Between Bombs and Good Intentions: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Italo-Ethiopian war, 1935-1936 9781782388722

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BETWEEN BOMBS

AND

GOOD INTENTIONS

Human Rights in Context General Editors: Marguerite Garling, British High Commission, Nairobi and Guglielmo Verdirame, University of Cambridge Research on human rights, or social and political issues closely related to human rights, is nowadays carried out in many academic departments, from law to anthropology, from sociology to philosophy. Yet, there is surprisingly little communication amongst scholars working in these different disciplines, and research that takes more than one perspective into account is seldom encouraged. This new series aims to bridge the divide between the social sciences and the law in human rights scholarship. Books published in this series will be based on original empirical investigations, innovative theoretical analyses or multidisciplinary research. They will be of interest to all those scholars who seek an audience beyond the confines of their academic subjects. Volume 1 BETWEEN BOMBS AND GOOD INTENTIONS The Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936 Rainer Baudendistel Volume 2 UNSILENCING THE PAST Track-Two Diplomacy and Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation D.L. Phillips

BETWEEN BOMBS

AND

GOOD INTENTIONS

The Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936

Rainer Baudendistel

Berghahn Books Books Berghahn Providence NEW Y O R K • • OOxford X FOR D

First published in 2006 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2006 Rainer Baudendistel All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baudendistel, Rainer. Between bombs and good intentions : the Red Cross and the Italio-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936 / Rainer Baudendistel. p. cm. –– (Human rights in context ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-84545-035-3 1. Italio-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936––War work––Red Cross. I. Title. II. Series. DT387.8.B38 2006 963’.056––dc22 2005056787 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 1-84545-035-3 (hardback)

To Astier

‘How many times can a man turn his head And pretend that he just doesn’t see? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind The answer is blowin’ in the wind.’ Bob Dylan

CONTENTS


List of Illustrations List of Tables Foreword Preface Map

Introduction Objectives and Methodology Historiography on the Subject Sources Transliteration

x xiii xiv xvi xviii

1 1 3 4 6

1. Switzerland, the ICRC and the Red Cross Movement at the Time of the Italo-Ethiopian War Switzerland and the War in East-Africa The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): Activities, Composition and Organisation Un posto al sole for the Italian Red Cross Rise and Fall of the Ethiopian Red Cross Ambiguous Relations with the League of Red Cross Societies

16 31 36 44

2. An African Solferino: the Emergency Medical Relief Operation in Ethiopia Health in Ethiopia at the Outbreak of the War Medical Services in the Ethiopian Army Ethiopian Efforts to Provide Medical Assistance The ICRC and the Emergency Medical Relief Operation

50 50 53 55 57

7 7

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Red Cross Field Hospitals in Ethiopia 73 A Meeting Near Korem, or the Disparity between Needs and Relief 96 3. Red Cross Work Challenged: the Respect of the Emblem Ethiopia’s Respect of the Emblem: a Barrage of Accusations, but Little Substance The Respect of the Emblem by Italy: Red Cross Hospitals under Fire Behind the Smokescreen: a Surprising Discovery

102

4. The Heart of the Matter: Ensuring the Protection of the Emblem Consequences of the Bombings for the Red Cross Units in the Field Prevention is Better than Cure: Notification to Italy of Medical Installations under Red Cross Protection Transmission of Complaints Regarding Violations of the Geneva Convention First Steps in Humanitarian Diplomacy Ensuring the Application of the Geneva Convention through an Inquiry Protecting the Interests of War Victims through Humanitarian Diplomacy – a Trip to Rome (24 March–1 April 1936) ‘Quella Benedetta Neutralità …’ The White Book on the War – between a Cover-up and a Contribution to Peace Revising the 1929 Convention to Reflect the Experiences of the War Sidney Brown, another Casualty of the War Humanitarian Action and Justice

168

103 110 160

168 171 173 176 180 185 192 196 200 206 211

5. Prisoners of War: Propaganda Prevails over Reality Charges and Legal Questions Prisoners on the Italian Side Prisoners of War on the Ethiopian Side The ICRC and the Protection of Prisoners of War Wrong Assumptions Lead to Wrong Conclusions

219 219 221 233 246 256

6. ‘Rain that Kills’: the ICRC and Fascist Italy’s Chemical Warfare Chemical Warfare between the First World War and the Italo-Ethiopian War Poison Gas in the Italo-Ethiopian War The ICRC and Chemical Warfare until 1935 First Reports on the Use of Poison Gas: Discovering the Truth Experience in the Field with Poison Gas

261 261 264 270 273 275

Contents

Silence on Chemical Warfare during the Mission to Rome The Defeat of the League of Nations on the Question of Poison Gas The League of Nations and the ICRC: Collective Security and Humanitarian Concerns The ICRC Response: a Request for Gas Masks Between the Spirit of 1918 and the Letter of the Law of 1929 An Intervention to the Italian Red Cross: Too Little, Too Late The Red Cross Movement Bows to the Inevitable Summary and Conclusion The Belligerents and International Humanitarian Law Humanitarian Action in Transition The ICRC and Its Humanitarian Action The ICRC and Fascist Italy ‘We didn’t know the truth’? Appendices 1. Chronology of Political and Military Events 2. Glossary 3. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in October 1935 4. Red Cross Field Hospitals on the Ethiopian Side during the Italo-Ethiopian War a. Field Hospitals under the Ethiopian Red Cross b. Foreign National Red Cross Field Hospitals 5. Bombings of Red Cross Field Hospitals and the Transport Unit during the Italo-Ethiopian War Bibliography Index

ix

279 282 285 289 291 293 296 303 303 305 305 310 311

313 320 321 322 322 323 325 331 338

LIST

OF ILLUSTRATIONS


1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

2.5 2.6

Max Huber (1874–1960), President of the ICRC from 1928–1944 Villa Moynier, the ICRC’s headquarters from 1933 to 1939 Paul Logoz (1888–1973), Vice-President Guillaume Favre (1875–1942), Vice-President and Chairman of the Ethiopia Commission Carl J. Burckhardt (1891–1974) and Jacques Chenevière (1886–1976) in 1939 Lucie Odier (1886–1984), the only woman on the Ethiopia Commission A Fascist salute from an Italian Red Cross Nurse Before the departure of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 2 from Addis Abeba to Dessie Ethiopian stamps issued in early 1936 to support the Ethiopian Red Cross Cartridges were an accepted means of payment for medical treatment in Ethiopian hospitals A soldier carries a patient for medical treatment to a Red Cross field hospital Sidney Brown and Marcel Junod, the two ICRC delegates, on their trip from Marseille to Djibouti Gunnar Agge, a former missionary and leader of the second Swedish Red Cross field hospital, holding a prayer service in the field Through a forest in Sidamo Region A Red Cross truck has to be pushed through a muddy piece of road in northern Ethiopia

21 27 29 29 29 29 32 39 41 51 54 70

76 83 84

List of Illustrations

2.7

2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11

2.12 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17

3.18

xi

Local people pushing and pulling the staff car of John Melly, the leader of the British Red Cross main unit, through a difficult piece of road 84 Towing a Swedish Red Cross truck over a rocky piece of road in December 1935 85 The roads in Ethiopia were often little more than mule tracks 85 The telephone station in the southern Ethiopian town of Ghinir 87 Thomas Lambie, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross, assists at the departure of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital 91 Meeting with Arussi tribesmen during the trip of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital to the southern tip of Ethiopia 91 When the Italians discovered rifle ammunition on a Swedish Red Cross truck in the forest of Wadara in January 1936 107 Bombs lined up for loading on Italian Ca.133 of the 6th Squadron on the Sciafat airfield near Mekele 114 Dessie. Bombing of 6 December 1935 121 Dessie. Bombing of 6 December 1935 121 Dessie. Italian bombing of the town on 6 December 1935 during which the hospital was hit 122 Dessie. Emperor Haile Selassie at a modern Swiss-made Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun 123 Melka Dida. Marcel Junod with Eric Smith and Kurt Allander 129 Melka Dida. The Swedish Red Cross field hospital before the bombing raid 130 Melka Dida. Suspended flags of Sweden, the Red Cross and Ethiopia, in conformity with the Geneva Convention of 1929 131 Melka Dida. The Swedish Red Cross field hospital on the banks of river Genale Doria on 23 December 1935 132 Melka Dida. Bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital on 30 December 1935 133 Melka Dida. Sketch drawing of the effects of the bombing 134 Departing from Stockholm for Addis Abeba 136 Melka Dida. Gunnar Lundström severely wounded on the head during the Italian bombing raid 136 Negele. Burial ceremony for Gunnar Lundström 137 A patrol of two Italian Ca.101 near Amba Aradam 140 Amba Aradam. The pilot of an Italian reconnaissance plane discovered on 16 January 1936 a cavern on the mountain with, near-by, three Red Cross flags on the ground 141 Korem plain. The British Red Cross field hospital, photographed probably on 3 March 1936 146

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

3.19 Korem plain. Panoramic view of the now complete British Red Cross field hospital on the edge of the vast plain on 4 March 1936, the day of the bombing 147 3.20 Korem plain. During the bombing of the British Red Cross on 4 March 1936 148 3.21 Korem plain. An Ethiopian killed in the bombing raid under a tent 149 3.22 Korem plain. Immediately after the bombing 150 3.23 Korem plain. After the bombing 151 3.24 Carl Gustaf von Rosen, the Swedish Red Cross pilot under the wing of the Red Cross Fokker in Ethiopia 154 3.25 The Red Cross Fokker at Yrga Alem in southern Ethiopia 155 3.26 Korem plain. The Ethiopian Potez and the Ethiopian Red Cross Fokker with its emblems painted on the tip of the wings on 17 March 1936 156 3.27 Korem plain. The two burning planes recognizable by the smoke rising into the sky in the afternoon of 17 March 1936 158 3.28 Korem plain. The remains of the destroyed Red Cross plane 159 4.1 Sidney H. Brown in front of the Red Cross plane in Addis Abeba 207 5.1 Stanisław Belau and Tadeusz Medynski of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 5 kneeling in front of their Italian captors 229 5.2 Eritrean Askaris whose right arm and left foot had been amputated by the Ethiopians after the battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896 235 5.3 Sidney Brown with the Italian deserter Sergio Costante in Addis Abeba 252 5.4 Carl Gustaf von Rosen and four of the five Italian prisoners of war visited in Dessie by the ICRC 254 6.1 An unexploded mustard gas bomb in Bale province to where the second Swedish Red Cross field hospital had been deployed 269 6.2 Burnt by mustard gas 276 6.3 Legs of an Ethiopian child whose feet show the typical blisters caused by mustard gas 277

LIST

OF

TABLES


1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 5.1 5.2

Max Huber (1874–1960) Guido Vinci Gigliucci (1878–?) Thomas A. Lambie (1885–1954) Cash donations of National Red Cross Societies Sidney H. Brown (1898–1970) Marcel Junod (1904–1961) André John Mesnard Melly (1898–1936) Italian Prisoners in Ethiopian hands Italian Missing in Action (MIA)

20 34 38 61 68 69 93 240 244

FOREWORD


The role played by the Red Cross in the 1935–36 Italo-Ethiopian war was recalled on 4 October 2003, almost seventy years after the events, in Geneva, where the humanitarian organisation was founded in 1864 and is still active. The occasion for the debate was the presentation of Between Bombs and Good Intentions. The Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian war, 1935–1936, Rainer Baudendistel’s doctoral thesis. This thesis was defended before a panel of four experts: Professors Christoph Conrad (chairman), Jean-Claude Favez (thesis supervisor), Angelo Del Boca and Mauro Cerutti. This is an important book, a definitive statement. I have studied the Italo-Ethiopian war for years; I thought I had read everything and knew all that there was to know on the subject. And yet, the study carried out by Rainer Baudendistel unearths surprising new episodes and explanations. The major discoveries arise from research conducted by the Swiss historian in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It was known that the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giuseppe Motta, looked favourably on Mussolini’s Italy, but it came as a surprise to learn that attitudes within the ICRC differed so much, that the actions of the humanitarian organisation look confused and contradictory. Even though the author has worked for the ICRC, his reconstruction of the events in which the organisation was involved is extremely rigorous: he has made no attempts to conceal or justify the facts. See, for example, the organisation’s culpable delay in denouncing the Italian army attacks on Ethiopian field hospitals; its lack of impartiality in presenting the points of view and the accusations of the two belligerents; its ambiguity and reticence in reporting the systematic use of poison gas by the Fascist air force. Rainer Baudendistel is even harsher when he describes the mission of the ICRC delegation to Rome in March 1936. The visit was intended to shed light on some of the events and to denounce the crimes perpetrated by the Italians but, says the author, ‘in reality the leadership of the ICRC had succumbed

Foreword

xv

to the Italian strategy with its passivity and political naïvety having played into Italian hands. The organisation was caught in a skilfully prepared trap from which escape was almost impossible. The trip to Rome was a turning point. The humanitarian organisation had been surreptitiously sucked into the Italian orbit.’ The author focuses his attention on another extremely serious event concerning Sidney H. Brown, the head of the ICRC delegation in Addis Abeba. Concerned by the inactivity of the humanitarian organisation, by its diplomatic silence, on 3 January 1936 Sidney H. Brown begged the ICRC in Geneva ‘to defend the interests of the Red Cross with a little bit more vehemence’. Hated by the Italians for his detailed accusations, and barely tolerated by the ICRC, which did not appreciate his constant exhortations, he was called back to Geneva in April and subsequently dismissed. When Guido Vinci Gigliucci, delegate of the Italian Red Cross in Switzerland, found out that Sidney H. Brown had been abruptly dismissed, he boasted about having contributed to his dismissal, by revealing to the ICRC hierarchy that Brown was homosexual. The ICRC gave in, once again, to Fascist Italy, thus losing any credibility. ‘The ICRC line of action’ – Rainer Baudendistel observed – ‘was a compromise, ensuring a minimum of trouble for the ICRC, not a maximum of protection for war victims.’ There is not a single part of this sound reconstruction of events by the Swiss historian, which lacks style or firsthand information. The book is very well constructed and every page shows the author’s moral commitment. If we had to name the chapters we appreciated most, we would choose those in which Rainer Baudendistel paints the portrait of the fifteen field hospitals because of their wealth of valuable and so far unpublished information; the chapter in which he describes the attacks by the Fascist air force on the camps of the various Red Cross missions; and the one relating the incredible trip of the ICRC delegation to Rome and their encounter with Mussolini who fooled them by pretending to be an earnest defender of the law and of international agreements. Moreover we would like to mention the wealth of illustrations, some previously unpublished, which punctuate the narrative. This book by Rainer Baudendistel deserves wide distribution, not only because of its invaluable contribution to the subject, but also because it demolishes worn-out myths and restores the truth about a conflict that still lends itself to controversial interpretations. In Italy, for instance, despite the publication of official documents on the Italo-Ethiopian war, the systematic use of poison gas by the Fascist air force is still denied today. Angelo Del Boca Turin, June 2004

PREFACE


This study of the Red Cross during the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935–36 has its roots in two decades I spent working in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Ethiopia and Eritrea. When I arrived in Ethiopia to work for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1984, the country was the scene of a tragic famine on an incredible scale. The images of long queues of emaciated Ethiopians – men, women and children – gathering at food distribution centres in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, remain engraved in my memory. Adwa, Axum, Korem and Maychew became familiar names. Only slowly did I realise that some of these towns and the distribution centres themselves were charged with historic significance going back to the dawn of our era. Beneath the human tragedy and misery unfolding in front of our eyes was an ancient and fascinating civilisation. At the same time, burning questions preoccupied many of us about the role and, above all, the limitations of humanitarian aid during war, particularly in the case of Ethiopia where the government and rebel movements were locked in an uncompromising struggle. However, these important questions were often brushed aside by the pressures of the emergency with which we had to cope. When I began to study the present subject, those questions came back with even greater intensity. To my surprise, which, in retrospect, was absolutely unwarranted – one underestimates how little human nature changes – I discovered that many issues of humanitarian aid in the ItaloEthiopian war were similar to those I had encountered fifty years later. Chief amongst these were whether an organisation like the ICRC should speak out against violations of international humanitarian law or remain silent in the interest of the victims; how much influence it had on the belligerents; how to control the unavoidable instrumentalisation of its assistance; and, finally, how such questions impinged on the composition and

Preface

xvii

orientation of the ICRC itself. A subject of historic research had suddenly taken on a new dimension. Although studies like this mostly imply long periods of time in which the author is alone with his subject, it could not have been completed without the precious assistance of those mentioned here. I would like to express my sincere thanks to: – The historians and researchers who have so expertly guided and assisted me, in particular Jean-Claude Favez, my thesis director who gave his unwavering support and advice; to François Bugnion who gave me the original idea for this study; to Mauro Cerutti, Andrea Curami, Angelo Del Boca, André Durand, Roberto Gentilli, Luigi Goglia, Richard Pankhurst, Giorgio Rochat, Gunnar Rosén, Paul Stauffer, Gian Carlo Stella and Irma Taddia. – The staff of the numerous archives and libraries which I visited in the course of this study, in particular Martin Morger of the Archives of the ICRC in Geneva for his untiring effort to assist me in all aspects of the research; the staff of the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, especially those responsible of the section containing the archives of the Italian Red Cross; the Archivio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Aeronautica and his director, Col C.A. Fejer de Buk; the helpful staff of the Library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Abeba; the Riksarkivet in Stockholm; the Public Record Office in London; the Bundesarchiv in Bern as well as Ezio Tonini from the Library of the Pavoni Social Center in Asmara and Sara Ely from the Sudan Interior Mission’s International Administration in Charlotte, NC, U.S.A. – To my wife Astier Yohannes who took a keen interest in the study and shared with me the ups and downs associated with such an enterprise; my friends Felice Dindo and Esther Portmann who read the manuscript and offered their pertinent suggestions and comments; Naegzhi Ghebremedhin who encouraged me throughout the period of study; Caroline Macdonald who so patiently corrected my English and pointed her finger unfailingly at the weak spot of a reasoning; Mariarosaria Cardines for the Italian-English translations; Fiorenzo Losa for his help with the photographs; Robert Burtscher for the design of the map; last but not least, to the Istituto Svizzero di Roma which provided the extraordinary accommodation for several stays in the Italian capital. Asmara, July 2005

Map of the Horn of Africa

INTRODUCTION


Objectives and Methodology The Italo-Ethiopian war (3 October 1935–5 May 1936) was a turning point for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and probably one of the most significant events in its history. Coinciding with an important phase of the break down of the post-First World War order, the war marked the beginning of the ICRC’s modern humanitarian action. Although the war only lasted for seven months, it had a profound effect upon the organisation. By the end, the ICRC was transformed and had shaped the instruments with which it would respond to the horrors of the next decade of war. Some of the decisions taken by the ICRC in 1935–36 still have an impact today. This thesis sets out to answer two broad questions. The first relates to the two belligerents, Italy and Ethiopia. How did their governments and armies facilitate or hinder the Red Cross’ humanitarian action? With regard to Italy, this involves the study of the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals deployed on the Ethiopian side; the treatment of Ethiopian prisoners of war and the effects of the use of poison gas on the humanitarian work. With regard to Ethiopia, this includes the study of alleged misuses of the Red Cross emblem by the authorities and the military as well as the treatment of Italian prisoners of war. The second broad question concerns the ICRC and can be divided into four parts. The first part examines questions related to the institution itself: its organisation, composition and, particularly, the political beliefs of its members regarding Fascist Italy. It also analyses the role of Switzerland in the Italo-Ethiopian war as well as the personal and institutional relations between the hosting country and the ICRC. The second part concerns the way the ICRC responded to the humanitarian emergency caused by the

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Italian aggression against Ethiopia. It describes the humanitarian operation of the ICRC and the involved National Red Cross Societies in favour of wounded and sick soldiers as well as prisoners of war – the two subjects covered at the time by international humanitarian law. The third part studies the measures taken by the ICRC to ensure respect for the provisions of the 1929 Geneva Conventions. It focuses on the inquiry into allegations of violations of the first Convention by the two belligerents and shows how this led to the ICRC’s submission to Fascist Italy. The fourth part deals with Fascist Italy’s chemical war against Ethiopia and its consequences on the ICRC in the field and at headquarters, especially the redefinition of the ICRC’s role in times of war. Although this study focuses on the ICRC it also covers the other components of the Red Cross movement: the National Red Cross Societies of the two belligerents – the Ethiopian and the Italian Red Cross; the Societies which participated in the medical relief operation as well as the League of Red Cross Societies. It is not only a study about the ICRC but about the Red Cross in times of war. The study exclusively addresses matters, which directly concerned the Red Cross: the medical relief operation; the respect of the emblem; prisoners of war; and chemical warfare. Other subjects of controversy have not been examined, such as slavery – an important argument of Italy against Ethiopia; or breaches of The Hague law, such as the alleged use of dumdum ammunition by the Ethiopians. The same applies to Ethiopia’s accusations that Italy bombed towns, villages and churches. Mass bombings of largely civilian centres were a very new phenomenon of warfare. They did not cause a formal debate in the ICRC at the time. Such matters only became important for the organisation shortly before and during the Second World War. In this context it should not be forgotten that the civilian population became a subject of international humanitarian law as late as 1949. With regard to the methodology, I have chosen a thematic approach in which events are developed generally in chronological order. While this approach allows a clear development of the themes, it has the disadvantage that the unfamiliar reader risks losing a synoptic view. However, this seems to me a minor disadvantage which is partly offset by the chronology of political and military events in Appendix 1. The starting point of this study is the field where the action took place. An entire chapter examines the controversial and crucial question of the respect of the emblem by the two belligerents, less space was required to treat the subjects of prisoners of war and gas warfare. Once determined what exactly happened in the field and how much the delegates knew or could have known, the reaction of the ICRC in Geneva is examined. At this point, it is important to underline that there are three striking differences between the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war and today. First, the

Introduction

3

world of 1935–36 was still a largely Euro-centric world. The acceptance of Ethiopia as a member of the League of Nations in 1923 was a bold step because it meant that the African country was put on an equal footing with all other member states. People started to realise the implications of this decision during the build-up to the Italo-Ethiopian war. A dispute with a politically insignificant country, situated at the periphery of the world that mattered, suddenly endangered peace and cooperation in Europe. The instruments of collective security had been established in the first place for securing peace in Europe, not between a European country and one, which was considered to have barely fulfilled the conditions for admission into the community of states. It is therefore not surprising that many countries did not intend to strictly apply the Covenant when it came to defending Ethiopia’s interests. The ICRC also held this view which inevitably affected its own operation vis-`a-vis Ethiopia, causing it to take decisions which can be understood today only with great difficulty. The second big difference concerns colonial affairs. Many people in Europe, even in Switzerland, which did not have overseas possessions, shared the belief that African peoples needed a European master for their own good. Ethiopia, a yet uncolonised country in a continent otherwise under European domination, was an anomaly in this regard. Many had sympathy with Fascist Italy’s attempt to change this state of affairs. It is likely that most ICRC members, as well as its delegates in Ethiopia (Marcel Junod more than Sidney Brown) were of the same opinion. The problem is that these feelings were seldom openly expressed but existed subliminally. It is difficult to say to what extent they have influenced certain decisions but that they did is hardly contestable. The third difference relates to the fact that in 1935 the Red Cross was the only humanitarian player bringing assistance to war victims. Even the ICRC despite having dealt with war since its foundation, was new to direct action in the field and had to come to terms with many problems for the first time. There were no other similar organisations, unlike nowadays when numerous International and Non-Governmental Organisations stimulate and compete with each other. Humanitarian action was not yet a business of professionals but an act of charity by amateurs.

Historiography on the Subject There is a vast amount of literature about the Italo-Ethiopian war in general of which the bibliography gives a rapid but necessarily incomplete overview. Very useful for the purpose of this study was Angelo Del Boca’s Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, of which the second volume is dedicated to the war itself (La conquista dell’Impero). Military history is well researched, in particular through the studies of Giorgio Rochat. The same

4

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

applies to gas warfare, for which Del Boca, Rochat and Roberto Gentilli have made significant contributions. Interestingly, the Italian bombings of hospitals under Red Cross protection have been given very little attention in Italian historiography and not much more was done on the Ethiopian side. This study fills the gap by using the information provided by the Italian military archives, in particular the Archivio Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Aeronautica (AUSSMA). The same remark can be made for the subject of prisoners of war for which the Archivio Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito (AUSSME) proved essential. There are many histories about the Red Cross in general. Of particular importance were the studies of François Bugnion, Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des victimes de la guerre and André Durand, De Sarajevo a` Hiroshima. An essential chapter of the ICRC’s history during the Second World War has been examined by Jean-Claude Favez in Das Internationale Rote Kreuz und das Dritte Reich. War der Holocaust aufzuhalten? However, most ICRC operations in the wars leading to the Second World War have not been the object of in-depth research. This study of the ICRC and the Italo-Ethiopian war attempts to cover one of them while a similar study for the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is unfortunately still lacking and would be an interesting subject.

Sources Unpublished source material for this study, as far as the Red Cross is concerned, was first and foremost provided by the archives of the ICRC. Access included the Archives personnelles Max Huber which contain the President’s correspondence with members of the ICRC and close relations. During my last visit to the ICRC in 2001, I was also permitted to consult the files kept in the safe where, amongst other items, documents concerning matters of personnel are kept. Source material from the ICRC was complemented by information originating from different Red Cross archives such as the British, Finnish, Swedish and Swiss Red Cross Societies, the latter two kept at the respective national archives. Of particular importance were the very complete archives of the Italian Red Cross at the Archivio centrale dello Stato (ACS) in Rome. Other archives and collections as detailed in the bibliography have shed light on more specific aspects. Italian archives pose a distinct challenge in which research itself is often not the biggest. They demand, above all, a good portion of interpersonal communication skills with the result that research can become a more or less rewarding experience. All archives consulted for this study provided a wealth of often unexpected material. The Fondo Graziani in the aforementioned Archivio centrale dello Stato proved particularly useful. It contained

Introduction

5

valuable information on most aspects of the military operations of the ItaloEthiopian war, especially the telegram traffic between Rome and the High Command in Eritrea and Somalia respectively. At the same time, this Fondo allowed a precious insight into General Rodolfo Graziani’s personality, thanks to the personal remarks, which he wrote in the margins of the documents. This was very helpful in order to understand the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Melka Dida. The Fondo Graziani also included the original photographs of this bombing raid. The Archivio Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Aeronautica (AUSSMA) contained all information on the bombing raids carried out by the Italian Air Force. The clearly arranged files allow the researcher to follow the events on a daily basis through the complete chain of command, from the Air Force Command to the pilot involved in reconnaissance or bombing. A cautionary remark must be made to the pilots’ reports. Although they are normally originals, they cannot be blindly trusted. In one instance (the destruction of the Red Cross plane on 17 March 1936), a report was rewritten in order to make it conform to the others. Quite a number of original photographs, mostly of excellent quality, have also been kept in the files. Thanks to this archive, all bombing raids in which hospitals or material under Red Cross protection were involved could be studied, often in surprising detail. The Archivio Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito (AUSSME) contains several hundred files on the Italo-Ethiopian war. Exhaustive research is almost impossible, not only because of its volume but also because of the restrictions connected to its consultation. A strict rule is enforced that only three files can be ordered per working day of four hours only. This is bearable as long as the researcher knows where to look for the information. If, however, this is not the case, research becomes very difficult and often a simple question of luck. For the political and diplomatic aspects, the two archives at the Ministero degli Affari Esteri contain all the necessary information: on one hand, the Archivio storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (ASMAE) and, on the other, the archives of the former Ministry of Colonies, the Archivio storico del Ministero dell’Africa Italiana (ASMAI). The same restrictions on numbers of files to be consulted per day, as in the archives of the Army, are applied here, but the informative inventory and friendly staff help to overcome this practical and often nerve-racking obstacle to research. The big difficulty for this type of study is the lack of Ethiopian government sources. Most of the government archives have been lost or destroyed, although some unorganised files apparently still exist in the old Menelik Palace in Addis Abeba, but no amount of door knocking at various offices and authorities during the early and mid-1990s opened its gates. Consolation stems from the fact that all (or at least the vast majority of) historians studying Ethiopian history have to come to terms with the same

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

problem. This type of challenge has been overcome thanks to: the Library of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Abeba University which contains a vast collection of published sources; the Stephen Wright Collection with many newspaper clippings at the National Library & Archives in Addis Abeba; and finally eyewitnesses of whom quite a few were still alive at the time of research. They have provided precious firsthand information. Historic studies in Amharic are scanty and have not been taken into account for this study. Once more, Italian archives come to the rescue of the historian, at least to some extent. Thanks to a very efficient and omnipresent intelligence service, the Italian army was able to collect lots of material about its adversary. In particular, the relevant services have intercepted a considerable number of communications between Emperor Haile Selassie and his field commanders. They are preserved in specific files in the already mentioned Italian archives. Although translated from the original Amharic into Italian by local employees, they give a prima facie accurate and very valuable picture of what was happening on the Ethiopian government side. However, it is unfortunately impossible to say how much of the total volume of Ethiopian communications the Italians were able to intercept in this way.

Transliteration Transliteration from Amharic into English presents difficulties, which cannot be solved to the satisfaction of everybody. If a scientific system is used, the words become unreadable for a non-linguist, if a pragmatic solution is chosen, the system is sometimes arbitrary. Faced with this dilemma, the present study, like most others, destined for a wider public, prefers readability to a scientific approach. Spellings of geographic names are made in accordance with the National Atlas of Ethiopia, Addis Abeba, 1988. If a particular location was not listed the original spelling, as much as possible in English, was used. With regard to names of persons, the most common spelling in English was normally chosen, such as Haile Selassie, selected from almost a dozen versions. Last but not least, the glossary in Appendix 2 lists the meanings of the Ethiopian words and explains the Ethiopian military and court titles mentioned in this study.

1 SWITZERLAND, THE ICRC AND THE RED CROSS MOVEMENT AT THE TIME OF THE ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR


‘Max Huber reckons that it would not be difficult to find that the Pact has been broken. One can see now how thoughtless it was of the League of Nations to admit Ethiopia, a country which does not deserve other nations risking a war to protect it.’ Summary of a discussion held at the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 3 October 1935, the first day of the Italo-Ethiopian war1

Switzerland and the War in East-Africa Fascist Italy’s Influence upon Swiss Foreign Policy before the War Fascist Italy played a crucial role in Swiss foreign policy in the mid-1930s. For the Swiss Foreign Minister, Giuseppe Motta, himself originating from the Italian speaking Canton of Ticino, friendly relations with Switzerland’s powerful southern neighbour were a matter of necessity. There were two main reasons. First, Motta considered that, in terms of international politics, Italy was a key ally of France and the United Kingdom in the effort to neutralise both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – a card which Mussolini skilfully played at the meeting in Stresa in April 1935. Italy, on the side of the western liberal democracies against the brown and red danger, was seen as being the best guarantee of Switzerland’s independence. Secondly, Switzerland had important economic assets in Italy, valued in 1935 at over 600 million Swiss Francs by the Swiss Bankers Association. More than eighteen thousand Swiss lived in Italy, often occupying significant functions in trade, commerce and industry.

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In contrast, Switzerland’s relations with Ethiopia were of marginal importance. Although Swiss nationals, such as Alfred Ilg, had played a key role in the modernisation of Ethiopia under Emperor Menelik II around the turn of the century, Switzerland had entered into official relations with the East African country only in 1933 when a Traité d’Amitié et de Commerce was concluded. Emperor Haile Selassie probably had a greater interest in developing relations with Switzerland than vice versa, as was underlined by the fact that an Ethiopian General Consulate was opened in Zürich soon after the signature of the treaty, while the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not in a hurry to do likewise in Addis Abeba. The Emperor’s interest in developing relations with small countries like Switzerland was aimed at restricting the influence of the colonial powers in the region, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, which had their eyes on the as yet uncolonised Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Ambassador in Paris explained to the Swiss Chargé d’affaires that Ethiopia needed trucks, arms and education for young Ethiopians. Interesting prospects lay ahead for certain sectors of the Swiss economy, eager for orders and still struggling with the repercussions of the world economic crisis of the early 1930s. While Swiss-Italian relations were officially considered to be very good, there were a number of frictions, which kept Swiss diplomacy constantly on the alert. On one hand, there were the activities of Italian anti-Fascists in Switzerland and the often acid criticism by the Swiss Socialist press of a very sensitive Mussolini. On the other hand, there was Mussolini’s ambiguous attitude towards the italianità of the Canton of Ticino, which could have had potentially grave consequences for Switzerland’s territorial integrity. Beneath all this, was a much more serious issue – the fact that Mussolini’s authoritarian regime and the Swiss representative democracy were incompatible and a continuous threat for each other. Motta and his Minister in Rome, Georges Wagnière, were well aware of the difficulties, but believed quite optimistically that one could do business with the Fascists, perhaps even domesticate their excesses over time. In the process they underestimated the duplicity and cynicism of which Mussolini and his regime were capable. Given these underlying tensions in Swiss-Italian relations, Italy’s preparations for war with Ethiopia in spring and summer of 1935 provided a welcome breathing space for Swiss diplomacy. In July, Wagnière informed Motta, in quite Machiavellian terms that the colonialisation of Ethiopia was in the best interest of Switzerland and that he hoped that the Swiss press would not champion too much the cause of Ethiopian liberties. ‘It would be in our interest, for reasons on which I will not dwell, to see Italy develop its colonial empire and create its own concerns overseas.’2 Motta entirely agreed with this assessment in a pencilled comment at the margin of the report from Rome. For Wagnière, Italian expansion to Ethiopia was not only in the interest of Swiss-Italian relations. There was much more to it. In his opinion, Italy

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had a right to colonial expansion. Ethiopia, in turn, could only gain from such an experience. The Swiss Minister was of the firm conviction that the country of the Negus should not have been accepted into the League of Nations in 1923 because it had never fulfilled the conditions for admission. The Ethiopian government did not exercise effective control over its territory and the country was in a state of anarchy and barbarism. The best solution, at this stage, would have been to exclude Ethiopia from the League, cutting short its dispute with Italy. Wagnière believed there was little point in upholding the principles of collective security on behalf of an uncivilised nation, particularly at the cost of peace in Europe. Ethiopia was not worth such a high price. In fact, Wagnière fully espoused Italy’s own argument thereby placing himself in the colonialist and imperialist tradition which had divided up the African continent. He was far from being alone. Motta had already expressed very similar arguments when Ethiopia was admitted into the League of Nations. There was no need to worry too much about the Swiss press, either. Most of the influential newspapers, above all the liberal SwissGerman Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Swiss-French Journal de Genève, also shared these views. A few disagreed, such as the Landbote and the more ideologically motivated Socialist press. Public opinion was also largely behind the two top officials. No wonder Italy was easily able to defend its interests in the months before the war, as far as Switzerland was concerned. A telling example is provided by a business deal involving Swissair, the national airline. Upon Mussolini’s instructions, Italian diplomatic missions were ordered to impede as much as possible important deliveries to Ethiopia, in particular arms and logistical supplies. Through its extensive network of informers in Switzerland, the Italian Legation in Bern learned that Swissair was negotiating with the Ethiopian government to sell four three-engine Fokker aircraft, which were too old for passenger service and unsuitable for military service, according to the Swiss Ministry of Defence. The Italian Minister in Bern intervened resolutely with Motta on the matter. At once, the Foreign Ministry contacted Swissair and received assurances that the deal would not be concluded before the Italian authorities had been consulted. Motta informed Wagnière on these discussions. When the director of Swissair visited Wagnière in Rome a few days later, the Swiss Minister made a strong case against the proposed deal with the Ethiopians, arguing that it would have negative repercussions on Swiss-Italian relations. As a result of these negotiations with the Italian authorities, Swissair found another solution, equally satisfactory from its point of view. Instead of selling the four old planes to Ethiopia, they were purchased by Italy on behalf of its airline Ala Littoria. Swiss diplomacy had obliged the Italians at a time when no Swiss law prohibited exports to Ethiopia. The story had an additional twist, unknown to the Swiss authorities. The Italians, unsure of the effectiveness of Motta’s intervention, had simultane-

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ously taken measures of their own to ensure that the planes would not reach their destination. Arrangements had been made with a German pilot, Hans Heinrich Gindler who claimed to be in-charge of transferring the planes to Addis Abeba. During the flight over the Mediterranean Sea, he was supposed to divert the planes to Italian Tobruk instead of Egyptian Alexandria. Gindler was promised a sum of 100,000 Lire for the successful execution, in addition to a job in the Italian colony of Libya and an unspecified sum for each additional aircraft landing in Italian territory. The long arm of Italy also reached Swiss arms manufacturers. They had pushed into the Ethiopian market since the late 1920s, well before Switzerland and Ethiopia had entered into official relations with each other. Following massive Italian interventions in spring 1935, the Swiss Foreign Minister was asked to dissuade the arms manufacturers from such deals. Motta promptly complied. As a consequence, one of the companies, the Schweizerische Industriegesellschaft Neuhausen (SIG) complied with the wish ‘of the Federal Council that arms exports to this country [i.e., Ethiopia] were undesirable until further notice’.3 The second one, the Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon whose director Emil Bührle had been named honorary Consul General of Ethiopia in December 1934, was more reluctant. This was understandable, as his company had been involved in lucrative business deals with Haile Selassie’s country since 1929. In early 1935, the Emperor had confirmed another order of ten pieces of 20 mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft/tank guns and ammunition, in addition to the twenty-six pieces delivered in the previous years. Since there was no legal obligation to comply with Motta’s wish, Bührle executed this last sale in extremis, exactly one day before the Swiss Federal Council’s arms embargo against both belligerents came into force (31 October 1935) and four weeks after the outbreak of the war in East Africa. The delivery deeply embarrassed Motta, since Wagnière had already notified the Italians that the Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon had not delivered arms to Ethiopia in 1935. Anyway, the Italians did not believe the Swiss Minister’s assurances because they had accurate information from informers inside the Swiss factory. The matter remained a bone of contention between Switzerland and Italy throughout the period of the war and involved even the Italian High Command in Asmara. Motta’s manoeuvres to please Mussolini were not always appreciated by his colleagues in the Swiss government. At some point the Minister of Defence felt compelled to remind Motta that Bührle had done nothing illegal with the arms sales to Ethiopia before the arms embargo, all the more since Italy had also received arms and ammunition from Swiss manufacturers during the same period. Equally, it must be added that Switzerland was not the only country which had given in to Italian pressure. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Turkey, Belgium and Greece had done likewise.

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Sanctions against Italy: between Legal Obligations and Political Necessity Swiss-Italian relations became more strained after 3 October 1935, when Fascist Italy started the war against Ethiopia. Swiftly, the General Assembly of the League of Nations concluded, with an overwhelming majority of fifty against four, that Italy had acted in breach of the Covenant and that sanctions had to be imposed ipso facto by the member states. Switzerland had voted with the majority, but the decision put the country into an unenviable position: it was torn between upholding the ideals of the Covenant and preserving its vital friendship with Italy. Not surprisingly, the period constituted a major challenge for Swiss diplomacy between the two World Wars and was the most dramatic in Motta’s, by then, fifteen-year career as Foreign Minister. The Swiss Federal Council, following largely the course of action outlined by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, decided on a policy of compromise, taking into account Switzerland’s particular situation and interests. As Wagnière said, Switzerland could not be expected to adopt the same sanctions as the far-away Liberia or Haiti. By imposing such sanctions, Switzerland would suffer proportionally much more than others. Worse, it risked endangering even its existence should Italy respond with a coup de force on the Ticino. No sensible Swiss would accept such an eventuality in order to obtain compliance with the Covenant from Italy in favour of African peoples, said the Federal Council. This was perfectly in line with the thinking of the political establishment and large segments of public opinion. As a result, Switzerland watered down the set of sanctions decided by the League of Nations to a point that they were thought to be acceptable to its southern neighbour. While the financial sanction, the stopping of loans and credits to Italy, was applied as such (the sanction did not affect capital already invested), economic sanctions were modified substantially. Switzerland did not prohibit exports to Italy as had been decided, but chose to continue them under a clearing arrangement in which imports and exports were expected to balance. As a concession, the volume of trade was frozen to the level of 1934 so as not to take advantage of the situation to the detriment of those states which had adopted the full set of sanctions. Such a solution was not bad from a Swiss perspective. In fact, the clearing arrangement enabled Switzerland’s negative trade balance with Italy to be brought under control. With regard to the third sanction, the arms embargo against Italy, Switzerland also chose a different path. The first intention was to apply, as agreed in Geneva, the embargo towards the aggressor exclusively. When Motta informed the newly appointed Italian Minister in Bern, Attilio Tamaro, accordingly, he received a harsh reaction. Tamaro shrewdly used an argument which he despised profoundly, but which he knew would work on his interlocutor. Tamaro told Motta that such a one-

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sided arms embargo would violate the spirit and the letter of Swiss neutrality and that it would go down badly with Italy. The Italian diplomat added menacingly that Switzerland should remember that it was dealing here with Italy, after all. Motta promised to review the matter. One week later, Switzerland, having given due consideration to Tamaro’s objections, declared a two-sided arms embargo against Italy and Ethiopia, in line with Swiss neutrality, but against the spirit of the Covenant. As a result of this decision, a storm of protest broke over Motta in the League of Nations. To a large extent Switzerland had accommodated Italy over the issue of sanctions and had veered away from the common line in self-interest. The small country had, as Motta noted after the conflict, put political necessity over legal obligations. At this point a person who will play a key role in this study should be introduced. Max Huber, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), made a significant contribution to Swiss foreign policy during this decisive period. Huber, a professor of international law, had worked on several occasions as a legal expert for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the aftermath of the First World War. He had been central in elaborating Swiss policy on membership of the League of Nations just as Giuseppe Motta moved to the helm of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From this time, the two men remained in close contact. They were similar in a number of respects: they were committed to patriotic duty and believed strongly in the idea of the force of the law. They shared the conviction that the problems of international cooperation could be solved in a rational way, namely, by a network of treaties of conciliation and arbitration – one of Motta’s favourite themes. Both underestimated, perhaps due to the deep religiosity, which marked them, the evil side of human nature, which would create havoc in international relations during the Second World War. Shortly before the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, Motta contacted Huber to discuss sanctions. Early indications from within the Foreign Minister’s entourage had shown that there was no unanimity on how to deal with the question. Some, such as Albert Oeri, National Councillor and editor-in-chief of the influent Basler Nachrichten, advocated a tough line towards Italy in defence of the Covenant. However, Motta wanted support for a different line. He convened a meeting in Bern with his key functionaries and two outside experts, Max Huber and Walter Burckhardt, both well-known authorities of international law. At this meeting, which incidentally took place on the first day of the Italo-Ethiopian war, the gist of future Swiss policy on sanctions was defined, with Huber making the main input. Huber was in favour, unlike his colleague Burckhardt, of a more flexible interpretation of Switzerland’s obligations under the Covenant, based on the 1920 Declaration of London and on the practice of the League of

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Nations in recent conflicts such as the one of Manchuria between Japan and China. Huber also pointed out that a realistic approach was dictated by the fact that Switzerland was exposed to much bigger risks than other League members, owing to its geographic position. Huber’s argument prevailed. Motta had obtained what he was looking for and missed no opportunity to praise Max Huber’s contribution. This example is significant as it illustrates Max Huber’s intimacy with Swiss foreign policy, particularly on the vital matter of sanctions. It was not the only occasion in which he was involved nor the only subject to which he gave his expert opinion during the period under consideration. The ICRC President knew from the very start of the Italo-Ethiopian war what was at stake for Switzerland and he strongly advocated the appeasement policy towards Fascist Italy which was eventually adopted.

Closing the Door: Repercussions of the War As soon as the Italo-Ethiopian war had come to an end with the occupation of Addis Abeba on 5 May 1936, Italy started a diplomatic campaign to get the League of Nations’ sanctions lifted. Switzerland, one of the weak links in the chain of states which had imposed sanctions, was pressurised to prepare the ground. This coincided with an increase of irredentist activities related to the Ticino. Motta, however, refused Tamaro’s request to take an initiative in the League of Nations to lift the sanctions, commenting to the new Swiss Minister in Rome, Paul Ruegger that Switzerland cannot turn into a satellite of Italy. However, a few days later, Motta made a declaration at the annual congress of his Conservative Party that the sanctions had not achieved their purpose and that continuing them was not justified. Mussolini had not obtained what he wanted – an official Swiss initiative – but he at least obtained the desired public statement. The Italian press gave wide publicity to Motta’s soothing words. There was no further need for specific Swiss action because, soon afterwards, the lead to lift sanctions came from the United Kingdom, which had been the driving force behind declaring them in the first place. Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, set the tone with his declaration that the extension of sanctions was ‘the very midsummer of madness’ (Walters 1952: p. 683). Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, followed suit eight days later with a similar declaration in the House of Commons. When the next General Assembly of the League met at the end of June 1936, it was clear that the large majority of member states were against continuing the sanctions. Motta’s intervention in the Assembly reflected the general mood. He explained that sanctions had failed to stop the war against Ethiopia. Maintaining them had no other purpose than to punish Italy and to prolong a state of uncertainty and irritation. The Assembly had not only the right, but the obligation to declare that sanctions had lost their raison

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d’être. At the end of the debate the League of Nations decided, against two dissenting voices that sanctions against Italy should be abandoned. Italy had achieved the first step in the diplomatic battle for international recognition of its military fait accompli in Ethiopia. Throughout the whole period, Switzerland had been dealing exclusively with the impact of the war upon Swiss-Italian relations. During this time, Ethiopia barely featured on Switzerland’s political agenda, except on one occasion. Emperor Haile Selassie, having escaped from Ethiopia just days before the Italians took Addis Abeba, asked the Swiss government for permission to live in Switzerland. The request in itself was quite strange and did not denote particular diplomatic sensitivity, given the well-known pro-Italian stand of the Swiss government. The Emperor explained his request by saying that he needed rest after the trying military campaign and that he owned a villa in Vevey, on the shores of Lake Geneva. For once, there was no need for an Italian intervention. The Swiss Federal Council was categorically opposed to the idea. Motta told the Swiss Ambassador in Paris that Switzerland had granted such requests in the past, notably to Emperor Charles of Austria who fled his country after the First World War. He had been admitted to Switzerland on the condition that he abstained from political activities. Since Haile Selassie had neither abdicated power nor accepted Italy’s military victory, Switzerland was unable to entertain the request. ‘It could create very serious difficulties and even risks in our relations with Italy’, said Motta.4 The Swiss government reiterated its negative decision to Jacques Auberson, the Emperor’s Swiss legal advisor and confirmed that it did not even wish the Negus to stay in his villa in Vevey for the few days of the forthcoming General Assembly of the League of Nations. When Haile Selassie gave his poignant speech at the League of Nations on 30 June 1936, he stayed in the near-by Carlton Hotel. The government delegates listened politely to what the defeated Emperor had to say about the inefficiency of collective security and common action, but his touching words did not change the course of events. Governments had already decided to lift sanctions. Haile Selassie had been abandoned by the member states. Now that the tide of overriding political interests had swept Haile Selassie away and into a five-year exile to the United Kingdom, Italy’s prestige and power was at its peak. Switzerland no longer needed to carefully weigh its every move. Time was ripe to envisage bolder initiatives and exploit the new situation. Three days before the previously mentioned General Assembly, Motta was approached to intervene on the next point on Italy’s agenda – diplomatic recognition of Italy’s sovereignty over Ethiopia. However, the timing was judged premature. The situation changed only later in the year, after Germany, Hungary, Austria and Japan had responded to Italy’s wishes on the matter. Shortly afterwards, the United Kingdom, France and the United

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States moved in the same direction, transforming their Legations in Addis Abeba into Consulates in what was considered a de facto but not de jure recognition of the realities created in Ethiopia. This was the moment for Switzerland to step in. Coinciding ‘with a veritable salvo of friendly remarks about Switzerland’ initiated by Italy (Bonjour 1965: p. 190), Motta convinced the Federal Council to express recognition de jure and de facto at a time when Switzerland could still benefit from such a step. As a result, Ruegger informed Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister on Christmas Eve 1936 that Switzerland had extended the jurisdiction of the Swiss Legation in Rome to Ethiopia. The diplomatic wording in which Swiss recognition was coated did not lessen its impact. Ciano took note of the news with ‘visible emotion’. He added that Switzerland had shown understanding of international realities and friendship with Italy. It was a significant step, indeed, which Switzerland had accomplished. Of the states which had imposed sanctions twelve months before, the small alpine republic was the first to recognise Fascist Italy’s illegal occupation of Ethiopia. The diplomatic gesture implied that force could create law, after all, against the better conviction of people like Motta and Huber. The sanctions issue had compellingly demonstrated the shortcomings of international solidarity – and Switzerland had to share responsibility in this. Participation in the League of Nations had brought the country into conflict with the time-honoured principles of independence and neutrality. Uneasy compromises and a questionable course of foreign policy were the result, exemplified by Switzerland’s hasty recognition of Italy’s sovereignty over Ethiopia. To Motta’s surprise, large sections of Swiss public opinion did not see this as a clever political move, but as kneeling down in front of the mighty. As a consequence of these events, a major shift in Swiss foreign policy started to take place. A return to full neutrality – the traditional pillar of its foreign policy – combined with strong emphasis on national defence was again seen as the only alternative to participation in the system of collective security under the League of Nations. Salvation had to come from within the country, not from the outside. After Italy had left the League of Nations in late 1937 and in view of the war clouds rapidly gathering on the European horizon, the new policy was put into effect. Once more, the Swiss Foreign Minister turned for help to Max Huber, the President of the ICRC. Huber drafted the memorandum to the Federal Council in which the return to traditional Swiss foreign policy was explained. He made the point that the League of Nations had not fulfilled the expectations entertained at the time of its foundation in regard to universality and disarmament. The system of sanctions had not functioned as planned. Under these circumstances Switzerland had the right to return to full neutrality and to be exempted from taking part in coercive measures under the Covenant. The League’s Council approved the Swiss request on 14 May 1938.

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The Italo-Ethiopian war had provided the test case of how international solidarity and Swiss neutrality interrelated in practice. It was a largely negative experience for the Switzerland of the late 1930s, marking the end of political membership in international organisations for many decades.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): Activities, Composition and Organisation For the purpose of this study it is important to recall the two main principles which are at the heart of the Red Cross.5 First and foremost the movement was born in action. When Henry Dunant took care of the wounded at the Chiesa Maggiore of Castiglione after the battle of Solferino (24 June 1859), he did so spontaneously, out of an impulse rooted in deep concern for the human suffering around him. It was the right thing to do at that time. Dunant’s act was very similar to the one of the Good Samaritan, an idea dear to Max Huber. However, Dunant was not content with this and quickly went one step further. As soon as the immediate needs of the wounded soldiers had been met, he asked the French military authorities to improve medical care by allowing Austrian doctors who had been taken prisoner to work. Immediate action and pleading the cause of the persons in need were part of the same humanitarian gesture. The second principle at the heart of the Red Cross is that persons in need, as well as those who come to their rescue, should receive legal protection under an international agreement. Hence, the origin of international humanitarian law, defining the conditions, rules and obligations under which humanitarian work should take place. Over the last 140 years such agreements, known as the law of Geneva or Geneva Conventions, have been elaborated, revised and extended in order to adapt them to the developments of warfare. But it must be kept in mind that the codification of international humanitarian law always lags behind reality. This results in an important consequence: the Red Cross, in order to fulfil its mission, cannot be content with simply applying existing law. It must remain constantly alert to new forms of human suffering and be prepared to undertake action in uncharted legal territory.

