, January 1965.

The Ogaden War ended in February 1965 with an inconclusive battle at Berbera and Egyptian soldiers amass on the Gondere frontier as Cairo threatened to support Somalia in an invasion of Ethiopia. Araya had finally agreed to peace talks under pressure of his advisors and the Imperial High Command who pointed out that even though Ethiopia sustained 7,613 total casualties to Somalia's 9,453, it definitely would get a higher body count with a sudden Egyptian invasion. Peace talks were held in the neighboring Republic of Juwama's capital, Juba, with the mediation of the Organization of African Unity. With Ethiopian soldiers occupying much of the former British Somaliland, Addis Ababa could negotiate from a position of strength and often did as Araya demanded the recognition of the current Ethiopian-Somali frontier and that their enemy's claim to the Ogaden be sworn off. Although Egyptian pressure prevented Addis Ababa from permanently occupying northern Somalia, this didn't prevent Araya from recruiting Isaaq civilian and military officials to form an embryonic government, proclaiming to represent the Republic of Somaliland with the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from Somalia entirely after the Treaty of Juba was signed in mid-1966.

The Treaty of Juba established the border between Ethiopia and Somalia, allowing the Ethiopian government to completely cordon off the Ogaden from Somalia. This included even the nomadic Somalis who had regularly ventured across the frontier to acquire lands that their cattle could graze on, encountering the experienced veterans of the 3rd Division. It simultaneously delivered a hit to the Somali economy and the Somali government's legitimacy who often depended on exploiting widespread irredentism during elections to ascend to power but they'd failed and the death of thousands, particularly the SNA's father, showed Somalia's abject failure in its pan-Somali aspirations. The establishment of the East African Community by Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Juba was perceived to be the founding of an anti-Somali Christian alliance for the purpose of surrounding and isolating Somalia, particularly when Ethiopia and Kenya signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact, or the Nairobi Pact, only a month later. In Ethiopia, the victory over Somalia's so-called hordes was heralded across the country and thousands of Ethiopian soldiers marched through Addis Ababa, saluted by the Emperor and Empress who congratulated them and the Ethiopian peoples.

An anti-Somalia rally in Addis Ababa, February 1965.

However, the Ogaden War had left the Ogaden ravaged as the Imperial government's development projects were cancelled with the ongoing war and mobilization was started. Reconstruction started after Araya mandated that the Imperial Highway Authority oversee the process of constructing a road network across the Ogaden and Araya personally poured vast amounts of money in rebuilding Jijiga. The Addis-Djibouti Railway was restored, though somewhat superseded by the Asmara-Asaita-Addis Railway that'd been constructed in the midst of the Ogaden War, bringing in imports of Soviet arms and exports of cash crops to Western markets shortly after its inauguration. Ogadeni refugees were resettled across the country, mostly in southern Ethiopia where Araya provided sizable land grants for newly-established communities who became the basis for new Kebeles in the southwestern areas as the Union of Gihon extended its reach to cover the more tenuous parts of Hararghe, Bale and Sidamo on the Somali frontier. It cut off groups like the Somali Youth League and Western Somali Liberation Front, restricting them to Somalia as pro-Mogadishu figures in the province were forced to flee to Somalia for fear of capture by the Union.

The war also changed the geopolitical dynamic in the Horn, leading to Ethiopia adopting a pro-Soviet stance and Somalia taking a pro-America stance. Although Imru and Araya adopted a neutral stance with an onset of palpable tensions between Washington and Moscow, Stalin's friendly disposition toward Addis Ababa and Washington's reluctance to commit to supporting Ethiopia [3] combined with Imru's left-leaning reformist stance led to Addis Ababa having a friendly demeanor toward the Eastern Bloc. Though the Imperial government was very much anti-Communist, it wouldn't hesitate to accept assistance from Eastern Bloc nations where necessary and cooperated with countries like Tito's Yugoslavia to establish the Non-Aligned Movement. Araya was happily willing to align Ethiopia with socialist nations like Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana and Julius Nyerere's Tanzania in the anti-colonialist arena despite maintaining personal friendships with men like Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar. He also furnished material support to the Royalists in Egypt's intervention in North Yemen, although this may've been to destabilize Egypt in response to a possible Egyptian invasion from Sudan that was undermined by Ethiopian support for Darfur and Juwama.

Ethiopian artillery fires on Egyptian forces in Sudan in a border incident, 1965/66.

With the Egyptian annexation of north Sudan in 1947, Ethiopia now shared a direct frontier with her historical opponent and became paranoid at the possibility of an Egyptian invasion. Something that served to only contribute to their shared animosity toward the other was Egypt's support for Somalia in the military sphere [4] and its irredentist aspirations in the Ogaden. Cairo's open support for the Eritrean Liberation Front did nothing to ease the historical conflict, especially when Ethiopia announced her intentions to build a dam on the Nile River and supported the Darfur insurgents as well as the Yemeni Royalists. Ethiopia, willing to use any means to win, successfully used Egypt's occupation of north Sudan in a propaganda campaign appealing to Orthodox Christian Eritreans in counterinsurgency operations and very nearly wiped out the ELF's armed wing after killing Hamid Idris Awate. It would ultimately culminate in their direct collusion decades later but the precedent was set with the conflict over the Nile as early as the 1300s.

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[1] Named after Emperor Zera Yaqob (r. 1434-68) for his victory over the Adal Sultanate.

[2] Named after Emperor Amda Tseyon (r. 1313-42) for his victories over Ifat and Fatagar as well as his incorporation of them into Ethiopia and bringing Zeila under Ethiopian control in 1328.

[3] See UNITED STATES MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO ETHIOPIA, 1953-1974: A REAPPRAISAL OF A DIFFICULT PATRON-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP by Lemmu Baissa for more.

[4] See Wings Over Ogaden: The Ethiopia-Somali War, 1978-79 by Tom Cooper for more.

Hagre · Jan 8, 2020

Africa, Be First

Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy

Barthelemy Boganda's tenure saw the continuation of many of Eboue's policies but the President would also pursue a divergent course. It was under him that Brazzaville adopted an anti-colonialist stance and worked alongside Garveyist Liberia - under Carlos Cooks - in supporting Patrice Lumumba's Stanleyville government during the Congolese Civil War by assisting in training of Lumumbist forces. Boganda's Garveyist leanings helped but it was his ultimate aim of establishing a union of Central Africa's Romance-speaking states, though Eboue's domestic development programs were quickly picked to continue a relatively quick development process. Despite Equatoria's bright future, it was wracked with regionalist pressures that could tear it asunder and it didn't help that the Marxist-Leninist Union of Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) in Cameroonian province, led by Ruben Um Nyobè, and led to Boganda taking on an unabashedly fervent anti-Socialist stance with his desire to form a bloc of pro-Western African states. Desiring to emulate French democracy and continue to maintain good relations despite his anti-colonialist views, Boganda didn't hesitate to take Paris' assistance in ruthlessly suppressing the UPC and force it into exile with Nyobè's death in September 1958.

The Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (MESAN) was utilized to supersede the regional political character that'd characterized the former French Equatorial Africa and form an Equatorian identity among its various peoples to promote Boganda's same French-style Republic. This was helped in part by Eboue's cultivation of an indigenous middle class via education of traditional leaders, seeing particular success with a predominantly Muslim-Ouaddaïan Chadian nobility who'd come to fear the militant Socialist ideology that so many African independence movements had embraced. Many Francophone Equatorian elites had little love for Socialism, leading to MESAN receiving quite a few votes with the popularity of François Tombalbaye's Equatorian Progressive Party (PPE) as Tombalbaye managed to unite Christians and Muslims alike. Although it was unable to win at the national level, the PPE did possess a sizable enough support base in Chad and this gave Tombalbaye the opportunity to become Governor of Chad with the help of Boganda. Even as Chadian elites opposed this decision and feared Tombalbaye's ability to unite Chadians regardless of differences, Boganda viewed him as the ideal model of an Equatorian leader and favored him.

After finally securing his hold on power, Boganda facilitated a "modernization from above" policy that saw a rigorous process of controlled modernization as was done in Chad. Infrastructure was key to this process as public works projects supported the economic modernization of the more backwards regions like his native Ubangi-Shari province and the construction of a nationwide road network centered at Brazzaville. The lingua franca of the country was French, allowing for better communication between the country's various groups and the maintenance of friendly relations with Equatoria's former colonizer who was desperate to retain what influence it held on the African Continent after its Algerian debacle. Charles de Gaulle's mission of restoring France to its former Great Power status included projecting its power into African nations where its influence could still be felt and that included Patrice Lumumba's Congo.