Staying on Course in Difficult Times Immediately after the First World War, a new Red Cross player entered the scene. Under American Red Cross leadership, the League of Red Cross Societies was founded in Paris in 1919. It was a rather unusual organisation as it was created outside existing Red Cross structures and in the beginning excluded the National Societies of the defeated nations. There was an understandable, but highly ambitious idea at the heart. Now that the war

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was over, the vast resources, which National Societies had been able to mobilise, should be redirected towards building a better future. Waging of war was replaced by fighting against disease and poverty. In fact, the founders of the League even thought that the ICRC had quite lost its raison d’être and that it should be confined to an honorific place in the movement. The ICRC, however, was not of the same opinion. At about the same time, refusing to be restricted exclusively to activities in times of war, it enlarged its own mandate to include peacetime activities. The new mandate was approved in 1921 during a regular International Red Cross Conference. The scene was set for a clash between the two organisations, and the dispute within the movement on their respective functions occupied centre stage for the next seven years. The original plan of the founders of the League of Red Cross Societies was to absorb the ICRC, but they quickly realised the difficulties of such an undertaking, given the fundamental differences between the two organisations. While all National Societies, as stake holders, were represented in the League and had a legitimate say in its affairs, the ICRC needed to preserve its independence in order to act as a neutral intermediary in times of war. An ICRC built on the same premise as the League would be unable to function effectively in case of need. Co-optation, instead of geographical or political representation, was still considered to be the best way to appoint new members. The result was that two separate Red Cross organisations were operating at the international level. In the mid-1920s this dualism was described as ‘two heads which did not work together’ (Reid and Gilbo 1997: p. 80). Scores of bilateral meetings, numerous study groups, commissions and two International Red Cross Conferences were unable to come to terms with the problem, which was compounded by interpersonal difficulties between the leading officials. The solution finally came from the realisation that maintaining the two organisations as they were was in the best interest of all concerned. Max Huber, then Vice-President of the ICRC and his counterpart and friend from the League, Col Paul Draudt, managed in early 1928 what had seemed impossible a few years previously. They worked out the Statutes of the International Red Cross, which were unanimously approved at a Conference convened in The Hague later in the same year. There was nothing miraculous in their proposal. They essentially codified the status quo, built on the antinomy ICRC-war/League-peace as it had evolved since 1919. The solution was far from perfect. It left considerable room for interpretation and required trust and good faith from both sides. The Statutes of 1928, basically still valid until today, were a major achievement and reestablished peace and tranquillity in the movement, although relations between the two organisations were not free of frictions and irritations, as will be seen later in this Chapter.

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The conflict between the ICRC and the League was rooted in a much wider disagreement. The aftermath of the First World War was marked by the motto war ‘never again’. Permanent peace was going to be established through international cooperation and, above all, the Covenant of the League of Nations. The idea was to ban war, except in case of collective action under the Covenant, or in self-defence. Throughout the 1920s, an organisation like the ICRC which was active in times of war contradicted the pacifist mood of the times. It was seen as standing in the way of, if not betraying, the overall goal. Fighting against war was the priority, not humanising it. The pacifists’ argument was also directed against further development of international humanitarian law of which the ICRC was, by virtue of tradition, the guardian and the promoter. This attack on the fundamental principles of the ICRC forced the organisation to constantly defend its raison d’être, in the higher interest of humanity (Brown 1934: pp. 367–87, Huber 1941: pp. 18–29). It was a debate that continued well into the 1930s, almost until the Italo-Ethiopian war, which convinced even the most idealistic pacifists that permanent peace was not going to materialise and that the course pursued by the ICRC was right, after all. Under these circumstances, it was an achievement to obtain agreement for the revision of the 1906 Geneva Convention. In 1929, under the auspices of the ICRC, a diplomatic conference in Geneva adopted an improved and extended International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and the Sick in Armies in the Field and elaborated a new one Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.6 Both Conventions, especially the latter, were built on the experiences of the First World War, but also touched upon recent developments in warfare. They came in time to provide the legal base applicable in the war between Italy and Ethiopia. In the years between the two world wars, the ICRC had worked quietly on other legal conventions. In 1924, the ICRC’s legal affairs’ specialist, Paul des Gouttes, had prepared a draft convention on the use of medical aircraft in war. Discussion of this draft had been deferred in 1929 in order not to compromise the process of ratification of the 1929 Conventions. Only in May 1935, did the ICRC forward the final version to the Swiss government for comment and eventual discussion in a Diplomatic Conference to be convened, but political developments did not allow such a Conference to take place before the Second World War. A similar fate affected another, potentially more important, draft convention elaborated in the early 1930s on the protection of civilians in times of war. Plenty of legal work was accomplished before 1935 but there was very little practical action. In the early 1930s the ICRC was involved in only two wars. The first was the war between Japan and China (1931–33), which resulted in the occupation of Manchuria and the bloody fighting in Shanghai. The ICRC played a marginal role in this conflict through a short mission undertaken by Sidney Brown in the spring of 1932. It was a

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perfunctory intervention, more aimed at showing the flag than developing a consistent Red Cross operation. (This would have been difficult anyway as Japan, the aggressor, did not recognise a state of war.) Not much different was the ICRC’s involvement in the conflict of the Chaco (1932–35) between Paraguay and Bolivia. ICRC delegates were able to visit prisoners of war on both sides during two short missions and obtained the repatriation of severely wounded prisoners. Both humanitarian operations were so limited because they took place in distant theatres of operation, far away from the day-to-day preoccupations of European Chanceries and even more of the ICRC in Geneva. When the Italo-Ethiopian war broke out in 1935, the ICRC had made great efforts towards improving international humanitarian law, but it lacked operational experience to face the horrors that lay ahead. Moreover, the organisation was isolated from the rest of the movement. This was painfully realised by Vice-President Guillaume Favre who led the ICRC delegation at the fifteenth International Red Cross Conference, held in Tokyo in October 1934. Upon his return to Geneva, he complained to a meeting of the Committee: ‘Even delegates from the National Red Cross Societies often ask questions which show that the International Committee and its role in the Red Cross are little known. They know about the League and the humanitarian activities; for them the Red Cross is synonymous with hospitals, and even if they are vaguely aware that somewhere beside the League there is an International Committee, they are not aware of its role or usefulness’.7 A rude awakening was awaiting both the ICRC and the movement in general.

‘A Gathering of Wise Men’? Eighteen full members constituted the ICRC in October 1935 (see Appendix 3). They were mature and elder people, averaging fifty-eight years with the oldest being seventy-four and the youngest forty. Only four of them had been involved in the last big operation of the organisation – the First World War. The others had been recruited in the 1920s and early 1930s. A particular mention must be made of Paul des Gouttes, a lawyer who had joined the ICRC as assistant secretary in 1893 and who became its specialist in international humanitarian law. Co-opted in 1918 as a member of the Committee, des Gouttes was a professional humanitarian, while his colleagues were amateurs – people of good intentions who dedicated their spare time and energy to the organisation. The large majority had a university degree, five were lawyers and four had a medical background. Several members had been in the Swiss diplomatic service for some time or had been working as experts for the Swiss Confederation. All but one were Protestants and belonged to the liberal and conservative bourgeoisie, in particular of the Canton of Geneva. This last fact is quite striking. In 1935,

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Table 1.1: Max Huber (1874–1960). Max Huber, son of a well-known Swiss-German industrialist family, was a multifaceted personality and a leading figure in the Switzerland of the first half of the twentieth century. He was active in so many fields that it is almost impossible to list them all: professor of law; judge of international reputation; key advisor on Swiss foreign policy between the two World Wars; chairman of several supervisory boards, in particular the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (not to be confused with the arms manufacturer Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik Oerlikon) and Aluminium Industrie AG (AIAG), both founded by his father; President of the ICRC for seventeen years; writer on a vast number of subjects ranging from politics, law, humanitarian affairs, religion to society in general. No less than eleven honorary doctoral degrees bestowed on him from various universities testify to his merits. Behind this impressive list of occupations and distinctions was a man of liberal conservative convictions, inclined towards an elitist and authoritarian concept of the State, animated by deep patriotism. He was a man of integrity and high moral standards. Despite his importance, he was curiously withdrawn, timid and disliked being in the public eye, unlike his much younger friend Carl Jacob Burckhardt. Huber was not a man of action, a trait of which he was well aware; he lacked organisational skills, but compensated for these shortcomings with a conciliatory spirit and the ability to get people to work together. The Italo-Ethiopian war was a crucial and demanding experience for Max Huber. It marked the beginning of a period of intense action for an ill-prepared ICRC and, at the same time, required careful reflection on its role in modern warfare under delicate political conditions. The workload and continuous stress almost became too much, as Huber admitted himself at some point during the war. He was beset by constant worries and hesitations about whether the ICRC was on the right track. Cooperation in the Committee was not always easy because of some individualistic, even egotistic characters that composed it. Huber jokingly compared his presidential function to keeping ‘a bag of fleas’1 under control. He complained privately to Burckhardt that the Swiss-French colleagues considered him as an opportunist. During this period a growing conflict of interests between Huber’s humanitarian and economic affairs became apparent. As chairmen of the board of the aforementioned companies, Huber had good reason not to compromise excellent business relations with Fascist Italy where both companies, especially AIAG, were involved. In fact, the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war coincided with a major expansion of AIAG’s Italian aluminium subsidiary, Società Alluminio Veneto Anonima (SAVA) whose capital was doubled in June 1935 from 20 to 40 million Lire. When accusations of a conflict of interests were voiced by the Communist press in mid-1936, Huber reacted angrily and was deeply offended, threatening to abandon everything, because ‘even a dog, which has been thrown into the water, is entitled to shake off the water and the collar with the fleas.’2 It is interesting to note that Huber renounced any revenue from his function at AIAG as of 1 September 1939, the beginning of the Second World War, perhaps in order to avoid similar accusations as in 1936.

1. Jean Pictet, Allocution de Jean Pictet le 7 novembre 1984, p. 2. 2. ZB, Nachlass Max Huber, 2.75, Umschlag IV/1936, Huber to Burckhardt, 17 June 1936.

Switzerland, the ICRC and the Red Cross Movement

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Figure 1.1 Max Huber (1874–1960), President of the ICRC from 1928–1944. (Photothèque CICR (DR)/s.n., HIST-E-00116)

fourteen ICRC members had their origins in Dunant’s city or had established themselves there for quite some time. At least half of them were related to each other, demonstrating that the ICRC, at the time, presented traits of a ‘family affair’ in the literal and extended sense. There were only three Swiss-Germans, amongst whom the President, Max Huber (Table 1.1 and Figure 1.1) and Carl Jacob Burckhardt, who came to prominence in the organisation during and after the Second World War, as well as one SwissItalian, Giuseppe Motta, the Foreign Minister. Only two of the eighteen members were women. A surprising nineteenth member was chosen in the midst of the Italo-Ethiopian war: the former Swiss Minister in Rome, Georges Wagnière, who belonged also to the Geneva group. Eight ICRC members played key roles during the period under study: Max Huber, the President; Paul Logoz, one of the three Vice-Presidents (Figure 1.3); Paul des Gouttes; as well as most members of the Ethiopia Commission, especially Vice-President Guillaume Favre who chaired the Commission; Edmond Boissier; Carl Jacob Burckhardt; Jacques Chenevière and Lucie Odier. Turning now to the political beliefs of the ICRC members, as far as they can be ascertained, one view was shared by most, if not all the members: anti-Communism.

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat were an anathema to the bourgeoisie of the Occident. A consolidated Soviet Union seeking world domination through local communist parties, was seen as the mortal threat to Western values and civilisation, especially in the early and mid1930s. A sharp polarisation of society was the consequence. Switzerland was no exception in this regard. The fight against communism took place on two different levels, on the official and on the private level. The Swiss government’s anti-Communist stand received wide attention when Soviet membership of the League of Nations was debated in 1934. Giuseppe Motta made a passionate plea in the General Assembly against the Soviet Union, without success. The country was admitted on the recommendation of the big powers. Max Huber shared Motta’s objections towards the Soviet Union, as can be seen by the fact that two years later he still thought that the Soviet presence in Geneva presented more dangers than its absence. Carl Jacob Burckhardt held a similar view. His anti-Soviet convictions were rooted in his conservative background and had developed shortly after the First World War. He observed with growing concern the activities of the Soviet Union in the League of Nations and its influence in western European politics at the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war. The developments of the Second World War did not change his strong views and Burckhardt remained deeply anti-Communist, well aware that the Soviets distrusted him, too. On a private level, a particular anti-Communist initiative with international ramifications had its origins in Geneva. In 1924, Théodore Aubert, a lawyer and former ICRC delegate, founded the International Entente against the Third International, known in French as the Entente Internationale Anticommuniste (EIA).8 Its objective was ambitious: to defend basic liberties, international law, order, the family, fatherland and property against Bolshevism. EIA aimed at the downfall of the communist power ‘by all lawful means’. The association was composed of the Permanent Bureau, ‘the world centre of the anti-Bolshevik movement’, the National Centres (in eighteen countries in 1937) and the Conseil International which was supposed to meet annually. No membership list of the Conseil was found during the research for this study, but EIA entertained relations with famous personalities, including the Finnish President, Marshall Carl Gustaf Mannerheim who was also Chairman of the Finnish Red Cross, as well as the Swiss conservative Gonzague de Reynold, the father-in-law of Carl Jacob Burckhardt and a close friend of Max Huber. Most interesting for the purpose of this study is the fact that three ICRC members were active in leading positions in EIA at the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war. They were Lucien Cramer, a cousin of the founder T. Aubert, Guillaume Favre and Georges Wagnière.9 A fourth member, Rodolphe de Haller, the ICRC treasurer, was part of EIA’s financial committee. Jacques Chenevière was well connected to the

Switzerland, the ICRC and the Red Cross Movement

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association but held no official position. There is no indication that Carl Jacob Burckhardt was a member of EIA as was contended during the Second World War. In 1939, Sidney Brown (1939: p. 223), the ICRC’s former chief delegate in Ethiopia, became the first to publicly criticise the leading role played by ICRC members in EIA. At that time, three years after the mission to Ethiopia, he did not link his criticism with the Italo-Ethiopian war, as he was more preoccupied with what would happen to the ICRC’s neutrality if the Soviet Union became a belligerent. Yet the strong anti-Communist convictions of leading ICRC members had a direct bearing on how they judged Nazi Germany and, above all, Fascist Italy in 1935–36. Lucien Cramer was the most outspoken of the group, but surely not the only one to say that Hitler’s coming to power had saved Germany from the Soviet menace. He (Cramer 1936: p. 12) was convinced that: ‘The existence of strong governments at the heart of Europe is the most effective protection in the current fight to the death with Marxism. Germany, Fascist Italy, Poland, Austria and Hungary provide a bulwark against the enemy of our civilisation … and the efforts of the Soviets and their allies will break upon it.’ Carl Jacob Burckhardt may not have agreed entirely with Cramer’s views, but he thought similarly about Fascist Italy10 – an opinion widely shared in Switzerland at the time. Guido Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate in Geneva, acknowledged Burckhardt’s sympathy towards Fascist Italy by calling him ‘our great friend’. Even up to the beginning of the Second World War, Burckhardt believed that Nazi Germany could be kept under control by isolating it from Fascist Italy which he viewed as a factor of stability in Europe and a potential ally of France and the United Kingdom (Stauffer 1991: pp. 64–66). Nowhere in Switzerland more than in Geneva was the polarisation of political forces so manifest. The executive organ of the Canton was controlled from 1933 to 1936 by the Socialists under a radical and anti-Fascist Léon Nicole, while the legislative was dominated by the bourgeois parties. This resulted in an unproductive political standoff and in an effectively paralysed government. In order to fight the ‘reds’, the bourgeois parties were forced to unite and did not hesitate to include in their Entente Nationale Genevoise the extreme right wing and openly pro-Fascist Union Nationale (UN) of Georges Oltramare. EIA was fully engaged in this struggle and joined forces with Oltramare’s party, with spectacular results. In October 1935, in the Swiss national elections, Théodore Aubert was elected on the list of UN as a national councillor, allowing EIA to assume a role in Swiss politics. In this context it is interesting to note that Aubert had established contact with the Italian authorities in 1927, but relations only became close after the Italo-Ethiopian war, when EIA received generous financial support from the Ministero della Cultura Popolare (Cerutti 1988: p. 261).

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

The close relationship between the traditional political right and the extreme right in Geneva went even further after 1936. In 1938, the Parti National Démocratique, a pillar of local bourgeois politics, negotiated a merger with the Union Nationale despite the fact that the UN had lost touch with Swiss political reality because of its unwavering support for the Fascist model. The merger was never realised but the matter is significant as four ICRC members from Geneva11 belonged to the Parti National Démocratique. If one includes the EIA members, in 1936, no fewer than seven of the fifteen ICRC members from Geneva had links to organisations with pronounced pro-Italian positions. In addition, six ICRC members12 who were all either supporters of the Parti National Démocratique and/or EIA, had been or were on the board of the liberal newspaper Journal de Genève, a noteworthy matter because the newspaper was distinctly proItalian during the Italo-Ethiopian war.13 The ICRC of 1935–36 was all but ‘a gathering of wise men’.14 They were men and women of flesh and blood with distinct political opinions. Most were sympathetic to Italy. About half of them, in particular those originating from Geneva, were connected to the political right, even to the extreme right through the Parti National Démocratique and EIA. Ethiopia simply did not play a role in their considerations and if it did, it was negatively, as can be seen at the example of Swiss Foreign policy at the time of the ItaloEthiopian war. However, personal political opinions held by ICRC members did not necessarily determine the organisation’s position in the war. On the contrary, even if ICRC members had definite political opinions, it did not stop them expressing their outrage, often instinctively felt, against Italian violations of international law in the war against Ethiopia. A case in point is Vice-President Favre who undoubtedly belonged politically to the proItalian camp. On two important occasions – the first after the bombing of Dessie hospital and the second when the ICRC determined its position in regard to Italy’s use of poison gas – he was the first to request that the ICRC should protest to Italy. If he was unable to impose his views, it was not for political bias. Political convictions were not a reason per se for not expressing humanitarian concerns against Italy. However, they came into play on a more subtle level, as shall be seen in the course of this study.

The Swiss Cross and the Red Cross: Two Sisters? From the beginning the ICRC had a special relationship with Switzerland because the founders of the Red Cross felt that its interests were best served in the country whose perpetual neutrality had been internationally recognised. Officially, however, the ICRC was a private association, legally independent of the Swiss authorities. In the first fifty years of its existence, relations between Bern and Geneva remained informal, underlined by the fact

Switzerland, the ICRC and the Red Cross Movement

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that the Committee was exclusively an affair of the Geneva bourgeoisie. A qualitative change in relations occurred during the First World War, when the ICRC and the Red Cross in general became an important component of Swiss foreign policy. Under the auspices of the Swiss government and with the participation of the ICRC, a series of protracted negotiations with the belligerents resulted in a number of often large-scale humanitarian operations. They concerned, in particular, captured medical staff and severely wounded soldiers who were repatriated via Swiss territory to their countries of origin, as well as over sixty-seven thousand wounded prisoners and civilians who were interned and hospitalised in Switzerland from 1916 (Durand 1978: pp. 38–48). A mutually beneficial relationship developed over the war years. The Red Cross had permitted Switzerland to play an active humanitarian role, thus enhancing Swiss neutrality and contributing to the preservation of Swiss independence (Motta 1931: p. 228, Vogelsanger 1967: p. 174). Switzerland, in turn, provided a safe haven for the Red Cross, enabling it to deploy its activities throughout the world. Based on the experiences of the First World War, Motta and Huber argued that Swiss neutrality was in the best interest of the international community. The winners of the war only reluctantly agreed to this view in the Declaration of London, which paved the way for Swiss participation in the League of Nations with its military neutrality intact. The Red Cross had rendered a precious service to Switzerland. The ICRC was no longer a local organisation but had acquired national importance. The Swiss Cross and the Red Cross were seen as being interdependent and mutually reinforcing each other. They were like two sisters, in Motta’s words. Some members of the ICRC went even further. The relationship between the two was not one of equality, but of subordination. According to them, an ICRC disconnected from an independent Switzerland was inconceivable and would have meant the end of the organisation. Whatever the precise nature of the relationship, the First World War opened a new chapter in Swiss-ICRC relations, which lasted well into the latter part of the twentieth century.15 It was a period of unparalleled Red Cross enthusiasm, especially before the Second World War. Motta himself (1941: p. 64) did not hesitate to elevate Henry Dunant to the level of Niklaus von der Flüe, Switzerland’s historic protector and went so far as to say that: ‘He who does not love it [the Red Cross] and does not understand its benefits is not Swiss at heart’. In the words of the former Swiss Minister to Rome and later ICRC President, Paul Ruegger (1971: p. 36), the Red Cross was nothing less than ‘the moral capital of the country’. The official argument that there was an identity of interests between Switzerland and the Red Cross acquired the status of a dogma in the interwar years. Only a few dared to question it. One of those was Sidney Brown (1939: p. 222), who put his finger on the weak spot when he pointed out that, in his opinion, the neutrality of Switzerland and the neutrality of the

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Red Cross were not identical: ‘If it were so or appeared so, one could claim that Switzerland wanted to use its close relations with the International Red Cross for its own political ends.’16 Brown’s comment was very pertinent. If there was such an intimate relationship between the two, the independence of the ICRC was seriously threatened. What would happen if the ICRC’s role as guardian of the Geneva Conventions ran against the political interests of Switzerland? Applied to the case under study, the question was: how much freedom of movement did the ICRC really have in regard to Fascist Italy, given the pro-Italian stand of the Swiss government which had no intention of alienating its powerful southern neighbour? To answer this question ICRC-Swiss government relations during the Italo-Ethiopian war must be examined. From the outset, it has to be said that in 1935–36, there was no evidence of undue governmental interference into the affairs of the ICRC, unlike 1942, when the Swiss government intervened successfully in Geneva against a proposed public appeal on the conduct of hostilities (Favez 1989: pp. 223–27). Motta, the Federal Councillor in office and member of the ICRC, abstained from taking part in plenary meetings for the whole period of the war except when Marcel Junod debriefed in Geneva after his mission to Ethiopia. Motta used this particular occasion to get first-hand information on Italy’s use of poison gas and other issues related to the Red Cross operation. Bern supported Geneva in three main areas. First, the Swiss government facilitated the ICRC’s work in practical matters, such as by issuing service passports to the two ICRC delegates leaving for Ethiopia. Secondly, it assisted in matters of mutual interest, such as by undertaking research on the visibility of the Red Cross emblem from the air. The ICRC, in turn, was of service on certain occasions when Swiss diplomacy was unable to act. For example, in July 1935, the humanitarian organisation transmitted a diplomatic note from the Swiss to the Soviet government – the two had no diplomatic relations – regarding Ethiopia’s adhesion to the 1929 Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. Thirdly, there was a regular flow of information from the Foreign Ministry to the ICRC, especially regarding official reports originating from the League of Nations on the war. The exchange was not confined exclusively to Red Cross matters, however. There was one case when Huber suggested that Burckhardt share with Motta interesting political information, which he had gathered during his trip to Germany on behalf of the ICRC. Visibly, Bern and Geneva entertained a hand-in-glove relationship, facilitated by the fact that the key personalities were so familiar with each other. Max Huber was, by virtue of his close links with Motta, the most indicated person at the ICRC to deal with the Swiss government. The Committee’s members respected his pivotal role in this regard although perhaps with some suspicion.17 This arrangement explains to a considerable extent why there are no records of formal Swiss government interference

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into ICRC affairs, if it ever occurred. Such interference was anyway highly unlikely because Max Huber was perfectly aware of what was at stake, being himself one of the architects of Swiss foreign policy at this crucial time. Furthermore, in case of doubt, Huber and Motta had enough opportunities to discuss informally the ICRC’s stance, either by telephone or at the margin of several meetings which brought the two together outside the ICRC. Another question was whether Max Huber would have allowed such direct interference into ICRC decisions. The answer to this question is similar to what was said when the influence of political opinions of ICRC members on the position of the organisation was examined. There is no indication that Huber intentionally subordinated ICRC decisions to Swiss political interests – he was too much a judge and a lawyer to let this happen – but indirectly this close link probably influenced the ICRC’s position.

An Organisation in Transition The ICRC in the mid-1930s was not the large organisation it is today. It consisted of the Committee and a small secretariat, composed in 1930 of eleven people including one technical advisor, four secretaries and six typists. In the following years there were no significant changes in personnel because of the precarious financial situation. In 1933 the headquarters were moved to the Villa Moynier (Figure 1.2), a rented building in a public park on the shores

Figure 1.2 Villa Moynier, the ICRC’s headquarters from 1933 to 1939. (Photothèque CICR (DR), HIST-00654)

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

of Lake Geneva. The two-storey villa, in which Gustave Moynier, one of the founding members of the ICRC, had lived until his death in 1910, was large enough to accommodate the organisation. The Committee was responsible for policy matters and important operational decisions. It met seventeen times during the Italo-Ethiopian war. There was no regular schedule for the meetings, but they usually took place bi-monthly. The main operational work was accomplished by the Ethiopia Commission. Like all ICRC commissions it was exclusively composed of ICRC members, with the consequence that there was no difference between the overseeing board and the task force in charge of operations. The most active members were naturally those who had spare time and were not living too far away from headquarters. From this point of view it was an obvious advantage that so many members came from Geneva. The Ethiopia Commission had its first meeting on 2 October 1935, one day before the war started, and it continued functioning until 20 August 1936. Over this period, the Commission met seventy-three times, of which sixty-three times during the war. Work in the Commission represented a considerable time investment given the fact that it convened on average every three days for one to two hours. The minutes were written by a member of the secretariat and eventually covered more than two hundred typewritten pages. The Commission was originally composed of five persons: Guillaume Favre, the chairman (Figure 1.4), Georges-Elie Audeoud, Edmond Boissier, Jacques Chenevière (Figure 1.5) and Lucie Odier (Figure 1.6). Carl Jacob Burckhardt (Figure 1.5) joined the Commission at the beginning of 1936. A meeting was normally attended by three to four members, but on important occasions up to eight ICRC members took part in the discussions. The ICRC’s decision-making process reflected the amateurish character of the organisation. It was built on consensus and collegiality. If consensus could not be obtained, decisions in the Committee and the Ethiopia Commission were taken on the basis of a vote with the simple majority carrying the day. The process was made more complicated because no clear terms of references between the Committee and the Commission had been established. In addition, none of the Committee’s members, perhaps with the exception of Favre, had organisational skills. Inevitably all active members wanted to have their say, but they were not always available. This resulted in a complicated and cumbersome decision-making process, which quite often led to friction. This was exemplified in November 1935, a period of intense work during which the medical relief operation in Ethiopia had to be coordinated. National Societies urgently needed information, but the drafting of the corresponding Circular Letter had to pass to so many hands that Favre threatened to resign from the Commission. Although Max Huber was the uncontested authority, he was more the primus inter pares. He dominated the Committee with his intellect and his

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Figure 1.3 (top left) Paul Logoz (1888–1973), Vice-President. (Photothèque CICR (DR)/s.n., HIST-E-00117) Figure 1.4 (top right) Guillaume Favre (1875–1942), Vice-President and Chairman of the Ethiopia Commission. (Photothèque CICR (DR)/Boissonnas, Frédéric, HIST-E-00118) Figure 1.5 (bottom left) Carl J. Burckhardt (1891–1974), standing, and Jacques Chenevière (1886–1976) in 1939. Both were members of the Ethiopia Commission. (Photothèque CICR (DR), HIST-00120) Figure 1.6 (bottom right) Lucie Odier (1886–1984), the only woman on the Ethiopia Commission. (Photothèque CICR (DR), HIST-02762-22A)

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Between Bombs and Good Intentions

legal mind, combined with qualities like moderation and modesty. Since the ICRC was not hierarchically organised with defined areas of competence, Huber was constantly solicited for his opinion. A voluminous exchange of correspondence was the consequence, not only between him and the secretariat, but also with individual members who wanted to make their point. In addition, Huber was often consulted over the phone, sometimes even during meetings of the Ethiopia Commission. These internal complications had a lot to do with the fact that Huber lived in Zürich and that he only travelled to Geneva for ICRC meetings. Huber was perfectly aware of this inconvenience and tried to improve the internal working of the organisation during the Italo-Ethiopian war, but without much success. The ICRC continued to function basically in the same way until 1946, when Huber planned to establish a professional directorate, in which ICRC members no longer played an operational role. Last but not least, a few words on the financial situation. The 1930s were very lean years for the ICRC, which had suffered continuous budget deficits. The lack of resources was a serious handicap and permanent concern. Members were repeatedly exhorted to cut administrative expenses and make even small economies by, for example, using letters instead of the more costly telephone. The ICRC was mainly financed from three sources. The first and smallest was revenue from a fund set up during the First World War. The second source was revenue from the Fondation en faveur du CICR established 1931. It had been funded to 90 percent by the Swiss government and donations from individuals, especially a one-time donation of Huber’s Aluminium Industrie AG in 1925.18 The largest source of income, however, originated from contributions of National Red Cross Societies, but the amounts had decreased steadily. By 1935, the ICRC received one third less from the same forty or so Societies than in 1930. It was a worrisome trend because diminished resources in the mid-1930s coincided with a marked increase in operational expenses. Several options to increase the ICRC’s income were explored. The preferred solution was to raise the capital of the Fondation. This had been envisaged in 1931 but by 1938 no progress had been achieved for lack of tangible support. Another possibility was suggested at the 1934 International Red Cross Conference in Tokyo, that all fourteen million Red Cross members should contribute twenty cents each to the ICRC. This would have amounted to 2.8 million Swiss Francs, solving the financial worries of the organisation for quite some time. But the idea remained a platonic wish, as Favre had feared upon his return to Geneva. By the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war, no improvement of the ICRC’s precarious financial situation was in sight. The mission expenses for the operation in Ethiopia amounted to 47,000 Swiss Francs, resulting in a deficit of 27,000 Swiss Francs despite additional contributions. The ICRC had no

Switzerland, the ICRC and the Red Cross Movement

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other choice than to cover the shortfall from the capital of the fund constituted during the First World War, as had been done with the deficit from the Chaco conflict. The two combined deficits reached a bit more than 45,000 Swiss Francs (Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge 1936: p. 946), equivalent to a 20 percent decrease of the fund’s capital. The Italo-Ethiopian war had demonstrated that the traditional sources of income were insufficient to meet the ICRC’s growing humanitarian obligations. New sources had to be tapped. When the ICRC was plagued by the same difficulties in the Spanish Civil War, it resorted to a solution practised in the First World War, i.e., support from governments. Instead, however, of appealing for help only from selected governments, the ICRC used a novel approach in April 1937, still practised today. It requested support from all signatories of the Geneva Conventions. The Italo-Ethiopian war marked the end of an era. Red Cross solidarity alone was unable to cope with the large-scale man-made disasters the organisation was expected to deal with.

Un Posto al Sole for the Italian Red Cross At the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war the Italian Red Cross was a very large organisation. It included 220,000 adult and 2 million junior members in ninety-four provincial committees, more than any other European National Society. It had chapters in most European countries, the Americas and the Middle East. As of 1928, Filippo Cremonesi,19 a convinced Fascist and former Governor of the city of Rome had been appointed General President by Mussolini. Under his direction, the National Society was brought in line with Fascism and particular emphasis was put on participation in national development projects such as the drainage of the agro pontino, the marshlands to the south of Rome. In 1935, the Italian Red Cross provided medical assistance to over 350,000 persons living or working on the newly developed land. Cremonesi had transformed the National Society in a few years into an instrument of the State and the Party, ‘instilling vigour in the tired organism’ as he wrote in the International Red Cross Review a few months before the war. Far from being apolitical, the organisation was put ‘to the service of the Fascist fatherland and to the orders of the Duce’ (Figure 1.7). When the war in East Africa started, Cremonesi hoped that his National Society would be called into action, as had been the case during the conquest of the Libyan territories of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In 1911–12, the Italian Red Cross had been heavily involved from the beginning of the war and had provided important medical support with nineteen hospitals for the war wounded and sick, with medical stations and a hospital ship (Durand 1978: p. 10). Since the government was not taking any initiative

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Figure 1.7 A Fascist salute from an Italian Red Cross Nurse for the Prince of Piedmont (centre) and the National Society’s General President Filippo Cremonesi (on the right of the Prince) during a visit of the Society’s exhibition of medical material in Rome, probably in early 1935. (Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, 17e Année, No. 196, Avril 1935, p. 246, photo No. 6; Photothèque CICR (DR), HIST-E-00121)

in the first days of the war against Ethiopia, Cremonesi offered the services of over ten thousand Italian Red Cross nurses. However, the offer was refused by the authorities with the argument that conditions were not yet favourable to deploy female and non-military medical personnel. In February 1936, when the military balance shifted rapidly in favour of the Italians, Cremonesi reiterated his offer directly to Mussolini. He expressed his Society’s wish to be given an active role in East Africa, in line with its tradition and the mission entrusted to it by the authorities and the Duce. The Italian Red Cross President suggested in particular to deploy Red Cross staff at the rear of the troops, to the benefit of the local civilian population in the conquered territories. Once again, Cremonesi’s appeal was rejected and the Italian Red Cross, so keen to show the flag in the Fascist enterprise in East Africa, was unable to play a direct role. In the end, the Society was only marginally involved with a much publicised propaganda tour by the future queen of Italy, Maria José di Piemonte as a voluntary Red Cross nurse. Cremonesi made up for his Society’s inactivity in East Africa by showing particular zeal towards the ICRC. As soon as the war broke out, Cremonesi realised that the Italian Red Cross had an important role to

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play on the humanitarian-diplomatic front in two different but interconnected fields. First, the Italian Red Cross became involved in what Cremonesi termed ‘a detailed and meticulous monitoring operation’.20 In reality, this meant above all that the Italian Red Cross served as a transmission channel for all information on the Red Cross operation in Ethiopia between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the ICRC. Although Cremonesi had no authority to take decisions, this role allowed him to comment on the incoming information and to influence decisions of his government. He missed no opportunity to prove to the Ministry that he put the political goals of the Fascist regime above the interests of the humanitarian organisation which he was supposed to represent. A case in point was the matter of medical aircraft. As soon as Cremonesi learnt that the Ethiopian Red Cross had requested medical aircraft for its operation, he told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that this seemed to him to be an obvious trick to obtain aircraft for military purposes. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared the suspicion and asked Cremonesi to intervene with the ICRC to make sure that Red Cross material sent to Ethiopia would only be used in conformity with international humanitarian law. Eager to please the authorities, Cremonesi went so far as to interpret the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick in the sense that the use of medical aircraft was completely interdicted. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was more cautious and made its own analysis of the respective articles. It promptly came to the conclusion that Cremonesi’s interpretation appeared doubtful. The Ministry, instead, suggested that the use of medical aircraft in Ethiopia be closely monitored. Secondly, Cremonesi seized the opportunity to participate in Italy’s ‘tough battle in Geneva to counteract a smear campaign with which people tried in vain to eclipse the dazzling heroism of our illustrious combatants’.21 Behind the pompous words was the less glorious reality of serving as a mouthpiece of the Italian propaganda machine. This role essentially consisted in forwarding Italian protestations to the ICRC. The protestations were very rarely written by the Italian Red Cross President, but more often verbatim copies of letters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – sometimes signed by Cremonesi – to the League of Nations. The aim was to keep the ICRC under constant pressure, to make it sympathetic to Italian views and to counteract what was perceived as Ethiopian propaganda. In this regard, one might assume that Cremonesi would have done anything to please the ICRC. An opportunity to do so arose in early 1936 when Geneva asked the Italian Red Cross to pay its contribution for 1935 and at the same time to add the one for 1936. However, while Cremonesi recommended payment of the dues of the past year, he proposed to withhold those for 1936 with the argument that it was still too early in the year to pay. Cremonesi’s frontline man in Geneva was Count Guido Vinci (Table 1.2), the Italian Red Cross General Delegate. He became involved in mid-

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Table 1.2: Guido Vinci Gigliucci (1878–?). Vinci was born in Rome and was a cousin of the Italian Minister in Ethiopia at the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war. He established himself in Geneva in 1906 as commercial agent. Declared unable to serve during the First World War, he was appointed delegate of the Italian Red Cross in Switzerland and dealt with exchanges of prisoners of war and relief operations. During this time Vinci became acquainted with some ICRC members, but definitely exaggerated when he told Cremonesi in October 1935 that all members of the Ethiopia Commission were his personal friends from the time of the Great War. In reality, Jacques Chenevière was the only one with whom he had worked, all other members of the Commission had joined the ICRC after 1918. In 1921, Vinci registered in Italy as a member of the Fascist party. Two years later he became one of the founders of the fascio Tito Menichetti in Geneva in which he served as political secretary until 1933. His wife, Leonora Vinci Barbiano di Belgioiosa was also involved in the local Fascist organisation as the head of the women’s section. Vinci’s role in politics and as long-time VicePresident of the local Italian Chamber of Commerce made him a very well known personality in Geneva. As a committed Fascist, Vinci quite naturally became involved in local politics and entertained cordial relations with Georges Oltramare, the head of the pro-Fascist and extreme right wing Union Nationale. Vinci also claimed to have close connections to the editor of foreign affairs of the pro-Italian Journal de Genève. More than once his name was associated with pro-Fascist manifestations such as when a group of Italian journalists booed Emperor Haile Selassie during his speech at the League of Nations on 30 June 1936. Vinci’s growing involvement in politics made him neglect his business activities which had suffered during the economic crisis in the 1930s. He was plagued by constant financial difficulties and was forced to take a rather large loan. Throughout the Italo-Ethiopian war and well after, he was engaged in a never-ending battle with the Italian Red Cross and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to obtain a salary for his Red Cross activities. This resulted in a continuous mixup of Vinci’s political-humanitarian and economic interests, made worse by an unbridled ambition for power and influence. In the end, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave in and paid Vinci 10,500 Swiss Francs for his services in 1936.1 At the same time the Ministry considered the question of whether further financial support should be provided to Vinci in view of his new activities in the context of the Spanish Civil War and the fact that a bankrupt Vinci would produce ‘a painful impression in local circles’.2

1. This amount corresponded to 875 Swiss Francs per month. It was less than Vinci had expected, but still more than the monthly salary of Sidney Brown, the ICRC chief delegate. 2. ASMAE, Società degli Nazioni, c. 46, f. Delegazione CRI in Svizzera, Appunto per il Gabinetto di S. E. il Ministro, without date, but probably written in September 1938.

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September 1935, after Cremonesi learnt that Ethiopia had adhered to the 1929 Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. Needing details, he turned to Vinci who had no particular engagement with the Italian Red Cross at the time but was eager to prove his commitment to Fascism. Vinci was an ideal choice and became ‘the important centre of information and control’22 of the Italian Red Cross in Geneva. Vinci’s main task was to transmit communications between the Italian Red Cross and the ICRC. Very often he chose to deliver them personally, missing no opportunity to influence the members of the Ethiopia Commission. Vinci’s actions were facilitated by the fact that he was allowed to make his case in front of the entire Commission on at least six occasions. In one instance he informed Cremonesi that he had even requested a special meeting, held on 2 March 1936, in order to present the latest Italian protestation on alleged Ethiopian atrocities in the war. There is, however, no confirmation in the corresponding minutes of the Commission that the meeting had taken place upon Vinci’s specific wish. Vinci’s claim appears doubtful as several other subjects, unrelated to Vinci’s visit, were treated at the same time. His assertion was more likely a bluff designed to impress Cremonesi with his importance in Geneva. Still, Vinci undoubtedly obtained some small victories at the ICRC. On at least two occasions the ICRC allowed him to review translations of key documents from the original Italian language into French. One such document was a letter which Mussolini had written to the ICRC in January 1936. At Vinci’s request, the ICRC gave him the draft translation for correction. Not surprisingly, Vinci found a few minor improvements ‘so that the meaning is closer to what H.E. Mussolini intended’.23 The ICRC accepted Vinci’s remarks without comment. Vinci’s attempts to make himself important and to influence ICRC decisions knew no bounds. In spring 1936, he managed to get hold of a mission report to Ethiopia by F. Small, a woman delegate of the Union internationale de secours aux enfants before it was published in the International Red Cross Review. Since the article was sympathetic to the Ethiopians and since it contained a critical paragraph on Italian bombings, Vinci intervened at the ICRC, requesting that it censor the part which was offensive to the Italians. The ICRC complied. Upon reading the modified article in the Review, a satisfied Cremonesi congratulated Vinci for the achievement. From the beginning of the war until the end, Italy maintained a high profile at the ICRC and exercised strong pressure, in contrast to Ethiopia which was totally absent. Beyond doubt, Vinci had some success with his interventions – not to mention his more sinister and insidious initiatives which will be mentioned in Chapter 4. It must, however, be underlined that Vinci was unable to influence important policy decisions of the ICRC.

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Rise and Fall of the Ethiopian Red Cross Origin The difference between the Italian Red Cross and its counterpart in Ethiopia could not have been greater. While the Italian Red Cross was founded in 1864 and was one of the oldest National Societies, the Ethiopian Red Cross24 was created in a last minute effort, immediately before the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war. Several attempts had been made in the past to create an Ethiopian Red Cross Society, starting from the time of the battle of Adwa in 1896 between Ethiopia and Italy. Emperor Menelik was asked to sign the 1864 Geneva Convention – a key condition for the recognition of a National Society – but refused because he was apparently unable to guarantee its application by his traditional army. In 1922, the diplomatic corps in Addis Abeba envisaged setting up a national Red Cross organisation under the patronage of the future Emperor Haile Selassie. The project was abandoned because Ethiopia was not yet a member of the League of Nations. When Ethiopia was admitted to the League in the following year, new efforts were made to establish a National Society. Discussions continued intermittently for the next decade without concrete results. The situation changed dramatically in spring 1935. Aware of the massive Italian troop mobilisations to the colonies in East Africa, the Ethiopian government approached the Red Cross movement for advice on setting up a national Red Cross.25 The League of Red Cross Societies in Paris took charge of the matter and responded that the country had to adhere first to the 1929 Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. While correspondence on this matter continued, pressure came from another side. Under the private initiative of John Melly, a British surgeon who had returned to the United Kingdom in early summer 1935 from Ethiopia, frantic preparations got under way in London to set up a field hospital for dispatch in case of war. Since such a field hospital was only able to benefit from the protection of the Geneva Convention if Ethiopia was a party, it became imperative for Ethiopia to undertake the necessary steps. Melly approached the ICRC, which, after some hesitation, decided to send a letter to Emperor Haile Selassie, encouraging him to sign the Convention and qualify, thus, for medical assistance under the emblem of the Red Cross. In the meantime Haile Selassie had done his part of the work. On 15 July 1935, before the ICRC’s letter reached Addis Abeba, the Swiss government as depository State received notification of Ethiopia’s accession to the Convention on Wounded and Sick. When Haile Selassie responded to the ICRC, he notified it not only about this legal step but also about the establishment of the Ethiopian Red Cross by a decree of 8 July 1935, published in the government’s gazette on 25 July. At the same time Haile Selassie assured the ICRC to follow

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‘attentively and benevolently the functioning of our National Red Cross Society, which will enjoy at every moment our protection and solicitude’.26 The ICRC examined the Statutes of the new Society as a matter of urgency and, on 26 September 1935, informed fellow Societies about its recognition of the Ethiopian Red Cross as the sixty-second member of the movement. The first modern African National Red Cross Society was born. No time had been lost. Seven days later, Italy initiated hostilities. Even before the new society was formally established, Cremonesi, the Italian Red Cross President, contested its right to exist in an Italian newspaper, the Popolo di Roma. He argued that Ethiopia had not yet reached the necessary degree of civilisation to be part of the Red Cross movement and urged the ICRC not to recognise the nascent National Society. After the recognition of the Ethiopian Red Cross, Cremonesi continued firing his broadsides. He repeatedly made the argument to the ICRC and the Italian press that ‘the Ethiopian Red Cross exists neither physically nor spiritually. Signing a convention is but a sterile act of international bureaucracy if the people signing it lack the minimum awareness required for its implementation’.27 He further contended that the Ethiopian Red Cross had not been established out of humanitarian concern, but in order to obtain international assistance. Cremonesi’s argument against the Ethiopian Red Cross mirrored exactly the Italian government’s argument against the Ethiopian State. It was one and the same strategy to justify Italy’s right to dominate the ‘inferior Ethiopians’. The ICRC also had misgivings about the creation of the Ethiopian Red Cross and shared Cremonesi’s views to some extent. Geneva doubted that there was enough time to set up a properly working Red Cross Society and feared that Ethiopia would be unable to apply the Geneva Convention. In the end, the ICRC had decided to recognise the new Society in the interest of the imminent international relief operation, as Max Huber admitted later. But the ICRC, once the war was over, was clearly no longer at ease with the decision and sounded strangely apologetic whenever it had to discuss the reasons for the recognition, omitting carefully to mention its own encouraging role in the creation of the Society. Did the ICRC regret the recognition? Some members such as Paul Logoz, one of the ICRC VicePresidents, probably thought so, as can be seen in a revealing comment made to Max Huber several months after the war: ‘Dr Junod told us that the Ethiopian Red Cross was only a façade. Perhaps it would have been better not to have tried to create such a façade and not to have admitted to the League of Nations a “State” whose “civilisation” was questionable’.28

Organisation and Financial Resources Placed under the patronage of the Emperor, the Board of the Ethiopian Red Cross was composed of fifteen members. Eight of them were influential

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Table 1.3: Thomas A. Lambie (1885–1954). Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Lambie studied medicine. During medical school he felt the call to become a medical missionary. From 1907 to 1919 he worked in the Sudan for the United Presbyterian Mission. Asked by an Ethiopian chief to provide medical services, Lambie moved in 1919 into western Ethiopia. It marked the beginning of a seventeen-year stay in Ethiopia during which more than a dozen mission stations were founded under his responsibility. Following disagreements with his mission society, Lambie joined the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) in 1927 with which he stayed into the early 1940s. In 1922, Lambie met the future Emperor Haile Selassie for the first time and became his private physician when he established himself in the Ethiopian capital. In Addis Abeba, Lambie founded two hospitals, one of them a Leprosarium. In August 1936, after the Italian take-over, Lambie left Ethiopia and spent several more years in the Sudan. Being barred from returning to Ethiopia where he had spent a large part of his life, he left in 1948, at the age of sixty-three, for Palestine joining his third mission society, the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Near Bethlehem he oversaw the construction of a tuberculosis hospital and a missionary rest home. When Lambie was asked by the Ethiopian Foreign Minister to become Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross, he was reluctant but was finally talked into accepting it. It was a full-time job for which he temporarily relinquished his responsibilities as SIM field director. Lambie was probably chosen because he presented the double advantage of being an Ethiopian national and being well connected to aid circles in the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, Lambie had some Red Cross experience having served as director of a British Red Cross hospital in Alexandria during the First World War battles over the Dardanelles. During the Italo-Ethiopian war, Lambie signed a protestation by Ethiopian Red Cross doctors to the League of Nations following the bombing of Dessie and he was the author of an emotional letter to The Times in which he accused the Italians of bombing civilian targets and using poison gas. Lambie’s life is a remarkable missionary story filled with pioneering medical and religious work in the most isolated places in this world. As any good missionary he was very close to local people – speaking Arabic and Amharic fluently – but his deep religious convictions prevented him from really understanding the Ethiopians. He was so committed to his mission work that it was the only thing which mattered to him. His reaction in May 1936, when he submitted himself to the Italians, showed that he was ready to sacrifice almost anything to preserve his mission: loyalty to Emperor Haile Selassie; loyalty to the suffering Ethiopians for whom he had publicly stood up; even loyalty towards himself (see later in this Chapter).

Ethiopian government officials such as the President of the Society, Blatten Geta Heruy Woldeselassie, the Foreign Minister and Tekle Hawariat, the General Director of the Addis Abeba Municipality and former Ethiopian Representative to the League of Nations. Seven members were foreigners mostly either in government service or doctors belonging to different protestant missionary societies. Thomas Lambie (Table 1.3 and Figure 1.8),

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Figure 1.8 Before the departure of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 2 from Addis Abeba to Dessie. From left to right: Thomas Lambie, Sidney Brown, Georges Dassios, the leader of the unit and Marcel Junod (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-505/2784, E-2003)

the Sudan Interior Mission’s field director, was appointed Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross days before the war. An American by birth, he had renounced his nationality in 1934 and taken Ethiopian citizenship29 – a much-talked about act at the time. The high-level appointments testified to the Emperor’s interest in the Society, but it was precious little in comparison with the huge task, which faced the handful of ill-prepared Red Cross officials in the first days of the war. The whole organisation had to be set up from scratch and readied for a war which was imminent. Soon after the solemn inauguration ceremony of the Ethiopian Red Cross in August 1935, it was decided that branch offices in Harar and Dire Dawa should be established. Harar was given priority because the

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Ethiopians expected hostilities to start in the southeastern Ogaden region. The Harar office was set up in early September 1935, four weeks before the war. In Addis Abeba, the new Society was given three large ground floor offices in a government building on the main road in Addis Abeba, poorly furnished and with rudimentary facilities. There were no toilets and not even lamps, forcing the staff more than once to finish writing their papers in the open air before darkness settled in. Lack of reliable telephone communications made people lose precious time, forcing them to move around the town. On top of this Lambie, although very committed to the new task, was not a manager. He was described by Brown as ‘the kind of person who can follow only one case at a time in every detail and who does not know at all how to make other people work. For a mule’s bridle he would be quite capable of leaving his office for a whole morning, bringing with him, if possible, the quartermaster, the deputy secretary and others.’30 Work by the Board of the new society was inefficient and ‘seldom resulted in anything practical’, in Lambie’s own words written after the war. Meetings were complicated because there was no common language between the participants resulting in time-consuming translations. In early December 1935, the Ethiopian Red Cross still appeared as ‘very chaotic’ to the British Minister in Addis Abeba. Although conditions improved later, the Society did not have sufficient time to get properly organised because of the rapidly deteriorating military situation. Junod was perhaps right when he observed that the Ethiopian Red Cross was only a façade, but Max Huber made the pertinent observation that any Red Cross Society would have been overwhelmed in such a situation, let alone one which had just been created. According to the Statutes a small, inalienable fund of 100,000 Thalers (about 90,000 Swiss Francs) from the Emperor’s purse had to be established in the name of the Ethiopian Red Cross. Its revenues were supposed to provide a modest income. There is no indication that this fund was effectively set up, but the Emperor covered the running costs of the Society during the first few months. By November 1935, he had contributed 32,000 Thalers.31 In the following weeks financial dependency on the Emperor decreased continuously because of major donations from inside the country and abroad. At the end of February 1936, Brown was able to inform Geneva that the accounts of the Ethiopian Red Cross were expected to balance without government subsidies. With regard to Geneva’s serious worries about the proper use of the donated funds, Brown assured the ICRC very quickly that every thing was under control. The Ethiopian Red Cross had taken the necessary measures which included professional accounting. Junod confirmed Brown’s assessment in his final report to the ICRC. In order to get more income, an ingenious scheme was devised, most probably on the initiative of Jacques Auberson, the Emperor’s Swiss legal

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Figure 1.9 Ethiopian stamps issued in early 1936 to support the Ethiopian Red Cross. The stamps came too late for the Italo-Ethiopian war, but after liberation from the Italian occupation in 1941, they were put into use and marked with a Vsign (top row). (Courtesy by Hélio Courvoisier S.A., Switzerland)

adviser. At the end of September 1935, Courvoisier in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, was asked to print a series of stamps for the Ethiopian Red Cross (Figure 1.9). The idea was to use the system of the Swiss ‘Pro Juventute’ stamps on which the same value as the stamp was added for the benefit of the charitable organisation. A firm order was placed in January 1936 for sixteen million stamps of various denominations at the cost of 27,000 Swiss Francs. The benefit from the surtax would have amounted to over four million Swiss Francs, and would have given the Ethiopian Red Cross a financial independence of which the ICRC was only dreaming. The Emperor promptly footed the bill and production of the stamps took place in early spring 1936, once the drawings of the Ethiopian artist Aghegnehu Inghida had been completed. In mid-May, shortly before the fall of Addis Abeba, the stamps had been produced and were dispatched to Djibouti (for Addis Abeba), Paris and New York, as desired by the Ethiopian Legation in Paris. However, the stamps came too late to be used. In the meantime, the Italians had occupied the Ethiopian capital. Still, some of the stamps found their way to the shortlived Ethiopian government in Gore (western Ethiopia) to where loyal officials of Haile Selassie had withdrawn. From Gore, a letter with Ethiopian

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Red Cross stamps was sent to Switzerland, though put in an envelope with Sudanese stamps. The intention was to prove that the Ethiopian Red Cross stamps had been effectively put into use by the authorities. Stamp collectors, however, could not be fooled and listed them as issued but not used. Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate in Geneva had been made aware of the existence of these stamps through the Italians’ well-functioning network of informers. Expecting that the stamps had not been delivered to Addis Abeba, he sensed the possibility of a propaganda coup to his liking. Vinci proposed to Cremonesi in Rome to buy the complete set of Ethiopian Red Cross stamps; overprint them with the Italian Red Cross emblem and sell them on its behalf. Cremonesi, much less enthusiastic than Vinci, submitted the proposal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which cut the matter short with a laconic ‘inopportune’. Finally, the story of the Ethiopian Red Cross stamps took a twist, which even Vinci could not have imagined. When the Italians were defeated, in turn, by the British, after a short five-year occupation of Ethiopia, the stamps were put in service by the Ethiopian authorities. This time, the Ethiopians overprinted the stamps with the V-sign for victory. An incredible Odyssey had come to its conclusion.