Boganda receives de Gaulle in Brazzaville, February 1962.

Speaking of Patrice Lumumba's Congo, it was in a pitiful state following the end of the Congolese Civil War in 1965. The subsequent elections saw the MNC ascend to power with Lumumba focusing on the rebuilding process in which the Congo's rich mineral resources were ruthlessly exploited to fund Lumumba's projects alongside loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington and Paris. This saw an inauguration of Africa's largest public works programs spread across one of the Continent's largest countries and Lumumba used the opportunity to implement wide-reaching reforms in the process. This included the federalization of the Congo with the establishment of provincial peoples' assemblies who served as local administration as the federal government took over the responsibilities of the state in much a similar fashion to that of the US and its own states. Lumumba's reforms were followed by the massive reorganization of the Congolese National Army, particularly its transformation from an infantry-heavy force of 2.1 million men to a mobile force of a number of 500,000 well-trained and well-armed soldiers with joint French-Soviet training as well as a substantial reserve force of 1.2 million veterans.

Monrovia also contributed significantly to the Congolese Reconstruction, providing loans and advisors to Lumumba's government as Carlos Cooks attempted to convince Lumumba to join the Liberian Bloc. Following Marcus Garvey's retirement in '55, Carlos Cooks had come to the forefront of the Universal Negro Improvement Association with William Tubman's support but primarily his reputation as a fiery orator and fierce ethnic nationalist advocating for more New World Negro immigration. Although Garvey had fiercely defended the UNIA's Pan-Africanist ideals, the Pan-Africanist faction would be supplanted by the Liberian nationalists as its older generation was gradually replaced by younger, Liberian-born Americo-Liberian and indigenous Liberian members represented by men like William Tolbert. The annexation of Sierra Leone in 1940 provided Liberia with more manpower, vital resources and living space that Marcus Garvey ruthlessly exploited in the midst of World War II, providing the last wave of Negro immigrants to Liberia with land. It was particularly useful in a burst of immigration in the late 1940s, organized by the Peace Movement of Ethiopia that brought 400,000 Negro-Americans with assistance from Southern Democrat Theodore Bilbo [1] to Liberian Sierra Leone.

African-American immigrants in Freetown, Liberia, August 1947.

Adding to the ranks of the younger generations of radicals came the pro-Axis Black nationalists who advocated an alliance with Hitler's Germany and especially with Hirohito's Japan with the ultimate aim to forge their own Negro empire in Africa as Haile Selassie promised to Negro soldiers in Burma, American and African alike. This included figures like Arthur Reid, Samuel W. Daniels, Robert Jordan, George Schuyler and Langston Hughes who were joined by the "Great African Migration" in the aftermath of the Second World War after the chaos of race riots like that of Detroit in '43. The Second Great Migration consisted of Negroes migrating to West Africa, centered at the Republic of Liberia which had undergone a radical change from being an African backwater to a rapidly developing model under the UNIA whose efforts had yielded considerable results. A contributing factor was Charles D.B. King's failure to seriously undermine the Garveyite movement [2] and Garvey's success in overhauling the major structural issues under the Americo-Liberian oligarchy. By 1945, its most dire issues had been solved and Marcus Garvey's Liberia had become a power to reckon with, especially with the sudden conquest of Sierra Leone and the Lend-Lease scheme's bountiful support.

By the time decolonization started occurring in earnest, the Republic of Liberia was well-positioned to take advantage of it with the widespread Garveyite network at the forefront. Liberian factories would churn out the guns, supplies and anything else that militant African independence fighters needed to continue the struggle but they would find an extensive demand for Liberian guns from Black nationalist organizations in Southern Africa like the African National Congress (ANC) and Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) [3] following the execution of Nelson Mandela in April 1965 [4] by the Apartheid government.

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[1] See "We Have Found a Moses": Theodore Bilbo, Black Nationalism, and the Greater Liberia Bill of 1939 by Michael W. Fitzgerald for more.

[2] See Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: The Background to the Abortion of Garvey's Scheme for African Colonization by M. B. Akpan for more.