An Inglorious End Haile Selassie’s sudden flight from Addis Abeba on 1 May 1936 resulted in a complete breakdown of law and order lasting for three full days, until the Italians entered the Ethiopian capital. In the ensuing chaos, the Ethiopian Red Cross headquarters was looted and burnt, like many other buildings and shops. Medicines and medical material worth over 150,000 Swiss Francs went up in flames, together with most records kept at the office. From the moment the Italians took charge of the town, Thomas Lambie became very worried. What was going to happen to him, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross who had chosen Ethiopian nationality and who had publicly denounced several times Italian violations of international law? What would happen to his mission for which he had worked so hard for so many years? He (Lambie 1939: p. 249) decided to surrender to the Italians. ‘I told them that although I had been against them I was not going to oppose them, but took Paul’s words in Romans 13:1 as my guide, “Resist not the Powers”.’ Not content with this step, highly contested amongst his missionary fellows, Lambie let himself be pressurised into writing a letter to the ICRC in which he took back important charges he had made against the Italians. Italian bombings of Red Cross hospitals during the war had not been intentional, Lambie now said. He reinterpreted the incidents in such a way that they appeared explainable from an Italian point of view, mainly by putting the blame on the involved Red Cross staff. Equally, he denied all responsibility of having authored official complaints

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to Geneva, accusing, instead, the Ethiopian Foreign Minister and his entourage including Sidney Brown, the ICRC delegate. The Italians had a field day. They gave wide publicity to Lambie’s statement, making it appear as if he generally condoned the actions of the Italian aviators. When Lambie realised what he had done, he hurriedly wrote a second letter to the ICRC, trying to rectify the impression given by the Italians. In particular, he mentioned that he could find no excuses for the bombings of the Swedish and British Red Cross field hospitals but it was obviously too late. Nobody listened to his new statement, which he hoped naïvely would be given the same publicity as the first one. As much as the Italians had rejoiced, the Ethiopians loathed Lambie for his change of heart. John Spencer (1984: p. 84), the young American advisor in the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considered his action as a defection to the Italians. Haile Selassie’s reaction was adamant. He refused to meet with Lambie, even when the missionary tried to get in touch with the Emperor in Khartoum during the struggle for liberation. Lambie, apparently ‘honestly puzzled by the emperor’s hostility’ (Cotterell 1973: p. 87), was barred from setting foot into Ethiopia again. Sidney Barton, the British Minister was equally disapproving, condemning Lambie’s statement as ‘a pusillanimous attempt to curry favour with the Italians’. He commented acidly that Lambie ‘presumably now contemplates necessity of becoming an Italian subject’.32 Marcel Junod, Brown’s colleague in Ethiopia, was not less incensed by Lambie’s attitude which he called ‘a shameful manoeuvre’33 purely intended to save his mission. In view of disagreements amongst Lambie’s missionaries due to his submissive attitude towards the Italians, the Sudan Interior Mission thought it advisable to ask Lambie to take a leave and allow matters to calm down. However, his absence made little difference. No sooner had he left Ethiopia than the Italians proceeded to expropriate the evangelical missions, making the expatriate staff leave the country. By 1938, the last members of the Sudan Interior Mission had departed. Lambie had lost in every respect. With the arrival of the Italians, the fate of the Ethiopian Red Cross was sealed. Lambie named himself liquidator of the Society with the blessing of the new authorities. Soon after his public change of heart, a final meeting with the few remaining members of the National Society’s Board was called. Under the watchful eye of the Italian Red Cross delegate, Edoardo Borra, outstanding financial matters were discussed, in particular salaries to expatriate employees. The available funds were just sufficient to honour the commitments under the condition that the new authorities would pay for the 360 cases of gasoline, which they had taken from the Ethiopian Red Cross.34 The sum was never reimbursed and the Society was unable to pay the outstanding salaries of staff who had been under regular contracts. The ICRC was informed by telegram and letter of the decision to liquidate the Ethiopian Red Cross as of 1 June 1936, given the fact that the

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Society ‘has not had any reason for existing since 5 May 1936, when the Italian troops entered Addis Abeba’.35 The Ethiopia Commission took note of the matter and sent a Circular Letter to National Societies announcing ‘the cessation of activity of the Ethiopian Red Cross’. It was a carefully chosen wording which had been the object of considerable debate in the Ethiopia Commission. At first, the ICRC intended to use the word ‘liquidate’ mentioned in Lambie’s message, but after discussion, the Commission felt that the term was too strong given the fact that the decision to terminate the Ethiopian Red Cross had been taken by the Italians and not the Ethiopians. No reaction was, however, registered from what was left of the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian Red Cross disappeared for the short period of the Italian occupation from the list of National Red Cross Societies.

Ambiguous Relations with the League of Red Cross Societies Officially, relations between the ICRC and the League of Red Cross Societies were very good before the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war. In reality, however, tensions and irritations still existed dating back to the 1920s. During the International Red Cross Conference in Tokyo in October 1934, the League’s American Chairman, John Barton Payne, made a proposal which at first seemed quite insignificant. He suggested changing the name of the League into International League of Red Cross Societies, arguing that the current name was not self-explanatory. According to the League, the ICRC delegates at the Conference had not objected to the proposed modification, although Guillaume Favre expressed reservations on the matter in his report to the ICRC. Favre advised his colleagues to consider carefully the opportunity of such a change, adding at the same stroke that it was not his intention ‘to revive conflicts and rivalries which belong to the past’.36 Dealing with the League was visibly still very touchy. Payne’s suggestion was tabled again in April 1935 during the meeting of the Board of Governors. This time Max Huber gave the official position of the ICRC. He explained diplomatically that the proposed change of name was not in conformity with the 1928 Statutes and that he feared, more importantly that it would lead to confusion between the two international bodies of the Red Cross. As a result of the discussions, National Societies were requested to give their views in a written consultation. Thirty Societies responded, with seventeen preferring to stick to the status quo. Their principal argument was that people were familiar with the existing name. In view of the clear outcome of the consultation, the proposal for changing the name of the League was dropped at the meeting of the Executive Committee in November 1935. Harmony in the movement was narrowly preserved, but

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the matter remained a subject of discussion well into the latter part of the twentieth century.37 A more serious disagreement arose shortly before the war in East Africa. During August and especially September 1935, the ICRC and the League became simultaneously involved in aspects of the upcoming humanitarian operation: the ICRC in regard to legal matters and the League in regard to relief assistance. Pressure for the involvement of the League stemmed largely from the American Red Cross which was planning a big relief operation in case of war. The Americans had asked their parent organisation in Paris, not the ICRC in Geneva – the competent organisation according to the Statutes – whether information on the needs in Ethiopia was available and what plans had been made to address them. The League informed the American Red Cross that the International Red Cross, meaning the League and the ICRC, were fully alert and were discussing arrangements with each other. The League had challenged the ICRC. Upon reading the communications from the League, some ICRC members became alarmed. Jacques Chenevière brought the matter up in the next meeting of the Committee and requested measures to be taken in order to preserve the ICRC’s role in war. It was, according to him, not a matter of prestige but of principle, to ensure the ICRC’s role as a neutral intermediary. Unable to decide in the absence of President Huber, the Committee resolved to refer the question to him. Huber himself had, in fact, complicated the matter, probably out of the desire to demonstrate the spirit of cooperation in the movement. He had entrusted the League’s Undersecretary General, Lewis de Gielgud, with a mission normally falling under ICRC prerogatives. De Gielgud had been asked to urge the Ethiopian Minister in London to ensure that his government adhered also to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War and to inquire about preparations being made for the relief operation. Needless to say, de Gielgud, who was among those who pushed for an increased role for the League, fulfilled his mission eagerly. The confusion was completed when the League’s new Chairman, Cary T. Grayson, warned National Societies in a circular letter after the outbreak of hostilities that the war had created a new situation in which the Red Cross might have to develop intense humanitarian activities. Underlining the traditional role falling at this moment upon the ICRC, Grayson added quite ambiguously that ‘the League must miss no opportunity of offering to the International Red Cross Committee cooperation in any form that may be useful to the Committee in carrying out its duties.’38 It sounded as if the big League had to help the small ICRC. In the weeks following the start of hostilities, the climate between the two organisations deteriorated further. The League kept its members informed about developments in East Africa through its own Bulletin and a press release, without discussing either with the ICRC. It looked increasingly as if the League, and not the ICRC, was bringing National Societies

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up to date. Chenevière again brought the matter up in the Committee and the Ethiopia Commission. He argued that the ICRC could not let the League take the lead in matters of information. ‘I really fear that one day someone might claim that, even in time of war, the League can replace the ICRC … Our task is to look after a heritage of moral authority – an authority that might suddenly be needed in dealing with very sensitive cases where only the ICRC can intervene.’39 A clarification became necessary. The matter was left to Max Huber and Paul Draudt, the League’s VicePresident and co-author of the 1928 Statutes. As soon as Draudt returned from Latin America where he had been on a Red Cross mission, Huber got in touch with him. Draudt quickly sent reassuring news. He admitted that some people in the League and the American Red Cross still ‘were not too clear’ with regard to the League’s role in the present war. But Draudt added that there was no need to worry ‘at least as long as I have something to say.’40 During the next two weeks, intense discussions behind the scenes took place between Huber and Draudt, who was acting, in his own words, as ‘an honest broker’. When the League’s Executive Committee met in Paris at the end of November 1935, the potentially dangerous dispute had been successfully defused. The meaning of Grayson’s circular letter of the beginning of October was expertly turned around, as Draudt’s address to the meeting made plain. Draudt stated specifically that there had been no intention on the part of the League to encroach on the traditional field of action of the ICRC. The League knew ‘that the prestige of the International Red Cross was safe in the hands of the International Committee, and all that we desired was to assure the Committee that if the League’s cooperation could be of value to it, that cooperation was very much at the Committee’s disposal. This thought was admirably formulated in your [i.e. Grayon’s] letter …’.41 Huber, on his part, did not miss the opportunity to say a few flattering words about the League, ‘a great centre of activity, knowledge and good will’. At the same time he thanked the League profusely for having rendered ‘big services’ to the ICRC in the first weeks of the war in the Horn of Africa.42 In the end, the League, accomplishing a backward somersault, voted a resolution, which re-established the status quo ante by requesting Draudt to study with the ICRC ‘the forms of support that the Committee might request of the League’. Peace had prevailed in the movement thanks to strong personal relations and the solid will of key players to make the 1928 Statutes work. At the same time, the ICRC had managed to fend off a challenge from its sister organisation on the very first occasion to apply the Statutes in times of war. The ICRC had affirmed its leading role, not only for the period of the ItaloEthiopian war, but until the end of the Second World War.

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Notes 1 Documents Diplomatiques Suisses, Vol. 11 (1934-1936), Bern, 1989, E 2001 (C) 5/131, No. 152, p. 461. 2 BAB, 2001 (C) 5/162, Wagnière to Motta, 10 July 1935. 3 BAB, Nachlass Bundesrat Giuseppe Motta, J.I.1., Akz. Nr. 1, Schachtel 5, VIII/70, Frey to Motta, 15 Aug. 1935. 4 BAB, 2200 Rom 22/9, Dossier: Séjour du Négus en Suisse, Motta to Dunant, 2 June 1936, p. 3. 5 There is abundant literature on the history of the Red Cross. The reader who would like to know more might want to consult the following studies: – Bugnion, F. ‘The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Development of International Humanitarian Law’, Chicago Journal of International Law, Vol. 5 no. 1, summer 2004, pp. 191–215 (a concise overview of the ICRC’s role in the development of international humanitarian law, including a brief mention of the most recent challenges caused by the ‘war on terror’); – Hutchinson, J.H. Champions of Charity. War and the Rise of the Red Cross, Colorado/Oxford, 1996 (a provocative and critical look at Red Cross history); – Moorehead, C. Dunant’s Dream. War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross, London, 1998 (a well-written and entertaining history of the Red Cross). 6 In this study these Conventions will be referred to as the Convention on Wounded and Sick or first Convention, respectively the Convention on Prisoners of War or second Convention. 7 CICR, CR 109a/I/1, Annexes au PV du CICR, No. 223, Rapport du Col. Div. Favre sur son voyage à Tokyo, 15 Jan. 1935, p. 5. 8 The EIA is at present the object of a study by Michel Caillat, under the direction of Mauro Cerutti. Its archives in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire (BPU) in Geneva have been made accessible only a few years ago. Special thanks to Michel Caillat for his kind assistance during my research in summer 2001. 9 The three persons occupied different responsibilities according to EIA documents. Cramer signed as President of the Association Suisse des Amis de l’Entente while Favre was listed as member of its Comité de Patronage. Wagnière joined EIA as a member of the Permanent Bureau, shortly after having been elected to the ICRC in 1936. By 1937 their positions were clarified: all three were listed as members of the eight-men Permanent Bureau (BPU, Archives EIA, classeur Bureau permanent 1936–43, undated overview under 1937). A specific remark must be made for Lucien Cramer. Although not actively taking part in the ICRC after January 1935, when he had completed his mission to Latin America in the context of the Chaco conflict, he remained a full member throughout 1935 and 1936. In his memoirs, Cramer (1952: p. 111) explained his absence from the ICRC with his wish to dedicate more time to EIA. 10 There is an indirect confirmation of this assertion in a letter Sidney Brown wrote to Burckhardt, a family friend of the Brown’s, during his journey to Ethiopia. In it Brown took issue with the fact that Mussolini was considered ‘as a force of tradition’ in conservative circles to which he counted Burckhardt and himself. To Brown, Mussolini’s Fascism looked very much like State-Socialism, but the ICRC delegate agreed that Italy should be helped to get back on the right track in order to join the fight against Soviet interference under the form of Front commun (CJB, ungeordnet, Brown to Burckhardt, 1 Nov. 1935. Special thanks to Paul Stauffer for having kindly allowed me to use this document). 11 Georges-Elie Audeoud, Edmond Boissier, Guillaume Favre and Jacques-Berthélemy Micheli.

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12 Edmond Boissier, Jacques Chenevière, Lucien Cramer, Guillaume Favre, Rodolphe de Haller and Georges Wagnière. 13 At the beginning of the Italo-Ethiopian war, Italy managed through the intermediary of G. Oltramare to acquire a certain number of shares of the Journal de Genève, but the number was insufficient to elect a person of Italian allegiance to the Board of Directors. More effective were probable ‘confidential relations’ entertained by Italy’s representatives in Geneva with the Journal de Genève’s editor of foreign affairs, P.E. Briquet, who gave special attention to the Italian point of view in his articles (Cerutti 1989: pp. 163–66 and 169–71). 14 Jean Pictet in an interview with the author, 4 April 1995. 15 Worldwide operations of the ICRC in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War reopened the discussion on the nature of Swiss-ICRC relations. There was a consensus that confusion between Swiss foreign policy and the ICRC should be avoided. As a result an accord de siège between the ICRC and Switzerland was signed in 1993, guaranteeing the independence and liberty of action of the humanitarian organisation. 16 It must be added that this comment is a later addition and was not contained in Brown’s original report to Geneva. 17 This suspicion of a blurred line between ICRC’s independence and Swiss interests transpired in a case occurring in spring 1936. Motta, like all ICRC members, received a copy of the very interesting reports of the delegates in Ethiopia. The ICRC was made aware that the Foreign Minister shared them with others when Pierre Bonna, a close collaborator, called the ICRC secretariat about the role of Swiss army officers in Haile Selassie’s services, mentioned in one of these reports. The matter was brought to the attention of Edmond Boissier, in charge of the Ethiopia Commission at the time. Boissier reacted angrily to what he considered a breach of confidentiality. A reproving letter was drafted to Motta, but after reflection, it was sent first to Huber. The ICRC President chose not to forward it and preferred to write himself to Motta, drawing his attention in a more polite way to the confidentiality of ICRC reports (CICR, CR 210/1014, Note signed Clouzot, 1 April 1936 and CR 210/1024, Huber to Motta, 4 April 1936). 18 Huber had taken an active part in the constitution of this fund, which was started in 1925. He appealed to Motta for a government contribution given Switzerland’s interest in Red Cross matters and in order to counter the League’s expectation that the ICRC would disappear because of lack of funds. At the same time Huber informed Motta about Aluminium Industrie AG’s (AIAG) donation of 100,000 Swiss Francs, a very large sum at the time. Huber’s AIAG made a similar donation in 1941. 19 Filippo Cremonesi (1872–1942), Minister of State and Senator, was born in Rome where he spent most of his life. As of 1914 he became involved in politics at the municipality of Rome. From 1922 to 1926, Cremonesi was first Mayor and then Governor of the Italian capital. Under his responsibility the modernisation and transformation of Rome was initiated in accordance with the Fascist plan to bring to the fore the city’s Roman origins. After two years at the head of the Istituto Nazionale Luce, Cremonesi was appointed in 1928 President of the Italian Red Cross, a charge which he occupied until 1939 (Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, Roma, 1963). 20 ACS, CRI, c. 73, f. 11, Pro-memoria relativo all’attività svolta dalla Croce Rossa italiana… nel recente conflitto italo-etiopico, 3 July 1936, p. 3. 21 ACS, CRI, c. 193, f. 6, Speech of Cremonesi at the occasion of a visit by the Duce, 1 Oct. 1936, p. 1. 22 ACS, CRI, c. 193, f. 6, Speech of Cremonesi …, 1 Oct. 1936, p. 1. 23 CICR, CR 210/603, Vinci to Clouzot, 18 Jan. 1936.

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24 The official name of the Society in French was Société nationale de la Croix-Rouge éthiopienne. The ICRC called it Abyssinian Red Cross in English, but this study uses Ethiopian Red Cross, as did the Ethiopians. 25 CICR, 00/83, CR éthiopienne, Collier to British Red Cross Society, 15 March 1935. According to the available information, it appears that the idea of creating a National Society took shape amongst a group of concerned foreigners who discussed it with Ethiopian officials and brought it to the attention of Emperor Haile Selassie. This group included Thomas Lambie, the field director of the Sudan Interior Mission, John Melly, and the three government advisers C.S. Collier, the British Governor of the Bank of Ethiopia, the Swedish General Erik Virgin and Jacques Auberson, the Swiss legal advisor, who was credited with writing the Statutes of the National Society. 26 CICR, 00/83, CR éthiopienne, Haile Selassie to Huber, 27 July 1935. Emperor Haile Selassie and the National Society considered 8 July 1935 as the birthday of the Ethiopian Red Cross, although 25 July would be more correct, coinciding with the publication of the Imperial decree. 27 CICR, CR 210/559, Cremonesi to ICRC, 11 Jan. 1936. 28 CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Logoz to Huber, 10 Nov. 1936. 29 An important factor in Lambie’s decision to take Ethiopian nationality was that the move would facilitate access to land ownership on behalf of the mission (Cotterell 1973: p. 79). 30 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 2, 30 Nov. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 2. 31 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 1, 14 Nov. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 7. Emperor Haile Selassie (1976: p. 211) wrote later that he had given to the Ethiopian Red Cross ‘up to 200,000 dollars [probably Thalers] from Our treasury for the payment of salaries, the purchase of medicines, and all related matters’. When he referred to the Ethiopian Red Cross, he meant, however, more likely the Ethiopian army’s medical service because, in his mind, there was no difference between the two. 32 PRO, FO 371/20194, p. 256, Barton to Foreign Office, 26 May 1936. 33 CICR, CR 210, Deux dossiers rapportés par Dr Junod, 1) Rapports, undated handwritten note, p. 2. 34 SIM, typewritten statement on the final meeting of the Ethiopian Red Cross of 1 June 1936. The value of the gasoline was estimated at over 5,000 Thalers. It was quite a large sum, corresponding to ten months of Lambie’s salary as Executive Secretary. 35 CICR, CR 210/1287bis, Lambie to ICRC, 8 June 1936. 36 CICR, CR 109a/I/1, Annexes au PV du CICR, No. 223, Rapport du Col. Div. Favre sur son voyage à Tokyo, 15 Jan. 1935, p. 6. 37 In 1991, fifty-seven years after the first attempt to change its name, the League was finally successful. The organisation overcame similar objections of the ICRC made in 1935 and was renamed the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). 38 CICR, CR 210/43, Grayson to Canadian Red Cross Society, 8 Oct. 1936. 39 CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Chenevière to Huber, 4 Nov. 1935. 40 CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Draudt to Huber, 5 Nov. 1935. 41 CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Notes for Colonel Draudt, 25 Nov. 1935. 42 CICR (library), Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Compte-rendu des séances du Comité Exécutif, 25 Nov. 1935, p. 27.

2 AN AFRICAN SOLFERINO: THE EMERGENCY MEDICAL RELIEF OPERATION IN ETHIOPIA


‘Italy wants Abyssinia … it is so simple. There are some millions, I suppose, of what are said to be the bravest warriors in the world, waiting to die for this country, and fight and die for it they will, to the very last man. But K. they have no Red Cross whatsoever. If you want a sleepless night, picture to yourself the indescribable horror and suffering behind the Ethiopian lines when Italian planes, with no danger whatsoever to themselves, and no opposition, have been dropping bombs on the Ethiopians for twenty-four hours …’ John Melly, the future director of the British Red Cross field hospital to his sister Kathleen Nelson, a few months before the war1

Health in Ethiopia at the Outbreak of the War The benefits of modern medicine did not reach Ethiopia until the second half of the nineteenth century, when Swedish missionaries began to work in the northern highlands. They were the first to provide modern medical care, soon followed by other mission societies such as the Presbyterian Church of North America, the Sudan Interior Mission, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Catholic Church. Initially, following orders by the Emperor, they were confined to the capital, Addis Abeba and to non-Christian regions of the Empire. But in the early 1930s Emperor Haile Selassie allowed missions to work also in the traditional Orthodox Christian heartland of Dessie, Debre Tabor, Gonder and, most importantly, the sacred town of Lalibela. By the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, mission societies were largely running Ethiopia’s medical service, complemented by a number of government medical facilities, particularly in the capital. Chief of them was the

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Figure 2.1 Cartridges were an accepted means of payment for medical treatment in Ethiopian hospitals. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 3)

Menelik hospital, built in 1909, and the well-equipped Bet Sayda hospital, set up in 1924. Only about twenty hospitals – five of which were in the capital – served the country’s population of six million (Pankhurst 1990: pp. 205–8). John Melly, the future leader of the British Red Cross field hospital, on his first mission to Ethiopia in 1934, spoke of appalling conditions and noted that there were only about four hundred hospital beds in the entire country. The Italians, well informed about the situation in Ethiopia through their diplomatic sources and an extensive network of informers, considered the medical organisation ‘as almost zero’ (Figure 2.1).2 Modern medicine was entirely in the hands of foreigners who were either employed by the mission hospitals, the government, or were working in

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private clinics. In 1928 there were twenty-five foreign doctors established in Addis Abeba. In 1935, estimates indicate that there were about fifty practising in the whole country, eight of whom were also missionaries (Ritchie Rice 1938: p. 59). At the time Ethiopia had only two fully trained medical doctors. One, hakim Warknah, better known as Charles Martin, was serving as Ethiopia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom; the other, Melaku Bayen, a relative of the Emperor, returned to Ethiopia in August 1935, after finishing medical school in the United States of America.3 He served throughout the war as Haile Selassie’s personal physician, accompanying him to the field and later into exile. The situation with regard to medical assistants was little better. The first government training facility had been established in 1935 in the Menelik hospital, but the project was cut short by the war. However, a number of Ethiopian medical auxiliaries had received training in mission hospitals. They were the only qualified local staff, some of whom worked with various Red Cross field hospitals in the war. With only a fraction of the Ethiopian population having access to modern medical care, the majority relied entirely on traditional medicine. It was based as much on the medical properties of plants and animal products as it was rooted in magic and religious beliefs. Thousands of prescriptions had been noted down over time, becoming the jealously guarded secrets of healers – very often connected with the Orthodox Church. A wide variety of diseases were treated, ranging from simple cough and wound healing to curing the evil eye or putting a curse on a neighbour. Considerable skills were developed in treating surgical cases, such as stitching of wounds and amputations. Methods used in traditional medicine included bleeding, cautery (burning with red iron) and the use of holy water. Fractures were treated by setting bones with pieces of wood tied together by string or leather (Pankhurst 1990: pp. 113–20). Some of these treatments have been successfully practised over time. They are still widely used in Ethiopia, sometimes in combination with, or in contradiction to, modern medicine. Contemporary observers were usually quite impressed by the results achieved with traditional medicine. Jacques Auberson, the Ethiopian government’s Swiss legal adviser, told the Ethiopia Commission that Ethiopians were very attached to this kind of medicine and that skilful healers sometimes obtained excellent results. Alejandro del Valle, the Cuban machine gunner in the service of Ras Mulugeta at Amba Aradam, observed how even deep war wounds were treated successfully with herbs and leaves. However, a physician such as J.W.S. Macfie (1936: p. 57), a medical authority in tropical medicine and member of the British Red Cross field hospital, was much less impressed by the results and methods of the traditional healers who ‘seemed seldom to have aimed higher than firing and purgation’.

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Medical Services in the Ethiopian Army The Ethiopian army’s medical service mirrored the general situation in the health sector. The largest part of the army, the regional forces, had no modern medical service at all and relied upon traditional medicine. The Imperial Forces, in particular the 3000-man elite Imperial Guard under the direct command of the Emperor had the only organised, modern medical unit of the whole army. Composed, according to an Italian intelligence report of 1934, of about twenty medical auxiliaries and drivers, the unit was equipped with some transport, first aid material and stretchers, barely adequate for peacetime needs, let alone for wartime.4 A Swedish medical doctor, Harald Nyström,5 employed by Haile Selassie since 1927, had been put in charge. One year before the outbreak of the war, Haile Selassie started to realise that medical care in the army needed to be improved. In September 1934 he established an army medical service headed by a Greek national, LieutenantColonel Georges Argyropoulos. According to the Italians, Argyropoulos was considered as one of the most educated medical officers of the Greek army. With little practical result, as his colleagues in Ethiopia unanimously agreed. No meaningful army medical service was developed in the year before the war, exasperating a normally cautious Thomas Lambie (1939: p. 233), the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross: ‘A strange condition existed. There was no army medical service. A Greek army colonel was supposed to be in charge of a service which was non-existent. The colonel had a magnificent uniform, and for all I know was an excellent doctor, but he would not leave Addis Abeba. He said his contract forbade it.’ The first to feel the absence of medical assistance in the Ethiopian army, just before the war, were the troops of Grazmach Afework Woldesemayat in the lowland plains of the Ogaden in southeastern Ethiopia. They had been deployed in the middle of 1935 to a series of outposts towards the border with Italian Somalia and given the task of holding back a possible surprise attack. When George Steer (1936: p. 106), a British journalist, visited Gorrahei, Afework’s headquarters, in August 1935, he was impressed with the defences built and the preparations made in just three weeks by the six hundred Ethiopians stationed there. He found the outpost thoroughly organised, not only militarily, but also healthwise. Afework had ordered latrines to be dug – the first African commander to have done so, in Steer’s opinion. There was a small dispensary, manned by an Ethiopian who had been trained by the Swedish mission in Harar. It was a well-kept place, equipped for minor operations. It also contained shelves ‘full of clean chemist’s bottles labelled in Latin’. However, Steer was not given the full picture. In the beginning of August, prior to Steer’s visit, Afework complained to Haile Selassie that sick soldiers under his command could not be cured due to lack of doctors and medicines. A few weeks later, shortly before the war, Afework informed his

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superior, Dajjazmach Nasibu Zamanuel that there was an increase of diseases amongst his troops and that they still needed a doctor. He had to wait for several more weeks before the first doctor arrived – well after the war had started. Behind the polished face presented to outsiders lay the grim Ethiopian reality. When the Italo-Ethiopian war started, a very large Ethiopian army without modern medical services faced a fully prepared and up-to-date Italian adversary. Two worlds were going to meet on the battlefield with disastrous consequences for the much weaker Ethiopians (Figure 2.2). A new Solferino, this time on the African continent, lay ahead. Diplomatic observers in Addis Abeba did not miss this point. A German Legation

Figure 2.2 A soldier carries a patient for medical treatment to a Red Cross field hospital. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 4)

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report, probably intercepted by the Italians while in transit through Djibouti, considered the Ethiopian army’s medical service as ‘the most critical point of the whole organisation of the army’. It noted that all medical preparations, including the ones made by the Red Cross, were ‘nothing else than a drop of water on a hot stone’ and concluded that ‘the main “cleanup” of the battlefields will be left, as a consequence, once more to hyenas, jackals and vultures’.6

Ethiopian Efforts to Provide Medical Assistance By mid-1935, Haile Selassie realised that war was probably inevitable. Frantic efforts were made to redress the military imbalance and provide Ethiopia with better means of resistance, including in the medical field. The first order of medical material for the Ethiopian army was placed in early July 1935 – quite late in view of the advanced Italian preparations for war on which newspapers regularly reported. The order was made under the watchful eyes of the Italians who intercepted the instructions sent to David Hall, the head of the government’s Bureau des Fournitures. Hall was asked to purchase in Europe twelve complete field hospitals with medicines and to arrange for their urgent dispatch to Ethiopia. The material arrived in Addis Abeba in November, at the same time as the two ICRC delegates, Sidney Brown and Marcel Junod. It did not actually contain complete field hospitals, but a large amount of medical material, including fifteen cases of surgical material, each one sufficient for one field hospital as well as eight hundred first aid kits. Additional material was bought with government funds in the pharmacies of the Ethiopian capital, or was sent there from abroad at the outbreak of the war – such as a large, unsolicited consignment from a Swiss bandage factory. Soon after the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, Haile Selassie took an important decision. He put the Ethiopian Red Cross in charge of the army’s medical service as if the Society had not yet enough to do with its own affairs. All medical material ordered by the government was promptly delivered to the Red Cross’ premises. It was an impressive amount, at first sight. When Junod saw the piles of boxes, he informed Geneva that a large quantity of medical material was available. Brown felt that, once all promised material had arrived, it would be sufficient ‘to last for a war of Homeric dimensions’.7 It was an overstatement of which the two ICRC delegates became quickly aware in the course of their mission. Lambie, the Ethiopian Red Cross manager, was more realistic. He was an insider, familiar with the government and had been involved in the medical relief operation since the beginning. He was worried by the uncoordinated purchases made by the two agents of the Ethiopian govern-

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ment. They had omitted to inform each other about their acquisitions, resulting in duplication and waste. At some point, veterinary drugs were sent to Addis Abeba, although there was nobody to take care of them. Also, and more importantly, Lambie knew that the army required far more medical material and medicines than the unprepared Ethiopian Red Cross was able to provide. With malaria prevalent, where should the money come from to buy $1,000 worth of quinine a day for the 200,000 soldiers operating in Ethiopia’s southern lowlands, or the vermifuge required by each soldier once a month? It was an impossible task and Lambie (1939: p. 241) came to the conclusion that the Ethiopian Red Cross ‘never got within miles of supplying their needs’. Besides medical material, the other weak point was the lack of qualified medical staff, doctors in particular. In July 1935, the Italians learnt through their intelligence service that Iacovos Zervos, the Greek Consul in Addis Abeba – a physician himself and confidant of the Emperor – was attempting to recruit young Greek doctors into the Ethiopian army. A few days later, a report announced that Georges Dassios – the future head of an Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital – had been enrolled as assistant to Argyropoulos, at the time still in charge of the army’s medical services. More doctors were expected to arrive through other contacts of the Ethiopian government, especially from the United Kingdom. However, the recruitment campaign was far from successful. By the end of August the Italians noted that the efforts of Zervos had given ‘derisory results’. Only two candidates had offered their services, but they both wanted to be paid in Pounds Sterling instead of Ethiopian Thalers. In the end, the Italians were right; only a small number of physicians came to Addis Abeba from abroad. Most of the doctors finally deployed to the field belonged to those few who were already established in the capital. The Ethiopian government and Red Cross received support from a number of individuals and foreign communities in the capital such as the Armenians. A significant contribution was also made by the Ethiopian Women’s Work Association (EWWA), a local Non-Governmental Organisation, as we would say nowadays. Founded at the approach of the war by a group of ladies of Ethiopia’s high society, it was placed under the patronage of Empress Menen. Lady Barton, the wife of the British Minister in Ethiopia, played an important role, without being formally part of the association. EWWA’s aim was to assist war-wounded. Composed of about fifty highly motivated women, the Association prepared bandages, first aid bags, tents for the field hospitals and even Red Cross flags to mark the stations. Brown and Junod unreservedly appreciated the small but active organisation, which managed to provide essential medical material for all five Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals, one of which, no. 3, was fully equipped through its efforts. It was a precious help for the Ethiopian Red Cross, although the relationship between EWWA and the National Society

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which was supported mainly by protestant missionaries was, in Junod’s opinion, not free of competition and rivalry.

The ICRC and the Emergency Medical Relief Operation An Offer of Assistance On 4 October 1935, the day after the Italians initiated hostilities against Ethiopia, the ICRC approached the National Red Cross Societies of the two belligerents and offered to launch an appeal for assistance. The Ethiopian response came swiftly on the following day. It was an appeal for all-out assistance, not surprisingly, given the medical conditions in the country. Lambie asked for medical aircraft, complete field hospitals and funds to cover the running cost of hospitals to the tune of 10,000 Pounds Sterling per month. The Ethiopian cry for help was transmitted by the ICRC to sister societies in the form of a Circular Letter. On the express wishes of Max Huber, the ICRC President, a general call in favour of peace was included in line with resolutions of recent International Red Cross Conferences. At the same time the ICRC, probably fearing that the conflict would spread to Europe, expressed its hope that it would be limited in time and space. The Italian Red Cross needed more time to respond than its Ethiopian counterpart. Filippo Cremonesi, the President of the National Society, forwarded the ICRC’s offer of service to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and asked for instructions. After consulting with Mussolini, Fulvio Suvich, the Undersecretary of State in the Ministry, told Cremonesi to decline the offer politely with the argument that Italy had sufficient medical means to face any eventuality in East Africa. This was said textually to the ICRC on 7 October, just in time to be included in the aforementioned Circular Letter. Behind the diplomatic answer, considered austere and dignified by Cremonesi, lay a political motive which was more difficult to spell out. Fascist Italy had embarked on a military campaign in violation of the League of Nations’ Covenant. It could hardly ask for assistance and rely on international solidarity. The campaign was an exclusive affair of Fascism. No one else should play a role in it, not even the Red Cross movement or the Italian National Red Cross Society. It was now up to the individual Red Cross Societies to launch their national fundraising appeals. While for some Societies, the ICRC appeal marked the beginning of activities in favour of the Ethiopian Red Cross, for others, such as the Swedes, it provided the reason to go public with plans for assistance prepared in advance. The aid machine was launched and the Red Cross movement was embarking on its first international medical relief operation since the First World War.

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A comment must be made on the ICRC’s offer of service. It was in pure ICRC tradition. Since the earliest days of the Red Cross, during the war between Austria and Prussia in 1866, the humanitarian organisation had facilitated contacts between the various National Societies with regard to medical relief assistance. Equally, the ICRC had recalled its role as intermediary on the same matter at the beginning of the First World War, in its Circular Letter of 15 August 1914. It is precisely this letter which served as a model to the drafters of the offer of service to the Ethiopian and Italian Red Cross Societies in 1935, underlining the fact that the ICRC intentionally chose to make a link with its past. In this sense there was nothing new. The difference was that in 1935, the ICRC had in support the Statutes of the International Red Cross which had been concluded seven years earlier. The Statutes provided the legal basis on which the ICRC could act, in particular Article VII and, more specifically, the Statutes of the ICRC itself. Article 4 of these Statutes stipulated the ICRC’s role as a neutral intermediary in times of war and its coordinating function in regard to assistance of war victims. Tradition and the Statutes would have provided sufficient grounds for the ICRC to initiate the relief operation. There was, however, a third element which pushed the ICRC into action. It was the ambiguous attitude of the American Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies regarding the question of who should lead an international relief operation. As soon as the ICRC realised what was going on, it decided to launch without delay the relief operation, fearing that it would loose otherwise the initiative on a matter which was its prime concern. In fact, already in mid-September 1935, the ICRC had undertaken action when it learned about the American Red Cross’ interest in an upcoming Ethiopia operation. Lucie Odier,8 responsible for relief matters at the ICRC, was asked to compile a practical guide on the conditions in Ethiopia. It was completed in a few days. The confidential document contained very useful information on the little known country in the Horn of Africa and made specific recommendations in regard to a medical relief operation. Unfortunately, ICRC documents of this crucial period contain important gaps, making it difficult to fully understand what was more important in pushing the ICRC into action on that second day of the Italo-Ethiopian war: the statutory role of the ICRC, i.e., its own initiative or American and other pressure coming from the outside.

The Response of the National Societies Although the medical relief operation was organised under the banner of Red Cross solidarity, politics played an important role. When the Italian army crossed the Mereb River which marked the border between colonial Eritrea and imperial Ethiopia, the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva quickly concluded with an overwhelming majority that

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Italy had resorted to war in breach of the Covenant, paving the way for sanctions against the aggressor. Yet behind the general consensus lay various, not always reconcilable, political interests. These differences were demonstrated not only in the way sanctions were applied against Italy, but also in the way National Red Cross Societies responded to Ethiopia’s call for assistance. There were three groups of Red Cross Societies. The first was made up of those whose governments unreservedly supported Ethiopia, such as Sweden, which had historic ties to the aggressed country. The Swiss Legation in Stockholm reported in this respect that the whole Swedish Nation, without distinction, was on the side of Ethiopia. As a consequence, the Swedish Red Cross was able to mount the biggest relief operation of all National Societies with a large and fully equipped field hospital. Finland joined the pro-Ethiopia camp for other reasons. It was unfamiliar with the African country, but Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim explained to the Italian Ambassador in Helsinki that the Finnish Red Cross had decided to be part of the international relief effort. With an eye on Finland’s unpredictable neighbour, the Soviet Union, from which it had acquired its independence in the wake of the First World War, Mannerheim explained that one day his small country might find itself in a similar situation to Ethiopia and be in need of help. The Baltic States reasoned in the same way. Two of them, Lithuania and Latvia made small but highly symbolic contributions through their national Red Cross Societies. The second group was composed of Societies whose governments had sided with the aggressor, such as Hungary which was one of the four nations that voted with Italy in the League’s General Assembly. The response of the Hungarian Red Cross was in line with its government’s stand. It informed the ICRC that it was unable to participate ‘because of insufficient means’.9 Slightly different was the case of the French Red Cross. Although its government had joined, albeit reluctantly, the majority in the League of Nations, the National Society was firmly in the hands of ‘very conservative people and for this reason most probably pro-Italian’, as Brown wrote to the ICRC from Addis Abeba.10 Indeed, the French Red Cross informed the ICRC reservedly that it was unable to do anything for Ethiopia, but at the price of strong disagreements in France, leading to the establishment of a leftist Comité d’assistance aux victimes de la guerre en Ethiopie. This Committee managed, later in the war, to dispatch its own small field hospital to Addis Abeba. Despite, or rather, because of this assistance, the French government felt that it needed to do something of its own, especially in view of its economic and political interests in Ethiopia. Eventually, the government decided to provide the French legation in Addis Abeba with limited funds for some relief activities. The third and largest group was composed of those who attempted to strike a balance between political considerations and humanitarian solidarity.

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Chief among them was the American Red Cross. Although the Society had shown considerable interest in an Ethiopia operation shortly before the war, the high expectations which its engagement had raised were not fulfilled, to the disappointment of Thomas Lambie, an American himself. Just days after the outbreak of the war, President Roosevelt declared neutrality in the conflict and an arms embargo against both belligerents. This did not prevent the National Society from appealing for assistance through its regional chapters, but the results were not encouraging. An inward-looking United States was unable to mobilise its vast resources. Still, the American Red Cross was the largest cash contributor to the Ethiopia operation with $13,000. The Swiss Red Cross provided another interesting case. Upon the ICRC’s call for assistance, the Society’s Secretary General turned for advise to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giuseppe Motta. Motta, treading on a very thin line between supporting collective security and avoiding upsetting Switzerland’s powerful neighbour, said cautiously that the government had no formal objections of sending a field hospital to Ethiopia. The National Society got the hint and discarded such assistance with the rather hollow arguments that Switzerland had no diplomatic representation in Addis Abeba and that there was no qualified Swiss national with sufficient knowledge of the country to lead such an expedition. Instead, the Swiss Red Cross opted for less objectionable action in the form of a public appeal for funds and provision of medical material. The Society’s first donation of such material, even before the results of the appeal were known, was handed over to the two ICRC delegates departing for Ethiopia. This overview illustrates the very complex mix of motivations behind the medical relief operation in Ethiopia. Differing political interests determined whether assistance was given or not, and in what form. It would be wrong to believe that humanitarian assistance was non-political. On the contrary, it was deeply embedded in politics. The appeals made by the twenty-three National Societies resulted in cash donations amounting to almost 100,000 Swiss Francs (Table 2.1). If one adds the National Societies which dispatched field hospitals,11 a total of twenty-eight took part in the medical relief operation in favour of Ethiopia, almost half of the sixty-two National Societies which composed the Red Cross movement in 1935. Such a large participation from all over the globe was a remarkable achievement and a new phenomenon in the history of the Red Cross, particularly significant because it was in favour of a little known country on a still very distant African continent. However, cash contributions were not as high as was expected in the first weeks of the operation. Max Huber, in mid-November 1935, after most of the pledges had been made, considered the sum to be modest. During the seven-month war, the ICRC sent a total of 83,180.90 Swiss Francs to Addis Abeba, corresponding to about 92,000 Thalers, or three times the budgeted monthly expenditures of the Ethiopian Red Cross. International support

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Table 2.1: Cash donations of National Red Cross Societies.12 National Society Type of Donation 1 American 2 Australian 3 Belgian 4 Canadian 5 Danish 6 French 7 German 8 Greek 9 Egyptian 10 Indian 11 12 13 14 15

Japanese Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourg Poland

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Portuguese Rumanian Siamese South African Spanish Turkish USSR Yugoslavian

Value in Swiss Francs

Cash $13,020.45 (U.S.) 39,336.45 Cash £349.5.6 4,006.95 10,000 field dressings given via the Swedish Red Cross Cash $200 (U.S.) 900.00 Cash £578.2.6 8,686.40 A Fr 5,000 (French) cash donation sent to the French Legation in Addis Abeba and 20 cases of medical material 100 collapsible stretchers Cash £400 6,015.50 Cash £500 (Egyptian) directly given to the Ethiopian Red Cross Cash 7,529 Rupees 8,583.00 30 pounds of quinine; surgical and medical material Medical material for 10,000 wounded 225,000 phials of tincture of iodine Cash 516.60 Cash BF500 (Belgian) 73.50 5,000 pieces of individual dressings; 100 stretchers; 10 kg of iodine in crystals Cash 869.34 Cash 500.00 Cash 800.00 Cash 1,712.25 Cash £500; 9 cases of various products 7,500.00 10,000 field dressings Cash $5000 (U.S.), sent directly 15,100.00 Cash 5,225.00

Total cash in Swiss Francs

99,824.99

may not have been overwhelming in terms of contributions in cash and medical material, but if the value of the six foreign Red Cross field hospitals, estimated at over two million Swiss Francs, is included, the picture is entirely different. Seen as a whole, the medical relief operation in Ethiopia was an impressive show of solidarity, not paid from the treasury of governments, but from the purses of individuals moved by the desperate struggle for survival of the aggressed African country.

Between Italian Politics and Ethiopian Requests for Assistance The Italians followed very closely the efforts of the Red Cross to assist Ethiopia. The matter was so important that relevant information flowed

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regularly into Mussolini’s weekly briefing notes established by the Ministero delle Colonie. Reports on the internal situation in the Italian colonies appeared next to news about the recruitment of foreign nationals into the Ethiopian military or on the efforts made in Sweden and the United Kingdom to organise field hospitals. Clearly, the Red Cross had a significant place in the strategic and political calculations of the Italians at the highest level and the ICRC, in particular, acquired increasing importance during the war – a matter which Max Huber and the Committee did not appreciate enough, as this study will show. The Fascist government was very suspicious of the international medical relief operation getting under way and, incapable of stopping it altogether, sought to limit it as much as possible. The ICRC’s appeal to National Societies as well as the Ethiopian Red Cross’ response were forwarded to Italian diplomatic representations all over the world. Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented that it did not object to the idea of bringing aid to the wounded and sick, but it asked the representations to be vigilant to make sure that relief work was not misused to cover illegitimate activities. Italian diplomats were urged to gather all available information on initiatives regarding aid to Ethiopia and to undertake necessary measures to ensure that the country received only material assistance compatible with the Geneva Convention of 1929. The Italians had three major preoccupations which they conveyed to the ICRC. The first concerned cash donations, which could very easily be diverted for other purposes and which the Italians would have liked to stop altogether, as the Foreign Ministry had explained to its representations abroad. The Italian government made this point to the ICRC via two channels. First the Italian Delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva was instructed to approach the Swiss Foreign Minister, Giuseppe Motta, at the sanctions conference at the end of October 1935. Motta apparently promised in the meeting to ask Max Huber to take the necessary measures in order to avoid misuse.13 Secondly Senator Giovanni Ciraolo,14 the former President of the Italian Red Cross, in Geneva at the same time for a conference on refugee matters transmitted the same message confidentially to unnamed members of the ICRC who assured him that ‘the financial contribution requested will be moderately reduced’.15 In the meantime the ICRC had received another urgent request for cash from the Ethiopian Red Cross. The request was promptly discussed in meetings of the Committee and the Ethiopia Commission. The latter had agreed, on 29 October 1935, to dispatch a first cash transfer of 10,000 Swiss Francs, but in the end, on 2 November, (exactly at the time when the aforementioned Italian interventions were made) only less than half, 4,800 Swiss Francs, were sent to Addis Abeba. It was a curious coincidence. Had the ICRC yielded to Italian pressure? This might have well been the case, at least at this particular moment. However, it must be added that the ICRC

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later transferred much more cash, but only after its delegates had arrived in Ethiopia and after they had given assurances about the competent management of finances by the Ethiopian Red Cross. The second preoccupation of the Italians was with the medical aircraft which the Ethiopian Red Cross had requested. Unable to prevent National Red Cross Societies from sending medical aircraft to Ethiopia, the Italians decided nevertheless to communicate to the ICRC their suspicions about possible misuse of such means of transport. It was done under a novel form of complaint, called ‘preventive protestation’, before a violation had even taken place. However, it did not catch on with the ICRC. Guillaume Favre told Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate, unmistakably that the ICRC could not receive such a type of protestation. In addition, he said that if the loading capacity of airplanes was not very big, they were still capable of rapidly bringing medicines to the front. Furthermore, the Geneva Convention of 1929 had expressly foreseen the use of medical aircraft and it was not up to the ICRC to dissuade National Societies from sending the type of aid which they deemed fittest. Finally, Vinci was informed that the pledges received, so far, included only one aircraft, from the Swedish Red Cross. The Italian concerns were misplaced because the Ethiopian appeal met with a very poor response. In addition to the Swedish Red Cross’ aircraft, unusable because of the altitude of the Ethiopian highlands, only one more plane was donated by the British League of Nations Union. It had an even worse fate and crashed during trial flights in Addis Abeba with the British pilot having a lucky escape. There remained only the old single-engine Fokker plane, offered by the Emperor to the Ethiopian Red Cross. This plane, however, was extremely useful, contrary to what the Italians had predicted. The Swedish Red Cross pilot, Carl Gustaf von Rosen, made in a period of less than four months 55 flights with 83 flying hours and covered a distance of 12,500 km. Eighty-one sick and wounded patients were evacuated and 3,005 kg of medical material/mail was transported.16 The plane would have continued to render valuable service were it not for the Italians who brought to an abrupt end the success story of the only medical aircraft in the Italo-Ethiopian war. The third concern of the Italians was with the Red Cross field hospitals, particularly those coming from abroad. Providing field hospitals in times of war was a very common, perhaps the most natural way of expressing Red Cross solidarity. The first Geneva Convention of 1929 had given considerable attention to such assistance, specifically the notification procedure between the belligerents. The Italians could hardly question this type of assistance, certainly not publicly and at the beginning of the war, but the Italian Red Cross put a lot of energy into making sure that only duly recognised aid societies would be deployed to Ethiopia. Each case, notified by the ICRC, acting on behalf of Ethiopia as a neutral intermediary, was thor-

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oughly checked in Rome. In one particular instance, shortly after the outbreak of the war, Cremonesi discovered that American Aid for Ethiopia, a support group, which had been given permission by Ethiopia to dispatch a field hospital, had not received the corresponding authorisation of the American government. This did not conform to the notification procedure and, to Cremonesi’s satisfaction, the notification was withdrawn.17 However, the Italian zeal went much further than checking whether the accepted aid societies were fulfilling the criteria set under the Geneva Convention. When the Finnish Red Cross, the last of the six foreign National Societies, announced its intention to send a field hospital to the Ethiopian side in early January 1936, a weary Cremonesi commented to Vinci: ‘This mission is going to create predictable problems for us down there, just like the other missions.’ He decided to raise formalistic points in the notification procedure ‘in order to obstaculise a bit this influx which is becoming excessive’.18 This statement shows that the field hospitals themselves had become the target of Italian action, but neither Cremonesi, nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dared to say so openly. This task was reserved for Mussolini who expressed his views on the matter on an unexpected occasion – the last audience granted to Georges Wagnière,19 the departing Swiss Minister who had spent eighteen years in Rome. When the discussion turned to the Italian bombings of Red Cross hospitals in Ethiopia during December 1935, Mussolini explained to Wagnière that the Red Cross medical units caused ‘inconveniences’ and added bluntly: ‘We will give them hospitals … along with roads, schools, doctors, all the advantages of civilisation.’20 Clearly, the Red Cross field hospitals were heading towards very stormy waters. The ICRC had no idea of what Mussolini and his officials really had in mind in this respect and the humanitarian organisation tried, during these first months of operation, to stay its ground between the Italian and Ethiopian Red Cross Societies, with a varying degree of success. The initial stages of the medical relief operation had shown that it was not easy to remain neutral and above the parties. It was only the beginning.

Unilaterality of Action and Neutrality of the ICRC Italy’s preoccupations received succour from an unexpected quarter – from the ICRC itself, but for an entirely different reason. When Max Huber addressed the National Societies in November 1936 on the work accomplished during the Italo-Ethiopian war, he made a specific mention of the fact that the ICRC had had a delegation on the Ethiopian side, but not on the Italian. While this was ‘perfectly compatible with the neutrality of the Red Cross’, it had raised ‘certain psychological difficulties’.21 What did he mean? Three weeks before the outbreak of the war, Max Huber had started to consider the future Red Cross operation in the Horn of Africa. Fully aware

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of the disparity of means between the two countries and their Red Cross Societies, he asked the Committee whether the ICRC’s role permitted it to assist only one party in the conflict. There was no further discussion on the subject, at least judging from the minutes of the meeting, but the question showed its relevance when Italy, unlike Ethiopia, refused Red Cross assistance during the first days of the war. The ICRC tried to make the Italians review their decision, but to no avail. A one-sided operation had become reality and the ICRC had to come to terms with its implications. Huber was quite worried about this development and confided to Paul Draudt, the Vice-Chairman of the League that ‘all what is undertaken now, is done only to the advantage of one of the parties to the conflict’.22 The ICRC President added that the unilateral action had not been well received in Italy despite the fact that the Italian Red Cross itself had refused assistance. As a result and in view of the political situation, Huber felt that ‘a very strong activity of the Red Cross is politically not unobjectionable’.23 Huber’s concern had direct consequences on the ICRC’s position regarding the relief operation in at least two instances. The first related to the poor results of the appeal to National Red Cross Societies. In view of the pressing calls for assistance from Ethiopia, the Committee deliberated at the beginning of November 1935 on the question of whether it should push National Societies to make an additional fundraising effort. The discussion coincided, incidentally, with the moment when Italian pressure on the ICRC was most intense in regard to cash remittances to the Ethiopian Red Cross. The decision of the Committee was negative and based on the argument that it was not up to the ICRC to intervene again on the matter. The second instance happened about the same time and was related to the above point. Given the shortage of medical staff in the Ethiopian Red Cross, the proposal was made to recruit more expatriates either through the Red Cross or even to request assistance from governments to send army medical doctors. Here too, the decision was negative. In both instances, Huber invoked as a reason the politically delicate unilateral action of the Red Cross. Such an argument may leave contemporary readers perplexed. Who else other than the ICRC should have taken the initiative to help the victims of the conflict? What was going on in the humanitarian organisation? Had Huber veered suddenly onto the Italian side? This was hardly conceivable, because a person like the ICRC President would not allow such a thing to happen. The reason for his reaction lay elsewhere. It concerned the concept of neutrality. For Huber there was no difference between the neutrality of the Red Cross and the neutrality of a state.24 In both cases it meant abstention from taking part in military action and ideological debate. At the same time, it implied that all parties had to be treated equally at a formal and substantial level. Concretely, the obligation of neutrality required the Red Cross and the ICRC, in particular, to treat both sides in the same way. Normally

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this was the case when relief was reaching all parties of a conflict. A problem arose when assistance was provided only to one party, as was the case in the Italo-Ethiopian war, even though the other had refused Red Cross help of its own choice. Huber feared that a greatly unbalanced operation in favour of Ethiopia would be interpreted by Italy as being politically motivated and that the ICRC would be accused of not being neutral. As a consequence, the ICRC exercised self-restraint with the result that it did not do all that it could have done for Ethiopia. In addition, the ICRC started to make subtle political choices in the relief operation. A case in point is its recommendation to the National Societies of Japan and India to send material assistance, despite the fact that Ethiopia had repeatedly asked for cash to cover the cost of its operation. The ICRC had declined to relay the Ethiopian request to ‘a country whose impartiality towards the belligerents could be questioned in Italy’.25 Material assistance, in its opinion, was less likely to be misused than cash donations. Fearing Italy’s negative reaction, the ICRC pushed for assistance with what it considered correct from a political point of view, not with what was necessary from a practical perspective. Preserving neutrality was leading straight into politics. Jean Pictet (1985: p. 102) wrote that the ICRC was moving in politics like a swimmer in the water. As long as water served as a support, the swimmer was able to move, but if he started to drink it, he risked drowning. Shortly after the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, the ICRC had exactly done what it should have avoided in the first place: it started to drink the water in which it was swimming. Such a view of neutrality led to a dangerous concurrence between Italian and ICRC aims, although the motivations were completely different. The matter of the additional appeal for Ethiopia illustrates this point. Italy was against such an appeal because it wanted to fight against an Ethiopia as weak as possible, meanwhile the ICRC’s reservations were based on its understanding of neutrality. In the end, both reached the same conclusion that such an appeal should not be launched. In fact, it meant that neutrality was a limiting, rather than a facilitating factor of humanitarian assistance as it should have been. However, nobody objected at the time to such a restrictive interpretation and no debate on this matter took place throughout the period under study. The ICRC was not alone to interpret neutrality in such a way. The French Red Cross did the same when it considered appealing to the public for help in the Italo-Ethiopian war. Although aware that Italy had refused outside assistance, the French National Society intended nevertheless to launch its appeal on behalf of both sides and planned using part of the funds for Italian families in need in France.

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From an Impossible Mission to Mission Impossible At the end of July 1935 – two months before the actual war – the Committee began to consider the question of ICRC representation in Ethiopia. Lucie Odier asked whether the ICRC could fulfil its role from Geneva or whether it had to send a mission to the field. The matter was discussed on various occasions. Until the outbreak of the war, the ICRC favoured the option of designating a qualified person on the spot, not necessarily a Swiss National. He could be supported, in case of need, by a mission from Geneva, as had been practised during the recent conflict of the Chaco.26 This cost-effective solution was, however, discarded in the very first days of the war for two reasons. The first was connected to the recently created Ethiopian Red Cross Society which was not yet thought to be up to standard. If the ICRC was to coordinate a medical relief operation in favour of such a young Society, it wanted to be sure that the donations were put to proper use. This preoccupation had also been expressed during Vinci’s first visit to the ICRC and became even more important when Italy refused international assistance for itself. The second reason was again related to internal Red Cross politics. Once the ICRC had decided to take the lead in launching the medical relief operation, it also had to take a certain role in its realisation, all the more since James K. McClintock, the ViceChairman of the American Red Cross, had suggested establishing a small international commission to supervise the operation in Addis Abeba. Next on the agenda was the question of whom to send to Ethiopia. Initial plans to choose a member of the Committee had to be abandoned because no one was available. Quite naturally, Sidney Brown (Table 2.2), the secretary of the Committee proposed himself to be entrusted with the task. Although some discreet signs of disapproval accompanied the choice, Max Huber agreed because Brown had acquired considerable Red Cross experience in Geneva and abroad since his engagement in 1929. In view of the importance of medical matters in the upcoming relief operation, it was decided to attach a medical doctor to the mission. A young Swiss surgeon, Marcel Junod (Table 2.3) had recently offered his services to the ICRC and, after some inquiries were made in medical circles, he was promptly employed. The ICRC had taken a momentous decision. For the first time in its history, the humanitarian organisation had decided to send its delegates to the field from the very beginning of a conflict. It took the ICRC only five days, after the war had started, to select two delegates although the process was done hurriedly and somewhat casually – a hallmark of the organisation for many years to come. The modern version of the ICRC delegation had been born. The mission instructions to the two delegates reflected the ICRC’s preoccupations at the time. More than half of the instructions were dedicated

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Table 2.2: Sidney H. Brown (1898–1970). Sidney Hamlet Brown was the eldest of three sons of Sidney W. Brown and Jenny Sulzer. Both parents belonged to leading Swiss industrialist families. His father, a constructor, was the brother of the founder of Brown, Boveri & Company of Baden near Zürich, his mother, a Sulzer from Winterthur. Given the fact that his father was still British at the time – which explains the rather unusual middle name chosen for the Swiss son – Sidney grew up with an English governess and became bilingual, in German and in English, to which came later an excellent command of French. Having no inclination to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle, Brown studied law and made his doctoral degree in international law at the University of Bern, Switzerland. During a summer course at the International Court of Justice in The Hague he met Max Huber who offered him in 1929 a job as secretary of the ICRC. For the next years Brown became the link between Huber (living first in The Hague and then in Zürich) and the ICRC in Geneva. During this time Brown developed deep respect and admiration for the ICRC President whom he started to know better than many members of the Committee. He specialised in international humanitarian law and published several articles on the subject in the International Review of the Red Cross. Brown undertook a number of missions on behalf of the ICRC: to the USSR (1931); to China and Japan (1932); and he participated in 1934 in the fifteenth International Red Cross Conference in Tokyo. From the end of October 1935 to April 1936, he was chief delegate in Ethiopia during the Italo-Ethiopian war. After his resignation from the ICRC at the end of April 1936, Brown returned – albeit reluctantly – to the family business in Baden where he stayed for the next twenty years until his retirement in 1965. He occupied various positions before becoming General Secretary in 1948 and Head of the Legal Division in 1952. For some, Brown was a kind of foreign minister of the Company, for others its maître de plaisir. During this time a number of myths started to circulate around Brown, connected with his mission to Ethiopia and the difficulties which he had with Fascist Italy. One such myth was that he had been condemned to death in contumaciam by Mussolini for having spoken out against the methods of warfare employed by the Italians against the Ethiopians. There is, however, no substance to this nor to the other myth that Brown was the ‘historic person’ who had informed the League of Nations about Italy’s use of poison gas in the war (Ramspeck 1987). Brown had been received by Emperor Haile Selassie several times during his mission for the ICRC in Ethiopia. After the Second World War he had another occasion to meet the Emperor when he visited the Company in Baden for business reasons.

to the medical relief operation. The objective of the delegates was to provide the contributing National Societies with ‘an interlocutor inspiring full confidence’ and to assist the field hospitals dispatched by foreign National Societies. In particular, the delegation was asked to support setting up a commission of neutral Red Cross Societies in the Ethiopian capital and to

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Table 2.3: Marcel Junod (1904–1961). Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Junod studied medicine in Geneva and Strasbourg (1923–1929) and specialised in surgery. He was recruited in 1935 by the ICRC as medical delegate and served for more than seven years in the organisation, with some interruptions, until the end of the Second World War. His experiences during these moving times are described vividly, though not always accurately (at least as far as it concerns the Italo-Ethiopian war), in Warrior without Weapons, a classic of humanitarian literature. Alternating medical work and humanitarian activities in the years after the Second World War, Junod served as a member of the ICRC from 1952 to 1961 and acted as Vice-President from 1959 to 1961. Junod embodied the modern ICRC delegate. Young, clever, energetic, motivated, self-assured and ready to take risks, he was the driving force behind the medical activities of the Red Cross on the Ethiopian side during the ItaloEthiopian war. Practically minded and endowed with a pronounced sense for priorities and organisation, he was respected also by his elder colleagues in spite of his young age and rudimentary command of English, which not even a crash course, given by Brown during the seajourney to Ethiopia, had managed to markedly improve. Junod was generally very appreciated as is underlined by decorations given to him by two National Red Cross Societies after the war and by words of praise even from the Italian Red Cross. However, being more technically minded and result-oriented, Junod had made very little effort to understand the Ethiopians and the difficulties of a government which was crumbling fast under the Italian onslaught. He developed growing disdain for both during the war to a point that he welcomed the entry of the Italians into the Ethiopian capital and the new colonial order which it symbolised. He lacked, contrary to Brown, political sensibility and judgement, leading him, at the time, to underestimate the ruthlessness of Fascist Italy’s warfare against the Ethiopians.

contribute actively to its functioning. In addition, the delegates were in charge of distributing funds in accordance with the wishes of the donors and of making sure that medical material was sent to where it was needed most. In effect, the ICRC delegates were sent to Ethiopia to act as a gobetween for the contributing Red Cross Societies and Ethiopia. Their role was to facilitate, supervise and coordinate the relief operation on behalf of those National Societies who wished to make use of the service. It was a very limited and clearly defined assignment. Before leaving for Ethiopia Max Huber told the delegates that they had ‘a beautiful task’ in front of them and that they would bring for the first time ‘un-biased assistance’ to the Ethiopians, who knew civilisation only in the form of competing national interests.27 The delegates were in for a rude shock. Upon arrival in Addis Abeba on 6 November 1935, after a thirteen-day journey by sea and a twenty-four-

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Figure 2.3 Sidney Brown (left) and Marcel Junod, the two ICRC delegates, on their trip from Marseille to Djibouti, photographed by a member of the Swedish Red Cross advance unit. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 6)

hour train ride from the Red Sea port of Djibouti, they found the Ethiopian Red Cross completely overwhelmed by the huge task of organising its own five field hospitals – the nucleus of the army’s modern medical services (Figure 2.3). From the very first day, Brown and Junod, who were supposed to remain above the parties according to Geneva, got sucked into the affairs of the National Society. Brown, in his own words, took over practically the function of the Executive Secretary of the Society and tried to instil a sense of purpose into the Ethiopian Red Cross as he wrote in desperation to Geneva: ‘It is I who finally made it clear that a Red Cross Society is neither a fair, nor a Presbyterian or Adventist mission, nor a garden party, nor a cattle market nor above all a combination of these things’.28 Junod, on his part, took care of the organisation of the Ethiopian field hospitals, becoming practically the coordinator of the Ethiopian army’s medical services. It was an impossible mission with which the two were confronted in the first hectic weeks of their stay. Out of the five Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals, only one had actually been deployed to the Ogaden. The others were in the process of being set up amid incredible difficulties of all sorts. Chief of these was to clarify to everybody, not least to the Bartons – the British Minister and his wife – that it was the Red Cross which was in charge from now on. Two meetings with Emperor Haile Selassie within one week were required to set the matter straight and to come up with a first

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deployment plan for the Ethiopian and the foreign field hospitals whose arrival was imminent. It was a period of great tension from the beginning. Five days after the arrival of the two delegates, Gerald Burgoyne (Burgoyne 1967: p. 253), the future leader of the mule transport unit, wrote about Junod in his diary: ‘Such trouble at the Red Cross. A young Swiss from the Geneva Red Cross Assoc. has arrived out here to put things in proper order as he told me. Of course he has upset everything’. There were serious difficulties inside the Ethiopian Red Cross with Lambie threatening to leave the job. There were sharp divisions and rivalries between the members of the Ethiopian field hospitals, but also problems between Brown and Junod, who both had different views on the organisation of an army medical service. The problems between the two delegates were solved in the aforementioned way with Brown, as the chief delegate, taking charge of all that was related to the Ethiopian Red Cross, the movement and relations with the diplomatic community and Junod taking care of medical matters. It was a judicious division of labour, allowing the two with their very different characters to get along with each other. By about mid-December these initial difficulties were somewhat overcome, aided to a considerable extent by the unity of purpose animating the Red Cross teams, but also by the arrival of the first foreign units, most of whom were very well organised and knew what they wanted. Things were slowly falling into place, but always lagging behind the needs of the huge Ethiopian army taking up its position against the Italians. During the next phase, from mid-December 1935 to end of March 1936, deployment plans for the Red Cross field hospitals were refined and improved. In three and a half months, Junod made five trips to the northern front mainly for this purpose and met as many times with Haile Selassie, in most diverse circumstances, from the temporary headquarters in Dessie to an improvised shelter-cave near Korem. A plan for a properly organised army medical service was drawn up during the month of January. Each army corps was to have its own basic hospital infrastructure, with one advanced medical unit and a transportation column whose task was to bring the wounded to the referral hospitals. However, the plan never came even close to implementation. Italian advances as of mid-February 1936 made it increasingly impossible in addition to the considerable number of incidents during which the medical units themselves came under attack from the Italian Air Force. The matter was further complicated by an early and heavy onset of the small rainy season, making road transport more difficult than it already was. Until December, Geneva had shown surprising comprehension for the radically new roles of the two delegates. This changed, however, very soon afterwards. Brown, in particular, came under heavy Italian criticism for his highly visible role in the Ethiopian Red Cross. The ICRC had its own mis-

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givings and became increasingly worried that the two had taken a wrong road – a matter which will be discussed later in this study. By mid-March, Junod had to admit that the situation of the Red Cross field hospitals was not very brilliant. It was an understatement of which he was fully aware. The impending military disaster of the Ethiopians cast its shadow. Bit by bit, the medical organisation fell apart like the army. Some field hospitals were captured, others had to escape via Kenya and the rest barely made it back to the Ethiopian capital. By the end of April, everything was in complete disarray. The story of the Red Cross field hospitals had come to an end before they had been able to fully deploy. The third and last phase of the medical operation, during the sack of Addis Abeba and after the Italian occupation of the capital on 5 May 1936, saw Junod’s role once again transformed. Brown had already been recalled to Geneva in March and Junod had been asked to take over as the only delegate. From being an extremely busy medical coordinator, he turned suddenly into a spectator. During the sack of Addis Abeba, Junod played only a marginal role in providing medical assistance,29 a task which fell to field hospitals such as the British Red Cross. After the fall of the Ethiopian capital, the ICRC instructed Junod to assist in the repatriation of the Swedish and Norwegian field hospitals which had been lost in the still unoccupied parts of southern Ethiopia. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Italian Supreme Commander, promised to assist Junod in the search for the missing units, but the delegate was allowed to take part actively on only one occasion. On 22 May 1936, Junod joined an Italian flight over Yrga Alem where a message was dropped over the still marked, but apparently abandoned Norwegian Red Cross field hospital. Later, Junod was informed that another Italian aircraft had sighted the Swedish medical unit and also dropped messages, asking them to return to Addis Abeba. At this point Junod told the ICRC that he considered his mission terminated and that he intended to return to Geneva in the next days. The ICRC, surprised at this decision like the Italian Red Cross, tried to convince him to stay on until the fate of the two missing field hospitals had been completely elucidated, but it was too late. Junod had already made arrangements for his trip home. He left Addis Abeba on 5 June. ICRC documents contained only praise for Italian cooperation in the last weeks of Junod’s stay in Addis Abeba and even Junod, in his official reports, never said anything else. However, a different picture emerges from his personal notes. In them, Junod gave two important reasons why he decided to return home so quickly. The first was that there was a change in the Italian command from Marshall Badoglio to General Rodolfo Graziani, promoted to Marshal and Viceroy at the occasion of the hand-over. This hand-over coincided exactly with Junod’s flight over Yrga Alem. Junod learned later that Graziani, on his first day in the office, had forbidden the flight, but that his counter-order arrived too late at the airfield. Junod sus-

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pected that it was done out of concern for his own safety, but more probably, Graziani felt that the ICRC delegate had no business in such a matter, especially because Graziani had been directly involved in the bombing of one of the field hospitals for which they were searching. As a consequence, Junod felt that his hands were tied under the new administration and he informed Geneva somewhat cryptically about his immobility in Ethiopia. There was another reason directly related to his personal safety. Junod, following a number of discussions with Italian officers, had gained the impression that he was not welcome because of his work on the Ethiopian side during the war. On one occasion he was told that if the Italians had got hold of him, he would have been shot. This was apparently confirmed by Badoglio’s son Mario, who confided to the wife of the French Minister during a dancing party at the French Legation: ‘Ah, if we had captured Dr Junod, we had authority to act at will! Just think, we could have joyfully shot him’. Junod’s reaction was comprehensible: ‘I concluded that there was something else and that I had best leave by other means.’30 Retrospectively, Junod’s fears for his life do not seem to have been justified. On the contrary, the ICRC had notified Rome of Junod’s presence before the capture of Addis Abeba and had recommended him to the Italians. Corresponding orders were promptly issued via Cremonesi to Badoglio, namely ‘to facilitate Junod’s stay in Addis Abeba’ given the fact that the ICRC delegate had shown ‘an attitude not unfavourable to us’31 during the war. Independent of Junod’s appreciation about his personal safety, there was a message behind these events. The winner of the war needed no Red Cross assistance, neither in times of war nor of peace. The Red Cross mission in Ethiopia had been declared impossible.

Red Cross Field Hospitals in Ethiopia Apart from providing material and cash support, the most important assistance of the Red Cross during the Italo-Ethiopian war was through field hospitals, called ambulances at the time.32 There were fifteen in all (see Appendix 4): eight originated from the National Societies of Egypt, Finland, United Kingdom (2), the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden (2). Seven were constituted by the Ethiopian Red Cross or worked under its responsibility. Before describing the field hospitals, a few general remarks must be made.

Between Coordination and Implementation As already mentioned, field hospitals had become the classical way of expressing Red Cross solidarity in times of war. The concept derived

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directly from Henry Dunant’s experience at Solferino when wounded soldiers were left on the battlefield without sufficient medical assistance. Seventy-six years later, in 1935, all the foreign Red Cross Societies involved in Ethiopia had such a tradition of assistance. The Dutch Red Cross had dispatched its first medical unit during the Franco-German war of 1870 and the Finnish Red Cross in 1877, when the Society was still a branch of the Russian Red Cross. Even the Egyptian Red Crescent had field hospital experience, having provided one to the Turkish side in 1913, during the war of the Balkans. The Swedish Red Cross had sent no less than nine units to various war fronts since 1912. For Ethiopia, such assistance was not new. In the wake of the battle of Adwa, on 1 March 1896, the Russian Red Cross had sent a medical unit composed of four doctors to Harar and Addis Abeba where it worked for a few months. During this period several thousand patients were treated, amongst whom were forty Italians,33 probably prisoners of war kept in the Ethiopian capital. From this initiative, undertaken because of political and religious sympathies between Czarist Russia and Imperial Ethiopia, followed one year later the establishment of the Russian Red Cross hospital. It marked the beginning of a tradition of Russian Red Cross involvement which has continued, though cut by a long interruption from 1906 to 1947, until today. In 1935, National Societies, with their field hospital tradition, came into direct contact with an ICRC, which had taken a role of its own. For the first time, the two Red Cross organisations were meeting for an operation in the field. Their encounter raised interesting questions. According to the Statutes of 1928 the ICRC had a coordinating role in time of war, meanwhile the National Societies were the implementing partners. At no point did the ICRC intend to change this division of labour by trying, for instance, to assume more responsibility in implementation. Max Huber underlined in the mission instructions to the delegates that due attention should be paid to the fact that those National Societies which had decided to send field hospitals to Ethiopia wanted to keep their separate national identity and that they should not be mixed-up under an International Red Cross label. This, in turn, was thought to allow the ICRC to remain above the parties and, as a consequence, credible to all belligerents. However, during the war, cracks appeared in this reasoning due to the in-built tension – even contradiction – between an ICRC coordinating relief efforts and not assuming operational responsibility. National Societies had different views with regard to the ICRC’s role. There were those, such as the British Red Cross, who wished to continue in the traditional way with a minimum involvement of the ICRC. When the main British field hospital was bombed on the Korem plain in early March 1936 – a matter of utmost importance to the ICRC – the delegation was only informed incidentally, because the main channel of communication

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between the unit and headquarters in London was the British Legation in Addis Abeba. This point of view was further underlined after the war, when the British Red Cross informed the ICRC that, in its opinion, the humanitarian organisation should be more active in the field of dissemination and ‘that it should be left to the National Red Cross Societies to deal with matters concerning the Convention and its violation from the juridical and diplomatic point of view’.34 On the opposite side were those who came from smaller countries, or those who had not been able to equip large field hospitals. For them, such as the Dutch Red Cross, coordination was much more important and they maintained regular contact with the ICRC in Geneva and the delegates in Addis Abeba. They would have wished more ICRC involvement in the medical operation, particularly at a moment when important decisions had to be taken, such as when the question of withdrawal of the units arose towards the end of the war. In view of the growing insecurity in the war-affected regions and the collapsing Ethiopian administration, the Dutch Red Cross suggested that the ICRC call a meeting of the six Societies which had dispatched field hospitals to Ethiopia, in order to discuss a common line of action. The request was turned down with the argument made by Jacques Chenevière in the Ethiopia Commission that the ICRC could not be held responsible for field hospitals in whose dispatch it had had no say. Max Huber formulated the ICRC’s negative answer more diplomatically in a letter to the concerned National Societies in which he explained that the ICRC was in no position to have an opinion ‘to maintain or to repatriate the ambulances. The ICRC can only wish that they continue their activity as long as they are able to perform useful work’.35 Most National Societies did not agree and made it known that they would have wished guidance. However, events in Ethiopia with the imminent fall of Addis Abeba cut short the discussion. It is interesting to add here that the ICRC itself was not at ease with the decision and that it reacted in a contradictory manner. On the one hand, Huber proposed to the concerned National Societies in the above mentioned letter to consult on the future of the field units with Marcel Junod, the ICRC delegate in the Ethiopian capital but, on the other, the same ICRC had instructed the delegation a few weeks earlier not to influence field hospital directors in one way or another. The example demonstrates that National Societies and the ICRC had their own ways of acting in times of war. It was a system in which the partners were working next to each other more than with each other. Despite the problems which occurred during the Italo-Ethiopian war, National Societies were not ready to fundamentally question how they and the ICRC interacted. The same applied to the ICRC. The war had shown that it was quite impossible to keep the middle ground between co-ordinating relief

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efforts in time of war and abstaining when hard choices had to be made. A coherent Red Cross operation had yet to be achieved. It took several more decades before the system was modified and before the ICRC was able to take full charge of Red Cross operations in war – which included coordination in Geneva as well as implementation in the field.

Red Cross Activities and Religious Work Religion was a key element in a number of field hospitals. The two Swedish Red Cross units were a good case in point. Of the thirteen expatriates, who composed the teams, seven were connected with Swedish missionary societies and three of them had served in mission stations in Ethiopia. Fride Hylander and Gunnar Agge (Figure 2.4), the directors of the field hospitals had both served for the Swedish Mission Bibeltrogna Vänner (SMBV) as medical doctors and missionaries, as had the administrator, Pastor Josef Svensson.36 Most probably, the initiative for sending a Swedish field hospital to Ethiopia had originated from missionary circles and when the Swedish Red Cross was entrusted with its organisation, it intentionally chose members having a missionary background. The reason was that the

Figure 2.4 Gunnar Agge (standing in the shade of the tent), a former missionary and director of the second Swedish Red Cross field hospital, holding a prayer service in the field. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 2)

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missionaries were more prepared to live under the primitive conditions which Ethiopia offered and accepted more easily the hardship accompanying such work. Lambie, the Ethiopian Red Cross Executive Secretary, shared this opinion. He wrote to his headquarters that ‘real Christians’ were best suited to sustain the stress related to work in Red Cross field hospitals because ‘better than any known sedative is a real vital faith in our Saviour’.37 The founder and director of the British field hospital, John Melly, was a fervent bible reader who had wanted to be a medical missionary since his early student days. He entertained close relations during the war with the British Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society in Ethiopia which he knew from 1934 when he came first to the country with the intention of establishing a medical school. Two of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals were set up by Evangelical missions in Ethiopia. Unit 1 – the first to be deployed in the Italo-Ethiopian war – was provided by the United Presbyterian Mission and placed under the responsibility of an American surgeon, Robert Hockman. The rival Sudan Interior Mission soon afterwards set up its own field hospital with three of its members under the Canadian physician Ralph Hooper. These field hospitals were called ‘mission ambulance’ or ‘Mission Red Cross’ in order to distinguish them from the secular ones. The motivation for these expatriates was often more religious than humanitarian as was expressed in an account of the work of the Sudan Interior Mission during this period. Tending to the wounded and dying provided above all ‘an opportunity of telling of the love of God and the saving power of Christ’ (Ritchie Rice 1938: p. 60). In Brown’s view, Hooper’s field hospital in Sidamo ‘was more interested in disseminating and in distributing bibles for cash … than to take care of the wounded’ with the result that the Ethiopians fled Hooper more than the Italian planes.38 Every occasion was good for a religious purpose. When the Ethiopian army had collapsed and thousands of displaced people flocked to Addis Abeba, the Ethiopian Red Cross, with the help of Evangelical mission staff in the capital, established reception centres where people were fed and treated. Lambie (1939: p. 245) reported that the missionaries seized the opportunity of such large crowds ‘to hold Gospel meetings after they had given them something to eat’. Four of the field hospitals deployed in Ethiopia had very close relations with missionary societies through their expatriate staff. The number was much higher when local Ethiopian staff trained in mission hospitals was included. Many of them were converts with a deep religious zeal. For example, Melly’s interpreter, a local preacher recruited from a Swedish Mission, held daily morning prayers in each ward tent and handed out Bibles to the Ethiopian soldiers despite the fact that most had already received them. Although this connection between the Red Cross and Evangelical missions was quite natural under Ethiopian circumstances, it created difficul-

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ties on various occasions. In the British Red Cross field hospital a serious disagreement arose between Melly and the less religious ex-soldiers. They objected to religious work being carried out in the field hospital but Melly consistently refused to forbid it. Hockman caused dissatisfaction when he dismissed a number of local workers, claiming he had too many of them, but according to Brown the real reason was that they had lacked religious fervour and had not attended prayer meetings. Brown, animated profoundly by Red Cross spirit, was very worried by this confusion between Red Cross and religious work. He was well aware about its sensitivity in the Ethiopian context in which Orthodox Christians reacted with deep suspicion towards other Christian faiths, not to speak of the Muslims in the Ogaden region where Hockman’s field hospital was stationed. Brown vented his anger to Geneva. He informed them that he had told Hockman’s successor to abstain from such ‘follies’39 and that, in his opinion, the Ethiopian Red Cross should more carefully distinguish between a missionary enterprise and a Red Cross field hospital. Brown received little support. Lucie Odier who responded to the delegate on behalf of the Ethiopia Commission, expressed regrets if missions used the occasion to make business under the cover of the Red Cross, but recalled that the Evangelical missions were rendering precious services to the Ethiopian Red Cross. ‘In our opinion, the Red Cross does not need to show that it has no religion. Quite the contrary. In almost every country it works in close cooperation with all religious agencies pursuing humanitarian goals. It thereby affirms that it respects all religions, that it is very tolerant, to the exclusion of no denomination.’40 Geneva was not at all on the same wavelength with its chief delegate.

Uncommon Men for an Uncommon Job In the weeks after the outbreak of the war, a highly heterogeneous group of men assembled in Addis Abeba in order to serve in the Red Cross field hospitals. There were only men because Emperor Haile Selassie had vetoed, from the onset, the participation of women and he repeated his refusal despite calls for reconsideration, especially from the Swedish Red Cross which had planned to send several women nurses to the field. Conditions in Ethiopia, excepting the capital, were thought to be for them too rough and the dangers too great. The first category of these men was made up of what can generally be called the idealists, such as the missionaries with their mix of religious and humanitarian motivations. Very often they were sympathetic to the Ethiopians and their government. Brown noted, for example that Fride Hylander, the director of the Swedish Red Cross’ field hospital, ‘loves the Ethiopians as only a missionary can love his Negroes’41 and commented later that Hylander ‘accepts all what comes from the Ethiopian government

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as if it came directly from Heaven’.42 The great advantage of these people was that they were generally trusted by the Ethiopians and received much more sensitive information than the members of the other field hospitals. Hylander’s Red Cross unit was always in close contact with the military commander of the southern front, Ras Desta Damtew, but this closeness became highly uncomfortable when his army was beaten and had to withdraw. On one occasion, the Swedes met the retreating Ras near Melka Dida where the field hospital had been bombed. They felt obliged to transport him and some of his soldiers back to safety in their clearly marked Red Cross vehicles. Showing solidarity with the Ethiopians and sticking to the obligation of neutrality was not easy under such trying circumstances. A few days later, during the evacuation from Negele to the forest of Wadara, they were confronted again with the same dilemma. They opted once more for allowing the Ras to ride on their vehicles.43 To this first category also belonged people committed to the ideals of the Red Cross, such as Richard Faltin, the director of the Finnish field hospital. Faltin was a celebrity in war and plastic surgery. Between 1897 and 1936, he took part in seven wars as a Finnish Red Cross representative. He led four medical missions on three continents – always on the losing side, as he jokingly commented. In 1935, Faltin, a former Chairman of the Finnish Red Cross, was already sixty-eight years old, but he still felt strong enough to lead the medical mission to Ethiopia. Used to military discipline and classical warfare with large numbers of casualties, he was deeply disappointed by his experience in the Ogaden where he had to treat mostly common diseases of the civilian population under harsh conditions with excessive heat, dust and inappropriate accommodation. A difficult character and a highly unconventional person – Faltin was also a musician, owning a Stradivarius violin – he changed the location of his field hospital three times in a matter of two months. Finally, he was able to perform work to his satisfaction in the Swedish Mission hospital in Harar during Graziani’s offensive in April 1936. Also included in this category were the politically minded, like Valentin Schüppler, an Austrian doctor. He fled his country in the wake of the 1934 Nazi putsch against Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. His anti-Italian sentiments brought him to Addis Abeba where the Ethiopian Red Cross engaged him. Schüppler and his field hospital no. 3 were attached to the overall commander of the Ethiopian forces on the northern front, Ras Kassa Hailu. His Red Cross team operated closest and for the longest period of time of all field hospitals in the frontline area. They performed medical work in extremely difficult circumstances, suffering constant Italian attacks and bombardments. In early March 1936, Schüppler and his unit had to withdraw to Korem and Addis Abeba. Indefatigable, and highly committed days before the fall of the capital, he was put in charge of an advance medical unit in support of an Ethiopian attempt to hold back Badoglio’s fast

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advancing column. After the occupation of Addis Abeba, Schüppler managed to slip out of the country as part of the British Red Cross team. Last but not least, John William Scott Macfie, a well-known specialist in tropical medicine and second-in-command of the main British Red Cross field hospital, joined the medical mission with a different motivation – a mix of political and humanitarian elements as he (Macfie 1936: p. 1) explained: ‘For my part, shocked by the Italian ultimatum, and the outbreak of the war on October 3rd 1935, I felt deeply that I should like to contribute something to alleviate the sufferings which I saw must follow the brave efforts of the Ethiopians to retain their independence’. Despite problems with his health, Macfie braved hardship, misfortune and danger to his life in the main British Red Cross unit before he had to be repatriated in the last days of the war. The second category of men who participated in the Red Cross field hospitals were the former soldiers, nostalgic of adventurous life and bored at home. Such was the case of Major Gerald Achilles Burgoyne. At the age of sixty-one, in the climate of sympathy moving the British public in favour of Ethiopia, he informed his wife one day that he wanted to offer his services to train cavalry for the Ethiopians. In view of the fact that the British government discouraged such initiatives, Burgoyne decided, as a second-best choice, to join the Red Cross and promptly embarked for Addis Abeba. The Ethiopian Red Cross engaged him as a volunteer after he had played down his age by ten years. The retired Major was put in charge of a mule transport unit, supposed to carry wounded from the field to the base hospitals. Unfortunately Burgoyne lacked medical training, as he regretfully admitted when he had to tend to wounded after an Italian bombing raid on Weldiya, but he made it up with determination, dedication and a good portion of humour. Burgoyne also had style – very British style. In the record of a member of the British field hospital (Burgoyne 1967: pp. 273–74) who encountered him during another bombing raid of the same town, the monocled Burgoyne was described as refusing to lie down because ‘he thought it would make a poor impression if a British officer seemed afraid of Italian bombs’. A hunter and a sportsman, Burgoyne considered his stay in Ethiopia as his ‘1935–36 season’s hunting’. It was going to be his last as will be seen later in this Chapter. These former military knew little about the Red Cross and neutrality. Many of them were unable to refrain from dispensing military advice to the Ethiopians. Captain Arnold Wienholt, an Australian and veteran of the Boer wars, had been engaged quite late in the war for the second Red Cross mule transport unit. On several occasions, he tried to convince the Ethiopians, including a very young Crown Prince Asfawossen Haile Selassie that they should stick to guerrilla tactics rather than conventional warfare against the Italians. It was his favourite line but nobody listened to him, to his chagrin.44 For some of these former soldiers working for the Red Cross in Ethiopia was the start of a long-term relationship with the country – with some even

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espousing the Ethiopian cause. Wienholt, after the defeat in 1936, remained in close touch with the anti-Italian opposition and tried in 1940, apparently successfully, to join the Ethiopian patriots in their fight against the Italian invaders. The same applied to Captain Marius Brophil, an Irish assistant to Schüppler’s field hospital. Considered by the Italians as an adventurer, Brophil deployed upon his return from Ethiopia an intensive public relations campaign in favour of Haile Selassie’s cause. He also joined a clandestine flight in mid-1936 to the western Ethiopian town of Gore, to which the remnants of the Imperial government had withdrawn for a short period after the fall of Addis Abeba. The most important category of Red Cross workers were, however, those who needed a job and happened to be in the right place at the right time. These included a young Norwegian doctor, Johannes Kvittingen, who had completed medical school in autumn 1935 and who was looking for employment – not an easy task at the time. When the Norwegian Red Cross asked him to join its medical mission to Ethiopia, he gladly accepted although the salary was not good but acceptable. This did not stop him showing exemplary devotion and perseverance by choosing to remain with Ras Desta’s troops even though his contract with the Red Cross had run out and his Norwegian colleagues had evacuated from southern Ethiopia, along with the Swedes. Given the fact that there were several hundred wounded and sick in the field hospital, hidden in the forest of Wadara, Kvittingen agreed, as the youngest of the team, to stay behind for another three months and take care of the patients – a period remembered by him as a continuous nightmare.45 To this category belonged also the doctors who worked for the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals. Most of them had been in Addis Abeba at the time of their engagement – such as Harald Nyström, Stanisław Belau, Dr Ahmed and Kálmán Mészáros. The latter, a Hungarian, was well known to the Italians. In Ethiopia since 1923, Mészáros had served in 1931 as a medical doctor during Dajjazmach Gebremariam’s campaign to verify the extent of Italian penetration in southeastern Ethiopia and to take action against rebellious Ogadeni tribes. Dissatisfied with the way he was treated, he abandoned the Ethiopians on a pretext and escaped to Italian Somalia but returned to Ethiopia soon afterwards. During the Italo-Ethiopian war he led the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 6. This unit turned out to be the only one not involved in sustained medical action. A highly frustrated Mészáros vented his anger on Ethiopian soldiers and servants alike whom he accused of being ‘more dangerous than the enemy’s aeroplanes’.46 The leader of the Dutch Red Cross unit, Charles Winckel, also belonged in a way to this group of people in need of employment. After his return from Ethiopia in mid-1936, Winckel approached the Italian Minister in The Hague. He offered him his services, based on more than twenty years of experience in tropical medicine in Dutch colonies. In order to increase his chances for employment he confided to the Minister that he disliked the

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Ethiopians for their ‘vanity, arrogance and ignorance’.47 Winckel’s offer was politely but firmly declined soon afterwards. A special mention must be made for an unnamed male nurse belonging to the Egyptian Red Crescent who, upon his return home, gave the Italians details of the hideout at Bulale of the Turkish General Wahib Pasha serving under Dajjazmach Nasibu Zamanuel. The place was promptly bombed and gassed by four Italian warplanes a few days after the information had reached the Italian Airforce in Somalia.48 It was, indeed, an unusual lot of people who worked for the Red Cross field hospitals in Ethiopia. It was a mix of the best and the worst humanity had to offer – not uncommon under such circumstances. Idealists worked with opportunists, the noble-hearted with the vile, the generous with the selfinterested, the courageous with the indecisive and the strong with the weak.

Communications Ethiopia’s road network was very limited in 1935. The only good roads for vehicles existed in and around the capital Addis Abeba. From there, a few roads led to the countryside, although these were very often enlarged mule tracks, suitable for lorries more than passenger cars. One such road was la grande route impériale du Nord. It led to the main theatre of operations in northern Ethiopia and was the road on which a large part of the army’s supplies had to pass. However, when the war started it was unfinished and came to an abrupt end about half way to Italian Eritrea, at Kobo, north of Dessie. The only thing imperial about the road was its name. In reality, it was a track through spectacular countryside, from highland plains and mountains with alpine vegetation (the highest of which peaking at over 3,000 m above sea level) to lowland valleys, full of lush vegetation and game of all sorts. The 370 km-long road to Dessie was in Junod’s words of a nature to frighten the most fearless driver. At some point the narrow road wound down a mountainside, plunging several hundred meters into a precipice. If the road was difficult to negotiate in the dry season, it became far worse in the rainy season which started very early in 1936. The road became slippery and dangerous with a high risk of accidents, such as the one in which a hired lorry with Red Cross material slid down a ravine, killing the Greek driver. Travel time became highly unpredictable. Normally a vehicle needed three and a half days to cover the distance between Addis Abeba and Dessie, but in April 1936, Dutch Red Cross lorries spent four long days on a piece of road normally covered in one. The vehicles got stuck in the mud and had to be dragged out by men-powered towropes. In one instance the trucks had to be offloaded, the material carried on foot for two kilometres and reloaded. Fuel consumption increased to a staggering one litre for two kilometres under such conditions (Figures 2.5 to 2.9).

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Figure 2.5 Through a forest in Sidamo Region. ‘We had good help from tire chains at this occasion’, noted Anders Joëlson from the Swedish Red Cross main unit. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

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Figure 2.6 A Red Cross truck has to be pushed through a muddy piece of road in northern Ethiopia. The small rains in 1936 came early and were unusually heavy putting men and material to a severe test. Stones were laid in the track in order to allow for easier advancing. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-5014/2793, ENS-PHT-10, E2019 à 2020)

Figure 2.7 Local people pushing and pulling the staff car of John Melly, the leader of the British Red Cross main unit, through a difficult piece of road. (Nelson K. and Sullivan A. John Melly of Ethiopia, London, 1937, p. 208, by permission of the British Library, shelfmark 10856.k.3)

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Figure 2.8 Towing a Swedish Red Cross truck over a rocky piece of road in December 1935. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 6)

Figure 2.9 The roads in Ethiopia were often little more than mule tracks. At times they were non-existent and the Red Cross trucks just drove through the open countryside as here in the Lake District. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

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Red Cross field hospitals in all parts of the country had the same problems. When the roads ended, they continued by other means. The second Swedish Red Cross medical unit spent three weeks travelling by truck and three weeks by mule and camel before they reached Ellot, their destination in southeastern Ethiopia. Such long and fragile lines of communication, which became even more hazardous with the increased activities of the Italian Airforce later in the war, made resupplying practically impossible. At the same time, it created huge difficulties for evacuating patients to base hospitals, even though the British unit in Weldiya had made special efforts to equip three trucks for carrying eight stretcher cases each. Had the war lasted into the real rainy season in mid-1936, the Red Cross operation would have almost certainly come to a complete standstill. The picture was no brighter with regard to telecommunications. The Ethiopian government did not trust the Red Cross enough to allow the field hospitals to have their own communications, not even ‘a pony express for weekly letters’, as Lambie (1939: p. 238) remarked. The only exception was, later in the war, the second Swedish unit under Gunnar Agge. It was given permission to use a portable wireless station, but the precious machine never reached its destination. It broke when the mule carrying it tripped over and fell to the ground. Instead, the units had to rely on existing telephone and telegraph lines which reached the main provincial capitals by 1935. Sending a message was a nerve-racking exercise involving overcoming red tape, long waiting hours at a telecommunications office – sometimes a simple tukul – and with no guarantee of success (Figure 2.10). Burgoyne found out why the lines were so unreliable. He discovered during his trip to the north some lengths of wire on the ground right across the path of his mules. With the help of six of his men he pulled the line back onto the post, high enough for the animals not to get caught. The result was that Addis Abeba was very often kept in the dark about the actual position and situation of the field hospitals. One extreme case was the aforementioned unit of Gunnar Agge. They had left Addis Abeba in December 1935. By the end of the war in early May 1936, the Ethiopian Red Cross had received only one letter and was not even sure whether Fride Hylander, the leader of the main unit, had managed to unite with them after reorganisation following the bombing of his field hospital at Melka Dida. In other cases, the poor communications resulted in delayed transmission. The bombing of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital on Amba Aradam reached Addis Abeba only eight days after it had happened. Communications became worse when the Ethiopian army started to crumble in early March 1936, not only for technical reasons, but also because the Ethiopians had started to keep tighter control over the flow of information. The leader of the Dutch Red Cross field hospital in Dessie was only informed about the wounding of one of his surgeons days after the incident on the road to Korem had taken place.

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Figure 2.10 The telephone station in the southern Ethiopian town of Ghinir. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 6)

Using such means of communication was tedious but there was little choice, short of sending a messenger or depending on rumours. In case of need, however, particularly if the matter was politically important, the system worked surprisingly well. Geneva and Stockholm were informed one day after the main Swedish Red Cross field hospital had been bombed on the very isolated southern tip of Ethiopia. It was made possible thanks to Ras Desta’s portable radio station which relayed the news to the imperial headquarters in Dessie and from there to Addis Abeba and abroad. When the Red Cross plane was bombed on the Korem plain, Junod managed to send a telegram from Korem to Geneva via Dessie in a matter of hours. Here again, the fact that the Emperor was in Korem, helped considerably to speed up communications. In regard to communications between the ICRC delegation in Addis Abeba and headquarters in Geneva, the normal means, besides the telegrams, were reports transmitted via airmail. It functioned reasonably well with delivery time taking an average of fourteen days for the sixteen reports written by the delegates and the ten responses from Geneva. A word must be said about confidentiality. It was generally known that telegrams could be intercepted easily. Governments, as a consequence, resorted to coding messages when communicating with their representa-

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tions abroad. The Italians had managed to crack a good part of the Ethiopian cipher system and systematically intercepted Ethiopian internal and external communications from December 1934. The capture of Ras Desta’s complete radio station in January 1936 gave further precious information about the codes although the Italians were unable to decipher all the Ethiopian telegrams until the end of the war. As far as the ICRC was concerned, it did not intend to establish a full-fledged code, but Geneva agreed with the departing delegates on a system whereby keywords were replaced by circumscriptions. The devised system was amateurish and ineffective because the meaning of the code words was normally easily intelligible from the context of a message.49 Besides that, it revealed interesting insights into how the ICRC viewed the belligerents. Haile Selassie’s government was called Maître (Master), probably in view of his authoritarian rule, meanwhile Mussolini’s not less authoritarian regime was circumscribed as Collège (College, Board). The ICRC code words were no match for the professional listening services of the Italians. Throughout the war, the ICRC telegram traffic was systematically intercepted and translated, both in Rome and by the High Command in East Africa. Practically all telegrams from Geneva to Addis Abeba and vice versa can be found in the files of the corresponding Italian archives. The ICRC, most probably, did not even imagine that this was done, certainly not so meticulously. Intelligence from such sources was of considerable importance for the Italian authorities. It had a direct impact upon policymaking as will be seen at the example of the negotiations on the inquiry, which the ICRC conducted in Rome at the end of March 1936.

Description of the Field Hospitals The Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals served principally as advance units. They were supposed to be based as close as possible to the front, to receive casualties and give them treatment or evacuate them to the better-equipped foreign field hospitals. These advance units normally consisted of two doctors and one or two expatriate assistants. Many of these assistants were not trained medical staff, such as the two missionaries of field hospital no. 1, Stokes and Dawkins who were respectively an architect and a lawyer. Each unit had about twenty to thirty Ethiopian staff who worked as medical orderlies, interpreters and servants, but otherwise very little is known about them.50 A very small medical unit from France, consisting of only one male expatriate nurse, operated under the Ethiopian Red Cross because it did not obtain the consent of its government for deployment under its own name – one of the conditions contained in the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. These field hospitals were equipped with first aid material, medicines and a few tents, locally manufactured or purchased. It was mostly basic material, in stark contrast to the sophisticated equipment which some for-

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eign units had brought along. In addition, they carried a few Red Cross flags in order to allow identification, especially from the air. Most units did not have their own vehicles, but used hired trucks. The only exception was field hospital no. 1, operating in the flatlands of the Ogaden, for which Lambie had organised four vehicles. The main means of transport were mules or camels which were best adapted to the rugged terrain. In midDecember 1935, Emperor Haile Selassie gave eighty-four mules to Belau’s field hospital no. 5, destined for the mountain stronghold of Amba Aradam and 114 animals to Schüppler’s no. 3, leaving for Abi Adi. These medical units on the move were a striking sight. Major Burgoyne (Burgoyne 1967: p. 274) described Dassios’ no. 2 near Weldiya: ‘Four Zabanias carrying three Red Cross flags and one Ethiopian colour, march in front of Dassios, then he in full war rig armed to the teeth, and behind him 12 more Zabanias – then his mule caravan.’ All in all, there was a lot of improvisation, nothing was standard, not even the Red Cross flags. Once the field hospitals had departed, they were on their own and had to depend on what they had taken with them. In this regard it was an advantage that the period spent in the field was relatively short for most of them, ranging from a few weeks to a few months. The Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 1 spent the longest time in action. Hockman’s unit left the Ethiopian capital by mid-October 1935, two weeks after the outbreak of the war, with the aforementioned Stokes and Dawkins returning to Addis Abeba only by the end of May 1936, three weeks after the occupation of the Ethiopian capital. They had spent seven long months in the field under rudimentary conditions though quite far away, most of the time, from the actual fighting. Richard Faltin, the Finnish Red Cross field hospital director who got to know Stokes and Dawkins, had only praise for their dedication and effectiveness. Unfortunately there are almost no records on the number of patients treated by the Ethiopian field hospitals. The only available information, covering a period of several weeks, comes from Dassios’ no. 2, which was attached to the Imperial Guard. When Junod visited them in Weldiya in midFebruary 1936, the Greek doctor had treated altogether 1500 persons and attended to seventy soldiers as outpatients per day. Eighteen patients were hospitalised at the time, thirteen of whom were down with typhoid fever.51 Belau’s field hospital no. 5, with two expatriates and Ethiopian staff, took care of 150 to 200 patients during the three-day battle of Amba Aradam, a very heavy workload not giving them time to rest.52 In the absence of precise numbers of patients treated by the Ethiopian field hospitals, it can safely be assumed that several thousand benefited from their assistance. As already mentioned, the Ethiopian Red Cross had set up a mule transport unit under the responsibility of Major Burgoyne whose function was to link the forward units with the field hospitals north of Dessie. The unit left Addis Abeba with thirty-five handlers and an impressive number of 129

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mules, Red Cross flags flying in front and an the end. Burgoyne rode on the biggest animal, accompanied by his Somali servant, reminding Sidney Brown of Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa. Altogether fifteen doctors, one of them an Ethiopian and another an Ethiopian veterinary surgeon, as well as fourteen expatriate assistants served in the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals during the war. They were accompanied by not more than two hundred local staff. The eight foreign Red Cross field hospitals, from six different countries, were staffed by thirty-five doctors and 109 assistants – including male nurses, transport officers and other support staff. These 144 expatriates were supported by an unknown number of local employees. The only information on this subject is provided by the Norwegian Red Cross, a mid-size unit, which had engaged twenty young Ethiopians for the work in southern Ethiopia. The main British Red Cross field hospital was an exception. They brought a complete foreign staff, eighteen British expatriates and about eighty Kenyan and Somali assistants. Only three Ethiopian translatorsdressers were hired in Addis Abeba. The British and Swedish units were the biggest, designed to take care of seventy and one hundred severely wounded respectively. While the British had planned to be entirely self-sufficient, the Swedes had chosen the opposite approach. In view of their excellent knowledge of the people and the country, they decided to bring only a core staff of thirteen expatriates and intended to rely as much as possible on local resources, both in regard to staff and food. Still, they had to transport an impressive amount of goods: fifteen special double-roofed tents; one hundred camp beds; 500 kg medical instruments; 1,500 kg medicines; 2,000 kg dressing material. The unit included a laboratory for biological examinations; one x-ray machine, fed from a truck with a transformer; two washing machines and a steriliser with a water boiler. The field hospital was packed into 350 boxes with a total weight of over 20,000 kg fitting into two railway wagons. The unit was completed by five 31/2 ton Volvo trucks specially designed for tropical conditions and a two-seater Heinkel plane to ensure communications. The field hospital was state-of-the-art (Figures 2.11 and 2.12). An average-size field hospital, such as the one from the Norwegian Red Cross was more manageable. Designed for a fifty-bed capacity, the five expatriates brought with them one big hospital tent, one operation tent and five smaller ones for accommodation. Their material weighed 6,300 kg in 218 boxes. The smallest unit was from the Finnish Red Cross. It was not a fullfledged field hospital, but a five-man surgical team, which depended on outside assistance in order to work efficiently, especially as far as management of the patients was concerned. The team was very well equipped and even had two x-ray machines. They carried equipment and medical material for fifty patients at a time.