[3] Organizations like the ANC and ICU were heavily influenced by the UNIA. See 'Sea Kaffirs': 'American Negroes' and the Gospel of Garveyism in Early Twentieth-Century Cape Town by Robert Trent Vinson for more.

[4] ITTL, Mandela and the other defendants in Rivonia are destined to be executed by the Apartheid government.

Hagre · Jan 9, 2020

Solomon's Sons

Excerpt from Solomon's Sons: A Modern History of Ethiopian Jewry by Taddesse Yaqob

The Italian occupation of Begemdir province in April 1936 would come to impact the Falasha community for decades to come, as can be seen in their preeminent status in current-day Israel. The occupation of Gondar paved the way for its Jewish residents to ascend to prominence in a way they hadn't since the 1700s, prior to Gondarine Ethiopia's ruthless suppression. The ancient Imperial capital was to become a model city in the Duce's New Roman Empire and its citizens models for the parts of the country that were in revolt by that time - the Falashas were central to this. There had been quite a bit of interest taken in the Falasha community's revealed existence in the late 19th Century, particularly by Italian Jews who were among the first to start learning about Begemdir's Falashas. It was through the efforts of Italian Jews that a case was made to integrate these African Jews into Italy proper, starting with the establishment of cultural ties between the two communities and even proposals for a separate Falasha state along the rough borders of the medieval Semien polity where European Jews were also to be settled, according to Mussolini.

Despite the favored status of the Falashas that the Italian colonial administration planned, Falasha reactions to the Italian presence were mixed. Prominent leaders like the educated Tamrat Emmanuel rejected the idea of cooperating with the Italian presence and called for Falashas to rise up against the Occupation like Imru had. Other educated elites like Abraham Adgeh argued that collaboration with Rome would allow the Falasha community to recover from the historical damage inflicted on them by the Solomonids, in much the same way Afawarq Gebre Iyasus argued for a temporary Italian occupation to modernize Ethiopia. Adgeh became its most fervent advocate in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, cooperating with Afawarq and the Italian colonial authorities in Gondar to provide avenues of advancement to Begemdir's Falashas. Imru's 1937 February Offensives saw Yohannes Iyasu's Patriots relentlessly siege the city of Gondar with several attempted seizures that convinced Adgeh to advocate for the establishment of a Falasha force to guard not just the city's Jewish quarter but the communities spread across northwestern Ethiopia - it didn't help that the Falasha communities came under attack from Christians and Muslims alike for their perceived collaborationism.

Falasha Askaris somewhere in Begemdir, February 1937.

Amedeo approved the formation of such a force, hoping to integrate the Falashas into his planned Council of Empire with Adgeh representing all East African Jews. Although Adgeh demanded that he command these Falasha soldiers, they followed orders issued by Italian officers and continued to remained under Italian control in practice until the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941. The recruitment of some three thousand Falasha Askari troops was slightly bolstered by the conscription of the few native Jews in Eritrea and interestingly enough, a number of Somalis who claimed to descend from an ancient Hebrew clan. However, this Falasha force was consistently overstretched, protecting Falasha communities from regular Patriot reprisals allegedly ordered by Yohannes Iyasu and unable to support Afawarq's Amhara auxiliaries. Despite the military failures, Adgeh's efforts to uplift the Falasha people were surprisingly somewhat successful - at least in Gondar's Jewish quarter - and led many to align themselves with the Italian colonial authority, although this may've been due to a fear of what would happen to them if the Patriots were victorious.

The Allied invasion of Italian East Africa from Sudan saw the Falasha Regiment, or Solomon's Sons as Adgeh called them, sustain heavy casualties in the fighting in western Ethiopia. Interestingly, the regiment was the last to surrender and did so after the conclusion of conventional warfare in November 1941, even being praised by the eccentric and very pro-Zionist Orde Wingate. The end of hostilities in East Africa didn't mean that the attacks on the Falasha community ended, in spite of Yohannes Iyasu's attempts to rein in his men or Imru enforcing Imperial authority following the suppression of the 1943 Woyane Revolt. The Imperial Bodyguard was dispatched to guard Gondar's Jewish quarter and northwestern Begemdir's Falasha communities, though many of them had bought into the popular notion that all the Falashas had done was collaborate with the Duce's lieutenants and were critical of them. Some figures in the Imperial administration started to contemplate whether or not it was possible to "repatriate" the Falashas to Mandatory Palestine as the Americans had done with their former slaves to Liberia and let them establish their own settlements there.