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Figure 2.11 Thomas Lambie, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross, assists at the departure of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital from Addis Abeba to the border with Italian Somalia in early December 1935. (SIM photo archive)

Figure 2.12 Meeting with Arussi tribesmen during the trip of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital to the southern tip of Ethiopia. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

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In view of the heavy equipment of most foreign field hospitals, transport by truck was considered the most appropriate means. Practically all units came with their own vehicles, twenty-six in total. Additional vehicles were hired in the Ethiopian capital. The British Red Cross main unit alone had sixteen trucks. It had been a deliberate choice when the field hospital was set up because the initiators thought that the unit was going to be used in the flat Ogaden. When Haile Selassie decided that the unit should be deployed north of Dessie, the dependence on road transport became a serious handicap. The British Red Cross had to wait for some two months in Weldiya until the road to Korem was completed. Smaller units such as the Dutch Red Cross had a big advantage in this respect. They had opted for a more flexible approach from the beginning, dividing their material between three vehicles brought from the Netherlands and two mule caravans organised upon their arrival in Addis Abeba. Although they had arrived in Ethiopia a few weeks after their British colleagues, their advance unit with sixty mules managed to reach Korem about ten days earlier. On their way from Dessie to Korem they passed an impatient and envious British team. The foreign Red Cross units stayed in Ethiopia for an average of four to five months with the Swedes and the Egyptians staying longest, about six months, and the Finns the shortest, three and a half months. Records on patients treated by the foreign field hospitals are better than those of the Ethiopian Red Cross’ units, although they are incomplete because some were lost during the last turbulent weeks in Ethiopia. The available information collected from various sources indicates that the eight field hospitals treated about 117,000 persons. The bulk of them, 91,000, were treated by the largest unit, the eighty-five-men strong Egyptian Red Crescent mission. Its main base was in the town of Harar where 75,000 patients received medical attention.53 If the latter number of patients – mostly civilians living in or around one of the big towns of Ethiopia – is deducted, this still means that about 42,000 people received medical care in rural areas, thousands of whom were direct war casualties. The British field hospital reported that it had taken care of three thousand patients during the three-week stay in Korem, with a peak of 232 patients in one single day, at a time when the area was subjected to heavy bombing and massive use of poison gas (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 36, Nelson and Sullivan 1937: p. 227). The most complete and reliable records have been kept by the two Swedish field hospitals, which treated 10,801 patients, including 5,912 medical and 1,935 surgical cases.54

‘I Wouldn’t Have Missed this Whole Show for Anything on Earth.’ When John Melly (Table 2.4), the leader of the British Red Cross field hospital wrote these words to his mother (Nelson and Sullivan 1937: p. 194), he and his team were in Weldiya where they had just received their first

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Table 2.4: André John Mesnard Melly (1898–1936). Melly’s life is an extraordinary story of determination and faith in a cause. Born in Liverpool, he was enrolled for military service in 1917 on his own insistence despite problems with his eyes. During the last months of the First World War, he saw action in France and was decorated with the Military Cross for bravery at the age of twenty. His life turned around two sources of inspiration. First, his deep Christian faith inherited from his mother. During his student days in Oxford, he became one of the founders of the University Bible Union and preached regularly in Church services. His friends (Townshend-Stevens 1936: p. 230) described him ‘as intensely, but unobtrusively religious’. The other source of inspiration was his profession. After demobilisation, Melly studied medicine in Liverpool and specialised in surgery, which he practised for a few years in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Instead of making a promising medical career at home, Melly dreamt of becoming a medical missionary, combining the two inspirations of his life. He started to realise his dream in 1934 with a first visit to Ethiopia of which he had heard through his missionary connections. His plan was to set up a medical school and hospital in Addis Abeba, but his stay was cut short because of an accident in which he almost lost the use of one hand. When Melly returned to Ethiopia in early 1935, he realised that long-term development plans needed to be postponed in view of emergency medical work in case of an increasingly probable war with Italy. With this idea in mind, Melly returned home and founded, during the summer of 1935, the British Ambulance Service in Ethiopia (BASE) which was later integrated into the British Red Cross. Fighting in the beginning with financial and practical difficulties of all sorts, Melly did, typically, not hesitate to pay the first expenses from his own pocket, financing, amongst other things, a trip to the ICRC in Geneva where he had discussions with Sidney Brown. When the war broke out in October 1935, a public appeal was launched. The generous response allowed him to equip not only one, but two field hospitals. Behind the British Red Cross enterprise stood one man, John Melly, to such a point that the two became synonymous. The man marked his unit much more than anyone else serving in the other field hospitals in Ethiopia. Even more, Melly seemed to have lived in order to die in Ethiopia.

fresh war casualties. Melly had good reason to be pleased. The unit had started to serve the purpose for which it had been designed. He could hardly have imagined that just three months later he would be back again in Addis Abeba, in need of complete reorganisation after his unit had been destroyed by the Italians (see Chapter 3). Even less could he have known that he was to pay for his commitment to help others with his own life. Soon after the British Red Cross field hospital had returned to Addis Abeba on 20 April, it became evident that the Ethiopians were unable to hold back the rapidly advancing Italian troops. Melly and his men decided to set up a temporary hospital in the Empress Menen School. This relieved

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pressure on the few existing hospitals which had to cope with an additional workload due to the influx of displaced people. The new hospital opened on 1 May 1936, just in time to take care of medical emergencies created by the sack of Addis Abeba following the Emperor’s flight. During the next four days, the British Red Cross team was busy collecting the wounded and evacuating expatriates to their respective legations. It was dangerous work since the streets were full of frenzied looters and rioters, often drunk and animated by rapidly growing anti-European sentiments. During one of these rescue trips on 3 May, amidst shooting and looting, Melly’s Red Cross truck stopped to pickup an apparently wounded man lying in the street. The driver, S.O. Gatward, got out from the vehicle to check on his condition and described (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 48) what happened: ‘Finding that he was wounded I turned round to call Dr Melly and was just in time to see a man thrust a revolver into the cab of the lorry and shoot Dr Melly. The latter collapsed on the seat and shouted out to be taken back quickly. I, thereupon, jumped into the driver’s seat and drove back quickly to our hospital. I recollect a shout in the crowd of “ferengi!” [foreignerEuropean] just as the shot was fired.’ Melly was mortally wounded in the chest and died two days later in the British Embassy to where he was moved, just hours after the Italians entered Addis Abeba. Whether a drunk killed him as was said later or not cannot mask the fact that a more absurd and tragic death is hardly imaginable for someone who had done so much to help the Ethiopians. Melly was laid to rest on 6 May 1936 in the Embassy grounds where his grave still is today. Melly was not the only Red Cross worker who died as a direct consequence of the war. In the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross main unit in Melka Dida on 30 December 1935, Gunnar Lundstroem, a male nurse, was killed (see Chapter 3). He was buried by his colleagues in the cemetery of the Orthodox Church in Negele in the very first days of 1936. When the Italians took the town about two weeks later, they encountered the fresh grave. General Graziani, probably remorseful about the incident for which he had direct responsibility, inquired in Rome whether it would be opportune to repatriate the body of the Swede but Mussolini was against the idea. He ordered, instead, to do nothing for the time being and to keep quiet. After the war Graziani came back to his proposal. He offered to repatriate the body but, upon consultation with the family of the deceased, the offer was rejected. The family wished that Lundstroem should remain where he had been killed and remind people of what the Fascist Air Force had done. Politics played an even bigger role when a third Red Cross worker perished. Gerald Burgoyne, in charge of the mule transport, disappeared after leaving Weldiya for the northern war front at the end of January 1936. One month later, the British Red Cross had just set up camp on the Korem plain when news arrived from servants of Burgoyne that he had been killed

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between Maychew and Lake Ashenge while withdrawing with Ras Mulugeta’s beaten troops. When the news was publicly announced a few days later, the Ethiopians said that Burgoyne had been killed during an Italian bombing raid on the retreating troops.55 It was later corroborated by sworn testimonies of the Cuban mercenary Alejandro del Valle and Ethiopian officers. However, another version circulated soon afterwards amongst Red Cross workers and diplomats. Burgoyne had not been killed by Italian bombs, but during a fight with Oromo tribesmen opposed to Haile Selassie’s rule. This explanation was transmitted to London by the British military attaché in Addis Abeba, Col H. B. Holt, following a visit to Korem.56 Junod reported the same to Geneva, adding that del Valle’s statement was false.57 Although the ICRC delegate gave no reason for his assertion, there might be some truth in it. It is curious that del Valle (1937: p. 134), in his souvenirs after the war, made no mention whatsoever about his affidavit, but he gave yet another – very confused – version of Burgoyne’s death.58 Thomas Lambie, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross, explained why it mattered so much how Burgoyne died. At the time, the Ethiopians did not want the world to know that Ras Mulugeta’s troops had been so thoroughly beaten at Amba Aradam and that the Emperor had lost control over some of his subjects. Explaining Burgoyne’s death with Italian bombs was more convenient than admitting that it was the responsibility of disgruntled Ethiopians who had switched sides. The truth of how Burgoyne was killed will probably never be known. It is interesting to add here that all the Italians found of him was his visiting card, left in a village in the same area where he met his death. Three more expatriate Red Cross workers died during these dramatic months in Ethiopia. Robert Hockman, the director of the first Ethiopian Red Cross unit, was killed while dismantling an unexploded Italian bomb, his favourite pastime according to more than one account. His body was brought by plane from Degeh Bur to Addis Abeba and buried on 15 December 1936. The second was Mohamed Al Saoui Gomaah, an Egyptian Red Crescent doctor who had died in Jijiga, apparently of illness. His body was embalmed and repatriated to Egypt where he was buried on 15 March 1936.59 The third was Elfrida Stadin, the wife of the director of the Adventist mission hospital in Dessie, Ragnar Stadin. Although formally not a Red Cross employee, her name must be mentioned here since the couple had distinguished themselves in the treatment of the casualties caused by the Italian bombing of the town on 6 December 1935. Mrs Stadin was mortally wounded by a stray bullet in Addis Abeba during the sack of the capital in which Melly had lost his life, too. In addition to these six persons killed, at least six more Red Cross expatriates had been wounded during the war, two of them seriously, either in Italian bombing raids or in fighting with Oromo tribesmen in northern

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Ethiopia. Several others, belonging to different field hospitals, had to leave their duty stations prematurely, either because they fell ill or did not withstand the stress associated with the hard work and difficult living conditions. It was an unusually heavy toll which the Red Cross had to pay. This is probably also true for the local employees who went through the same hardship but about whom there is so little information.

A Meeting Near Korem, or the Disparity between Needs and Relief In the early evening of 20 March 1936, John Melly rode the few kilometres separating the British Red Cross cave hospital near Korem from Emperor Haile Selassie’s temporary headquarters, also located in a cave for better protection against the daily Italian bombing raids. The two had a short and sombre meeting. Melly informed Haile Selassie about his decision to evacuate from Korem where circumstances had made it impossible for the Red Cross to work. The British unit needed complete reorganisation. It was understood that the Dutch Red Cross’ advance post was included in the evacuation. In fact, it meant that all Red Cross field hospitals in the area were withdrawing at a moment when Haile Selassie had decided to make a last stand. That same night, the Emperor moved north with his troops to face the Italians. Shortly afterwards, Melly and his people drove south to safety. Eleven days later, on 31 March 1936, the daylong battle of Maychew sealed the fate of the Emperor. He had lost the war to the Italians and several thousand more people had been killed.60 The Ethiopian troops, estimated at 30,000 to 35,000, had gone to the last battle practically without modern medical assistance. There was only one doctor, the Ethiopian Melaku Bayen who had stayed with the Emperor. He and the remaining medical assistants had received some medical material from the departing British and Dutch units. The situation was symbolic in two respects. First, seen politically, the Emperor had fought his last battle alone, with only the remaining loyal troops. He had been abandoned by the League of Nations which, just months ago, had stood up in defence of the aggressed Ethiopia in the name of collective security. Nothing had really come out from this much-hailed stand on a principle. The only concrete assistance of the international community had been, retrospectively, the emergency medical relief operation of the Red Cross. Secondly, the situation during these last days of March was characteristic for the Red Cross operation as a whole. The Red Cross field units had been able to get close enough to the frontlines in only a few cases: Schüppler’s and Belau’s Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals in the north and the Norwegians in the south, at the time of the last stages of organised

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resistance after the fall of Addis Abeba. Some field hospitals, such as the main British and the Dutch advance units, had managed to reach zones which were subjected to aerial bombings with large numbers of civilian and military casualties. The other medical units often stayed way behind the front and treated, as a consequence, many more civilians than military. This was not because of a lack of good will on the part of the concerned Red Cross units, but because of the nature of the terrain in which the main fighting took place, as well as the state of Ethiopian preparations and organisation. The disparity in medical relief is further highlighted when the medical organisation of the two belligerents is compared. More than half a million Italian soldiers and workers in East Africa were supported by 2,484 doctors; 16,747 nurses and medical assistants; over three hundred hospitals of various types, amongst which were 135 field hospitals, offering more than 30,000 beds.61 On the Ethiopian side were only 51 doctors, 123 expatriate assistants and perhaps three hundred Ethiopian helpers.62 Considering that the Ethiopian army had between 250,000 and 350,000 soldiers, there was one doctor for 4,900 (or 6,900) Ethiopian soldiers,63 compared with one doctor for two hundred Italians. In other words the Italians had proportionally at least twenty-five times more doctors than the Ethiopians. Like the whole war, it was strikingly uneven. The Ethiopians had nothing comparable to oppose the Italian war machine, neither militarily nor medically. The Red Cross did what it could, but it far from covered Ethiopian needs, as is underlined in the final words of the British Red Cross report (1937: p. 53): ‘Together with the other ambulance units in Ethiopia some measure of relief was afforded to a suffering people. Unfortunately, the demand far exceeded the supply. Many battles were fought by the Ethiopians in sectors where on their side no ambulance units of any kind were present, and thousands must have died who with adequate medical treatment might have been saved’.

Notes 1 Nelson, K. and Sullivan A. John Melly of Ethiopia, London, 1937, p. 131. 2 ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 1, Ministero degli Affari Esteri to Colonie, 9 Nov. 1935, Nota informativa confidenziale, 1 Nov. 1935. This view is based on a confidential note from the ICRC to interested National Red Cross Societies, which the Italians managed to get hold of. 3 Melaku Bayen (1900–1940) was sent abroad in 1921 to study medicine together with three other young Ethiopians. After some time spent in India, he moved to the United States where he graduated in 1935. Junod, the ICRC medical delegate, had a very low professional opinion of Melaku Bayen, judging him ‘incapable of making an intravenous injection’ (CICR, CR 210/1424, Notes du Dr Marcel Junod pouvant figurer comme conclusion générale de tous ses rapports, 19 Aug. 1936, p. 2). 4 ASMAI, c. 264, f. 161, L’Esercito etiopico, monografia, 15 Nov. 1934, p. 69.

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5 Harald Nyström (1898–1975), born in Italian Eritrea of Swedish missionaries, entered in 1927 into the private service of Ras Tafari Makonnen, the future Haile Selassie. He worked as a physician at the Bet Sayda hospital in Addis Abeba and was responsible for the medical service of the Imperial Guard. During the war with Italy, Nyström served with Ras Imru’s troops in northwestern Ethiopia and surrendered to the Italians in Gonder after the Ethiopian defeat. He was released in July 1936 and left the Horn of Africa, but returned to Ethiopia after the Second World War. 6 AUSSME, D-2, c. 35, Guerra italo-etiopica, Somalia, sf. Notiziario politico militare del centro informazioni di Gibuti, Bericht Nr. 55, signed H. e. R., Addis Abeba, 1 Dec. 1935. A good amount of information contained in this report originated most probably from Sidney Brown who had briefed the German Legation on Red Cross efforts in support of Ethiopia. 7 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 2, 30 Nov. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 7. 8 A nurse by training, Lucie Odier (1886–1984) was very active in the medico-humanitarian field. She was a long-serving member of the ICRC from 1930 to 1961, taking care of medical relief and relief in general. Odier was a member of the Commissions dealing with the Italo-Ethiopian war and the Spanish Civil War. During the Second World War she was in charge of the Relief Bureau. Her colleagues appreciated her humanitarian spirit, devotion, common sense, courage and tenacity. These qualities made her not an accommodating but a rather challenging member. Carl Jacob Burckhardt considered her as ‘unintelligent and dangerously obstinate in delicate affairs’ (CJB Archiv, Familienbesitz S. de Muralt, Burckhardt to Huber, 6 Oct. 1946, p. 3). During her career in the ICRC, not least during the Ethiopia operation, Odier courageously questioned several times a line of action which did not seem right to her, especially when legal considerations were overriding general humanitarian concerns. 9 CICR, CR 210/155bis, 24 Oct. 1935. 10 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 4, 26 Dec. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 6. In his book, Brown (1939: p. 90) was more outspoken and qualified the French Red Cross as being in the hands of ‘conservative, even reactionary circles’. 11 The Red Cross Societies of Finland, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Egypt (the latter is already mentioned in the table). 12 General Report of the International Red Cross Committee on its activities from August, 1934 to March, 1938, 16th International Red Cross Conference, London, 1938, pp. 81–82. The table does not include a few direct donations to the ICRC to cover its own expenses, the largest of which was one of the American Red Cross amounting to U.S. $3,000 (about 15,000 Swiss Francs). The donation of the Polish Red Cross (no. 15) was omitted in the ICRC table, most probably by mistake. It had been effectuated on 21 March 1935. 13 ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 1, N. 369/360, note signed Pilotti, 2 Nov. 1935. 14 Giovanni Ciraolo (1873–1954), lawyer, writer and philanthropist. Ciraolo entered into the services of the Italian Red Cross in 1896 and presided over it from 1919 to 1925 when he was removed, apparently for his lukewarm support for Fascism. He was the founder of the Union Internationale de Secours, set up after the First World War to assist victims of disasters. Ciraolo remained attached to the Red Cross, serving in 1935 as member of the Board of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies in Paris. 15 ASMAE, Società delle Nazioni, c. 46, f. Soccorsi stranieri alla Croce Rossa Etiopica, s/f. Parte generale, Appunto signed Bertelé, 2 Nov. 1935. 16 ACS, CRI, c. 192, ‘C’, Italian translation of an article on the Swedish Red Cross field hospital, published in the Swedish Red Cross Review, No. 4, April 1936. 17 The withdrawal was facilitated by the fact that American Aid for Ethiopia had changed its plans to send a medical unit to Ethiopia, probably because of the position of the American government and lack of financial means.

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18 ACS, CRI, c. 71, ‘H’, Cremonesi to Vinci, 7 Jan. 1936, p. 2. 19 Georges Wagnière (1862–1948) lawyer, journalist and diplomat. After having worked first as journalist and later as director of the Journal de Genève, Wagnière was appointed Swiss Minister to Rome in 1918. Having stayed for eighteen years in the Italian capital, he developed a very close relationship with the country in which he was born. Having followed Fascism from the very start, Wagnière developed some sympathies for the system and supported fully Italy’s colonial expansion in Ethiopia. He retired in early 1936 from Swiss government service at the age of seventy-four. In February of the same year, he was co-opted as a member of the ICRC, reinforcing the conservative and pro-Italian elements in the Committee. He remained a member until 1945. Wagnière was chosen for his knowledge of the world of politics and diplomacy, but he did not make a big impact in the Committee during the remaining months of the Italo-Ethiopian war. Huber was disappointed with his performance and remained dependent in political matters on the advice of Carl Jacob Burckhardt (ZB Zürich, Nachlass Max Huber, 2.75, Umschlag IV/1936, Huber to Burckhardt, 17 June 1936). 20 BAB, E 2300 Rom 36, Wagnière to Motta, 20 Jan. 1936. 21 CICR, CR 210, Consultation de Paris, Translation of the speech delivered by Mr Max Huber, 23 Nov. 1936, p. 2. 22 CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Huber to Draudt, 24 Dec. 1935, p. 4. 23 Ibid. 24 Bugnion (1994: pp. 1161–63) gives a detailed explanation of the two concepts, different in terms of legal basis, finality and content. 25 CICR, CR 210, Commission d’Ethiopie, 11 Nov. 1935, p. 1. 26 Two locally recruited delegates, Emmanuel Galland from Buenos Aires and Rodolfo Talice from Montevideo, undertook a first mission to the two belligerents in May 1933. It was followed by a second mission from Geneva in September 1934, led this time by an ICRC member, Lucien Cramer (1868–1953) (Durand 1978: pp. 225–26). 27 CICR, PV Séances plénières, 21 Oct. 1935, p. 5. 28 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 3, 20 Dec. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 1. 29 Junod had planned to seek protection in the French Legation in Addis Abeba in case of trouble. On 2 May the day after the Emperor had fled the capital, Junod missed the chance to get to the safe haven in time and was rescued only in the afternoon of the third day of the sack of the capital. He immediately organised a health post in the French Legation and took care of about a dozen wounded. In the afternoon of 5 May he witnessed the entry of the Italian troops and assisted at the hoisting of the Italian flag (CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 16, 12 May 1936, Junod to ICRC, pp. 5–6). 30 CICR, CR 210, DJ 210, 1) Rapports, Rapport du Dr Junod au CICR, handwritten, undated, p. 5. 31 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Colucci to Badoglio, 2 May 1936. 32 Throughout the conflict, the Red Cross movement used the term ‘ambulance’ to designate field hospitals – a term emphasising the character of mobility of the units supposed to follow the shifting war fronts. For the sake of clarity, this study uses the more familiar ‘field hospital’ because ‘ambulance’ is connected nowadays to the vehicle transporting wounded and sick. 33 The Bulletin international des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge (April 1896: p. 92) mentioned that the Russian Red Cross had dispatched to Ethiopia a very large mission composed of ‘10 doctors, 20 female nurses, 1 pope and 60 men of the medical corps’. 34 BRRC, Minutes of the Executive Committee, 11 Dec. 1936, No. 283, p. 3. 35 CICR, CR 210/1131, Huber to Prince Carl of Sweden, 27 April 1936, p. 4. 36 Svensson had spent fourteen years in Ethiopia out of which twelve in Addis Abeba. He spoke fluently Amharic, as did Hylander who had been six years in the country.

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37 SIM, Article written by Thomas Lambie, untitled and undated, but written just after the war when Lambie was still in Ethiopia, p. 5. 38 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 6, 9 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 10. 39 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 3, 20 Dec. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 2. 40 CICR, CR 210, Odier to Brown, 8 Feb. 1936, p. 4. 41 CJB, ungeordnet, Brown to Burckhardt, 1 Nov. 1935, p. 1. Special thanks to Paul Stauffer for having allowed me to use this document. 42 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 2, 30 Nov. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 6. 43 RA, UD, 1920 års dossiersystem, HP, 1503, F. XI, Declaration Allander, 18 Nov. 1936. In the first case, Allander, the car mechanic, says that the Swedes considered it wise to accept Ras Desta’s request for transport in view of the confusion and exhaustion in which they found the Ras and his men. In the second case, Ras Desta and two of his companions were given a lift upon orders of Pastor Svensson, together with sixteen wounded. Svensson, in a statement to an official of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gave a slightly different version. He added that the Ethiopians on this occasion wanted to load two cases of ammunition on the trucks, but it was refused with the argument that it violated Red Cross rules. The Ethiopians desisted as a consequence. Ras Desta was given a lift because he was in bad condition. Svensson mentioned that only one additional Ethiopian officer, in need of medical care, not two as contended by Allander, was allowed on the truck (RA, ibid., Declaration Svensson, 1 Dec. 1935). 44 Brown (1939: p. 185) considered Wienholt as ‘being visibly somewhat out of balance’. 45 Johannes Kvittingen in a letter of 27 Nov. 1994 to the author, p. 4. 46 CICR, CR 210/953bis, Report of Dr Kálmán Mészáros, 23 March 1936, p. 2. 47 ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 109, f. 9, Taliani to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 24 June 1936. 48 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 25, Allegato al diario storico, 25 March 1936 and 30 March 1936. 49 The following example of an intercepted and translated message sent from Geneva to Addis Abeba illustrates the point. The coded message from the ICRC said: ‘Avons transmis collège protestation munitions sur camions’ (CICR, CR 210/725, 7 Feb. 1936). The Italians translated it literally: ‘Abbiamo trasmesso al Colleggio la protesta sulle munizioni sugli autocarri’ (ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, PS 1936, c. 1A, Feb. 1936, Stazione R. T. Autocentro-Roma, 7 Feb. 1936). Despite the use of the word collège the sense of the message is evident. 50 The only available information concerns the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 6, which had twenty-two medical assistants (CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 3, 17 Dec. 1935, Junod to ICRC, p. 1). 51 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 10, 20 Feb. 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 3. The ICRC’s General Report of 1938 mentioned that Dassios had treated an additional 150 severely and 2,000 lightly wounded from 12 November 1935 to 8 January 1936, but it is not clear from where the information originates. 52 CICR, CR 210/891, Déposition Medynski, 12 March 1936, p. 3. 53 CICR, CR 210/1522, Société Nationale du Croissant Rouge Egyptien to ICRC, 13 Feb. 1937. Though high, the indicated number of patients treated is not impossible in view of the fact that the unit comprised thirteen doctors and sixty nurses and that they worked for a long period of time in the same places, quite undisturbed by the war until April 1936 when military operations resumed in the Ogaden. 54 CICR, CR 210/1519bis, L’ambulance de la Croix-Rouge Suédoise en Ethiopie, 29 Jan. 1937, p. 4. 55 The Times, 7 March 1936. Clarissa Burgoyne (1967: p. 326), in an on-the-spot inquiry made twenty-four years after the death of her husband, came to the same conclusion.

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56 PRO, FO 371/20165, p. 261, Barton to Foreign Office, 14 March 1936. Holt believed that Ras Mulugeta, the old War Minister, was killed on the same occasion. 57 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 9. 58 Del Valle says here that Burgoyne had been captured and handed over to Haile Selassie by the very same tribesmen who had attacked his party. According to him, Burgoyne was killed one day later by Ethiopians just outside of his camp. This version contains too many inaccuracies, factual errors and incoherences to be taken seriously. 59 ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 109, f. 9, Legazione d’Italia in Egitto to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, 30 April 1936. The Italian report mentioned that some people in Egypt had attributed Al Saoui’s death to Ethiopian ill-treatment and negligence on the part of his Egyptian colleagues, a version vehemently denied by the Committee which had dispatched the Red Crescent mission to Ethiopia. 60 Del Boca (1979: pp. 636–37) gives various estimates of Ethiopians killed in the battle ranging from about one thousand, according to Konovaloff, to over eight thousand, according to Badoglio. The Italians had 1,273 casualties amongst Italian and local troops. 61 Maria di Piemonte (1937: pp. 167–71) reprints Prof Aldo Castellani’s report on the sanitary organisation and the health of the troops during the Italo-Ethiopian war. Castellani was Alto Consulente Sanitario ed Ispettore Superiore Generale per l’Africa Orientale Italiana. His report is the basis for most similar citations in literature about the war. The reference concerning the number of hospital beds comes from ASMAI, c. 181/34, f. 165, Note e considerazioni sanitarie, signed Prof Giuseppe Giardino, p. 18, undated. 62 Del Boca (1979: pp. 368–71) reached the conclusion that less than one hundred foreigners had provided medical aid to the Ethiopian army. 63 Junod had calculated at the time that there was one doctor for about twelve thousand Ethiopian soldiers (CICR, CR 210/1424, Notes du Dr Marcel Junod pouvant figurer comme conclusion générale de tous ses rapports, 19 Aug. 1936, p. 2).

3 RED CROSS WORK CHALLENGED: THE RESPECT OF THE EMBLEM


‘How is the war going?’ ‘Yesterday they bombarded a hospital, as a reprisal’, Spina said. ‘Who did?’ ‘Those who intend to bring civilisation to that part of the world.’ ‘When do the rains start again?’ ‘In May.’ ‘Only in May? Poor Abyssinians!’ the blind man said.1

Respect of the emblem is fundamental to the effectiveness of the Red Cross. Only if it is honoured can the Red Cross fulfil its role and serve as an island of peace in times of war. In reality, however, the emblem has probably been misused in every war since the founding of the Red Cross over 140 years ago. Countless complaints of violations of the emblem have been made, ranging from misuse caused by simple lack of knowledge to deliberate breaches in search of military gains. While such violations normally give only short-term advantages – they have no impact on the outcome of a war – they, however, significantly weaken the protection of war victims and often result in a series of reprisals and counter-reprisals which can easily spin out of control. In the Franco-German war (1870–71), the first war in which the Geneva Convention of 1864 was formally applicable, neither the French army nor its medical service had sufficient knowledge about the new sign. At some point, every building flew the Red Cross flag over vast areas in order to keep the Prussian army at bay. When the Prussians attacked nevertheless, the French reacted indignantly. In the end, it was easier to blame the Geneva Convention than the responsible governments who failed to enforce a

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proper use of the new emblem (Bugnion 1994: p. 64). Matters became worse during the First World War. Allegations of shelling of medical installations under the protection of the Red Cross abounded. Belligerents accused each other of ill-treating and executing wounded soldiers or medical staff. Particularly severe were the attacks on properly marked hospital ships which were suspected of carrying troops and military material instead of wounded and sick. German strikes on British hospital ships provoked British and French reprisals which, in turn, led to German counter-reprisals. This cycle of violence cost several thousand lives and lasted for the entire four years of the war. It was brought to a halt only by the armistice of 1918 (Durand 1978: p. 38 and pp. 48–51). After the First World War there was general agreement that the 1906 Geneva Convention needed revision, in particular the obligation to respect the emblem. The matter was carefully considered and the obligation more accurately defined in the new Convention on Wounded and Sick. A new article was included: ‘The emblem of the red cross on a white ground … shall not be used, either in time of peace or in time of war, except to protect or to indicate the medical formations and establishments and the personnel and material protected by the Convention’.2 How was this key article put into practice during the Italo-Ethiopian war?

Ethiopia’s Respect of the Emblem: a Barrage of Accusations, but Little Substance Fascist Italy’s charge against Ethiopia was blunt: ‘Abyssinian leaders and troops systematically misuse the Red Cross emblem, transforming it into a veritable arm of military defence and attack.’3 Italian war correspondents echoed this accusation. Guido Mattioli (1937: p. 157) claimed that ‘they [the Ethiopians] usually protected all their depots and military equipment with a symbol that can be sacred only on condition that it does not lend itself to illicit actions of any kind’. Behind these general accusations were two specific ones: first, that the Red Cross emblem was used illicitly to protect public and private buildings in towns and, secondly that the emblem was misused by the Ethiopian army for military purposes.

The Use of the Red Cross Emblem in Ethiopian Towns No other town than Harar received so much attention during the war with regard to alleged misuses of the Red Cross emblem. Harar, the capital city of southeastern Ethiopia and the gateway to the Ogaden front, was a town of strategic importance. In early September 1935, one month before the outbreak of the war, the local Ethiopian Red Cross chapter, under the direction of Dajjazmach Nasibu Zamanuel, the Governor,

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decided that more hospital space was required in order to accommodate the expected casualties. Five buildings were selected for this purpose and marked with the Red Cross emblem: the existing Swedish mission hospital outside the old town, the French hospital, the old and new palaces and the old treasury building. There was a problem, however, with the old palace belonging to Emperor Haile Selassie’s father, Ras Makonnen. The building housed the government’s radio station which had to be removed if it was going to be used as temporary hospital. This was judged inconvenient and the authorities decided to keep the station where it was. The Red Cross on the roof was painted over in the following weeks. In the end only four buildings in Harar were retained as temporary war hospitals. At the end of October, four weeks after the start of the war, the first foreign journalists – avid for news after a frustrating stay in Addis Abeba – were allowed to visit Harar. The journalists, amongst them Evelyn Waugh, then war correspondent for the Daily Mail, found news worth reporting: the town had many buildings marked with Red Cross emblems, but they had no medical staff or equipment. However, they omitted to report that assistance was being organised through the efforts of the local Red Cross and, more importantly, was already on its way from the Egyptian Red Crescent, en route to Harar and the Ogaden. The Italians eagerly picked up the news from Harar as they confirmed similar observations made by the former Italian Consul in the town (who had been expelled from Ethiopia after the outbreak of the war). A vast campaign on the misuse of the Red Cross emblem with particular emphasis on Harar was launched in the Italian and international press as well as through diplomatic channels, lasting from the end of October 1935 until early March 1936. Heavy pressure was put upon the ICRC in Geneva which soon received the first Italian protestation on the subject. From the beginning, the ICRC had had its own doubts about whether Ethiopia was able to fulfil its obligations under the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. The Italian protestation confirmed the ICRC’s fears and the delegation in Addis Abeba was urged to look without delay into the matter of misuse of the emblem. Brown shared initially Geneva’s concerns. Three weeks after his arrival in Addis Abeba, he told the ICRC that the Ethiopians needed more time before they understood the full meaning of the Geneva Conventions and he specifically mentioned reports that in Harar almost everybody had painted a Red Cross on the roof. One of the ICRC delegation’s first tasks was to compile, with the Ethiopian Red Cross, a list of buildings which had the right to Red Cross protection. By the end of December, Brown was able to inform Geneva about these buildings in Harar. The ICRC subsequently notified Italy. However, the list contained a small but potentially serious mistake: the old palace still figured on the Ethiopian Red Cross’ list, along with a note stating that the radio station had been removed, which was not correct.

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Thomas Lambie, the Ethiopian Red Cross Executive Secretary, noticed the mistake only in February 1936 when he returned from a visit to Harar. He found that only four instead of five notified buildings were operating under Red Cross protection. Luckily for the Ethiopian Red Cross and for Brown, Italy never discovered that the ICRC had transmitted incorrect information. Apart from Harar, reports on the misuse of the protective emblem can be quickly dealt with. With regard to Adwa, the Italians denounced large-scale misuse of the Red Cross emblem, confirmed apparently when the invading troops occupied the town. However, the Italians failed to provide evidence and the matter was quickly forgotten. In Addis Abeba, many little Red Crosses indicated pharmacies and clinics, but Brown advised Geneva that these minor violations of the Convention did not warrant intervention, because they were not visible from the air. Much wider publicity was given to the issue of what appeared to be Red Cross signs on the doors of local beer houses, the tej biets. In fact, they had nothing to do at all with the Red Cross but represented the Christian cross. Normally painted in red, these crosses indicated places where Orthodox Christians would gather to drink and socialise. Italian propaganda made wide use of this argument and claimed that Ethiopians were too primitive to understand the meaning of the Red Cross emblem although the difference was plain to any Ethiopian and informed observer.4 Still, the campaign had some effect and the Emperor became worried that it would negatively affect Ethiopia’s image. He instructed the local authorities in Harar to ensure the emblem was properly used and mentioned particularly to forbid the use of little red crosses on tej biets.5 In another related case, the authorities removed, after several interventions by the ICRC delegates, signs resembling the Red Cross on an aeroplane which was used in the first days of the war by a French journalist, de Vilmorin. Brown’s initial worries on the misuse of the Red Cross emblem quickly gave way to the conviction that the Ethiopians were cooperating at the highest level and that the matter was being brought under control. At the end of December 1935, Brown informed the ICRC that he and Junod, watching ‘like Cerberus’, had not noticed misuse of the emblem in towns like Addis Abeba and Dessie. However, Geneva remained deeply sceptical in view of continued Italian allegations and the fact that no official Ethiopian response on the reported misuses in Harar had been received. The ICRC urged the delegation in ever more pressing terms to conduct an on-the-spot investigation. Jacques Chenevière, in a harsh letter written in February 1936, went so far as to accuse the chief delegate of insubordination because Brown had not complied with Geneva’s wishes. Brown did not respond. He was preoccupied by matters which he considered more important; in particular the Italian bombings of hospitals under Red Cross protection (see later in this Chapter). In his view, the misuse of the emblem in

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Harar had not been proven and Italian allegations related essentially to the prewar period. There were other subjects which worried Geneva. The ICRC wanted Ethiopia to introduce specific legislation protecting the emblem of the Red Cross, as was common practice with European countries. According to Brown, no action was taken because the Ethiopian Parliament, the competent body, had not convened since the outbreak of the war. In any case, it seemed to him that the specific orders of the Emperor on the matter counted far more than any decree or law. Furthermore, the ICRC objected strongly to Brown’s casual reaction regarding the protection of imperial buildings. Brown found it acceptable that the Red Cross emblem should protect the entire new palace in Harar, although only one wing was used as a temporary hospital. Geneva sensed trouble and requested Brown to be stricter. A serious rift was developing between the ICRC and its chief delegate in the field.

The Use of the Red Cross Emblem by the Ethiopian Military The second Italian accusation was that the Ethiopians misused the Red Cross emblem for military purposes. One of these allegations was that Ethiopia imported arms under the cover of the Red Cross via British Somaliland in the first months of the war. Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate, acting under instructions from his President and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Ethiopia Commission confidentially that ‘about one million cartridges, 6 anti-aircraft guns and 30 machine guns, all in cases visibly carrying the emblem of the Red Cross’6 had transited through Berbera port. The ICRC relayed the information to the delegation in Addis Abeba, requesting them to make a discreet inquiry and maliciously wondering whether the British Red Cross field hospital under John Melly was particularly well equipped in this regard. Brown quickly established that the Italian allegation was baseless and, furthermore, highly improbable for the simple reason that there was no need for Ethiopia to import arms covertly since the League of Nations had declared an arms embargo only against Italy, not Ethiopia. The British Red Cross field hospital which had recently arrived through Berbera had brought along only revolvers and had left behind forty guns.7 The matter was not further pursued. Italy had its own doubts about the solidity of the information and abstained from making a formal complaint. One more similar allegation was made very late in the war, again against the British Red Cross, but at that time it was too late to make the necessary verifications. The allegation that Ethiopia secretly imported weapons is interesting not so much for its quite improbable content, but because it sheds a revealing light on Italy’s wider – and quite modern – strategy to use any means to vilify its opponent. The ICRC figured prominently in this strategy. Equally

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interesting is the fact that the ICRC took the charges at face value and suspected instantly that the British Red Cross team was carrying out a double mission, one for the Red Cross and one for the British government. A serious incident happened, however, in Wadara. On 23 January 1936, while pursuing the severely beaten army of Ras Desta Damtew, Italian troops encountered in a small locality called Wadara, 70 km north of Negele, five clearly marked lorries belonging to the Swedish Red Cross field hospital. In one of them they discovered twenty-seven cases with 20,250 cartridges, definitely more than what the Swedish Red Cross staff needed for self-defence (Figure 3.1). Immediately accusations were traded between the involved parties. Mussolini himself accused the Swedish Red Cross of

Figure 3.1 When the Italians discovered rifle ammunition on a Swedish Red Cross truck in the forest of Wadara in January 1936, as seen by Il Popolo di Roma: ‘Doctor, this oxygen bottle lacks the connecting piece to the tube…’ (RA, UD 1920 års dossiersystem, HP 1501, F. V, Il Popolo di Roma, 30 Jan. 1936)

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transporting ammunition for the Ethiopians under cover of the Red Cross, while Haile Selassie retorted that the Italians had loaded the truck themselves in order to tarnish Ethiopia’s image. What had happened? In mid-January 1936, the invading troops under General Graziani had dealt a disastrous blow to Ras Desta’s army at the battle of Genale Doria. A disorderly retreat followed over more than 300 km. It came to a temporary halt in the forests north of Negele, at Wadara. With Ras Desta were the remaining members of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital, which had just suffered a devastating Italian bombing raid (see later in the Chapter). Being under heavy attack from the advancing Italians, Desta informed the Swedish Red Cross team on 21 January that they should abandon their trucks because there were no more roads and to escape on mules through the forest. Four trucks were left in Wadara and summarily put out of order. The fifth was driven some 2 km out of the village where it was finally abandoned. Kurt Allander, the Swedish Red Cross mechanic, removed the vehicle’s ignition and hid it in the forest. On this truck the Italians found the ammunition two days later. Up to this point, the sequence of events can be reconstructed, but what happened precisely in these two days is difficult to ascertain due to lack of reliable information. On their long journey back to Addis Abeba the Swedes learnt that Ras Desta, or one of his subordinates, had ordered the Red Cross lorry to be loaded with ammunition. Furious, they dispatched a telegram, promptly intercepted by the Italians, to Haile Selassie in Dessie, requesting him to make an investigation into what they considered a clear violation of the Red Cross emblem. There is no information as to whether such an inquiry was made, but the Ethiopians categorically rejected all responsibility and blamed the Italians, as already mentioned. Graziani, well aware of the Swedes’ telegram, was, interestingly, more careful than his superior in Rome. He avoided blaming the Swedes directly for the misuse and chose instead to say that it might have happened without their knowledge, a formula taken up in the official protestations made on the case to the ICRC and the League of Nations. Allander, the mechanic, told an official of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs later that, in his opinion, the Ethiopians had seen where he had hidden the ignition. After the Swedes had left, they had recovered the part, repaired the vehicle and used it for their own purpose. Brown, after a quick inquiry of his own, had mixed feelings about the incident. On one hand he believed the Swedish version of Ethiopian responsibility and informed Geneva accordingly: ‘Probably, a few idiot Ethiopian officers, who did not manage to blow up these munitions, had hidden them as well as possible on one of the Swedish trucks’.8 But he did not entirely exclude the possibility of Italian foul play despite the fact that not even the Swedes themselves had blamed the Italians this time. To complete the record, two more alleged violations of the emblem of the Red Cross by Ethiopia must be mentioned: the first concerned the shooting

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at Italian stretcher-bearers after an Ethiopian attack on units of the Tevere Blackshirt Legion in northern Ethiopia on 20 January 1936. The second related to the shelling by the Ethiopian army of an Italian field hospital in the first hours of the last battle of the war on the northern front, near Maychew, on 31 March 1936. Three persons were killed in these incidents and six wounded, according to Italian sources. The ICRC delegation was informed about both incidents but was unable to obtain details from the Ethiopian authorities. The Italians also alleged that Ethiopian soldiers took cover from attacking aircraft in Red Cross field hospitals, from where the Ethiopians would fire at them. The first such incident allegedly happened at the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 1 in the Ogaden, in the initial stages of the war. While there is no information from independent sources on the specific incident, it must be noted that the director of the field hospital, Robert Hockmann, had, according to Brown, some difficulties persuading civilians and soldiers alike not to consider the field hospital as a safe haven. He complained to the authorities, who helped him to get rid of the unwelcome guests.9 During the course of the war, the Italians reported a few similar incidents, including shooting at overflying aircraft from within field hospitals,10 but Junod, who had travelled very extensively in the field, dismissed the accusations. He told Geneva after his return that such incidents might have happened at the beginning of the war but not later: ‘Never during my different travels have I met Ethiopian warriors or chiefs in the ambulances, to the contrary, each time, on the approach of aircraft, I saw part of the ambulance crews as well as the sick who were still fit, flee the camp as quickly as they were able to.’11 In general, although there was a constant flow of Italian allegations on the misuse of the Red Cross emblem by the Ethiopian military, the delegates were unable to confirm them. The reported violations were far from being systematic as the Italians had claimed; most of them were based on outdated, unverifiable or incorrect information and some were clearly individual cases. Brown, still under the impression of the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, wrote to Geneva towards the end of his mission that it was easier to convince people to remove Red Cross signs than to put them on. Why then should the Ethiopians seek Red Cross protection under such circumstances? During his debriefing in Geneva in late April 1936, Brown felt confident enough to say that the Ethiopians never intentionally misused the emblem. In the few cases, which the delegates had to treat, corrective measures were taken without delay. Junod largely agreed with Brown’s assessment when he concluded in his final report: ‘In short, during my stay in Ethiopia, I never noticed any flagrant misuse of the emblem, and I think it would be more correct to speak of Abyssinian ignorance of the Red Cross emblem than of misuse.’12 In view of these corresponding assessments from the field, the ICRC in Geneva came to realise very late, i.e., when the war

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was already over that there was not much substance to the Italian allegations. However, it was unfortunate that the humanitarian organisation allowed a wedge to be driven over this matter between its headquarters and the delegates in the field, particularly the chief delegate. Brown was partly responsible for this split because he made matters worse with his highhanded and insensitive reaction to Geneva’s concerns. Ethiopia’s respect of the Red Cross emblem was not as bad as portrayed by the Italians, but the government missed a precious opportunity to put the record straight. The Ethiopian authorities were unaccustomed to operating on the international scene and were unable to effectively counteract Italian propaganda. There was, rather unjustly, only one party which benefited from the whole matter: Italy, which had managed to plant a seed of doubt in the ICRC and public opinion about the ability of the Ethiopians to grasp the meaning of the emblem and, ultimately, to be a full member of the civilised world. In fact, however, Fascist Italy had laid a smokescreen behind which lay a different reality.

The Respect of the Emblem by Italy: Red Cross Hospitals under Fire Fascism, Colonial Expansion and the War with Ethiopia Force was a constituent part of Fascism, starting from the march on Rome in 1922 to Mussolini’s execution in 1945 at the shores of Lake Como. In between there was an ever-widening trail of violence and blood of which the Italo-Ethiopian war represented an important stage. When the theoretical foundations of Fascism were formulated in the late 1920s, use of force played a predominant role as Mussolini (1933: p. 11) explained: Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism – born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision – the alternative of life or death.

In Fascism, the use of force was not only legitimate but essential to enable man and his people to realise their destiny. Life – real life – was worthwhile only if it was lived in combat. A cult of violence, as practised by the Fascist squads, was the consequence of such a belief and Mussolini’s vivere pericolosamente finds here its deeper justification. Fascism left no place for values such as compromise, compassion and respect for others. These values symbolised cowardice, escape from responsibility and sacrifice. Translated into politics, Fascism elevated force over law. It meant, in

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reality, nothing else than a return to the law of the jungle, which profoundly challenged the post-First World War order with its carefully elaborated system of collective security, treaties of conciliation and arbitration. Under Fascism, the stronger had the right to tread on the weaker and nowhere was this more apparent than in colonial matters. The justification for colonial expansion was rooted in Mussolini’s conviction that colonies – un posto al sole – were not only the right of the stronger but also a matter of economic development and a condition of Great Power status to which Fascist Italy aspired. While these ambitions were masked by the argument that the colonial powers were on a civilising mission, it was clear that they could only be achieved by force, well expressed in General Rodolfo Graziani’s (Canivari 1947: p. 11) following comment: ‘The colonial conquest is not an act of charity … It is a military operation aiming at attaining, with minimum loss of life among soldiers, peace in the country in order to introduce those elements of civilisation which would benefit the conquered people as much as the motherland.’ The first to suffer the effects of this concept were the local populations of Libya. In Tripolitania, firm control was gradually established through a series of military operations, starting from 1921. Between 1928 and 1930, the rebellious Arab tribes of the desert hinterland were brutally subjected by the Italian military in a combination of traditional and modern means of warfare. Resistance was crushed, resulting in the deaths of several thousand people (Rochat 1974: pp. 97–100).13 Worse was reserved for Cyrenaica. In order to establish direct control over this eastern region of Libya, earlier agreements with the Senussia, the local political and religious organisation, were repudiated. Military operations were intensified as of 1930 against the rebels under Omar al Muktar who enjoyed strong support of the local population. These operations included an extremely brutal counterinsurgency strategy. The entire population of Cyrenaica’s Al Jabal al Akhdar region was deported into concentration camps along the coast between Bangh¯azi and Al ´Uqayla. When the rebellion came to an end in early 1932, some sixty thousand people had perished from hunger, exhaustion and illness, and their livestock had been reduced to a fraction. An entire society had been annihilated (ibid., pp. 100–1). The pitiless pacification of Libya is connected with the names of Pietro Badoglio, the Governor of Libya, and Rodolfo Graziani, responsible for military operations in Cyrenaica. The results which they had obtained enhanced their prestige and furthered their career to the point that the two men occupied the key military positions during the Italo-Ethiopian war. Military operations in Libya took place under strict censorship, contrary to the pre-Fascist period. The responsible officers knew that they could count on the regime to condone their actions. It was facilitated by what Del Boca (1991: p. 234) termed ‘the codification of violence’. Any type of vio-

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lence was justified as long as it served the regime’s goals. The mould of Fascism and the colonial wars in Libya shaped a particular brand of military commanders – ruthless, brutal and ready to use any means in order to achieve an objective. International agreements on the methods and limits of warfare counted little if they stood in the way. The war with Ethiopia was going to provide a telling example. Mussolini was the ‘supreme director’ (ibid., p. 248) and uncontested authority, leading the war in the Horn of Africa from Rome. He did not hesitate to order the use of poison gas, in contravention of the 1925 Gas Protocol which his government had solemnly signed. He suggested to Badoglio to resort to equally illegal bacteriological warfare14 and gave precise instructions on repressive measures on various occasions. Badoglio recommended at the time when the war with Ethiopia was being prepared that the Air Force should be widely used to spread terror in the whole empire, including strategic bombardments of all major towns. At some point during the war Badoglio envisaged putting this plan into practice, if operations did not progress as foreseen.15 Graziani requested from Mussolini maximum liberty to use poison gas and even employed it against specific orders from Rome. Without scruples he lifted restrictions on bombings of the civilian population, urban centres and concentrations of animals.16 He issued categorical orders for a scorched earth policy as in the Wadara incursion.17 The list could be continued, especially for the period after the official end of the Italo-Ethiopian war. What strikes the historian is that there is not one single telegram during the whole war in which transpired a sense of chivalry or generosity. Mussolini, Badoglio and Graziani encouraged and expected their subordinates to follow the same line. It is, therefore, not astonishing that the field commanders and the troops, especially the elite Black Shirt divisions and the Air Force, were animated by the same spirit and looked with suspicion upon everything even faintly connected to supporting the Ethiopian side. Everything was seen in terms of black and white: it was good if it benefited Italy, it was bad if it helped Ethiopia, as was observed by Edoardo Borra, an Italian surgeon and director of the Italian hospital, la Consolata, in Addis Abeba until the outbreak of the war. His testimony18 is particularly interesting because he joined the Italian troops in Asmara as Italian Red Cross delegate and returned with Badoglio to Addis Abeba in May 1936. Borra remembered how difficult it was to transmit a differentiated view of Ethiopia and its rich culture to the Italian officers to whom he had given conferences at Forto Baldissera in Eritrea. Red Cross assistance given to Ethiopia by the various National Red Cross Societies was also seen in the same terms. In various discussions with the High Command, as well as with troops, Borra recalled that ‘nothing was expected from the Red Cross in Geneva’ and that many simply considered the foreign doctors working in Red Cross field hospitals ‘as mercenaries, sell-outs and against us’. Equally,

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there was a widespread view that ‘the Hague and Geneva Conventions or the Gas Protocol had no value, because this was a war which needed to be fought’ or as Badoglio, a Piemontese like Borra, said more diplomatically: ‘Wars should not be fought, but if they are, they should be won as soon as possible; wars that last a long time are too expensive.’

The Italian Air Force Aviation had made great progress since the First World War in terms of performance and reliability. From a very limited role in support of ground forces, aviation had opened a new dimension of warfare by the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war. No wonder that Italy’s prestigious Regia Aeronautica was assigned to play a crucial role in military operations. It was also expected that its involvement in the Italo-Ethiopian war would provide valuable experience for future theatres of operation. As soon as Mussolini had circulated his blueprint for aggression against Ethiopia, the first warplanes arrived in the Italian colony of Eritrea. By the end of January 1935, forty were delivered to Massawa where they were assembled. More were to come in the months before the outbreak of hostilities. On the eve of the war, on 2 October, a fleet of 163 warplanes was ready for action, 125 on the northern and 38 on the southern front.19 The number still fell far short of Mussolini’s requested three hundred because of production bottlenecks and military considerations in Europe itself. Still, it was an impressive fleet, something never witnessed on African soil. Although most of the planes were old models, they had multiple uses and were well suited for colonial warfare with its harsh climatic conditions and rough terrain. Over the coming months the situation gradually improved and the Aeronautica Africa Orientale was reinforced with additional and modern aircraft, in particular the heavier and better performing bombers Caproni Ca.133 and Siai-Marchetti S.81. By the end of the war, in May 1936, Italy had dispatched altogether 450 warplanes to the Horn of Africa (Rochat 1990: p. 105)20 with huge amounts of spare parts and ammunition. The Air Force was placed under the command of Air Brigadier General Mario Ajmone Cat and included some of the most prominent figures of the Fascist hierarchy who had volunteered for the campaign: Roberto Farinacci,21 Alessandro Pavolini,22 and the most famous, Galeazzo Ciano, then Minister of Press and Propaganda and son-in-law of Mussolini.23 Ciano commanded, with the rank of captain, a bomber squadron named by Pavolini la Disperata after a notorious Fascist squad of Florence. To complete the picture, there were also two of Mussolini’s sons, Vittorio and Bruno who flew in the same 4th Group as Ciano. Such eye-catching names ensured that the Air Force was given wide attention and enjoyed high prestige, even glamour. Their involvement proved that the regime at the top level was playing an active part in the war although the Air Force watched

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Figure 3.2 Bombs lined up for loading on Italian Ca.133 of the 6th Squadron on the Sciafat airfield near Mekele. (USSME, Archivio iconografico, A.O. 592/172)

carefully that their hands did not get too dirty with such unfitting matters as dropping poison gas. These tasks were left to the professionals of the Air Force. The dry statistics provided by the Air Force underlined its important contribution to the seven-month war. Although sounding extremely low by today’s standards, the performance was unheard of at the time: 6,852 flights operated, more than thirty per day, with 38,418 flight hours during which 1,529 tons of explosives were dropped and 346,200 machine gun shots were fired (Figure 3.2).24 However, the Air Force paid a heavy price for this achievement, with eighty-four people killed in action and one hundred aeroplanes lost – eight were shot down and 251 were hit by anti-aircraft fire or were involved in accidents (Rochat 1990: pp. 105, 111, 112).25 This massive build-up contrasted sharply with what Ethiopia had at her disposal. The first aircraft arrived in the country in 1929, but no Air Force worth its name was established over the coming years. According to Italian sources – the only ones available – Ethiopia had in September 1935 a total of sixteen planes, of which only nine were in working condition. The biggest threat came from six Potez light bomber/reconnaissance aircraft although not all of them were in flying condition. The Potez were not employed in combat missions, but were used for communication, transport

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of personnel and material, including military supplies. This small Ethiopian fleet was no match for the Italian Air Force which enjoyed undisputed air superiority as a consequence. Two Fokker aircraft were given to the Ethiopian Red Cross for ambulance and transport purposes but only one of them, the single-engine aircraft, was effectively used. A handful of foreigners were working for the Emperor’s fleet as well as seven Ethiopian pilots, some of whom had completed their flight training in France. At the end of the war, in May 1936, not much was left of the fleet. At least four aircraft had been destroyed on the ground by the Italian Air Force, others were captured or were taken out of the country before the Italian take-over. A few words must be said about the accuracy of bombings, a matter of utmost importance for the subject of this study. Although the Italian pilots consistently boasted in their reports of having hit their targets – records mentioned only once or twice that targets were missed – it must be understood that the targeting devices of the aircraft were crude and permitted bombing only with a considerable margin of error. Better equipment only became available in the last two years of the Second World War with the advent of radio directional techniques. The precision of bombings depended on many factors such as the speed of the aircraft, altitude, wind conditions, the weight of the bombs26 and the configuration of the target. The co-pilot used a relatively simple sighting device to fix the target and released the bombs with a handle, or gave instructions to a crewmember in the back of the plane to do so. Taking aim with the naked eye was another option but it was discarded for being even less accurate. In July 1935, bombing trials were made in Italy with the S.81. Based on a bombing series of 66 shots of 10 kg each from 1000 m above ground and a target surface of 25 by 20 m, only about 12 percent were right on target. Some bombs missed by up to 100 m. When the bombing took place from 2000 m above ground, the dispersion increased to 150 m.27 Under combat conditions, with enemy fire and the shape of the target unknown, this rate was even less favourable, despite intense training of the flight crews. Bombing at the time had a lot to do with luck and plenty of so-called collateral damage had to be expected. The Air Force did not recommend bombings from lower flight levels because they did not improve accuracy. This was demonstrated when an Italian S.81 attacked the Red Cross Fokker on Dessie airport on 9 February 1936. During two overflights from 150 m above ground, the crew dropped various smaller and three 31 kg bombs, which ‘exploded about 10 m from the plane’, according to the pilot. He concluded ‘that the plane must have been damaged’,28 but in reality it had only been hit by shrapnel on the fuselage and wing. Immediately after the incident, the plane took off and returned safely to Addis Abeba. The American military attaché, Captain Meade, was in Dessie at the time and meticulously recorded the strike of

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each bomb. He told his British colleague that the mean point of impact was 124 m beyond the target and 16 m to the right of the flight line. The only person impressed by the marksmanship was the Italian pilot. The Air Force preferred bombings to be conducted from 1000 to 2000 m above ground, but this rule was quite often broken, especially later in the war. The reason for flying low – even to tree top level – was that pilots used the plane’s machine guns or that they needed to get precise reconnaissance. Such manoeuvres put them within the range of small arms fire – which explains the high number of casualties among the crews as well as of damaged aircraft. As in all wars, the Air Force made mistakes. In one noted case an Italian warplane mistakenly hit a medical unit of Division Sila with seven bombs, causing eighteen dead and eighty-one wounded. Most probably bad weather conditions prevailing over the whole high plateau on that day were to blame.

The Bombings of Red Cross Hospitals in Ethiopia This is one of the major topics of this study and an extremely bitter affair, raising strong emotions among all concerned at the time. For Emperor Haile Selassie, the bombings of Red Cross medical installations not only prevented the injured from getting medical care, but contributed to the defeat itself as he (Haile Selassie 1976: p. 272) explained in his own Byzantine language: ‘Hence Our people, who had hoped that the Red Cross doctors would treat them and look after them, when they saw the kind of attack that was descending upon the doctors as well as such acts of cruelty (which should never be carried out against human beings) being perpetrated against them, felt sure that it was the devil that they were fighting. Thus their lack of hope and their despair exceeded all bounds.’ The Italians, on their side, gave more or less serious explanations for the numerous attacks on Red Cross medical installations, depending on individuals and circumstances: Fulvio Suvich, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, considered these incidents ‘fortuitous’,29 happening in the course of vast military operations, particularly when the Red Cross units were too close to the Ethiopian military. Alessandro Lessona, his counterpart at the Ministry of Colonies, blamed Italy’s adversaries for ‘inventing accusations’ that bombings were made intentionally. He (Lessona 1939: p. 204) contended that the Ethiopian army was ‘very frequently misusing’ the Red Cross emblem to hide military personnel and material, giving a legitimate reason for attack. Mussolini gave the most bizarre explanation of all: in an interview with the Daily Mail on the eve of Badoglio’s occupation of Addis Abeba, he (Mussolini 1959: p. 263) claimed that ‘the missionaries of the different Red Crosses have been killed or wounded by the Abyssinians who are too backward to be able to respect emblems’.

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Several lists of bombings of Red Cross hospitals have been compiled by the Ethiopian government, the most important being the one published by the League of Nations with nineteen incidents.30 This list formed the basis of a revised version intended for the United Nations War Crimes Commission after the war, but it was downsized to seventeen (Ministry of Justice 1950, Vol. 2: pp. 26–27). Richard Pankhurst used this and other information in 1973 to establish a list of twenty-three incidents, followed by an article published in 1997 on the same subject (see the bibliography). While all these lists include the major incidents, they contain sometimes inaccurate or incorrect information.31 For obvious reasons, the Italian authorities did not collect information on the subject. However, what surprises more is the fact that Italian historians have been curiously tight-lipped about this aspect, despite thousands of pages written on the war. In most cases, the bombings of Red Cross hospitals were glossed over with a few general comments. Renzo de Felice (1974: p. 724), in his voluminous study about Mussolini, covered the subject in exactly three lines, speaking of ‘a few specific incidents (usually unintentional rather than intentional)’. Alberto Sbacchi dealt with the subject in a confusing and inconclusive way. In an article of 1974, he (Sbacchi 1974: p. 47) wrote: ‘It is not clear whether the Italians bombed places marked with red crosses purposely’. But in a later version of the same article, he (Sbacchi 1997: p. 66) came to the conclusion that they had, indeed, done so.32 Giorgio Rochat, the military historian who has written some of the most expert articles on the period, treated the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals only as a side issue. He (Rochat 1990: p. 120, footnote 34) repeated the Italian Air Force’s standard response that the Ethiopian military misused the Red Cross emblem. Angelo Del Boca has given most consideration to this subject, particularly in his study on the Italians in East Africa. He (Del Boca 1991: p. 251) is one of the few historians who has drawn conclusions on the moral and legal responsibility of the senior Fascist leaders and noted that neither Badoglio nor Graziani had to defend their criminal actions in the Italo-Ethiopian war in a courtroom. For this study, a list of seventeen incidents involving bombing of Red Cross installations, mainly field hospitals, was established for the period of the war (see Appendix 5). These incidents can be divided into three categories:33 seven direct bombings (four major, three minor); two bombings ordered but not realised for internal Air Force reasons; eight indirect bombings among which four strategic bombardments. A few comments must be made on some incidents mentioned in this list. Regarding Adwa, where the first bombing on the first day of the war took place, Haile Selassie alleged that the Red Cross clinic in the town had been destroyed, but this is contested by an eyewitness interviewed for this study. Furthermore, available information points to the fact that Red Cross signs on the clinic were not visible from the air.

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The four major incidents of Melka Dida, Amba Aradam and the two bombings on the Korem plain (no. 4, 9, 13, 15 in Appendix 5) will be examined in detail, as well as the bombing of the town of Dessie. The three minor direct air strikes on the Red Cross at Melka Dida, Dessie airport and Ellot (no. 3, 11 and 14 in Appendix 5) are so labelled because of the limited damage which they caused, but potentially they could have been major incidents. A case in point is the bombing of Ellot in southeastern Ethiopia. Ten days before the incident, Italian reconnaissance planes flew over the locality and noticed the big green tent with the Red Cross flag extended on the ground. The Swedish Red Cross team, warned by the previous negative experience of their colleagues at Melka Dida, decided to move staff, patients and material to a safe location, but they left the big tent with the Red Cross at the original place. When Ellot was bombed on 17 March 1936, luckily only the big tent was destroyed. Regarding the incidents which took place at Bulale (11 and 12 February 1936) and Degeh Bur (no. 5–7 in Appendix 5), it must be said that the warplanes carried out the bombing raids from a relatively high level of 1500 m above ground, with the result that bombs fell far short of the target. Some of the four strategic bombardments of Dessie, Negele, Jijiga and Harar (no. 1, 2, 16, 17 in Appendix 5) were made from 2000 m above ground resulting in even less bombing accuracy. In the case of Weldiya (no. 8 in Appendix 5), the air strike was aimed at the tents on the outskirts of the village and the village itself, not Burgoyne’s mule transport unit whose signs were too small to be seen from the air. Finally, the list contains two more incidents involving the Norwegian Red Cross (4 or 5 May and 6 June 1936). The first cannot be verified for lack of precise information. The second, which happened one month after the official end of the war, was considered by the director of the field hospital unintentional but a close call. Three distinct phases can be distinguished regarding the respect of the Red Cross emblem by the Italian Air Force. The first, characterised by encouraging signs of complying with international humanitarian law, covered the initial two months of the war. During this period occurred the first observation of an Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital – no. 1 at Degeh Bur. Italian warplanes overflew the medical unit several times in the following weeks and abstained from bombing. The second period lasted from the time of the bombing of Dessie (6 December 1935) to the one of Harar (30 March 1936), coinciding with the months of major war activities. The period is marked by two opposite trends. On one hand, soon after the first bombings of hospitals under Red Cross protection had occurred, strict orders were given to the Air Force to respect the hospitals. The orders had some effect and the Air Force definitely became more cautious. Numerous sightings of properly marked field hospitals are recorded in the pilots’ reports, sometimes followed by a spe-

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cific remark that no bombing had taken place as a consequence. In early February, a confident Badoglio informed Rome that all Red Cross hospitals were well identified. On the other hand, the most brutal attacks on the Red Cross field hospitals happened exactly during the same period. The incidents generally took place in the wake of Ethiopian preparations for offensive action (detected by the Air Force) or Italian follow-up operations after decisive battles. In view of continued bombings, even the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had to deal with the embarrassing diplomatic consequences, felt compelled to intervene. The Ministry suggested to Badoglio in an extremely polite form that it would be better to avoid attacks on Ethiopian soldiers if Red Cross field hospitals were near-by. The third phase concerned the last month of the war. Once the Italians had managed to break the Ethiopian resistance on the northern and southern fronts, no more bombing raids on Red Cross installations took place, mainly for two reasons. The first was that the number of functional field hospitals had greatly diminished as a result of the bombings and of the rapidly deteriorating military situation of the Ethiopians. On more than one occasion the staff of the field hospitals were on the retreat like the beaten soldiers. The second reason was that those few field hospitals which were still able to work at this moment did so under camouflage and escaped detection from the air.

Bombing of Dessie (6 December 1935) From the end of October 1935, the Italians watched carefully over Haile Selassie’s movements and registered that he planned to lead the war from Dessie. By the end of November they knew that the Emperor was going to set up camp in the former Italian Consulate. On the last day of the month, the information was confirmed through an intercepted cable sent by the Emperor to his wife in Addis Abeba that he had arrived safely in Dessie. The Air Force in Asmara went promptly to work and prepared a surprise attack on the town. Since the long distance from Italian airfields in the north to the town of Dessie imposed significant weight restrictions, the Command decided to use the Red Sea port of Assab for the two-day offensive action. The day before the attack test flights were hurriedly arranged in Assab to determine the maximum bomb carrying capacity of the main striking force of Ca.111 bomber planes. As a result, it was decided to reduce the number of crewmembers to the bare minimum of three for most of the planes and to leave behind some machine gun ammunition. Each aircraft was assigned a particular target, for example, the four aeroplanes of the Squadron of the Chief of Staff were given orders to attack the Italian Consulate and surroundings; the airfield; the gibbi and the centre of the town. On Friday, 6 December, the first wave of four Ca.101, belonging to the Squadron of the Chief of Staff, appeared at 8.15 a.m. in the clear skies over

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Dessie and attacked their assigned targets. The second wave of fourteen Ca.111, in four patrols, arrived twenty minutes later and dropped their deadly cargo over the town in a matter of ten minutes. Altogether, the eighteen planes involved in the raid used 7,698 kg of explosives – forty-eight bombs of 100 kg, sixty of 12 kg and more than two thousand bomblets of 1 or 2 kg.34 The pilots were thrilled with the results. They noted in their reports that the raid was executed with ‘cold precision’; all main targets were hit repeatedly ‘in full’ and ‘with great accuracy’.35 ‘The enemy’s town and camps are in flames, blazing especially from depots of flammable material and explosives, which are located in the town itself and in the immediate vicinity. The unexpected air raid has clearly spread panic in the town and camps. Large numbers of men on foot and horseback are fleeing in every direction.’36 The pilots were convinced that they had inflicted huge damage and that the brick houses of the town were, if not completely destroyed, at least heavily damaged. In particular, they noted ‘a very high column of black smoke close to the Red Cross.’37 The raid was judged all the more successful because, at the same time, the camps of Ethiopian soldiers in the vicinity of the town – with more than 3,000 tents – had also been hit. The only negative point had been extremely heavy anti-aircraft fire from suspected Swiss-made Oerlikon guns that came from the hills surrounding Dessie. They damaged several Italian planes but not all as the High Command later claimed (Figures 3.3 and 3.4). On the ground, the bombing raid was witnessed by the assembled international press who had obtained permission to go to Dessie after the brief interlude in Harar in November. The correspondents of Associated Press, Havas, Paramount Pictures, Reuters, The Times and others got an unexpected prime view of the first public application of Douhet’s theory of mass air warfare. Encamped in the compound of the Tafari Makonnen Hospital, belonging to the American Adventist mission in Dessie, they were in the middle of it. The American journalist Wynant Hubbard (1936: pp. 379–80) described the scene: After that first bomb we hadn’t time to think. Machine guns began to chatter. The heavy droning of the ships echoed and reëchoed in the mountain bowl. The crash of bombs, the coughing mutter of the antiquated anti-aircraft on the hills above us, the shots from the old weapons of the natives, and the shouts and cries of the population dashing for shelter made an indescribable din … At the hospital bombs were dropping all around us, both incendiary and high explosive. I heard the patients crying wildly. There were some sixty of them, chiefly old men and women with leprosy and other horrible diseases.

Two small bombs hit the hospital. One fell right through the roof, marked with a somewhat faded large Red Cross, into a patients’ ward, the other into the sterilisation room. Miraculously, nobody was hurt but the bombs caused some material damage, as Junod witnessed a few days after.

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Figure 3.3 Dessie. Bombing of 6 December 1935. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, Bombardamento di Dessie, No. 18539)

Figure 3.4 Dessie. Bombing of 6 December 1935. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, Bombardamento di Dessie, No. 19056)

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Figure 3.5 Dessie. Italian bombing of the town on 6 December 1935 during which the hospital was hit. Extended on the ground of the large building on the lower left, a Red Cross flag can be seen, marking the site where the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 under Valentin Schüppler had set up camp. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, Bombardamento di Dessie, No. 18525)

Three more bombs exploded on the ground near the hospital and a sixth destroyed a tent and medical material belonging to an Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital set up in the compound. Just outside the town, two more bombs fell 10 to 20 m from a building on a little hill which was occupied by the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3. Its flag can clearly be seen in a picture taken by the Italians during the raid (Figure 3.5). The Times reported that fifty-three people were killed and two hundred injured, although Emperor Haile Selassie later said that the number was less than half. Many casualties were caused by bullets falling back from the uncontrolled small arms fire with which the attacking planes were shot at. The vast majority were civilians, only five were soldiers, according to Hubbard. The doctors of the mission hospital and of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals took care of the wounded as they came in. It was a blessing in disguise that the Red Cross medical units had not yet moved farther north, because the enormous work could not have been handled by Ragnar Stadin, the mission doctor, alone. The main target of the Italian attack was the former Consulate with its illustrious inhabitants, Emperor Haile Selassie and his two sons, Crown

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Figure 3.6 Dessie. Emperor Haile Selassie at a modern Swiss-made Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, No. 25482)

Prince Asfawossen and young Prince Makonnen. They escaped unharmed. According to press reports, the Emperor, in a defiant and highly symbolic gesture, rushed to an Oerlikon gun in the compound and fired several rounds at the attacking planes (Figure 3.6). Six bombs exploded near the Consulate as a Swiss weapons technician noted (Brogle 1937: p. 107). Many bombs – half according to some sources – failed to explode. A good number of them were collected in the Consulate’s ground where they were duly recorded and examined. Material damage in the town, after the clouds of dust and smoke had settled, was not as serious as the Italian pilots had claimed, apart from several dozen tukul – the thatched roofed houses of the Ethiopians – which were burnt to the ground. However, the air strike caused unimaginable panic and terror in the first moments because the large majority of people had never heard aeroplanes before, let alone seen them dropping bombs. In terms of military achievements, the attack on Dessie had not given the expected results. It was, in The Times correspondent’s words (Steer 1936: p. 205) ‘an attempt to burn a large civilian centre and a rather poor potshot at the Emperor’. As soon as the first shock was over, the telegraph office in Dessie, which the Italian pilots considered as repeatedly hit, had its busiest day ever. Shortly after midday, the first brief Ethiopian telegram about the Dessie bombing, signed by Prince Makonnen, was sent to Addis Abeba, immedi-

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ately intercepted by the High Command. Later in the day, Haile Selassie dispatched his own telegram to the League of Nations in Geneva in which he protested vehemently against the bombing of Dessie and the Red Cross installations. The foreign journalists filed thousands of words to their home offices with the story of the bombing which made prime news all over the world. The Emperor’s protest was followed one day later with an angry complaint signed by five doctors and the director of the Dessie mission hospital. Stanisław Belau, Dr Loeb, Georges Dassios, Melaku Bayen, Manuel Sorensen and Ragnar Stadin solemnly declared ‘that in the enclosure containing the dressing-stations and the hospital, which is outside the town, the Red Cross emblems were in place and in large numbers. We protest against this inhuman act and stigmatise it before the whole civilised world ...’38 The ICRC in Geneva was informed about this protest the same day in a telegram co-signed by Lambie and Brown. Late in the afternoon on the day when Dessie was bombed, an extremely urgent cable was sent from Asmara to the Air Force command in Assab. The bombing raid for the next day was called off. No reason was given, but it appears that the High Command quickly realised the harmful impact of the bombing raid and wanted to avoid further negative headlines. On 7 December, the four aeroplanes of the Squadron of the Chief of Staff returned to Asmara via Dessie without bombing, but the pilots took the opportunity to have a closer look at the effects of the raid of the day before. They confirmed large damage and noticed that the town appeared deserted. The numerous tents in the vicinity of the town were greatly reduced in number, more hidden in the terrain and extending over a much vaster area.39 The ICRC in Geneva was quite alarmed about the news and appeared rather impressed by the protest of the Red Cross doctors in Dessie, as a preoccupied Vinci reported to the Italian Red Cross President. The organisation transmitted the protest to Filippo Cremonesi and added that the Italian Red Cross had been notified on the very same day of the bombing about the existence of the Tafari Makonnen Hospital in Dessie. It mentioned specifically that formal notification was not a prerequisite to respect of the Red Cross emblem: ‘The emblem on its own must provide sufficient protection’.40 With this remark, the ICRC intended to pre-empt a possible Italian argument – that they were not officially informed about the existence of this hospital under Red Cross protection. The ICRC’s point fell on deaf ears. In its official response to the League of Nations and to the ICRC Fascist diplomacy made exactly this argument. At the same time they invoked photographs taken by the crews flying over Dessie on 7 December according to which buildings and tents marked with the Red Cross sign ‘appeared intact’,41 although the aforementioned squadron commander’s flight report did not make such a mention at all. It was more likely an addition of the politico-military hierarchy to contradict the damaging reports from Ethiopia.

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This was not the only manipulation of a flight report. That the Italians resorted to such means is apparent when the next point is examined. Denying their planes had violated the emblem of the Red Cross, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, instead, accused the Ethiopians of having done so. In support of their accusation, the Ministry again cited observations made after the day of the bombing, namely that ‘all was covered with Red Cross signs including the army camps and even the airfield’.42 Where did this information come from? Once again, no such observation was contained in the original squadron commander’s report. A similar observation appeared for the first time on 8 December in the briefing notes of General Ajmone Cat, the Air Force commander and it was repeated by Badoglio. It said: ‘Red Cross trick immediately exploited on vast scale day after, all Dessie and even airfield marked in such a way’.43 If one compares the two statements, it becomes evident that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had made its own version by adding that the Red Cross signs were also covering army camps. It was a cheap trick allowing blame to fall on the Ethiopians. At a closer look, Ajmone Cat’s version also appears quite incredible. Why should the inhabitants of Dessie, terrorised by the bombing as they were, have found the time and the material to paint Red Crosses everywhere from one day to the other, especially when they had evacuated the town as the pilots had reported? In addition, why should Ethiopians believe in the protection of the Red Cross when they had seen with their own eyes bombs hit the duly marked hospital? Finally, how could the squadron commander have forgotten to report such a sensational observation that Red Crosses were painted everywhere? The Italian government’s version is hardly credible and shows that various levels of the hierarchy tampered with the original flight report in an effort to control damage. They had good reason to do so. The doctors’ protest of Italian bombs falling on a Red Cross hospital did not convince international public opinion that Fascist Italy had embarked on a civilising mission in Ethiopia. On the contrary, it stirred up anti-Italian feelings and resentment. More importantly, the dispute which followed the bombing of Dessie could not have come at a worse time. It coincided with a meeting scheduled for 12 December at the League of Nations on extended sanctions to be taken against Italy. Fascist Italy needed to muster any kind of argument in order to avoid this worst case scenario. How did the ICRC and its delegates assess the incident in Dessie? Junod, very concerned by what had happened like Brown, drove shortly afterwards to the bombed town in order to make his own investigation. He interviewed eyewitnesses and examined the damage to the Red Cross installations. He came to the conclusion that the Italians had intended to hit Haile Selassie in the former Italian Consulate, just 300 to 400 m away from the hospital, but felt at the time that ‘this is not an excuse for such a horrible mistake’. He told Geneva that the violation of the Geneva Convention had been

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‘flagrant’.44 Brown made a different assessment sometime later. Under the influence of the much worse bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital, he concluded that the hitting of the Dessie hospital was accidental and had to be counted under the risks of war. Geneva shared Brown’s view. After having received Junod’s report on his visit to Dessie, Max Huber immediately pointed to what Junod had noticed, that Haile Selassie’s residence was very close to the Dessie hospital. It was left to Paul des Gouttes to draw the conclusion in early January that the Italians, in the case of Dessie, had probably not violated the Geneva Convention. The air raid on Dessie was the first strategic bombardment which took place during the Italo-Ethiopian war. Despite the unimpressive military results which it produced, the Italian High Command ordered three more. The second took place shortly afterwards, on the southern Ethiopian town of Negele (no. 2 on the list in Appendix 5) and two more at the end of March 1936 – one on the town of Jijiga, lasting for three consecutive days, and the other on Harar (no. 16 and 17 in Appendix 5). In this last bombardment, a record thirty-three planes dropped over twelve tons of explosives over a town not much bigger than Dessie. In each instance, Red Cross medical units were present, but they were lucky enough to sustain only little material damage. It is interesting to note that the ICRC was, in regard to these bombardments, only concerned with possible violations of the Red Cross emblem. The underlying question, whether it was legitimate to bomb largely civilian targets and what the ICRC’s reaction should be to that was not raised throughout the period under study. Geneva simply did not appreciate the wider significance of these bombardments. Of course, it was only the beginning. Much worse was to come with Guernica, Coventry, Dresden and Hiroshima. The Italians were very surprised by the vehement international reaction. They realised that this war was no longer a little colonial affair, fought somewhere in a desert away from public scrutiny. Things had changed since Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. This time Fascist Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia happened literally in front of cameras and news was reported in a matter of hours around the world. One would expect that a regime otherwise so sensitive to its image should have been warned and would avoid similar incidents but this was not so, as the following case studies demonstrate.

Bombing of the Swedish Red Cross Field Hospital in Melka Dida (30 December 1935) Three weeks later, it happened again. On Monday morning, 30 December 1935, at about 7.30 a.m., the Swedish Red Cross field hospital at Melka Dida45 had just started daily work when four Italian warplanes appeared in the blue sky. Immediately bombs started to fall. The first ones hit the ground on the opposite side of the River Genale Doria on which the field

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hospital had put up camp. At this moment six more planes arrived right over the camp in patrol formation of three. Their bombs hit the field hospital before the stunned occupants. All around them was suddenly mayhem, fire, smoke and a deafening noise like ‘continuous thunder rumbling’ in the words of Fride Hylander, the director of the field hospital.46 In several passes, the ten planes dropped their bombs from a few hundred meters above the unarmed Swedish Red Cross expatriates, local staff and patients. They were so shocked that they could not even say for how long the air raid had lasted. When it was over the camp was ‘in a horrifying condition’. Bomb craters were everywhere with the biggest being two meters deep. Tents were destroyed or torn apart by shrapnel. Fires were burning because of the incendiary bombs. But the worst were the people: ‘The sick section offered an appalling sight. A man reduced to strips, another whose flesh had been torn from the hips and the legs. A few were lying half-buried under the debris and earth thrown up by the explosions. Everywhere flesh quivered. A strip of flesh thrown onto the roof of the tent where we took our meals.’47 Eighteen people were killed instantly and about fifty were wounded, some of them so severely that they did not survive the day of the attack. The death toll rose quickly to twenty-eight and later to forty-two between patients and Red Cross staff. Gunnar Lundstroem, one of the Swedish male nurses, had sought refuge in a Red Cross lorry. ‘While reading the Bible’, he was hit severely in the face, as Hylander reported. The upper and the internal part of the lower jawbone had been ripped off. He later died on a truck just a few hours before the survivors reached Negele, from where they had initiated their journey just two weeks before. Hylander himself, standing close to the operation tent, was thrown to the ground and covered by earth. Shrapnel wounded him on both legs, the right side and the shoulder. Manfred Lundgren was superficially hit in the skull and fell briefly unconscious. Many had a lucky escape, such as Eric Smith, above whose head a large piece of shrapnel cut a branch off a tree ‘as if it was a straw’. As far as material damage was concerned, it could have been worse, but Junod judged it still ‘considerable and representing a big loss’ when he investigated the incident a few days later.48 All tents had been hit by shrapnel, one with 380 pieces, according to Junod’s count. The window screens of the five trucks were broken and two trucks sustained radiator damage. The big autoclave was battered beyond repair. Using the remaining medical material, the team immediately started to treat the wounded doing amputations, suturing and bandaging. The dead were summarily buried in bomb craters, the largest of which had room for six bodies. A catastrophe had struck the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Sidamo Province, on the southeastern tip of Ethiopia at the border with Italian Somalia and British Kenya. In view of the substantial damage and fearing a return of the enemy planes, the team quickly decided to evacuate from

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Melka Dida and return to Negele, the nearest town. With the help of Ras Desta’s radio transmitter an urgent telegram was dispatched to Addis Abeba, requesting the Red Cross plane to pick up the wounded. Three trucks were loaded with people and material in a great hurry and they embarked on the 300 km return journey. They were later joined by the two damaged trucks which had been hastily repaired. Upon hearing the news of yet another bombing, the two ICRC delegates decided that Junod should travel as soon as possible to the site in order to see for himself what had happened. After several days of delay, having more to do with Ras Desta’s security considerations than with the bureaucracy in Addis Abeba, Junod and Gustaf von Rosen, the pilot, were finally able to fly to the rescue of the Swedish Red Cross team. In an adventurous trip leading over uncharted aviation territory, they reached Negele via Yrgalem in the evening of 4 January 1936. That same night they made contact with the Swedes whose morale had suffered a severe blow from the bombing and the loss of a colleague. The next day, while von Rosen flew back to Addis Abeba with Hylander and three more wounded, Junod made his first interviews. The following night he began the arduous journey to Melka Dida in the company of Eric Smith, one of the surviving Swedish Red Cross’ doctors. On 7 January, they arrived at the site, easily identifiable by the destroyed palm forest, pieces of stretchers with large bloodstains and material scattered all over (Figure 3.7). Junod made three main observations. First, after examining the surroundings of the former field hospital one kilometre along the river, he reported that ‘no other place had been bombed with the same intensity’.49 Secondly, he noted that the site of the field hospital was located about 2.5 km behind the Ethiopian frontline. Ras Desta’s headquarters was 7 km upstream, 5 km by truck and two on foot. Thirdly, the former field hospital ‘had been duly marked’,50 with the signs stipulated by the Geneva Convention. Three flags 2.5 by 2.5 m – the Swedish, the Red Cross and the Ethiopian flags – were extended on the ground and three more were suspended between trees. The camp surface itself measured 75 by 75 m. Still in Melka Dida, Junod telegraphed his conclusion to Geneva: ‘Swedish ambulance mercilessly bombed despite visible signs and isolated location’.51 Brown, for his part, at first thought that the Swedes whom he judged pro-Ethiopian, might have blundered, but he became quickly convinced that this was not the case. He told Geneva that the incident was a ‘a horrible massacre’ and accused the Italians of having committed ‘a crime’.52 So much for the events which unfolded in Melka Dida and immediately afterwards. In order to understand what had happened on that ill-fated day, attention must be turned now to the Italian side. By mid-December 1935, General Rodolfo Graziani, the commanding officer of the Italian southern front, was growing increasingly nervous about the whereabouts of Ras Desta Damtew’s large army. He knew that they were marching towards the Italian

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Figure 3.7 Melka Dida. Marcel Junod (centre) with Eric Smith and Kurt Allander from the Swedish Red Cross on the site of the bombing for a factfinding trip in early January 1936. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-504/2783, E-2002)

defensive positions along the border in the zone of Dolo, but they had largely escaped observation by seeking cover under the riverain forest along the Dawa Parma and Genale Doria. Confirmation of the threat posed by the Ethiopians came only on 29 December, when the Italian intelligence service picked up a message from Ras Desta to Haile Selassie that he had arrived at Melka Dida. Now Graziani knew where the Ethiopians were and he immediately started to prepare counter measures. The days of uncertainty had come to an end. Until then, the daily reconnaissance flights of the Air Force over the area had not revealed many troops, but considerable and suspicious concentrations of transport animals and other ruminants which were bombed and

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machine-gunned without delay. There was one noteworthy exception, however. On 22 December, during such a reconnaissance mission, two planes, one Ro.1 and one Ca.101, discovered the Swedish Red Cross field hospital which had just arrived the day before and put up camp on the banks of the Genale Doria (Figures 3.8 and 3.9). The pilots, after having identified three Red Cross flags on the ground as well as flags suspended between trees, proceeded to subject the field hospital to routine scrutiny. This meant that the Ca.101 threw bomblets on the surrounding area, while the Ro.1 machine gunned the site twice from as low as 200 m. It was standard tactics to literally ‘beat the bush’ and see whether soldiers or animals were in hiding, without results in this case. One burst of machine gun fire went right across the camp and the second hit the ground some 10 m away from one of the Red Cross flags, next to which stood a few stunned Swedes.53 Nobody was hurt this time, by sheer luck. In the following days the unit was overflown almost daily, either in the morning or in the afternoon. The Red Cross team became accustomed to these visits and started to feel more secure again. On 23 December, the pilots observed three tents in the open and correctly identified the flags: ‘On the left and on the right of the tents – two white sheets with a Red Cross at the centre spread out on the ground. To the east of the larger tent; at about fifty steps, two big flags, one Ethiopian and the other Swedish’.54 On this occasion the camp was also photographed. On the same day another plane observed a man waving a flag. A few days later another reconnaissance plane noticed that the field hospital had increased in size. On 26 December, an incident occurred a few hundred kilometres away with dramatic consequences for the Swedish Red Cross field hospital. During a reconnaissance flight, a Ro.1 had to make an emergency landing about 10 km from Degeh Bur in the Ogaden. Later the same day, the Italians

Figure 3.8 Melka Dida. The Swedish Red Cross field hospital before the bombing raid. Some of the tents were intentionally put into the open for easy identification from the air. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

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Figure 3.9 Melka Dida. Suspended flags of Sweden, the Red Cross and Ethiopia, in conformity with the Geneva Convention of 1929, marking the Swedish Red Cross field hospital. The flags were correctly identified during the first Italian observation flight on 22 December 1935, with the exception of the Swedish flag, described as ‘a white cross in a blue field’. On the next day, the error was corrected. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

whose search for the plane was fruitless learned from an intercepted message that Somali tribesmen had killed the pilot, Tito Minniti, and the observer, Livio Zannoni (see Chapter 5). Graziani went into a rage and wanted ‘an eye for an eye’, as is attested by his handwritten annotation on the telegram from the zonal commander, General Luigi Frusci in Gorrahei from whom he received the bad news. After discussing possible action with the Air Force Commander, General Mario Bernasconi, the following instruction went out to Gorrahei airbase the next day: ‘Heroic death of our comrade in barbaric enemy land requires exemplary reprisal punishment’.55 The reprisal punishment was going to be poison gas mixed with ordinary bombs. The punitive raids were launched on 30 December with eight Ca.101 on the Ogadeni towns of Degeh Bur, Sassebaneh and Bulale. At Bulale, the Egyptian Red Crescent field hospital had a narrow escape when bombs exploded nearby (no. 5 and 6 in Appendix 5). The raid was repeated on the following day. However, the worst was reserved for the Swedish Red Cross at Melka Dida. Based on verbal orders, four Ro.1 and six Ca.101 bombed ‘the locality of Malca Dida’.56 At the head of the main bomber force was Bernasconi in person. He had reserved for himself the right to drop the heaviest bomb,

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one of 250 kg. Arriving over ‘the objective’ at 7.25 a.m., his planes hit the field hospital in two passages with 1,982 kg of explosives including 252 kg of mustard gas. Twenty-five minutes later, the job was done with the bombs having ‘hit the target very effectively’.57 The whole raid was photographed and leaflets were dropped, quickly collected by the Swedes. They read as follows: ‘You have beheaded one of our airmen, infringing all human and international laws, under which prisoners are sacred and deserve respect. You will get what you deserve. Graziani’.58 While the staff of the field hospital tried to come to terms with the disaster which had befallen it, the warplanes returned safely to the base of Lugh (Figures 3.10 to 3.15). The mission was accomplished with a laconic: ‘We have not noticed any problem with the planes or engines’.59 Graziani knew from the beginning that he could not say, not even to his superiors, what exactly his orders were on that day. He constructed a justification consisting of a web of half-truths and simple lies. In the afternoon of the day of the bombing, he had learned from Ethiopian cable traffic that Hylander was wounded in the bombing raid. In the evening he drafted a telegram to Lessona and Badoglio with the following content: in response to the killing of Minniti and Zannoni, he had ordered ‘reprisal bombing

Figure 3.10 Melka Dida. The Swedish Red Cross field hospital on the banks of river Genale Doria on 23 December 1935. The Italian observer noticed three tents in the open on the lower centre of the picture, one Red Cross flag to the left of the tents and another slightly to the right, as well as two vehicles half-hidden under the palm trees. (USSMA, fondo A.O.I., c. 89, diario storico dicembre 1935, 23 Dec. 1935)

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Figure 3.11 Melka Dida. Bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital on 30 December 1935. Explosions right over the site of the field hospital can be observed (smoke columns on the top center). (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 16, f. 21/3, 30 Dec. 1935)

action’ on the Juba and Ogaden fronts. ‘Since we were informed furthermore that Ras Desta Damtew and other chiefs had found shelter from air raids near the field hospital set up a few days earlier near Goguru, I ordered his tents to be bombed too. During this operation some of the bombs fell on the field hospital wounding a Swedish doctor, a certain Dr Fritz’.60 In essence, Graziani pretended that the Swedish Red Cross hospital was hit involuntarily in an air raid directed against the Ethiopian military commander who had sought illicit protection of the Red Cross. In reality, there was no such camp in the vicinity of the field hospital, as the Swedes affirmed consistently. More importantly, the Air Force, despite many overflights until the day before the bombing, had not observed anything like that.61 The only support for such an assumption came from an informer cited in the daily information report of 30 December, the day of the bombing. A Somali arrested for spying revealed that ‘some white people, who were in the headquarters of the Ras, and the chiefs subordinate to the Ras, often found shelter during our air strikes in the big ambulance tent – and precisely the one hit by the bombs’.62 This report is interesting because the informer not only confirmed that there was no other camp near the hospital, but he flatly contradicted Graziani’s claim that Ras Desta himself had been at the hospital.

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Figure 3.12 Melka Dida. Sketch drawing of the effects of the bombing of 30 December 1935, made by the Swedish Red Cross team. (RA, Svenska Röda Korsets arkiv, Österstyrelsen, E I c5, vol. 2, Folder Diarienummer 38–134, enclosure to report Hylander, 7 Jan. 1936)

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Figure 3.12

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(continued)

In fact, it appears that Graziani had distorted information in his possession to make his own case. There was another, even better argument for this: if the real aim of Graziani’s air raid was Ras Desta and his tents, there was no need to drop the aforementioned leaflets of a reprisal action on the hospital grounds. Ras Desta’s camp would have been a legitimate target, requiring no further justification. The Italians would have been the first ones not to miss such an opportunity, as the Dessie bombing convincingly demonstrated.

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Figure 3.13 Departing from Stockholm for Addis Abeba. On the left: Gunnar Lundström with Anders Joëlson and Knut Johansson (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 1)

Figure 3.14 Melka Dida. Gunnar Lundström severely wounded on the head during the Italian bombing raid. He died on a Swedish Red Cross truck two days later, shortly before reaching the town of Negele. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 7)

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Figure 3.15 Negele. Burial ceremony for Gunnar Lundström in the Orthodox church ground in the very first days of 1936. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-5011/2790, E-2009)

Once Graziani had started arguing on such shaky grounds, he was obliged to continue. As can be expected the bombing of the field hospital in Melka Dida caused a storm of indignation in Europe, particularly in Sweden where flags were flown at half-mast as a sign of national mourning. On New Year’s Day, Fulvio Suvich, the Undersecretary of State, briefed the Swedish Minister in Rome, Eric Sjoeborg, on the incident. Sjoeborg returned four days later with a set of precise questions. They were submitted to Graziani who responded promptly on 9 January. There is no need to study in detail all seven points but it suffices to consider just two: Graziani affirmed that clouds on 30 December were so dense that the pilots were unable to recognise signs on the ground. This was a lie, because the pictures taken of the bombing by the Italians did not show one single cloud and the annotation on the back of one of them was unambiguous: ‘Good visibility’.63 Secondly, according to Graziani – citing pilots’ observations – no bombs had fallen directly on the field hospital, which, as a consequence, could have been hit only indirectly by shrapnel. In addition, he said, the pilots had not observed that the tents had been damaged. The tents were seen standing after the bombing raid – an affirmation clearly contradicted by the already mentioned flight report of the bombing day as well as the confirmed damage on the field hospital. In short, Graziani’s

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response was a mockery. It was so obviously wrong that it made things worse and gave more grounds to the Swedish government to pursue the case. Based on interviews with the survivors, the Swedish government maintained from the beginning that the Italian Air Force had deliberately attacked the field hospital. It requested the Italian government to reprimand the persons responsible and to pay compensation for the loss incurred, with no tangible results. On the contrary, at the end of August 1936, four months after the formal end of the war, Ciano, the new Foreign Minister, presented the Swedish government with allegedly new information. Citing a testimony of a former military advisor of Ras Desta, Lieutenant Armand Frère, Ciano said that Ethiopian military chiefs ‘were undoubtedly in the vicinity of the Swedish ambulance’ and that on the day of the bombing ‘there were very low lying clouds’.64 As a result of this new evidence, the Italian government maintained its version of the events: while regretting what had happened, it pretended that the bombing had been accidental and inherent in the risks of war. Frère’s testimony does not need much comment. It was an obvious fake, in flagrant contradiction with the pilots’ observations on the weather conditions prevailing on that day.65 The only difference with earlier explanations was that the Fascist government now covered up for Graziani’s violation of Red Cross immunity. The Swedish government was not fooled and insisted again that the bombing was a deliberate act of aggression against the field hospital, in violation of the first Geneva Convention. To no avail. Neither side gave in. The dispute dragged on for a full sixteen months when the Swedish Government concluded the matter by stating the deep differences of views between the two governments. Graziani’s fabrications served the official propaganda well. The Italian media gave wide publicity to his version and called for even tougher action on the ground. They attacked the anti-Fascist press, which was accused of launching a smear campaign against Italy. Cremonesi was, not surprisingly, of the same view and spoke of a ‘despicable hubbub’, a ‘huge exaggeration’, while Vinci qualified the incident as a ‘hotbed of misinformation’.66 However, Mussolini and Badoglio were not fooled. Both understood what Graziani had done. Mussolini was furious when he heard the news and sent an angry telegram to Badoglio. He reproached him that after Dessie there was now Melka Dida and that such incidents were working into the hands of the ones calling for sanctions against Italy: No one is more in favour of a harsh war than myself … but the game ought to be worth the candle and the necessary retaliation must be intelligently thought out. If, in order to put ten more Abyssinians to flight, we attract criticism from all over the world and force our few friends to express their reservation, we are only making our task more difficult. Give strict orders to diligently respect all Red Cross installations wherever it may be.67

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Badoglio, in his reply, justified the Dessie raid by the fact that the Ethiopian Emperor had been in the town and that the hospital had been hit by accident, but regarding Melka Dida he washed his hands in innocence: ‘Nothing to say about the Swedish hospital in Somaliland about the bombardment of which I have heard after it had taken place’.68 In line with Mussolini’s instructions he promptly asked Graziani to abstain from such acts in the future.

Bombing of the Ethiopian Field Hospital No. 3 on Amba Aradam (18 January 1936) Amba Aradam is a characteristic table mountain of the northern Ethiopian highlands. Situated about 20 km south of Mekele, the mountain peaks at 2,700 m, is 8 km long and 3 km wide. The top was covered at the time with dense vegetation and several springs provided fresh water for people and animals (Figure 3.16). Amba Aradam occupied a strategic location with a commanding view over Mekele and the surrounding areas which the Italians held since the beginning of November 1935. Not surprisingly, the lightly armed Ethiopian army made the mountain one of their main positions in Tigray. It became the eastern point of the Ethiopian front line, stretching from there across central Tembien and the gorges of the Tekeze River to northern Gondar in the west. Ras Mulugeta Igazu, a veteran fighter of the battle of Adwa and actual Minister of War, occupied the mountain with several thousand soldiers since the second week of December. Amba Aradam was, in Badoglio’s words (1936: p. 93), ‘a natural fortress’, suitable ‘for effective, defensive manoeuvres and rapid counteroffensives’. It was a permanent threat right in front of the eyes of the Italians who kept the mountain under close observation. By the beginning of January 1936, the Italian Air Force had discovered that the Ethiopians converged on the mountain. Regular reconnaissance and bombing raids were ordered as a consequence, but they caused little harm to the troops who found good shelter in numerous caves and under the thick vegetation. In mid-January, Valentin Schüppler – in charge of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 – reached Amba Aradam, his temporary area of assignment, after a two-week journey from Dessie. He was accompanied by an Indian doctor, Dr Ahmed, two Irish assistants, Marius Brophil and James Hickey and a number of Ethiopian Red Cross assistants. On 16 January, the team started to set up the field hospital on Amba Aradam. Three flags, one bigger and two smaller ones, were extended on the ground, promptly spotted by an Italian reconnaissance plane on the same day (Figure 3.17). The following day, 17 January, four more planes flew over the medical unit at various times. On one such occasion, at 11 a.m., Brophil saw the pilot of a plane, circling above them, making a sign to which he

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Figure 3.16 A patrol of two Italian Ca.101 near Amba Aradam (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, Amba Aradam, No. 38516)

responded by pointing his arms at the Red Cross flag on the ground. Later in the day, the field hospital was photographed. The pilot specifically noted that there was no anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground, confirming Schüppler’s remark that there were no troops in the vicinity. During the same flight the pilot observed that the mountain appeared heavily occupied: he discovered over two hundred tents although he could not see many persons but a lot of animals. Warned by these suspicious overflights and remembering the Dessie bombing, Schüppler decided to move the field hospital to a nearby cave. He was well advised. The next day, on 18 January, Italian planes bombed the field hospital’s site69 in several waves for almost the whole day. Luckily there were very few casualties. Five women were wounded in the morning raids and two children in the afternoon. Some damage was done by shrapnel to material stored at the entrance of the cave.70 The bombing order came from Badoglio.71 The aim of the raid was ‘repression and destruction of the enemy forces concentrated on Amba Aradam’.72 The order was to be executed in the morning of 18 January. It was followed by yet another order that the same targets should be hit again in the afternoon ‘with all possible intensity’.73 As far as can be reconstructed from the relevant flight reports, more than ten planes, mainly Ro.37

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from Mekele, bombed Amba Aradam, including the field hospital area, with some 3,000 kg of explosives.74 The pilots’ reports made no reference to the Red Cross signs, observed so clearly the day before, with one interesting exception, written by Captain Camillo Benzi: ‘During the extremely effective air strike, three red crosses were displayed like yesterday. No anti-aircraft reaction.’75 This observation raises the question whether Schüppler removed the flags when he got suspicious about the intentions of the Italians and spread them out again during the bombing in order to signal to the pilots that there was a Red Cross medical unit. This is possible and would mean that at least for part of the

Figure 3.17 Amba Aradam. The pilot of an Italian reconnaissance plane discovered on 16 January 1936 a cavern on the mountain with, near-by, three Red Cross flags on the ground (the top and central flags are easily identifiable, meanwhile the third on the lower right is more difficult to see). The site marked the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 under Valentin Schüppler which was bombed two days later. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, Amba Aradam, No. 22460)

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bombing there were no Red Cross signs visible for the Italian pilots. It would excuse them to some extent but once the flags were shown again, the Italians must have realised that they were bombing a Red Cross medical unit. Schüppler, unfortunately, gave no answer to this question in his report made after his return to Addis Abeba. Most revealing, however, was Badoglio’s reaction. Once more, the Ethiopian government protested about this bombing to the ICRC which transmitted the protest to Rome. Badoglio was asked to comment. His response came swiftly and contained a denial as surprising as it was untrue: ‘On the 18th, during the air strike of Amba Aradam there was no sign of a hospital. It was only after the bombing that airmen saw armed Abyssinians stretching out on the ground white sheeting on which they laid red, crosslike stripes.’76 This explanation made little sense. Why would the staff of a field hospital, which had just been bombed for practically a whole day, expose flags after the bombing? More importantly, Badoglio’s explanation was in blatant contradiction with Benzi’s observation that the Red Cross flags were extended during the bombing. It appears that Badoglio had transformed a ‘during’ into an ‘after’, in order to claim that the Air Force did not know that they had bombed a Red Cross field hospital. He cheated like Ajmone Cat after the Dessie bombing and Graziani after Melka Dida. Behind Badoglio’s explanation lay the familiar Italian argument that Ethiopian troops misused the emblem of the Red Cross. He specifically mentioned that a Red Cross field hospital could not be so close to the front but he had obviously been wrong. When Schüppler was able to comment on the pictures of his field hospital, published by the Italians as an example of misuse of the Red Cross emblem, it was already too late. Nobody listened any more to his side of the story. Ethiopia was just about to disappear from the political map of the time. This recalls an earlier incident involving the same field hospital. On 4 January 1936, an Italian Ca.133 on a reconnaissance flight, piloted by Col Vincenzo Magliocco, the commander of the Air Force’s base at Mekele, discovered a large group of armed men and many animals on the Korem plain. Further north, near Lake Ashenge, the observer noticed a group of one hundred to one hundred and fifty people around three Red Crosses and took pictures of the scene. Badoglio, without further investigation, immediately accused the Ethiopian troops of foul play, seeking immunity from bombing. The incident was cited as yet another example of Ethiopian misuses of the Red Cross. Valentin Schüppler later explained what had happened. On that morning Ethiopian troops in the area had broken camp before sunrise and started to move north. Schüppler’s field hospital, on the way to Amba Aradam, was just about ready to move when, at about 8 a.m., an Italian Ca.133 flew over them. They quickly extended the three Red Cross flags on the ground around their material and almost all the team, some twenty unarmed per-

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sons, stood in the middle. Their mules grazed some 50 to 100 m away and no troops were nearby. The Italian reaction to these incidents revealed an interesting pattern. Whenever a Red Cross emblem was discovered on the way to or near the front, the pilots and, particularly the High Command, invariably jumped to the conclusion that the Ethiopians were playing a trick on them. Admittedly, it must have been confusing to observe Red Cross signs in locations such as Amba Aradam. To a certain extent, one can understand their suspicions, but what surprises is that the High Command never made further investigations. They did not even give the benefit of doubt to the Red Cross emblems which they spotted on the ground. Was it so difficult for the High Command to order observations for a few more days and/or make an inquiry in Rome and Ethiopia via the ICRC? In the case of Amba Aradam this would have been certainly appropriate since the reconnaissance flights had established that there was no immediate threat coming from the ground. Such inquiries were never made. Graziani and especially Badoglio preferred to expose themselves to the reproach of having bombed Red Cross installations in violation of the Geneva Convention and, even against self-interest.