The Regent was suspicious of the Falashas, though not to the borderline anti-semitic extent that Gonderes often held and asked London if it was possible that the Falashas be allowed to settle in Palestine. Although it was hesitant to do so, the British government allowed for a wave of approximately 4,000 Falasha Patriots and their families to establish their own communities in Palestine. The former Askaris were restricted from their own claims to pursue settlement in the Holy Land, closely monitored by the Union of Gihon and Mi5 in the POW camps that Imru opened in 1941-42. In Palestine, the Falashas intermingled with the pre-existing Yishuv community, many of whom were also Jewish immigrants from Europe and North Africa, curious about their African counterparts who tended to lean radical and were represented by the pro-Lehi Yona Bogale. Bogale's choice to join the Emperor in exile in Japan also made him suspect by the governments of Ethiopia and Britain but he'd redeemed himself by coming back to fight on the Allied side in liberating Ethiopia and went on in 1944 to willingly sign up for the Jewish Division's [1] campaigns in Italy.

Falashas arrive in Palestine, May 1942.

The small but quickly growing Falasha community played an influential role in the creation of the State of Israel where another wave of Falasha immigrants following World War II settled in Palestine. Many of them were veterans that served in East Africa, North Africa and Italy but some were also former Askaris from the Falasha Regiment. They were useful for when Egypt invaded Israel in 1947 where 20,000 Falasha soldiers, led by a stalwart Yona Bogale, came to make up the basis of "Solomon's Legion" which was responsible for defending the Negev front against relentless Egyptian attack. The rumor of what the Egyptians did to their supposed Sudanese brothers in Darfur didn't go unheard of in the Falasha ranks who were now determined to avoid falling into Egyptian hands, often fighting to death when the Egyptians seized a position. That fierce resistance and their combat experience allowed Solomon's Legion to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive as they spearheaded a counterattack across the Suez Canal and forced Cairo to the negotiating table in '49 when it was clear that there would be no help from the Jordanians who'd been busying themselves with annexing Syria after the 1947 Druze Revolt [2] and covertly aligned themselves with Israel.

Despite their debated Jewishness, the 100,000 or so Falasha-Israelis proved themselves vital in securing Israeli independence and came to influence Israeli foreign policy in Africa. Imru's Ethiopia was seen as fitting in a Periphery Alliance [3] as proposed by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in spite of the fact that Addis Ababa had abstained from the Palestinian partition. Emperor Araya promoted vigorously the national epic that the Solomonic Dynasty was descended directly from the line of Emperor Menelik I, the son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon - something that the Israelis exploited for propaganda use. The popular notion that the Christian Ethiopian polity was one besieged by hordes of Muslims and pagans also played into Israeli-Ethiopian relations - although debatable [4] - and made the Israeli situation a much more relatable one. The United Arab States' support for Eritrean and Ogadeni rebels, as well as Somalia [5] during the Ogaden War, did much to endear the Israelis' enemy to the Imperial government, particularly when the parliamentary Somali state was hijacked by Siad Barre's socialist junta after his coup in February 1968.

Falasha soldiers on the Negev front, October 1948-49.

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[1] Instead of simply being referred to as the Jewish Brigade, the numbers of veteran Ethiopian Jews who sign up bolster TTL's Jewish units fighting in Italy.

[2] ITTL, Abdullah ferments a revolt in Druze as a pretext to seize Syria and marches on Damascus in '47 with Iraqi and Turkish support.

[3] See Israel and Ethiopia: From a Special to a Pragmatic Relationship by Michael B. Bishku for more.

[4] See BELEAGUERED MUSLIM FORTRESSES AND ETHIOPIAN IMPERIAL EXPANSION FROM THE 13TH TO THE 16TH CENTURY by Travis J. Owens for more.

[5] IOTL, many Arab nations went on to support Somalia against Ethiopia like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Sudan. See Toward Northeast African Cooperation - Resolving the Ethiopia-Somalia Disputes by Daniel D. Kendie for more.

Sheba's Sons - Haile Selassie goes to Tokyo

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