Bombing of the British Red Cross Field Hospital on the Korem Plain (4 March 1936) Badoglio’s crushing victories over the Ethiopian forces in northern Ethiopia in February and early March 1936, brought the end of the war within reach for the first time. ‘Here the enemy is annihilated and I think that we are close to the Abyssinian collapse’, was his triumphant conclusion to Rome in a topsecret telegram,77 but he did not intend to rest on his laurels. On the contrary, Badoglio wanted to take maximum advantage of the military achievements. The next logical step was a decisive push south in pursuit of the rest of the beaten armies and against the only remaining intact Ethiopian force in the north, Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard. The Air Force was to play a crucial role in this next cycle of operations. Fully aware of what was at stake, it hammered in the successive weeks the retreating Ethiopian armies with continuous bombings and poured a rain of poison gas over them. This was probably the Air Force’s most intense period of the war and it is no surprise that the Red Cross became caught up in the process once again. From the middle of January to the end of February, the British Red Cross field hospital under John Melly was camped for a very long six weeks in Weldiya, north of Dessie. They were blocked there because they had to wait for the completion of the road to Korem, a good 100 km north of Weldiya. Deadlines and promises had gone by without effect. Finally word reached the impatient Red Cross staff that the road was ready. An advance team left on 26 February for the small town of Alamata, situated at the foot of a steep ramp above which lay Korem and its vast plain. It was followed two

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days later by the main unit. In order to be safe from Italian planes, the twelve lorries travelled only in the afternoon, when flight activity was often hampered by unsuitable weather and they continued well into the evening. Such precautions were necessary since the journey northwards was taking place, in Melly’s words (1937: p. 213), ‘in the midst of a chaotic straggling mass of irregular soldiers with thousands of packmules and donkeys’. They were supposed to reinforce the armies of Ras Mulugeta and Ras Kassa in Tigray about whose real situation little information had filtered through. The Red Cross staff knew that under such circumstances they could not count on the protection of the emblem because it was impossible to keep them separated from an army on the move. On 29 February, after a tiring journey, the two units met up in Alamata. The new site was well chosen, near a river and close to a large ficus tree, but J.W.S. Macfie, the second in command of the field hospital, noticed that tents of innumerable soldiers were dangerously close all around. The stage was set for the first serious incident. The Italian Air Force kept a close watch on the troop movements taking place on the road leading north from Dessie and the field hospital did not escape its attention. On 29 February, a plane on an ‘offensive reconnaissance mission’, co-piloted by Mussolini’s son Vittorio, discovered the advance unit in Alamata, thanks to the large Red Cross flag lying on the ground. In the immediate vicinity the crew noticed an unspecified number of men seeking cover under the dense vegetation. The next morning, on the first of March, the same crew inspected the site again and found the complete field hospital with the twelve trucks which had united the night before. It was correctly identified as ‘English Red Cross’.78 While the plane descended to take pictures, it got hit four times by anti-aircraft fire from a distance of about 500 m away from the Red Cross camp, according to the pilot’s flight report. Vittorio Mussolini (1937: p. 86), whose task was to take the pictures of the field hospital, described this incident later in his book: I see a large red cross made of cloth and spread out in the middle of the camp, which was not there yesterday … Looking closer, though, I see all around the camp some grey, suspicious patches. They look like camouflage tents. Here we are, just above it, I can take a photo. Our engines are quiet, but what are these shots? My heart sank … It is gun fire and some light Oerlikon cannons. Our colonel heard those shots too. He laughs out of anger and pulls out the throttle; we go up about a hundred metres. Something is moving around the red cross. We move about two hundred metres from the tents and I launch 12 anti-personnel bombs in those shallow ditches behind the bushes. Some Abyssinians jump out, they are no longer hiding. You have set an ambush for the Italian Air Force, but one must fight with courage not cowardice.

Although the crew of the plane had clearly observed that the shots were not fired from within the perimeter of the Red Cross field hospital, they drew

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the conclusion that the plane was hit by soldiers taking advantage of the protection of the Red Cross. From here, it was only a small step to conclude that the Red Cross was actively protecting the soldiers themselves. In fact, this incident persuaded the Italians that Red Cross signs on the ground could not be trusted. Nobody, certainly not the Air Force Command in Asmara, was plagued by doubts in this regard or remembered that the British Red Cross field hospital had stayed clear of the Ethiopian army for several weeks in Weldiya. While apprehension and anger on the Italian side were mounting rapidly after this incident, the Red Cross people on the ground were unaware of what was going on. During their stay in Weldiya, John Melly and his people had become accustomed to the numerous overflights of Italian warplanes and they trusted in the protection of their extra large Red Cross flags. They had witnessed a number of bombings close to their campsite but were never hit directly. Interestingly they made no remarks in their various reports or memoirs on the incident of the first of March, probably because it was ‘business as usual’ for them. The next incident was almost inevitable. The site of the British Red Cross in Alamata was only temporary and the team was anxious to reach the Korem plain as quickly as possible. The matter was made more urgent as the place was unsafe due to constant attacks by the local Raya and Azebo Oromo tribe which was supported by Italy. On 2 March, a British Red Cross advance unit travelled, again in the midst of Ethiopian troops, some 18 km up the escarpment with its seventeen hairpin bends. When they arrived on the vast plain, they established a new camp on a very convenient site, in Macfie’s words (1936: pp. 81–82), ‘an immense level stretch of ground extending far over the plain, dry and covered by coarse grass … There was not a hut, or a tent, or even a tree for miles. So here, we pitched our tents, trusting implicitly in the good faith of the Italians, which hitherto we had no cause to doubt. From above we must have looked blatantly conspicuous and isolated’. The next morning, while the medical staff was already busy treating the first patients – seventy-three during the whole day – several planes flew over the advance unit. One of them was a Ca.133 from Mekele whose observer, Captain Guido Vedovato, accurately described its flag, four tents and three lorries some distance away. Down at the foot of the escarpment, near Alamata, he promptly discovered the main field hospital but suspected foul play. There were twelve lorries, too many for him for only six tents and he jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the lorries below were loaded with ammunition, instead of medical supplies. The matter was made worse because the plane was later hit five times by anti-aircraft fire not from one of the two Red Cross camps or their surroundings but ‘from the camps noticed to the west of the Korem plain’.79 At this point, a twist happened, which could occur only in the over-excited atmosphere of the Italian Air

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Force headquarters. In Ajmone Cat’s daily report, the two clearly separate events, the shooting at the plane and the observation of the Red Cross advance unit on the plain, were amalgamated into one: A Ca.133 from Mekele was hit by bursts of machine-gun fire while flying low to check the movements of 30 lorries in the process of unloading near a red cross sign, hardly visible in a plain north of Quoram … It is the second time over the past few days that in the same region 2 Ca.133 have been hit in six places by an attack launched from a spot marked on the ground by a red cross. I gave orders to retaliate against the first burst of gun fire coming from a place displaying a red cross with immediate bombing, regardless of international signs’.80

In addition, this wrong conclusion was further aggravated by the fact that the three trucks observed on the plain became thirty in the daily report, probably due to sloppy writing. Very dark clouds were assembling over the field hospital. As two days before at Alamata, the Red Cross staff did not even notice that an observing plane was shot at on the slopes of the hills leading to the Korem plain and even less imagined what unexpected orders were given in the wake of that shooting (Figure 3.18). Late in the night of the same day, 3 March, the two units of the British Red Cross field hospital were reunited after the main component had man-

Figure 3.18 Korem plain. The British Red Cross field hospital, photographed probably on 3 March 1936. The unit is not yet complete. The Red Cross trucks were still busy transporting material from the previous to this new site. (Fototeca Stato Maggiore Aeronautica Militare, Roma, A.O.I., Guerra Etiopica 1935/36, No. 18670)

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Figure 3.19 Korem plain. Panoramic view of the now complete British Red Cross field hospital on the edge of the vast plain on 4 March 1936, the day of the bombing. (USSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 93, diario storico marzo 1936, 4 March 1936)

aged the steep ascent to the plain under cover of low lying clouds. They brought with them fifty casualties from Alamata and together with the thirty under treatment by the advance unit, the hospital was already filled to capacity. The next morning, 4 March, the field hospital looked different again to the overflying Italians (Figure 3.19). In an early morning reconnaissance flight, the same observer of the day before, Vedovato, noticed correctly that the two units had joined each other but he found his supposition confirmed that the twelve trucks, which he thought were loaded with ammunition, had followed the Red Cross. More, he suspected that the Red Cross was protecting the trucks because ‘you do not usually move a health post from one day to the next and, even if it had to reach the forward post, you do not set it up just for a few hours a few kilometres away’.81 Towards midday, Vedovato returned yet again to the site, a bit like a dog sniffing his prey and found unusual movement of men on the ground near the Red Cross. Taking a closer look at the scene, he reported that the plane was shot at with ‘heavy bursts of rifle fire’, with two shots hitting the wing of the plane. This was the proverbial drop causing the cup to flow over. He initiated bombing with a 24 kg bomb near the field hospital and observed that ‘about 400 men wearing khaki uniforms – clearly armed and in numbers far exceeding the staff of a health post – ran away from their tents. So we are now certain that health emblems have been used to hide war equipment and armed men …’82 As a consequence, the whole unit was hit with 774 kg of explosives in nine low-level overflights, as Melly noted

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bitterly, and the effects – ‘visible’ – were calmly photographed (Figure 3.20). Once more, Ajmone Cat’s daily report inflated Vedovato’s observations. He contended that the plane was shot at by ‘machine gun’, instead of simply ‘gun’ fire and that it was hit in ‘four’ instead of the earlier mentioned ‘two’ spots. Furthermore, the Air Force commander, on his own, added another remark, which was going to be cited in all Italian reports on the incident, namely that during the bombing ‘some boxes exploded thus revealing their explosive contents’.83 The effects of this bombing are sadly familiar by now: five patients were killed in ward tents and several others were wounded a second time. Almost miraculously, none of the British Red Cross staff was seriously hurt, apart from bruises and scratches caused by fragments and the frantic run for cover. Material damage was considerable. Altogether thirty-five tents were

Figure 3.20 Korem plain. During the bombing of the British Red Cross on 4 March 1936. A plume of smoke is seen rising from an explosion on the left side of the field hospital. (USSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 93, diario storico marzo 1936, 4 March 1936)

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Figure 3.21 Korem plain. An Ethiopian killed in the bombing raid under a tent. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 3)

destroyed or badly damaged. The operation tent, the pride of the unit, was lost. A substantial amount of medical supplies and equipment was smashed. Two Red Cross lorries went up in flames (Figures 3.21–3.23). And on top of all this, as if to crown matters, the large 15 by 15 m flag had received a direct hit. The air raid, which lasted for about half an hour, took the Red Cross staff and their patients by complete surprise. Macfie (1936: p. 89) noted: ‘It was an entirely one-sided affair. From our camp not a shot was fired; indeed, not a shot could be fired because, I believe, the few rifles we had for our guard had not been issued. The fellow could come down as low as he liked and risk nothing. It made one angry to think that such things could be done with impunity’. The raid could not have come at a worse moment because it coincided precisely with the start of a series of twenty-two operations planned for the afternoon. The first patient had been put under anaesthesia, but he had to be abandoned on the operation table. Macfie turned the patient’s head to the side and threw a blanket over him before running for cover with Melly. As soon as the raid was finished, he returned to the wrecked tent and found to his surprise that the patient was still alive, semi-conscious but with a fresh wound in the leg. He was summarily treated and moved to an intact ward tent. Medical care was improvised for the additional patients. One of the less damaged tents was converted into an emergency operation theatre where a number of amputations were performed.

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With regard to the remarks of Captain Vedovato, the Italian observer, two points need further elaboration. The first concerns the shots fired against the overflying plane. None of the British staff members recalled having heard the shots. Melly was affirmative in this regard. W.S. Empey (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 31), another doctor of the field hospital, added in his own report that the unit had pitched camp in the middle of the Korem plain where ‘there was not so much as a scrub within an area of two square miles … [and where] Ethiopian soldiery very wisely refrained from appearing on the plain by day, so that our camp and patients were the only occupants’. There is a contradiction between the accounts of the Italian observer and the British doctors, leaving only questions without answers. From where were the shots at the plane really fired, from the vicinity of the field hospital or rather from somewhere else, as on 2 March? Were perhaps some nervous or imprudent Ethiopian guards of the British unit the immediate cause of the bombing raid? If, in this regard, statement stands against statement, the same is not true for the second point relating to the four hundred men whom Vedovato saw running away from the field hospital. The number is quite realistic. On that ill-fated afternoon of 4 March, the hospital had nearly one hundred in-patients and one hundred out-patients waiting for treatment, in

Figure 3.22 Korem plain. Immediately after the bombing. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-509/2788, E-2007, Guerre d’Ethiopie 1935-1936)

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Figure 3.23 Korem plain. After the bombing. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1985-5013/2792, ENS-PHT-9, E-2012 à 2018, Guerre d’Ethiopie 1935-1936)

addition to another one hundred hospital staff and an unknown number of visitors or family members. When the alarm whistle was sounded for personnel to take cover, Vedovato’s estimation was not far from reality. What is stranger is the fact that he did not realise that it was, indeed, a real field hospital with patients. Why did his superiors, who had properly identified the field hospital a few days earlier – after having observed it for weeks in Weldiya – not dissuade him from his speculation? In addition, an ammunition convoy would have undoubtedly been much better defended and it is highly improbable that the attacking plane would have been allowed to bomb the field hospital at such leisure. Vedovato’s wrong judgement, or more accurately, his preconceptions resulted in tragic consequences for the people on the ground and nobody higher up in the hierarchy intervened to stop him. It was impossible for the severely battered field hospital to continue at the site. Late in the afternoon, a new camp location was identified to which the unit withdrew during the night. It was a gully, some 5 km away, wooded with sufficient shelter and cover. The four unclaimed dead resulting from the Italian raid were hurriedly buried in a bomb crater. The wounded were loaded on trucks and transported to the new site where they spent a short and uncomfortable night like the rest of the unit. The tents, as well as the flags, were left behind at the former site.

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The next day, 5 March, the former site was bombed again. On this day, the Italians subjected the nearby town of Korem to heavy all-day-long bombing in view of information that the Emperor was staying there. The Italian Air Force commander claimed in his daily report once more that during this operation one of his planes was hit by anti-aircraft Oerlikon guns from the area of the Red Cross camp. The camp was bombed as a consequence. While the corresponding flight report confirmed that a plane had been shot at, it gave, however, no information on the precise location. According to Melly and Macfie, the former Red Cross site was bombed even for a third time on 6 March, during the continued bombing of Korem and its surroundings. The news of the bombing of the British Red Cross field hospital made headlines, especially in the United Kingdom because, as in Dessie, it took place in the presence of journalists, this time the correspondents of The Times and Reuters who had put their camp right next to it. In addition, the effects were photographed and even filmed by B. Zeitlin,84 a Russian Bolshevist according to Brown. The British government, informed about the dramatic turn of events in Korem by its Minister in Addis Abeba, took up the matter immediately but found itself in a delicate position. On one hand, the bombing was a provocation and required strong action. It concerned British subjects and a British Red Cross field hospital of which Fascist Italy had been kept well informed. On the other, the British government was perfectly aware that Ethiopia’s resistance was falling rapidly apart and that an Italian victory was in the offing. Since no British national had really been hurt and since British interests were only marginally touched, the Foreign Office decided to take a low key approach, contrary to what the Swedish government had done after Melka Dida. Not even the intervention of the ICRC was requested. The delegates in Ethiopia curiously abstained from making an investigation of their own despite the fact that Junod was in Korem just two weeks later. Brown, on his side, had quickly made up his mind that the Italians had bombed the British Red Cross field hospital intentionally, while Junod could not decide on whom to lay the blame. This time, Badoglio had prepared a better response than that provided after Amba Aradam. From the beginning he repeated Ajmone Cat’s version of the shots fired from the vicinity of the unit on 3 March, including the wrong number of thirty trucks (instead of three). Equally, he reiterated Vedovato’s theory of the Red Cross protecting an ammunition transport and the story of the exploding boxes. Badoglio also assumed full responsibility for the incident. These points were made to the British government and, once again, the Italians placed all blame on the field hospital staff who were accused of not having prevented firing at Italian planes. The British government, in turn, strongly rejected the Italian explanation. It requested categorical assurances for the protection of British Red Cross units in

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Ethiopia and reserved the right to claim compensation. Italy responded once more with the same arguments, but chose a particularly auspicious moment, namely the first day after the capture of Addis Abeba. Reality on the ground had created the final convincing argument. No British reaction is recorded thereafter, and the diplomatic follow-up on this incident came to a quick and inconclusive end. The reaction in Rome followed the same pattern as after Melka Dida. The Fascist press and, naturally, Cremonesi, the Italian Red Cross President, widely echoed the High Command’s version. Mussolini had his typical double track response, one for outside consumption and one for his military commander. In the already cited interview to the Daily Mail, incidentally two days before the above-mentioned last Italian note to the British government, he (Mussolini 1959: p. 263) had the nerve to proclaim that ‘the English ambulances were never deliberately bombed by Italian airmen’. However, in reality, he was not duped. He had understood that the field hospital had been bombed in questionable circumstances. Indeed, a few days after the bombing at Korem, he requested Lessona to tell Badoglio ‘that bombing be targeted only against objectives that are definitely military. Actions such as that carried out on the 4th of this month in Quoram attract criticism from the United States and international public opinion and they do not give us any noticeable material advantage’.85 Mussolini’s reprimand was much milder than the one of early January, for understandable reasons. The bombing of the British Red Cross was a little unpleasant incident in an otherwise highly successful military campaign. The case of the bombing of the British Red Cross field hospital in Korem demonstrated that the responsibility for such an act lay with every level of the Italian hierarchy, from an over-zealous observer in the plane to a Commander-in-Chief without scruples. Vedovato, Ajmone Cat, Badoglio and Mussolini all played a part in the bombing. At each level, action could have been taken to avoid it but nobody did so. The result was an incredible, tragic and yet interruptible chain of events. Yet the bombing at Korem was not only the fault of individuals, its roots lay in the spirit reigning in the Air Force, in the High Command and in the Fascist system in general.

Destruction of the Ethiopian Red Cross Aircraft on the Korem Plain (17 March 1936) There must be something peculiar about the Korem plain. Barely two weeks after the air strike on the British Red Cross field hospital, it became the scene of yet another incident,86 witnessed by Junod, the ICRC delegate. Junod went to Korem for two reasons. News had reached Addis Abeba that shiftas (bandits) between Kobo and Alamata had wounded a Dutch Red Cross doctor and that he needed evacuation. Furthermore, the field hospi-

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tals close to the front urgently needed medicines for the ever-increasing number of patients. The Ethiopian Red Cross Fokker, a single-engine plane, left Addis Abeba on the afternoon of 16 March 1936, for Korem with Junod, Carl Gustaf von Rosen, the Swedish pilot and an Ethiopian mechanic (Figures 3.24 and 3.25). After a refuelling stop in Dessie, the plane took off again late in the afternoon in order to avoid risky encounters with Italian aircraft patrolling the area. It arrived just before sunset on the Korem plain where it safely landed. The Red Cross aircraft was parked some 200 m from an Ethiopian government plane, a Potez which had got there half an hour earlier. The plan was to leave the exposed plain very early the next morning, but Junod quickly found out that this was hardly feasible on account of the long distances between the airfield and the field hospitals which he needed to visit. After discussion with the Emperor, who stayed in a nearby cave, it was decided to camouflage the aircraft in order to conceal it

Figure 3.24 Carl Gustaf von Rosen, the Swedish Red Cross pilot under the wing of the Red Cross Fokker in Ethiopia. Red Cross staff were allowed to carry a pistol or a gun in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 1929. (Courtesy of Anders Joëlson)

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Figure 3.25 The Red Cross Fokker at Yrga Alem in southern Ethiopia. Anders Joëlson, a member of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital, is in the foreground. (SIM photo archive)

from enemy aircraft. Take-off was postponed for one day, to 18 March but never took place. Before sunrise on 17 March, Junod, von Rosen and Ethiopian soldiers covered the Red Cross Fokker and the Potez with branches. It was a waste of time as Junod observed shortly afterwards. The shapes of the two planes were clearly visible from a distance. No sooner had he arrived at the British Red Cross field hospital, a good hour’s walk away that a first wave of three Italian Ca.133 arrived over the plain and spotted the two Ethiopian planes. Bombing started without delay. The Potez was quickly hit and ‘flared up like a torch’.87 Credit for this achievement was claimed by none other than Captain Guido Vedovato, the very same military observer who was responsible for the bombing of the British Red Cross field hospital. According to his account, one 50 kg bomb fell between the two planes, but the smaller ones directly hit the Potez. Vedovato seemed to have developed fatal attraction towards wrecking property under Red Cross protection. His full attention was now directed towards the destruction of the Red Cross plane, despite the fact that the Red Cross emblems were clearly visible on the wings, as is attested by a picture taken before the Potez was destroyed (Figure 3.26). Vedovato must have seen them, too, although he claimed in his flight report specifically, but not surprisingly, that the enemy planes ‘displayed no emblem guaranteeing

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immunity’ and that ‘ in the vicinity there were no health facilities’.88 In three passages more bombs of different calibre, amongst which another one of 50 kg, were dropped on the target, falling ‘not farther away than ten meters, causing serious damage’. Vedovato was wrong, once again, because the Red Cross plane was still intact at that time. Having exhausted their load, the three planes returned to base. Assuming that the pilots could not see the Red Cross signs, Junod and von Rosen rushed to the airfield with the intention of removing the branches so that the emblems would be exposed. Before they managed to get there, a second wave of five Ca.111 in two patrols arrived at about 10 a.m. and attacked the two targets on the ground. The leader of the second patrol, flight lieutenant Luciano Orlandini, claimed in his flight report that he had destroyed Haile Selassie’s Potez, too, as Vedovato before him, but Junod’s and von Rosen’s accounts attribute its destruction unequivocally to the first wave of attacking planes. More important for the subject of this study was, however, Orlandini’s discovery. When he had completed the bombing over

Figure 3.26 Korem plain. The Ethiopian Potez (smaller plane on top centre) and the Ethiopian Red Cross Fokker with its emblems painted on the tip of the wings on 17 March 1936, shortly before their destruction. (USSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 120, diario storico marzo 1936, 17 March 1936)

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the still undamaged plane, he noticed a Red Cross sign on the fuselage. He turned away and discharged the remaining bombs on a group of armed people in the area. The leader of the first patrol, flight lieutenant Donato Pinto, apparently did not notice anything unusual if his flight report in the file of the Air Force Command is to be believed. Curiously, however, in a much shorter version of his flight report, kept in the file of his own squadron, he specifically added that he had not seen Red Cross signs. At this point, it should be mentioned that at least two copies of flight reports were normally preserved, one in the file of the squadron and another, if important, as an appendix in the diario storico of the Air Force Command. Interestingly and quite unusually, two different versions have been established by the pilots of this squadron in this case. A larger report was kept in the file of the Air Force Command and a shorter in the file of the squadron. In this latter file, each pilot had signed a version similar to each other with one important difference. While Orlandini had omitted his earlier observation that he had seen a Red Cross on the plane, Pinto had added that he did not see such a sign. Had Orlandini and Pinto rewritten their earlier reports in order to make their statements agree? Did Orlandini intend to protect his colleague Pinto with this obvious manipulation? Was Pinto afraid of possible blame that his patrol had bombed a plane with Red Cross signs? The bombing by the Italian planes was observed from the higher lying British Red Cross field hospital. It was ‘an amazing spectacle’, described by Dr Empey (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 36): ‘From our vantage point they seemed to hit every foot of the ground in a half mile radius around the Red Cross machine which seemed to have a charmed life. We counted up to three hundred bombs aimed directly at the machine on the ground and then got tired of counting.’ The rest of the story is quickly told. During the third wave, at around 11 a.m., Air Brigadier General Attilio Matricardi, at the command of one of six Ca.111, on the way to bomb the Korem area with poison gas, had sharp enough eyes to identify the still intact plane on the ground as a Fokker aircraft, but he was apparently unable to see the Red Cross signs. An Ro.37 from Mekele gave the first blow to the Red Cross plane, spraying it with machine gun fire from as low as 20 m, in von Rosen’s estimation. When it had exhausted the ammunition and disappeared over the mountains, Junod and von Rosen were able, at last, to reach the Fokker, remove the branches and inspect it briefly. Bullets had perforated and emptied the two fuel tanks, but otherwise the plane had bravely withstood the morning’s onslaught. The relief lasted only for a short time. The fourth wave of three Ca.133 arrived on the scene and several hundred small bombs fell around the Red Cross plane between noon and 1 p.m. Not one managed to hit it directly, as if it was immune, observed Junod. A last overflight by one of the Italian

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planes from as low as 150 m gave Junod the idea that the pilot must have seen the protective emblem. He rushed off to Haile Selassie’s radio station from where he sent a desperate plea to Geneva: ‘Red Cross plane heavily bombed Korem -stop- implore you to inform Italian Airforce not to bomb -stop- must make reparations -stop- transmit rapidly -stop- Junod’.89 It was obviously too late. While Junod was away, the fifth wave of Ro.37 had finally managed to set the Fokker ablaze with tracer and normal bullets from the planes’ machine guns. All in all, some fifteen planes needed about eight hours, over two dozen passages and hundreds of kilograms of explosives to destroy the only Red Cross plane in use in Ethiopia. It had put up a heroic last stand, against all odds (Figures 3.27 and 3.28). Early in the morning of 18 March, the day after the destruction of the plane, the ICRC transmitted Junod’s urgent telegram to the Italian Red Cross and received a surprisingly quick official response the same day – a fact which demonstrated that communication between Geneva, Rome and Asmara was very efficient if necessary. The Italian response repeated part of Badoglio’s second update of the previous day in which bombing of two Potez aircraft on the Korem plain was mentioned. Furthermore, the response had two important additions. The first addition said that a Red

Figure 3.27 Korem plain. The two burning planes recognizable by the smoke rising into the sky, in the afternoon of 17 March 1936. (AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 93, diario storico marzo 1936, 17 March 1936)

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Cross Fokker aircraft had never been notified, although the ICRC had specifically done so in January. The second addition was an obvious invention that none of the bombed planes had Red Cross markings. However, the ICRC omitted to contest these points for reasons which will be examined in the next chapter. The destruction of the Ethiopian Red Cross plane is interesting in two more respects. First, only one pilot of at least fifteen planes with their crews, ranging from simple soldier to Brigadier General, admitted to having observed a Red Cross sign, while the others were silent, although they must have seen it, too. The esprit de corps in the Air Force was so strong that even this single pilot rewrote his observation report in order to make it appear to conform with the others. The truth of the matter is that, in this case, the Air Force did not care about the respect of the Red Cross and, once again, nobody was prepared to stop the destruction of the plane. The second remark relates to Rome’s response to the ICRC. In a note to the League of Nations, Fascist diplomacy accused Junod and von Rosen of camouflaging the plane from overflying aircraft instead of openly displaying the Red Cross signs. This argument revealed nothing less than bad faith because, as was mentioned, the emblem was properly identified, but not respected by the Italian pilots. There was no way that the Red Cross could do something right under such circumstances: concealing the Red Cross emblem was as wrong as was showing it. It was a classic no-win situation.

Figure 3.28 Korem plain. The remains of the destroyed Red Cross plane. (Macfie, J. W. S. An Ethiopian diary, London, 1936, p. 96, by permission of The British Library, shelfmark 010093.e.14.)

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Behind the Smokescreen: a Surprising Discovery This chapter, full of dramatic events, examined the Italian allegations that Ethiopia systematically misused the Red Cross emblem in order to protect public and private buildings in towns as well as in order to obtain military advantages. With regard to protecting buildings in towns, the Italians singled out Harar. The town became the subject of controversy lasting for most of the war, with Italian propaganda skilfully exploiting the issue. While some misuse had probably happened there in the weeks before and after the outbreak of the war, it was quickly brought under control. Specific buildings to be used as hospitals were put under Red Cross protection and properly notified to Italy via the ICRC. The most important accusation of the Italians, however, was that the Ethiopian military had misused the emblem of the Red Cross in three ways. First, to protect military material. A very serious incident happened in Wadara, when ammunition was found on a Swedish Red Cross lorry. Although it appeared that the Ethiopian army was responsible, conclusive proof is lacking. At the same time it must be noted that it remained an isolated incident, from which one cannot generalise in good faith. Secondly, the Italians accused Ethiopian military commanders and troops of seeking refuge in Red Cross field hospitals during air strikes. Here again, it appears that while such incidents may have occurred especially at the beginning of the war, it was not general practice. On the contrary, the longer the war lasted, with its bombings of Red Cross installations, the less attractive they became for soldiers. In reality, there was little substance to this Italian allegation, but insistent repetition ensured that it too remained a hot topic until the end of the war. Thirdly, the Italians accused the Ethiopian military of misusing the Red Cross in order to camouflage their own positions. The research carried out for this study does not sustain such an accusation. There is not one single case where the accusation can be proven. In each incident cited by the Italians, there really was a Red Cross field hospital on the ground, with one exception, where the available information is not sufficient to positively identify the unit.90 Invariably, when seeing a Red Cross sign, they concluded that it was fake or a trick – yet they did not seek confirmation or verification. Geneva was never contacted on such matters, although the Italians knew very well that the ICRC had two delegates in Ethiopia who could have clarified matters if required. The Italians fell victim to a strategy which they had devised themselves. For them, the war with Ethiopia was, from the beginning, a war between unequals, a civilised and an uncivilised nation, between whom direct communication should or could not take place. Communication with the Ethiopian government, even at a humanitarian level, would have implied a measure of recognition, which was exactly what Italy wanted to avoid.

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Italian propaganda gave wide publicity to these alleged misuses of the Red Cross emblem by the Ethiopians, despite the lack of substance. The point was so strongly made that it still lingers in the memory of many Italians and appears even in recent studies on the war.91 With regard to the Italian respect of the Red Cross emblem, a list of seventeen bombing incidents of Red Cross installations on the Ethiopian side was established. Most of the foreign and Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals were affected by Italian air warfare either in direct or indirect bombings. In seven cases the Red Cross field hospitals or property under the protection of the Red Cross were directly targeted. As a result, forty-seven people were killed, several dozen wounded, a considerable quantity of medical material and equipment destroyed, over forty tents damaged or burnt, two trucks damaged beyond repair and the only Red Cross transport plane was reduced to a heap of iron and ash. The exact amount of explosives dropped on Red Cross installations alone is difficult to calculate for lack of precise information, but it can safely be assumed to be well over 10,000 kg, including 252 kg of poison gas. In retrospect, the total damage caused by the bombings seems small, but most field hospitals were extremely lucky and casualty figures could easily have been much higher. Fortunately for the Red Cross, many bombs and bomblets missed their targets or failed to explode on the ground. The bombings of Red Cross hospitals have left deep marks on the Ethiopian collective memory as is attested by the numerous traditional paintings depicting such scenes, made until today. The Ethiopian accusation mirrored the one of the Italians. The Ethiopian government accused Italy of systematically bombing hospitals under the protection of the Red Cross emblem. Some historians made the same point.92 The findings of this study do not support such a generalisation, but lead to the conclusion that the closer the field hospitals came to the war front and whenever they got in the way of Italian military objectives, they were invariably and pitilessly bombed. The field hospitals in the rear were, therefore, much less under threat than the ones at the front. The main unit of the Dutch Red Cross field hospital, for example, at the Catholic Mission in Dessie – they arrived there after the bombing of the town in December 1935 – remained unharmed despite many overflights by Italian warplanes. In general, what counted for the Italian leadership and, particularly, the military was the attainment of their goal, the conquest of Ethiopia. Humanitarian considerations had no place at the war front, with the consequence that the Red Cross was unable to fulfil the mission for which it was created: to take care of the wounded on the battlefield. Such a strategy, based exclusively on military concerns, is neither new nor unique, but it was made more destructive against a background of a system which despised humanitarian gestures; of Fascist colonial warfare and an Air Force which believed that it embodied the new order. As far as Mussolini’s

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instructions on the respect of the Red Cross emblem were concerned, they had more to do with international politics than with the will to apply legal obligations. At no point did the instructions have a lasting effect and as soon as they clashed with military reality, they were overridden. The surprising discovery of this chapter is that it was Fascist Italy rather than Ethiopia which did not respect the emblem of the Red Cross. The party which claimed it was bringing civilisation to a retrograde country was using uncivilised means to achieve the goal. The responsibility for these bombings cannot be placed upon an individual or a group, as Brown believed when blaming the Italian pilots in his debriefing in Geneva. The reality was more complex. Responsibility can be traced to all levels of the military and political hierarchy, from the observer in the plane to the pilot, the squadron and group commanders to Ajmone Cat, Graziani, Badoglio and Mussolini. All had, in their own capacity, contributed to the destruction of the field hospitals. Who was more to blame is a question which will not be answered here. Too much depends on where the yardstick is applied: at the level of the individual, at the top of the military hierarchy or at the system which bred such a type of person and action. One thing is sure, however, all of these persons contributed significantly to weaken the Red Cross ideals and the Geneva Convention. They forgot that, one day, they might need the assistance of the very same emblem which they had destroyed so thoughtlessly.

Notes 1 Silone, I. Bread and Wine, New York, 1946, p. 314. The novel was first published in German in 1936. 2 International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and the Sick in Armies in the Field, Geneva, 27 July 1929, Treaty Series No. 36, London, 1931, Art. 24. 3 LON, Ethiopian atrocities and misuse of the Red Cross emblem in Ethiopia, Communication from the Italian Government to the League of Nations, C.104.M.45, 1936, VII, 10 March 1936, p. 5. 4 Until today Ethiopian and Eritrean butcheries, which slaughter animals according to the Christian orthodox rite, are often marked with a cross (in red colour) in order to distinguish them from Muslim butcheries. 5 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 20, f. 22/3, Haile Selassie to Tesemma Banta, Italian interception, 16 Jan. 1936. Haile Selassie added in this dispatch: ‘If there are any [i.e., Red Cross signs not used in conformity with this instruction] destroy them secretly so that nobody sees it’. See also Steer (1936: p. 122). 6 CICR, CR 210/422bis, 18 Dec. 1935. The word ‘visibly’ was an addition of Vinci’s. 7 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 6, 9 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, pp. 5 and 7. The Geneva Convention of 1929 allowed Red Cross personnel to carry weapons for their own defence. 8 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 10, 21 Feb. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 6. 9 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 2, 30 Nov. 1935, Brown to ICRC, p. 4

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and No. 9, 27 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 3; Laurence Stallings (‘Bush Brigades and Blackamoors’, The American Mercury, April 1936, p. 416), an American correspondent, reported that Hockman told him ‘that, whenever his post at Degeh Bur sighted Italian planes, the Red Cross tents became a bevy of brass-hats’. Egyptian Red Crescent employees were quoted by the Italians as witnesses of such incidents (CICR, CR 210/826 and LON, Ethiopian atrocities and misuse of the Red Cross emblem in Ethiopia, Communication from the Italian Government to the League of Nations, C.104.M.45, 1936, VII, 10 March 1936, pp. 17 and 21), in particular that shooting at the attacking planes took place from within the perimeter of the hospitals, but their written testimonies are surrounded by too many factual errors and inconsistencies as to be considered reliable. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 10, 20 Feb. 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 4. CICR, CR 210/1424, Rapports du Dr Marcel Junod concernant le LIVRE BLANC sur le conflit italo-éthiopien, 1. Rapport sur les abus du signe de la Croix-Rouge, p. 4, 19 Aug. 1936. Rochat notes that the military conquest of Tripolitania was decided in early 1922, i.e., before the advent of Fascism – a fact, which underlined the continuity of colonial politics between the liberal and the Fascist governments. Badoglio rejected the suggestion, not because of moral or legal inhibitions, but because there was no good military reason after the victory obtained at Amba Aradam. Mussolini accepted Badoglio’s opinion the day after. ‘If instead of engaging near Quoram the enemy recoils … then I have had it. There will be nothing left but my old project. To deploy the entire air force and flatten all the main towns starting from Addis Abeba’ (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6/3, Badoglio to Lessona, 12 March 1936); Badoglio had already made a request to Mussolini on 29 February for ‘a terrorist action by the air force on Shoan centres including the capital’ (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6/2). ‘With immediate effect all restrictions on targets in Juba sector must be lifted, including those on civilian populations, urban centres and cattle’ (AUSSMA, c. 48, diario storico novembre 1935, Allegato 119, Graziani to Avio Mogadiscio, 18 Nov. 1935). In a telegram to Rome and Asmara of 7 March 1936, Graziani outlined his conditions for a resumption of operations on the southern front. They included: ‘Total freedom to bomb towns in addition to the other two [probably Harar and Jijiga] which are the targets of action’ (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Graziani to Lessona and Badoglio, 7 March 1936). Graziani’s much feared temper made him order wholesale destruction such as during the Wadara incursion: ‘To burn and destroy all that can be burned and destroyed. To round up all that can be rounded up …’ (Commando delle Forze Armate della Somalia, Vol. 3, 1937: p. 483, 24 Jan. 1936). Interview with Edoardo Borra in Alba, Italy on 12 April 1996. AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 1, Comando A.O. – Diario storico, 2 Oct. 1935. Ferdinando Pedriali (1997: p. 130) calculated that a total of 390 planes had been sent to Africa Orientale until the end of June 1936. Farinacci (16 Oct. 1892–28 April 1945) personifies, more than any other, early Fascism with its violent squads. The ‘Ras of Cremona’ rose briefly to Secretary General of the Fascist party despite the fact that he was considered uncontrollable, intransigent and inclined to violence. In 1935, he participated actively in the preparation of the Ethiopia campaign with the rank of Minister of State. His stay in East Africa was cut short by an incident during which he lost his right hand while fishing with a grenade. Farinacci became known later as the most pro-Nazi Fascist, a strong supporter of the anti-Semitic campaign in Italy. In April 1945, he fled Cremona but was captured. After a summary process he was shot. Pavolini (27 Sept. 1903–28 April 1945) was a journalist, poet and intellectual from

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Florence, of the same age as his more famous friend Galeazzo Ciano. He served as osservatore tenente in Ciano’s warplane, participating, amongst others, in the first bombing raid of the war on the town of Adwa. His war experience was described in his souvenirs Disperata, published in 1937. In 1939, he became Minister of Cultura populare. Convinced about his mission, Pavolini stayed with Mussolini until the last days of the Republic of Salò. He was the only high-ranking Fascist captured while fighting and was executed one day later. Ciano (18 March 1903–11 Nov. 1944) made a brilliant career under Fascism and was the star amongst the young Party members. He entered into the diplomatic service in 1925, married Mussolini’s daughter Edda in 1930 and became Minister of Press and Propaganda in June 1935. Ciano acquired fame and glory in the war with Ethiopia. Upon his return to Italy, Mussolini named him Minister of Foreign Affairs at the young age of thirty-three. His name was closely associated with Fascist Italy’s alignment with Germany. He was executed for having participated in the coup d’état against his father-in-law in 1943. AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 176/f. 2, Attività svolta dai reparti d’aviazione in A.O.I., 2 Oct. 1935–5 May 1936. The statistics of the killed cover the period until October 1936. In the Italo-Ethiopian war bombs of 1, 2, 10, 31, 50, 100 and 250 kg were used. AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 5/Memorie storiche, f. varie, 23 July 1935, segreto. AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 2, diario storico febbraio 1936, relazione 9 Feb. 1936, signed Capitano Pil. M. Tenti and c. 4, diario storico 1936, communicati giornalieri, gennaio – marzo 1936, 9 Feb. 1936. ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 103, f. 6, Suvich to Italian Embassy London, 13 Feb. 1936. LON, Rapport du Comité des Treize au Conseil, C.176.M.112.1936.VII, 18 April 1936, Annexe 2, pp. 7–9; CICR, CR 210/1103 bis. The lists contain incorrect information in regard to several incidents, for example, the alleged bombings of the Egyptian Red Crescent field hospital at Bulale on 30 and 31 December 1935: while the Ethiopian news agency and the Ethiopian government accused the Italian Air Force of directly bombing the medical unit, the Egyptian director of the field hospital said that bombs only fell near-by (see Appendix 5). Similarly, on 20 March 1936, one Italian plane bombed a target in the vicinity of the second British Red Cross field hospital near Chilga, but not the field hospital as the Ethiopian government claimed. The correct information on this incident was already contained in a League of Nations document of April 1936 (LON, Rapport du Comité des Treize au Conseil, C.176.M.112.1936.VII, Annexe 2, 18 April 1936, p. 9). Pankhurst’s article (1997: p. 139) contains some inaccuracies. For example, Pankhurst mentions that three Red Cross field hospitals were hit at Weldiya on 15 January 1936. In reality, it was only Burgoyne’s mule transport unit, described in the original document as ‘l’unité de liaison des ambulances Nos. 2, 3, 5 de la CroixRouge éthiopienne’ (Gingold Duprey 1955: p. 644). In addition Pankhurst mentions wrongly that the medical units were hit by artillery fire – impossible because the Italian front line, in January 1936, was too far away, near Mekele, not Weldiya. There are many factual errors in both publications, cf. Rochat (1991: p. 175, footnote 140). This study uses the terms ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ instead of the more subjective ‘intentional’ and ‘unintentional’. Indirect bombings were caused by either strategic bombardments (i.e., the concentrated use of large numbers of aircraft on towns) or by patrols of up to four aircraft on bombing or reconnaissance missions. AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 1, diario storico dicembre 1935, 6 Dec. 1935, p. 3. Ibid.; relazione signed Maggiore Pilota Piero Ferretti and relazione signed Maggiore G. Fresia, both of 6 Dec. 1935.

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36 Ibid., relazione Ferretti, pp. 2–3. 37 Ibid., relazione Fresia, p. 2. 38 CICR, CR 210/381F: LON, Communication from the Ethiopian Government, C.474.M.250.1935.VII, 9 Dec. 1935. 39 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 1, diario storico dicembre 1935, 7 Dec. 1935 and AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 132, diario storico 1935, Bombardamento di Dessie effettuato il 6 e 7 dicembre 1935, signed Maggiore Pilota Giuseppe Gostoli, the squadron commander. 40 CICR, CR 210/384, Favre to Cremonesi, 9 Dec. 1935. 41 CICR, CR 210/439, Cremonesi to ICRC, 19 Dec. 1936. 42 Ibid. Cremonesi, upon instruction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, repeated to the ICRC only what the Ministry had already said a few days earlier to the League of Nations. 43 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 4, f. diario storico 1935: Communicati giornalieri al Ministero dell’Aeronautica, 8 Dec. 1935. 44 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 3, 17 Dec. 1935, Junod to ICRC, p. 5. 45 There are numerous spellings of the place: Junod called it first Melka Lidar, the Italians Gogoru and the Swedes Malka Dida, Maelka Dida, Malka Didaka and finally Melka Dida. This study uses the last spelling. 46 CICR, CR 210/743, Le bombardement de l’ambulance de la Croix-Rouge à Malka Didaka le 30 décembre 1935, signed Dr F. Hylander, Addis Abeba, 7 Jan. 1935, p. 6 (in short: report Hylander). 47 Ibid., p. 6. 48 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 7, 13 Jan. 1936, Rapport du Docteur Junod au Comité international de la Croix-Rouge sur le bombardement de la CroixRouge suédoise par l’aviation italienne, le 30-12-1935, à Melka-Lidar, 13 Jan. 1936, p. 4, (in short: Rapport Junod Melka Dida). 49 Ibid., p. 4. 50 Ibid., p. 5. 51 CICR, CR 210/538, telegram Junod to Geneva, 7 Jan. 1936. 52 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 6, 9 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 7. The word ‘crime’ was used in his speech during the funeral service for Gunnar Lundstroem in Addis Abeba. 53 CICR, CR 210/897, Note from the Swedish Minister in Bern to ICRC, 13 March 1935, Exposé des faits relatifs au bombardement de l’ambulance de la Croix-Rouge Suédoise à Melka Dida le 30.12.1935, p. 1. The description of the incident is quite unanimous between the Italians and the Swedes, but the Air Force’s report (AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 25, diario storico dicembre 1935, 22 Dec. 1935) is silent with regard to the machine gunning of the field hospital. In addition, the report noted that there were only ‘two persons in black cloth’ standing near the Red Cross sign, instead of five, as mentioned by the Swedes. 54 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 85, diario storico dicembre 1935, 23 Dec. 1935, report signed Tenente R.E. Gennaro Salvi. 55 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 25, diario storico dicembre 1935, Bernasconi to Gorrahei, 27 Dec. 1935. 56 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 96, diario storico dicembre 1935, relazione, allegato no. 11, 30 Dec. 1935. 57 Ibid., p. 3. 58 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 16, f. 21/3, 29 Dec. 1935. This is the original text signed by Graziani. It was translated into Amharic. Junod had received a copy of this leaflet from the Swedes and sent it to Geneva. 59 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 96, diario storico dicembre 1935, relazione, allegato no. 11, 30 Dec. 1935, p. 3.

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60 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 16, f. 21/3, 30 Dec. 1935. The cable was sent on the following day. 61 On 27 December, the pilot of a Ro.1 observed some ten tents half hidden 4 km north of the field hospital. It was the closest that another camp had been sighted (AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 85, diario storico dicembre 1935, 27 Dec. 1935, report signed Tenente R.E. Gennaro Salvi). This could have been Ras Desta’s real camp, but there is only circumstantial evidence to support this suggestion. 62 ASMAI, c. 181/20, f. 90, Notiziario giornaliero N. 30, 30 Dec. 1935, p. 3. 63 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 16, f. 21/3, 30 Dec. 1935. 64 CICR, CR 210/1437, Ciano to Sjoeborg, 22 Aug. 1936, p. 2. 65 Frère, a Belgian national, was well known in foreign circles in Ethiopia. He was a dubious character. He told the Swedes after the bombing that he considered it ‘a real premedited murder’ but changed his mind later. After the defeat of Ras Desta’s army during which his equipment was lost – it was found by the Italians – he was short of money and requested payment for his services from the Ethiopian Legation in France at the value of 5,500 Francs but he received no satisfaction. There is a strong indication that Frère was paid, instead, by the Italians for his obviously wrong statement. At the end of October 1936, 1,000 Francs were sent to the journalist Renzo Cardelli Rinaldini ‘for the expenses he incurred when Lieutenant Frère made a statement concerning the alleged bombing of a Swedish ambulance’ (ASMAE, Ethiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 109/9, Ministero per la Stampa e la Propaganda to R. Ambasciata d’Italia in Brussels, 30 Oct. 1936). 66 ACS, CRI, c. 192/“C”, Cremonesi to Vinci, 3 Jan. 1936; ACS, CRI c. 190, f. 2, Interview Cremonesi, 24 Jan 1936, p. 7; ACS, CRI, c. 192/“C”, Vinci to Cremonesi, 1 Jan. 1936. 67 Archivio Angelo Del Boca, Mussolini to Badoglio, 1 Jan. 1936. Special thanks to Angelo Del Boca who has kindly allowed me to use this telegram. 68 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 15, f. 21, Badoglio to Colonie for Mussolini, undated. 69 In the Ethiopian protestation to the ICRC of 2 March 1936, (CICR, CR 210/832, p. 16) the place of the bombing is still correctly listed as ‘Makallé (on the south of)’, but in a later League of Nations document (C.176.M.112.1936.VII of 18 April 1936) it appears only as Makalle. This was definitely wrong, since the town of Mekele was at the time already in Italian hands. 70 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 9, 27 Jan. 1936, two telegrams in the enclosure. The delegates in Addis Abeba were only informed of the bombing on 27 January because of transmission delays of Schüppler’s telegrams from Dessie. Brown wrongly informed Geneva that all the medical material had been destroyed but this was not the case, because the unit continued to work for another one and a half months. Brophil, upon his return to the United Kingdom at the end of April, said that two persons were killed in the bombing and eight severely wounded (The Times, 24 April 1936). There are no independent reports to verify this information. 71 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 4, diario storico 1936: Communicati giornalieri, 18 Jan. 1936: ‘Ca.133 and Ro.1 and Ro.37 Macallé order of commander executed …’ 72 Ibid. 73 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 2, diario storico gennaio 1936, Magliocco to units, 18 Jan. 1936. 74 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 62, diario storico gennaio – marzo 1936, 18 Jan. 1936. The number of planes involved in this incident is unclear because of lack of precise information. 75 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 134, diario storico gennaio, report signed Capitano Osservatore Camillo Benzi, 18 Jan. 1936. 76 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6/2, Badoglio to Colonie, 4 Feb. 1936. 77 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6/3, Badoglio to Lessona, 5 March 1936.

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78 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 2, diario storico marzo 1936, 1 March 1936. 79 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 5, f: Commando aeronautica …, relazioni marzo 36, signed Cap. Osservatore G. Vedovato, 3 March 1936. 80 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 4, f: diario storico 1936, communicati giornalieri, 3 March 1936. 81 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 5, f: Commando aeronautica …, relazioni marzo 36, 4 March 1936, first report, signed Cap. Osservatore G. Vedovato. 82 Ibid., 4 March 1936, second report, signed Cap. Osservatore G. Vedovato. 83 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 4, f: diario storico 1936, communicati giornalieri …, 4 March 1936. 84 Burgoyne, the leader of the Ethiopian Red Cross’ transport unit, who had spent some time with Zeitlin in Dessie, said that Zeitlin was a Lett army Lieutenant-Colonel. The film, Guerra d’Abessinia, made in the Soviet Union, merits to be seen because of the striking images. It is kept at the Archivio audiovisivo del movimento operaio e democratico in Rome. The film is largely unknown nowadays, but Zeitlin’s pictures were sent by Brown to the ICRC and are published in this study. 85 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Lessona to Badoglio, 7 March 1936. 86 Almost fifty years later, in 1984, the plain again made international headlines, when the BBC reported on the starving people in and around the town of Korem. The dramatic images marked the beginning of the largest international food relief operation in the 1980s. 87 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 2. 88 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 2, diario storico marzo, report signed Vedovato, 17 March 1936; the same report, in form of jotted-down notes can be found in c. 93, diario storico marzo 36, 17 March 1936. 89 CICR, CR 210/917, 17 March 1936. The telegram was sent via Dessie and arrived in Geneva the same day at 5.54 p.m. local time. 90 On 6 January 1936, in the area of Lake Ashenge, an Italian plane on a reconnaissance mission spotted about five thousand Ethiopian soldiers. At the approach of the plane, one Red Cross flag was extended on the ground, according to one flight record, three flags, according to another report of a different squadron (AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 80, diario storico, 6 Jan. 1936; AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 93, diario storico, 6 Jan. 1936). The flags could have belonged to Schüppler’s Ethiopian Red Cross unit no. 3, which was in the area. 91 Pedriali (1997: p. 60): ‘Another violation of the regulations by the Ethiopians was the misuse of the Red Cross emblem.’ 92 See, for example, Pankhurst (1990: p. 224): ‘These missions [Red Cross missions], however, soon were deliberately bombed by the Italian air force, apparently in an attempt to bring all Ethiopian and Red Cross activity to an end.’

4 THE HEART ENSURING

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‘Wake up Geneva as is evident Italians making special target any Red Cross.’ Telegram of Major Gerald Burgoyne, leader of the Ethiopian Red Cross’ transport unit, after being hit by bombs at Weldiya, 15 January 19361

Consequences of the Bombings for the Red Cross Units in the Field At this point a brief look at the practical consequences of the bombings becomes necessary. The bombings of Dessie and Melka Dida had served as strong warnings to all Red Cross field hospitals. The fear that similar incidents might occur hung over them like Damocles’ sword. This worried especially the field hospitals of the Ethiopian Red Cross which, by their small size, were less visible to overflying planes than the larger field hospitals and which could not count on diplomatic protection. Normal medical work became much more difficult. Able-bodied patients often chose to leave the field hospitals with their blankets in the morning and seek cover elsewhere during the day, or at least during the more risky morning and early afternoon hours. When Italian warplanes were on the approach, the field hospitals became suddenly very agitated, as Junod witnessed in February 1936, during a visit to the Ethiopian Red Cross hospital no. 2 under Georges Dassios: As soon as the tinny sound of the trumpet, alerted by telephone from Korem, heralds the approach of an aircraft from the north, Dassios and all the other soldiers take down the tents, remove the flags, help their powerless patients to shel-

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ter, and anyone with enough strength to flee runs to hide in the holes! I can assure you that it is a sorry sight and that the Italian Air Force has no reason to be proud.2

Following a bombing raid work in the field hospitals became very difficult. The British Red Cross unit was forced to retreat into a gully for the first three days. There was no time for lamentation or self-pity. Medical assistance had to be reorganised without delay because continued bombings in the area caused a constant flow of patients. At the same time, a more suitable, safer site had to be identified. With the assistance of Emperor Haile Selassie, a cave was selected in the mountains above Lake Ashangi but it presented a number of disadvantages. It was off the main road, three hours away on foot and reachable only after a hazardous climb over mountain paths. Although the new field hospital provided some safety, it was a far cry from the previous one. When the installation was completed, there was only room for eight in-patients instead of the anticipated twenty – twelve times less than in the original field hospital. Working and sanitary conditions left much to be desired. The operating theatre was only divided by a sheet of cloth from the rest of the cave. The cave was infested with fleas; its roof dripped moisture and the floor was slippery. There were other disadvantages. During bombing raids, the new hospital also served as shelter for local people. By mid-March they happened almost daily, so ‘a mad scamper by the local inhabitants often filled the cave in the midst of an operation – not a very aseptic proceeding’ (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 35). The new field hospital, in the words of the British adjutant, R. Townshend-Stephens (1936: p. 228), was perhaps bombproof, but ‘it was a sad failure as a hospital’. Despite all of these problems, patients flocked to the cave and the British Red Cross team had the busiest days ever: some sixty new patients per day, mostly poison gas victims, gunshot or bombing casualties, with a record of 232 on one single day. It was improvised, rudimentary medicine, but the best possible under the adverse circumstances with the little medical material and medicines left from the bombing. The bombings had one small but positive side effect. In today’s humanitarian operations everybody is used to safety and security instructions. This was not the case at all during the Italo-Ethiopian war. The ICRC delegates and their colleagues from the National Societies went quite naïvely into the conflict, trusting that the Red Cross signs would protect them. They knew that living conditions in Ethiopia were primitive and that the country was generally in a low state of development. They expected to encounter all sorts of difficulties from this, but much less from the Italians with whom they thought they shared a common heritage – the respect of the Red Cross. The bombings of the field hospitals demonstrated that things were not so and that humanitarian work in times of conflict needed to be looked at more realistically. As a consequence, Junod and Brown elaborated security

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instructions intended for the field hospitals. They were basic and selfexplanatory: mark Red Cross sites with signs as large as possible; avoid travel at times when enemy planes are most active; take cover when they appear on the horizon and most importantly, do not set up camp in the proximity of military objectives or troops. These instructions marked the beginning of a growing awareness of security matters, acquired through costly experiences in the field. The bombings did not only affect the performance of the field hospitals, they had also significant psychological effects. First in regard to the Red Cross: with every bombing, its prestige and credibility diminished, reaching ‘zero’ in Junod’s judgement after the British Red Cross was hit. Places marked by the distinctive emblem of the Red Cross offered no protection for the needy, they had to be avoided, instead, as much as possible. Secondly, the bombings made working and living conditions for the teams so difficult that it was inevitable they would eventually take their toll. There was continuous fear that bombing would resume, keeping everybody constantly on the qui vive. Matters were made worse by an early start of the rainy season in the north with dampness, mud, cold and sometimes even frost. It is not surprising that several helpers fell sick and had to be evacuated to Addis Abeba, but most stayed bravely on as long as they could. The British Red Cross expatriates lost practically all their Kenyan and Somali staff who refused staying on after the bombing. Overnight, the expatriates found themselves without their assistants, cooks and dressers – amounting to one hundred persons. It was a massive loss, which could not be overcome without the complete reorganisation of the field hospital, impossible to achieve in a cave. However, it must be noted that the morale and motivation of such highly committed people could not be broken so easily, not even by the terrorising effects of the bombings. Quite the opposite, it stiffened their resolve to continue humanitarian work. Both the Swedish and the British Red Cross field hospitals, after having been bombed mercilessly, returned to Addis Abeba, reorganised themselves and redeployed to the field quickly afterwards. Finally, the bombings had a profound effect on the delegates and their relations with headquarters. Brown, the chief delegate in particular, was deeply worried. He quickly concluded, like the Ethiopian authorities that the Italians wanted to destroy the field hospitals deliberately, ‘quasi systematically’3 and told Geneva about what he considered as evident and cynical infractions of the Geneva Convention. Such strong words did nothing to improve the already strained relations between Brown and the ICRC over the Harar issue. Now the conflict became deeper and soon reached a point where it affected their ability to work. When Brown telegraphed the ICRC about another bombing at the end of January 1936, this time of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3, an angry ICRC responded: ‘Consider observations 3rd field hospital secondary.

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Would rather have report on Harar where constant misuse of emblem is reported’.4 The dispute over Brown’s speech at the funeral service of the Swedish Red Cross nurse killed in Melka Dida provides another example of the deteriorating relationship between Brown and the ICRC. When addressing the participants on this official occasion, Brown intentionally spoke of a ‘crime which was committed’ – a wording with which the Italians promptly took issue. Cremonesi complained to the ICRC which, in turn, excused Brown with the fact that his mother tongue was German and not French. Brown was incensed with Geneva’s appeasing answer and told them in no uncertain terms ‘that sometimes one has to have the courage of one’s convictions’.5 In brief, Brown felt that the ICRC did not stand up to Italy on a matter of principle – ensuring the respect of the emblem – and that it did not do enough for the Red Cross field hospitals in Ethiopia. Brown’s accusation against Geneva was very strong, indeed. Did it correspond to reality?

Prevention is Better than Cure: Notification to Italy of Medical Installations under Red Cross Protection In the past, the ICRC took two principal measures in order to safeguard the emblem in times of conflict. They will be examined in this and the following sub-chapter. The first was the notification of medical installations under Red Cross protection to the belligerents. Article 11 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick stipulated the conditions. Admittance of a recognised aid society was dependent on prior agreement by its own government and the acceptance by the belligerent on whose side it was going to be deployed. In addition – and this was the important part – the belligerent concerned was required to notify the enemy beforehand about the aid societies which had been admitted. The six European National Red Cross Societies which offered medical help to Ethiopia informed Italy about their intention through their governments’ diplomatic channels. Ethiopia, in turn, did not address Italy directly on the matter but chose to use the ICRC. From the beginning, the humanitarian organisation accepted this role as a neutral intermediary between the parties and facilitated the process foreseen under the Convention. Once the ICRC delegation was established in Addis Abeba, notification took on yet another meaning with practical consequences for the safety of the Red Cross teams. As discussed in the previous chapter, one of the delegation’s functions was to verify whether the Red Cross emblem was properly used in Ethiopia. As a result the Ethiopian Red Cross, in cooperation with Brown, listed fixed medical installations which had the right to be protected under the Geneva Convention. The first such list, of eight hospitals,

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was sent via the ICRC to Italy in early December 1935 and was completed a few weeks later to include seventeen altogether: eight in Addis Abeba, including the former Italian hospital La Consolata, three in Dessie, five in Harar and one in Debre Tabor. Italy was formally notified in mid-January with the cautionary notice that the list was still not exhaustive and that it was subject to modification. In view of the growing number of air raids on the Red Cross field hospitals and in order to give them better protection, the system was extended. Whenever their precise locations were known, Italy was notified via the ICRC. This was done for the first time in early January 1936 when the ICRC informed Italy about the latest deployments of the Egyptian Red Crescent in Bulaleh, Degeh Bur and Jijiga. Even the British Red Cross, which usually preferred to use its government’s channel, resorted at times to this system, for example, when the field hospital set up camp for its long six-week stay in Weldiya. Unfortunately there is not enough documentary evidence to know how much time was normally needed for the information to pass from the Ethiopian to the Italian side, nor whether it was always forwarded to the Italian military units in the field. In general, transmission appeared to have taken time as the notification of the above-mentioned new site of the British Red Cross field hospital in Weldiya shows. The information required six days to pass from Addis Abeba to Badoglio’s Headquarters in Mekele via Geneva and Rome. Such long transmission times had a reason. While the system of notifications fulfilled its purpose from an ICRC perspective, the same was not true for the Italians. Cremonesi, the Italian Red Cross President, had understood perfectly what was the idea behind: ‘further involving our responsibility in the event of future bombings’.6 He complained to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the ‘absolute inopportunity of such notifications’ and pretended not to see what practical effect they could have. The Ministry agreed but realised that it could hardly openly oppose the procedure but welcomed Cremonesi’s offer to express Italy’s reservations. A few days later, Cremonesi wrote a polite letter to the ICRC, the significance of which is understood only in light of his just-mentioned comments to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Cremonesi told Geneva that the notifications of movements of field hospitals and the role which the ICRC attributed to itself were, in fact, new procedures not foreseen under the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. He promised that Italy would pay maximum attention to these communications, but cautioned that time constraints and problems in identifying the locations constituted ‘practical difficulties’. Notifications of movements of field hospitals were made only for field hospitals belonging to foreign National Red Cross Societies. The Ethiopian government refused to reveal from the beginning the location of the local

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Red Cross’ medical units, fearing that this would give Italy valuable military information. Beyond doubt, these notifications constituted an innovation under the terms of the Geneva Convention and an improvement for the security of the field hospitals whether Cremonesi liked it or not.7 The ICRC took, to a certain extent, the role of a protecting power, as its general report to the sixteenth International Red Cross Conference in London 1938 underlined. However, this achievement, important as it was in terms of attempting to prevent violations of the Red Cross emblem, should not be overestimated. The notification procedure did not include all foreign units, nor was it systematic, as the ICRC’s report suggested. Many movements of field hospitals and especially the flights of the Red Cross medical aircraft, were not brought to the attention of the Italian authorities.

Transmission of Complaints Regarding Violations of the Geneva Convention The main weakness of all the Geneva Conventions from 1864 to 1949 is their lack of enforcement mechanisms, despite the fact that violations had occurred in practically every conflict in which they were applicable. The ICRC tried to offset, at least partially, this serious weakness by transmitting complaints between the belligerents via their respective National Red Cross Societies. In special cases the concerned governments were directly addressed. The idea behind these transmissions was that governments would inquire into the alleged violations and take corrective measures. The ICRC itself played a very limited role. It strictly abstained from pronouncing itself on the merits of the complaints, but published them ‘systematically’ in the International Red Cross Review (February 1936: p. 154). The system was first put into practice in the Franco-German war of 1870 and applied in successive conflicts. During the First World War and until 1920 the ICRC transmitted and published eighty such complaints (Durand 1978: p. 38). In accordance with this tradition, the ICRC, throughout the ItaloEthiopian war, transmitted complaints from one government to the other via the Ethiopian and Italian Red Cross Societies, normally by telegram or by letter. In addition, in the first five months of the war they were brought to the attention of all National Red Cross Societies through Circular Letters, which were then published in the monthly International Red Cross Review. This practice resulted in double publication and was discontinued as of February 1936 when complaints were made public only through the Review. However, there was no clear policy with regard to publications of complaints in the Circular Letters. If more important matters needed to be included, complaints were simply dropped. A case in point is Circular

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Letter No. 323, published on 23 January 1936. The ICRC’s draft contained several operational matters of interest as well as the latest Ethiopian complaints about bombings of Red Cross field hospitals such as the one in Melka Dida. The whole draft was eventually scrapped and, instead, the Circular Letter was dedicated to matters regarding Italy, i.e., an exchange of letters between the ICRC and Mussolini, followed by two lengthy complaints signed by Cremonesi. The next Circular Letter, No. 324 of 10 February, again included only Italian correspondence, but no Ethiopian complaints. The result was that a number of important Ethiopian complaints were not published when they were made, but only several weeks later. ICRC documents are silent as to why the draft of Circular Letter No. 323 was modified. However, an explanation is given by Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate to the ICRC. In a note to Cremonesi he confirmed that the ICRC at first did not intend to publish the correspondence with Mussolini in its entirety but only in form of a résumé. Thanks to his personal intervention, he continued, and on the express wishes of the Italian delegation to the League of Nations, the ICRC had changed its mind and published the Circular Letter in its actual form, without making mention of the Ethiopian complaints. The Italian Red Cross was clearly pleased with the outcome and promptly asked the ICRC for ten thousand copies of the Circular Letter. The request was so unusual that it needed discussion in the Committee. Paul des Gouttes regretted that the Ethiopia Commission had approved such a onesided publication, which invited Italy to take advantage for propaganda purposes and he urged that such a mistake should not be repeated. As a consequence, the Committee decided to inform Vinci orally that the ICRC was unable to entertain the Italian Red Cross’ request, as it would be incompatible with its obligation of impartiality. Still on the subject of the Circular Letters, another point commands attention. In the past, the ICRC would censor complaints if they contained offending language. This was applied in one instance to the Ethiopian protest regarding the Dessie hospital bombing, mentioned in Circular Letter No. 322. The entire last phrase of Thomas Lambie’s telegram to the ICRC was cut. It read like this: ‘[the] Ethiopian Red Cross protests formally against [the] inhuman [and] barbaric act [and] asks you to intervene in Rome in order to avoid a repetition of the scandal’.8 Interestingly, the ICRC did not do the same in regard to Italy. For example, one of Cremonesi’s complaints in the appendix of Circular Letter No. 323 contained equally, if not more offending language since it was directed against Ethiopia as a country. Cremonesi detected a ‘state of legal and international unawareness of this nation’ and, more importantly, described Ethiopia as a ‘barbaric state’.9 Visibly, the ICRC had applied different standards favouring Italy over Ethiopia. The same remark can be made when the respective issues of the International Red Cross Review are examined. As discussed earlier, com-

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plaints of the belligerents were published exclusively in the Review from February 1936 onwards. This February issue contained the complete list of Ethiopian and Italian protests to date and put, though belatedly, the two sides again on an equal footing. This did not last for long. From March onwards, individual Ethiopian complaints about bombings of Red Cross field hospitals were simply ignored. Yet such important incidents as the bombing of the British Red Cross at Korem had occurred in early March. This is all the more puzzling since the Review published in April an Italian complaint about the alleged Ethiopian shelling of a field hospital in Maychew. In fact, from March until June 1936, the Review published only one major Ethiopian but three major Italian complaints, the last as late as in June 1936, one month after the war had come to an official end. The examination of this matter reveals how unbalanced the ICRC’s handling of the two belligerents was. Italy had more opportunities to publicly express its views and was treated more respectfully than Ethiopia. Complaints were not published systematically as claimed.10 Interestingly, nobody at the time took notice of this striking fact. The ICRC realised that the results of its policy of transmission and publication of complaints were extremely limited. In a letter to the delegation Lucie Odier admitted that the responses of the parties to the conflict were not numerous. This was a euphemism. The responses were not only few but they gave no concrete or visible results at all. The archival records show that no internal inquiry was ever undertaken by the belligerents and even less remedial action. On the contrary, instead of bringing the two sides closer, the policy contributed to cementing their division. There are two main reasons for this. The first had to do with the fact that the complaints were published. At a time when wars were fought both on the battlefronts and before international public opinion, such a measure pre-empted the search for effective solutions because neither belligerent wanted to admit any wrongdoing. The publication of the complaints in the Review provided the belligerents with a forum in front of which they could present their case although it was no longer the most important nor the only one of international significance as in the First World War. The League of Nations had occupied this place in the meantime and all protestations, small and large, were normally sent first to the League before they reached the ICRC. The second reason related to the Red Cross Societies of Ethiopia and Italy. Both were unable to have a direct bearing on the important decisions of their respective governments. The Ethiopian Red Cross, although presided over by the Foreign Minister Blatten Geta Heruy Woldeselassie, was physically too far away from the Emperor in the field who took the decisions. The Italian Red Cross was completely ‘fascisised’ under Cremonesi and incapable of being anything else than the government’s mouthpiece. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the policy, once thought to be useful, degenerated from the beginning of the war into a ster-

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ile exchange of accusations and counteraccusations. The main responsibility must be attributed to the parties themselves which emptied the policy of its substance, but the ICRC was not free from blame, either. It remained strangely passive in the face of this development of which it was quite aware and it failed to take measures in order to make the policy more effective. In fact, by the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war the policy had lost its value and was draining the Committee’s valuable energy and resources which could have been put to better use for the protection of war victims. ‘Old habits die hard’ goes the saying. It applies also in this particular case. Max Huber echoed the experience made in the Italo-Ethiopian war when he recalled after the Second World War that the policy of transmission of complaints had rarely given satisfactory results for the party which submitted the protest. Despite the ICRC’s reluctance, the seventeenth International Red Cross Conference in 1948 insisted that it should continue to receive complaints. Seventeen more years had to pass before the Red Cross movement came to the conclusion that this procedure had never produced a tangible result. In 1965, it agreed that the ICRC would transmit such complaints in the future only if there was no other regular means of communication or if its intervention as a neutral intermediary was required.

First Steps in Humanitarian Diplomacy The bombings of Dessie and Melka Dida not only worried Brown but also some ICRC members. In very early January 1936, Vice-President Favre brought the subject to the Ethiopia Commission and suggested sending a delegation to Rome whose mission should be to stop the bombings of Red Cross installations. The principle of such an intervention was approved, but the members of the Commission were unable to agree on the form in which the ICRC’s concern should be conveyed. Some preferred Favre’s suggestion of a delegation, others a more immediate reaction with a telegram or a letter. It was decided to submit the question to the ICRC President and, in order to save time, a draft telegram for the attention of the Italian Red Cross was prepared. In it, the ICRC requested the Italian government to give precise instructions in order to avoid attacks on Red Cross medical installations such as the ones which had happened in Dessie and Melka Dida. Given the urgency of the matter, the next scheduled ICRC meeting was advanced by a few days to take place on 6 January 1936. In a lengthy discussion, lasting the whole afternoon, the principles and form of an intervention to Rome were hammered out. Max Huber, supported by Paul Logoz, made the main inputs. The President’s view was that the ICRC had not established a violation of the Geneva Convention; there were ‘at present only strong presumptions’.11 Before resorting to a formal protest, the

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Italian government had to be asked for its side of the story. Given the gravity of the events, the Committee agreed that the most appropriate form was a letter addressed to Mussolini. Jacques Chenevière, who was a writer and normally in charge of such matters, prepared the draft. The next morning, Huber and Logoz reviewed it. In the afternoon, the final version of the letter was established in the Ethiopia Commission, in the presence of Max Huber. More modifications were made at this occasion, amongst them, the suppression of details of the bombing which, it was feared, might distract Italian attention from the main issue. Equally, the concluding paragraph, appearing too soft to some participants – not least in view of a future publication – was reformulated. There was one overriding concern, the letter had to be general and very polite. In Huber’s opinion, it should even be kept in an excessively measured tone, given the personality of the Italian head of government to whom it was addressed. On the same afternoon of 7 January 1936, after intense discussions and several drafting sessions, the carefully worded letter to Mussolini was typed out. It was dispatched immediately to Gino Augusto Spechel, the Royal Italian Consul in Geneva, for forwarding to the illustrious addressee in Rome. The letter itself was short. The damages suffered by medical installations under Red Cross protection during Italian bombing raids had caused ‘emotion’ which was brought to the attention of the ICRC by several concerned organisations and governments. The Ethiopian Red Cross and foreign National Red Cross Societies which had deployed field hospitals requested respect and protection for the emblem as enshrined in the Geneva Convention. The ICRC expressed ‘its deep concern that the Geneva Convention be fully implemented’ for the benefit of Red Cross workers, wounded and sick alike. Finally, it requested the Italian Head of Government to take the necessary measures to avoid a repetition of such ‘events’ which were putting Red Cross activities at risk and to provide information to the ICRC in order to reassure the involved National Societies.12 The tone of the letter was in stark contrast to the gravity of the incidents to which it referred, reflecting well the ICRC’s apprehensions. The humanitarian organisation had carefully avoided making a comment of its own and was anxious to be seen as acting on behalf of the concerned National Societies and their governments. The letter was a far cry from demanding Italy not to bomb Red Cross installations, as Favre originally wanted and as the draft telegram had so clearly expressed. It was, in substance, little more than an improved version of a transmission of a complaint. Still, there was a difference compared with similar past interventions. The ICRC became directly involved in such matters and was obliged to take position in a certain way. This was largely due to the fact that it had a delegation in the field which reported to headquarters. The letter to Mussolini marked the beginning of a new activity. The ICRC had entered, though still very

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timidly, the scene of humanitarian diplomacy where it would excel in the decades to come. The ICRC knew that it had made a bold step and was apprehensive about the possible repercussions. The first reaction came from Vinci. It made the ICRC fear the worst. Vinci had been informed about the unprecedented ICRC step only two days after the letter to Mussolini had been dispatched when he was given a copy to pass on to the Italian Red Cross President. Vinci was offended that the ICRC had not involved him earlier. He seized the first possible occasion to make the ICRC pay for his hurt pride and expressed promptly to Favre and Chenevière that their letter risked being badly interpreted in Rome and that ‘the ICRC had somehow hastened to say that Italy was wrong’.13 They were alarmed. The Ethiopia Commission convened the following day in order to ponder the next steps, in particular Vinci’s suggestion that they write to him personally to explain what had motivated the letter to Mussolini. The members of the Commission were again divided on how to respond. Lucie Odier made the point that, if the ICRC intervention had caused a negative impact in Rome, an additional letter would certainly not redress it. Edmond Boissier expressed his conviction that the ICRC’s oral explanations given to Vinci should be sufficient. However, after considerable discussion, all members finally agreed to Vinci’s proposal, in the higher interest of avoiding ‘above all’ a wrong interpretation of the ICRC’s letter to Rome. After consultation with Huber, Vinci was given his explanatory letter in which the ICRC underlined that it had not made any judgement on the alleged facts; that it had acted in line with past practice and in line with its moral responsibility. Despite what Chenevière said in a note to Huber, the ICRC’s letter sounded not like a comment, but much more like an apology for having made the intervention to Mussolini. Vinci had got his personal revenge. He informed Cremonesi about his discussions with the ICRC and the resulting letter, which the Italian Red Cross President transmitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without further comment. Vinci’s gut reaction did not correspond at all to the mood in Rome. During December 1935, it became clear that attempts at a peaceful settlement of the conflict had no chances of success. The Hoare-Laval plan which aimed at the division of Ethiopia was doomed from the beginning and was promptly rejected by the Emperor, but it meant that the threat of an intensification of sanctions against Italy (to include coal, steel and above all oil) was thwarted, at least for the near future. Further negotiations were not expected to take place until the end of January when the Council of the League of Nations was to reconvene. The situation, from the Italian point of view, was still uncertain but by no means hopeless. Suvich, the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had interpreted it correctly when he commented on 10 January 1936, in a memorandum to Mussolini that Italy could probably count on a period of relative calm in

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international relations for the next weeks. He recommended that the government should, in the meantime, proceed under the formula: ‘great determination in the military sphere, calm at home and in international relations’.14 As regards the oil sanction, Suvich considered that the League intended to use it for the time being as a threat, as was the case with military sanctions. This would change, however, if the ‘moral isolation of Italy’ further increased and if sympathetic or neutral states changed their position. ‘That is why the precise orders to spare hospitals and Red Cross facilities, and to avoid using gas are of the outmost importance. In this respect what happened in Dolo [i.e., Melka Dida where the Swedish Red Cross field hospital had been bombed] has done great harm to us’.15 Italy was politically in a situation where it was advisable not to antagonise, but to show readiness for compromise and cooperation, especially on such sensitive matters as medical installations under the protection of the Red Cross. Mussolini’s response to the ICRC of 16 January reflected this mood. First and foremost, he underlined Italy’s commitment to international agreements and assured the ICRC that ‘Italian airmen deployed in Eastern Africa consider themselves duty-bound to respect the Red Cross emblem, even when they have good reasons to believe that the enemy is using it for military purposes’.16 However, as in every war, it could happen that Red Cross installations were hit involuntarily, but Italy spared no effort to avoid such incidents and deplored them. At the same time, Mussolini drew the ICRC’s attention to the Ethiopian misuses of the emblem for military purposes and the enemy’s repeated atrocities committed on dead, wounded and prisoners. Finally, he expressed the Italian government’s appreciation for the ICRC’s noble mission and declared his readiness ‘to cooperate closely’ in upholding the principles of civilised people. As his response to the ICRC was being written, Mussolini asked Badoglio to take large scale military action against Ethiopia. Graziani’s advance in southern Ethiopia in mid-January 1936 was not enough. Mussolini needed to show the Italian people and the world that his forces were not locked on African soil in a defensive war, but capable of grand victories. He encouraged Badoglio to take the military initiative and use the fifteen divisions under his orders for what they had been intended: to fight. Naturally, the ICRC knew nothing of what was discussed behind the thick walls of Palazzo Venezia, and they could hardly imagine the dark clouds hanging over the field hospitals when they received Mussolini’s reply. The ICRC was, in Vinci’s words, very impressed and most of all honoured, especially since some members of the Committee expected that the Duce was not even going to respond. The six national Societies which had sent field hospitals to Ethiopia received copies of the response on the same day it had arrived at the ICRC. Two days later it was communicated to the press and published in Circular Letter No. 323 of 23 January 1936. At the

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same time, the delegation in Addis Abeba was informed with the comment that Geneva judged the Italian declarations ‘as satisfactory as possible’. The field was far less impressed than headquarters. Brown read the telegram to the next meeting of the Ethiopian Red Cross board and argued that there was now some room for hope for a better respect of the emblem but he received a cold response. The board asked Brown to inform Geneva that the effort was appreciated, but that Mussolini’s assurances were considered at best ‘pretty satisfactory’ and still incomplete. The Swedes, particularly, remained convinced that the bombing of their medical unit was not attributable to an accident of war, as Mussolini had claimed. They continued to insist on formal Italian guarantees that the Red Cross would not be an object of reprisal. The ICRC’s letter to Mussolini had a significant side effect whose importance was not well appreciated in Geneva. The Red Cross had made its voice known and was immediately accepted as a moral authority to whom one had to listen. Vinci was the first to realise the political implications of this and the utility of such an organisation for Fascist Italy. He confided to Cremonesi: ‘We are dealing with good people, maybe a bit simple but honest and free of any Masonic or other influences, which cannot be said of the League of Nations … We should do our best to keep them on our side, because we might get from them the satisfaction we will never get from the League of Nations.’17 The comment did not fall on deaf ears and was duly registered in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Ensuring the Application of the Geneva Convention through an Inquiry Following the bombing of Dessie, the Italian Red Cross President requested the ICRC to find out what precisely had happened. Huber replied promptly and asked whether this meant that Italy demanded the application of Article 30 of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick and the establishment of a commission of inquiry. Cremonesi forwarded the ICRC’s question to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was not in a hurry to answer. At the end of December 1935, the Ministry had finally made up its mind: it saw no benefit in a formal inquiry, but could not say so openly in view of the sensitivity of the matter. The main argument against the inquiry was that the two countries and their Red Cross societies would be put on an equal level – a concession Italy was not ready to make in regard to a belligerent which it considered inferior. This suddenly changed after the next bombing – of the Swedish Red Cross in Melka Dida on 30 December 1935. The Ethiopian government formally requested the League of Nations to investigate the incident. In parallel, the Swedish Red Cross pushed the ICRC to do the same and even

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transferred some money for this purpose to the cash-strapped organisation. At the same time it urged the Ethiopian government to request the formal application of Article 30. The result was that, at the beginning of the New Year, calls to investigate the incident were coming from different sides and could no longer be ignored. Italy needed to deal earnestly with the matter if it wanted to avoid negative repercussions upon its image in international public opinion – especially as the Italian Red Cross’ President had unwittingly launched the process. Article 30 of the 1929 Geneva Convention was considered to be one of the most important improvements over the previous 1906 Convention. It read as follows: ‘On the request of a belligerent, an enquiry shall be instituted, in a manner to be decided between the interested parties, concerning any alleged violation of the Convention; when such violation has been established the belligerents shall put an end to and repress it as promptly as possible.’18 Paul des Gouttes (1930: p. 217), the ICRC’s specialist in international humanitarian law called the Article in his commentary ‘a real and new guarantee of the strict application of the Convention’. For the first time, governments had agreed, in principle, to submit alleged violations to impartial investigation. The Article included two points. The first was that an inquiry was mandatory upon the request of one of the belligerents. The second was that measures would be undertaken to stop violations if verified and that those responsible would be punished. However, the Article had several important weaknesses. Crucial matters like the composition of the commission, the modalities of its working and the time frame were left open to negotiation between the involved parties. While the Article fixed clearly the beginning of the mechanism and to a lesser extent its effects, all the rest was uncharted territory, leaving ample room for interminable negotiations, manoeuvres and delaying tactics. The positive part of the Article was, in fact, the first part, namely that escaping from the inquiry would be inevitably seen as an admission of guilt. In other words, an incriminated party had to cooperate, or at least be seen cooperating, in an inquiry which had been demanded. The alarm bells were ringing in Rome. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly reviewed its earlier position on the inquiry, for two reasons. First, Italy did not want an inquiry before the League of Nations as Ethiopia had requested. The League was the last organisation with which Italy desired to deal because of the inevitable politics. The other reason was Junod’s on-thespot investigation in Melka Dida. Huber had already told Cremonesi about the Swedish Red Cross’s request for an investigation and the ICRC’s intention to share the results with the Swedes – a matter which was clearly not in Italy’s interest. The Italians had to choose between two evils, an inquiry before the League of Nations or before the ICRC. There was no hesitation. Preference was given to the latter whose potential usefulness had just been underlined

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by Vinci and Cremonesi. Mussolini seized the opportunity of his already mentioned response to the ICRC. He added a paragraph expressing his government’s agreement that ‘delegates of this Committee, specially chosen, go to the areas where military operations are carried out to check whether and how the rules of the Geneva Conventions are applied or violated by each’.19 At the same time, Cremonesi embarked on a public campaign to highlight the merits of the lesser-known ICRC in full agreement with Pompeo Aloisi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ chef-de-cabinet and chief delegate to the League of Nations. In a long interview in the Giornale d’Italia which Cremonesi specifically asked Vinci to show to the ICRC he spoke of the organisation as being imbued by the most rigid and absolute neutrality. In the same vein, Italy took a decision which was more costly in the literal sense of the word. Despite the country’s scarce foreign currency resources, it was decided to pay to the ICRC the annual dues for 1935. Cremonesi proudly informed Vinci about this important step. But promises were easier to make than to keep. By mid-February, the necessary authorisations had not yet been given and Cremonesi had to solicit the good offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before the payment was finally made. Mussolini’s request for an inquiry arrived in Geneva even before Haile Selassie’s, allowing Italy to score important points on the propaganda front. According to Vinci, the ICRC had noted with particular contentment that Italy entrusted the inquiry to the ICRC and not the League of Nations. There was no need to think twice. All ICRC members were unanimous: the organisation had to accept the challenge of conducting such an inquiry. Huber explained after the war the reason for which the ICRC had accepted the request of the two sides. It was in the ICRC’s interest that violations of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick were investigated, ‘free from sentiment of any kind and inspired only by a passion for justice’.20 If the parties to a conflict considered the ICRC to be the only organisation, which offered the necessary guarantees to undertake such an inquiry, it could not decline, despite the fact that the task was delicate and even overwhelming. There was another reason, however, not mentioned by Huber. The ICRC had realised that it had an historic opportunity to participate in the first application of Article 30 of the Convention. Chenevière probably expressed the opinion of most ICRC members when he said that refusing such an opportunity was tantamount to losing all prestige and authority in regard to humanitarian affairs in the ItaloEthiopian war. The only dissenting voice came from the field. Brown felt that conducting an inquiry in such a vast territory as Ethiopia would be extremely difficult, in addition to other obstacles such as the legal implications and the cost of the inquiry. He feared that it would lead to interminable correspondence and negotiations between the parties. But, besides these difficulties, the planned inquiry would also obstruct a matter of utmost importance to

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him – the transmission of Junod’s report on the incident in Melka Dida to the Swedish Red Cross. It has to be recalled here that Marcel Junod, the ICRC’s medical delegate, travelled to Melka Dida immediately after the bombing to make his own investigation. By mid-January, his report was dispatched to Geneva, where it arrived at the end of the month. Throughout this period, the ICRC intended to share the report with the Swedish Red Cross, as was also said to Cremonesi in Rome. This changed as soon as the ICRC decided to hold the formal inquiry. The day after that decision was made, the Swedish Red Cross was informed that the ICRC was no longer in a position to transmit Junod’s report because it had become part of the inquiry. Fascist diplomacy had made a clever move. It had achieved two major objectives with one single stroke. First Italy had demonstrated to the world its willingness to cooperate in an inquiry. Secondly, the move had blocked the ICRC’s plans to pass on Junod’s findings on the Melka Dida bombing which were unfavourable to Italy. In exchange, Italy had committed itself to nothing else than the principle of an inquiry, but this was already sufficient to silence the ICRC. By agreeing to take charge of the inquiry, the ICRC had forfeited its only trump card, the reports of its delegates in the field. It was very risky to put all the trust in Italy’s professions of good faith. This was the deeper reason for Brown’s discontentment. He had promised Junod’s report to the Swedish Red Cross team in Addis Abeba. Suddenly he found himself disavowed by headquarters. In his opinion the ICRC should have taken a different path. Junod’s report should have been given to the Swedes while negotiations on the inquiry were going on. He made this point with so much insistence that Huber had to send a telegram himself to cut short the dispute which was carefully registered by the Italian listening service. If Brown had difficulties in accepting the ICRC’s stand, it was even harder for the Ethiopian government and some diplomats in Addis Abeba. They interpreted the ICRC’s decision politically. Sidney Barton, the British Minister, told Brown that that the humanitarian organisation ‘is afraid to appear disagreeable towards Italy’.21 While the ICRC feverishly launched preparations for the inquiry in the first days of February 1936, the Italians, after having elegantly defused a potentially damaging situation, considered their next steps. Aloisi, Italy’s chief negotiator, had been reluctant from the beginning to hold such an inquiry and told Carl Jacob Burckhardt that it would be a complex and expensive undertaking. On 14 February 1936, when the ICRC had optimistically hoped to start the actual inquiry in the field, Aloisi informed Geneva that the matter needed further discussion and invited Huber to Rome in order to examine in particular the legal implications of the inquiry. Here, the Italians saw the first serious hurdle. When the ICRC had informed Rome and Addis Abeba that it would accept the inquiry, it was on condition that both sides agreed to its conclusions. This was clearly too

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much for Rome. ‘The quasi arbitral character’ of the inquiry was ‘unacceptable’, as a comment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made plain.22 Brown’s fear of interminable discussions became reality faster than anticipated, but Geneva seemed not to realise what was behind Aloisi’s diplomatic wording and invitation. His suggestion for a meeting in Rome was quickly accepted and scheduled, after much toing and froing, for the end of March. On the Ethiopian side, matters looked unfavourable from the beginning and its views were not coated in diplomatic niceties. Five days after receiving the ICRC’s telegram announcing that it had agreed to take charge of the inquiry, Brown told Geneva that the Ethiopians were most probably unable to cover the enormous cost of such an inquiry, estimated at 40 to 50,000 Swiss Francs for each belligerent. This was confirmed at the end of February when Ethiopia cited priority for national defence. Despite these rather bleak perspectives, the ICRC refined the plans for the inquiry with unbroken enthusiasm, discussed several options for cutting its cost and went ahead with preparations for the trip to Rome. In the meantime, Italy began to prepare for a possible inquiry. Alessandro Lessona, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Colonies, ordered the establishment of an Ufficio Croce Rossa at the High Command in Eritrea for the northern front and a branch office for the southern front in Somalia. Each office had an Italian Red Cross delegate and a legal expert. For the main northern front were named Edoardo Borra, the ex-director of the Italian Hospital in Addis Abeba and Giovanni Betteloni, a diplomat at the Italian delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, before he was mobilised for the war. By the end of March, after many delays, the offices became operational. Their task was to prepare for the visit of the commission of inquiry whose objective, in the Italian view, was ‘to ascertain on one hand the atrocities perpetrated by the Ethiopians and the violations of international laws on war, and on the other hand the scrupulous respect for such norms that guides our action’.23 Borra and Betteloni started to collect documentary evidence in support of the Italian thesis but were apparently not sure about the solidity of the information. Although they expressed their conviction that considerable advantages could result from the visit of the commission of inquiry to Asmara, they cautioned Rome that it would be better if none of its members knew Amharic, the main Ethiopian language. A lot of developments had taken place since December 1935 when the subject of an inquiry was first raised. By mid-March 1936, when the ICRC was gearing up for its meetings in Rome, the political situation looked much more favourable for Italy. Although the threat of oil sanctions was still hanging over the country, the League of Nations had other worries besides the conflict in the Horn of Africa. Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936, shifted attention dramatically back to Europe. The military situation in Ethiopia looked even better. It had completely veered in favour

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of Italy. Badoglio had beaten all three Ethiopian armies in northern Ethiopia, the only exception being Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard which was taking up positions for the final battle. The end of the war was in sight. The price for these spectacular advances was heavy, not least for the Red Cross field hospitals deployed on the frontlines. Mussolini’s reassuring letter to the ICRC in January had not brought any improvement. On the contrary, bombings of field hospitals had continued unabated. At the same time, Brown’s impatience with the ICRC’s lack of firmness towards Italy had reached new heights, as had Ethiopia’s disenchantment with the international community in general and the humanitarian organisation in Geneva in particular. The ICRC President himself became worried about the reports of bombings of the Red Cross medical installations and felt that the matter needed to be taken up in Rome. In a draft of a memorandum prepared for the occasion, the ICRC expressed the view that the bombings ‘cannot be any longer considered as an accidental fact of war and that at least in Ethiopia, they were interpreted as the result of a plan of systematic destruction’. ‘A solemn declaration of the Italian Government’ was now required for allowing the Red Cross to continue to perform its task in Ethiopia.24 Although this whole section was dropped in the final version of the memorandum – the ICRC was afraid of negative consequences – it showed that the gravity of the events was unmistakably realised in Geneva. The trip to Rome was an excellent opportunity to meet face to face with the main actor, to get an explanation for the continued bombings and above all another chance to obtain what had been denied so far, a better protection of the Red Cross and the victims under its care. However, time was rapidly running out.

Protecting the Interests of War Victims through Humanitarian Diplomacy – a Trip to Rome (24 March–1 April 1936) The composition of the delegation for the mission to Rome was quite a sensitive matter and it became quickly obvious that the delegation was going to be rather large. Next to Huber, Paul Logoz, one of the three VicePresidents, was selected. He was not only competent in legal and military matters but he had also been in charge of the preparations for the inquiry. Carl Jacob Burckhardt joined the group most probably because of his knowledge of the world of diplomacy. The fourth was Jacques Chenevière, skilled in writing and in charge of the dossier of prisoners of war. Guillaume Favre, the chairman of the Ethiopia Commission and an obvious choice to join the group, declined Huber’s invitation with the argument that the delegation would be too large and that Logoz had all the military background required. When Vinci was informed of the composition of the delegation ‘by my friend J. Chenevière’, he confided to Cremonesi: ‘The mission which

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will come to Rome is made up of distinguished personalities, certainly sympathetic to the Italian cause. Professor Logoz and the other members are long-standing friends of mine.’25 Cremonesi asked Vinci to accompany the delegation to Rome, not only as a facilitator, but also as a watchdog. He recommended to the Italian Red Cross delegate to make sure that the ICRC delegation did not get in touch ‘with a certain person here in Rome’, meaning most probably Senator Giovanni Ciraolo, the ex-President of the Italian Red Cross (1919–25), known for his lukewarm support of Fascism. Cremonesi had well anticipated the matter since Huber’s first intention was precisely to meet Ciraolo. There is no indication that the meeting took place but it appears doubtful. Huber politely declined the Italian offer to cover the cost of the mission entirely, but he accepted free first class train tickets inside Italy, as well as a substantial reduction in the Excelsior Hotel on Rome’s renowned Via Veneto. According to a note to the Protocol Department the Swiss guests had to pay only thirty percent of the cost of accommodation and food, the other seventy percent were to be charged to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The room reservation was made via a former student of Max Huber, the recently appointed Swiss Minister to Italy, Paul Ruegger,26 who happened to stay in the same Hotel. When Huber, Logoz, Burckhardt and Chenevière arrived at Rome’s main train station late in the evening of 24 March 1936, a busy and varied schedule awaited them for the next six days with meetings at the Foreign Ministry and the Italian Red Cross as well as representative duties and entertainment. All in all, three days were dedicated to work and three to various trips in and out of Rome, such as a tour of the Italian capital’s basilicas and a visit to the Villa d’Este in Tivoli. On 26 March, Vinci took Huber and Burckhardt to Naples where they witnessed the departure to Massawa of the Italian Hospital ship Cesarea with Maria di Piemonte, the wife of the son of Italy’s King Vittorio Emanuele III and a voluntary Red Cross nurse. Fascist diplomacy intended to favourably impress the delegates from Geneva. The Italian Red Cross was put in charge of making their sojourn as pleasant as possible. Cremonesi, besides hosting a number of meetings at the Red Cross headquarters, took them on a tour of some Italian Red Cross projects and invited them to his country residence in Castello d’Orvigno, outside of Rome. All delegates were presented with medals, Max Huber with the Croce per il merito. The purpose was obvious, as Cremonesi later admitted in a review of the Society’s activities, namely to demonstrate to the important Swiss guests ‘the power and civilising work of the State which hosted them.’ Had the manifest tactic of charm really succeeded in creating in the delegates ‘widespread good will towards Italy’ as he had proudly claimed?27

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‘A Historic Moment for the Red Cross’? The Italian bombings of medical installations were discussed on several occasions by the four-man delegation, with Foreign Affairs as well as with the Italian Red Cross. With regard to the latter, nobody was in doubt as to who was really in charge, but the ICRC thought it appropriate to involve the National Society. The different incidents were reviewed and the Italians had ample time to bring up their already known responses. Even Cremonesi felt that he had to make a contribution and advanced the novel, but not very original argument that the pilots had great difficulty ‘in identifying the signs at high altitude and at considerable speed’.28 It was a mockery because the ICRC delegates in Rome must have been perfectly aware that the major bombings had occurred from a very low level. At the example of the Swedish Red Cross bombing in Melka Dida, the question of legitimacy of reprisals against the Red Cross targets was brought up. Huber argued that the emblem should not be the object of reprisals under any circumstances. The Italians agreed and had the nerve to assure that the famous leaflets dropped at Melka Dida did not mean that the air strike had been undertaken against the field hospital (although this had been exactly Graziani’s intention). These leaflets were dropped not only there, but also on vast parts of the front and in large quantities. Once more, the point was made that the bombing had been directed against the nearby military escort with its suspicious movements, not against the hospital. There is no indication that the ICRC responded to these obviously wrong explanations despite the fact that Junod, its own delegate, let alone the eyewitnesses themselves, had flatly contradicted such assertions. It is striking to observe in general that the ICRC delegation in Rome contented itself with registering the Italian arguments without further questioning, perhaps for fear of anticipating or compromising the chances of the envisaged inquiry. This was facilitated by the fact that the Italians claimed to deplore the incidents and professed their faith in the Red Cross. In addition they assured their interlocutors that they were perfectly aware of the political and moral disadvantages resulting from such incidents, clearly outweighing any military gains. Nowhere was this more plainly expressed than during the very short audience with the Italian Head of Government, Benito Mussolini, then at the height of his power and popularity. Huber had requested the audience in the first meeting with Aloisi the day after their arrival. It was promptly, though not unexpectedly,29 granted for the last day, 30 March, in the afternoon. According to the Italian records, the audience lasted exactly ten minutes, from 4.00 to 4.10 p.m., as was annotated meticulously in pencil on the corresponding meeting schedule. It was one of the shortest audiences Mussolini gave that week.30

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No official minutes were recorded, most probably because the audience was so short, but several accounts were written by the participants.31 Aloisi’s, Huber’s and Chenevière’s accounts agree that Mussolini had unequivocally expressed in a few minutes his firm conviction that Fascist Italy stood by the Red Cross and that the emblem needed to be respected. This was further underlined in a press release following the audience. The text published by the Italian News Agency, Stefani, was based on a draft submitted by the ICRC, which Aloisi obligingly had preferred to the one of his own Ministry. The release recalled the reason for the delegation’s visit to Rome and concluded: ‘On this occasion, the Head of Government confirmed the will of the Italian Government to safeguard the effectiveness of the Red Cross emblem. As far as Italy is concerned, strict orders have been given to this end, due to the deep conviction of the Italian Government that the Red Cross has an essential value for all interested states.’32 Aloisi (1957: p. 364) had correctly interpreted the delegation’s feelings when he wrote in his diary that they were ‘very much satisfied’. At first sight, it was indeed a considerable success. After almost four months of more or less openly expressed criticism, the ICRC had obtained Mussolini’s declaration. Given this result, the audience was evidently more than a courtesy call although it fell far short of a proper working meeting, too, but Mussolini had said the right things at the right time. The audience had crowned a week of intensive discussions during which the groundwork for this declaration had been laid. It comes to no surprise that the ICRC members had the feeling that ‘one could do business’ with the Fascists. Burckhardt said two years later in a confidential meeting with Ernst Schürch, the editor-in-chief of the Swiss newspaper Bund that Mussolini was ‘open to rational arguments’, unlike Hitler whom he considered ‘a hysteric’.33 Chenevière (1966: p. 257), in his memoirs, speaking for all four ICRC members, had the impression of having met ‘“a man” and not just the daunting master of Italy or even the man who coveted an entire empire’. Too happy with the soothing, even enchanting, words of the Duce and fascinated by the person himself, the ICRC delegation did not wonder for one moment why the words in Rome so manifestly did not match the deeds in the field. They failed completely to perceive Mussolini’s duplicity and opportunism hidden behind his acting skills. This study has already examined in the previous chapter how Mussolini, at each major bombing, had perfectly realised what had happened, but consistently covered the actions of his military. Winning the war against Ethiopia had absolute priority from a political and military point of view. Crudely put, a few Red Cross casualties were an acceptable and negligible price to pay, as long as they did not belong to a major power such as the United Kingdom. Had Mussolini not ordered Badoglio just two days before the audience with the ICRC: ‘Regardless of which Red Cross is in Gonder and which flag is pulled out at the last minute, Your Excellency should go straight on; you

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should, however, avoid inflicting any damage on the English Red Cross if it exists’.34 The point here is not so much what we know now, retrospectively, but whether the ICRC leadership in Rome had the necessary information at hand to see the reality behind the words. The answer must be yes because they had so much disturbing and trustworthy information from the field. This should have been sufficient to at least keep a critical distance from Mussolini’s declarations. How could the ICRC already have forgotten his promises of January that the Italian Air Force made a point of respecting the Red Cross emblem and that, despite it, bombings continued for the next two and a half months? This surprising political naïvety was the result of a complex mix of reasons. There was Huber’s fear of doing something wrong and jeopardising the mission’s outcome, maybe even Switzerland’s national interests, as well as his firm wish to abide strictly by judicial standards. There were also the delegation’s political sympathies for Fascist Italy and Mussolini, in particular. Last but not least, Fascist diplomacy presented itself in the best light. Cremonesi had made his own contribution with a skillfully prepared programme. The ICRC had undoubtedly done the right thing by going to see Mussolini, but it entered the lion’s den late, very poorly armed and not prepared to make a stand. Chenevière made a revealing judgement in the concluding remarks of his later account on the audience. Mentioning that three years after this meeting the Second World War had erupted, he (Chenevière 1966: p. 258) commented: ‘We know now how serious were the acts that the dictator I had observed listening so attentively had to answer for.’ The remark shows that he (and most probably the other participants) was convinced that Mussolini was able to listen and learn in 1936 but that he had changed in 1939. It was, in fact, an error. The opposite was true. It was more Chenevière than Mussolini who had changed, but it was easier to blame the Italian dictator for having taken the wrong path than admitting to have misjudged him in 1936. In this vein, Burckhardt and Chenevière distorted in their later accounts not only the reason for the trip to Rome but also the results of the audience with Mussolini. Burckhardt played down retrospectively the central role which the inquiry had in the Rome visit, while Chenevière did not even mention it with one word, saying that the trip was undertaken because of Italian bombings of Red Cross hospitals and the mutual recriminations of the two belligerents.35 With regard to the results, both pretended that the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals had stopped following their intervention at the end of March 1936, though Burckhardt formulated it more cautiously in 1938 when he added that it was admittedly a little bit late in the war. It was still an exaggeration. The ICRC’s intervention had come too late to have any effect in the field. On 1 April, the day the delegation was about to return to Switzerland, the news of Haile Selassie’s final defeat at Maychew reached Rome amidst an

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‘explosion of joy all over Italy’, as Aloisi (1957: p. 365) noted in his diary. Red Cross field hospitals could no longer get in the way of the Italian military because there was a general retreat and the war’s end was only weeks away. The two ICRC members unfairly took credit where it was not due. Burckhardt and Chenevière portrayed the ICRC of 1936 with the eyes of 1944 and thereafter. It was perhaps an ICRC as it should have been but not as it is was. In his 1944 article on the ICRC and the Italo-Ethiopian war, Burckhardt (1944: p. 261) offered yet another interpretation. He presented the meeting with Mussolini as ‘a historical moment for the Red Cross’ because it allowed reaffirming Fascist Italy’s commitment to the cause of the Red Cross from which it risked turning away with incalculable consequences for the period of the Second World War. There is precious little to support such a rather far-fetched theory. Why should Mussolini who was a politician and not an ideologue take such a provocative step? Burckhardt’s interpretation is again not based on facts, but has more to do with his tendency to create legends.36 The audience with Mussolini can hardly be considered a historical moment, given the fact that the numerous victims of Italian bombings had been given such a weak voice.

Progress on the Inquiry? The matter of the inquiry was discussed in great detail in three meetings, two at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the presence of Aloisi and one at the headquarters of the Italian Red Cross. After hours of, at times, delicate negotiations, agreement was found between the two sides on a general outline of the future inquiry. Chenevière said in his report to the Ethiopia Commission that it represented Italian demands which the ICRC judged reasonable and he stressed that the Italians did not want to put forward conditions unacceptable to the delegation. If this was the case, why then were these negotiations so delicate? Like the ICRC which had invested a lot of effort in preparing the inquiry the Italians had done their homework. Three memoranda written to Mussolini give excellent insight into their position and show how far they were ready to go. One contained general remarks on the projected inquiry made the day before the arrival of the ICRC delegation in Rome.37 The other two were Aloisi’s briefing notes on the meetings conducted at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.38 Four issues need to be examined in regard to the aforementioned outline. The first concerned the question of where the inquiry should be conducted. The corner piece of the ICRC’s plan was to make on-the-spot investigations on the Italian and Ethiopian sides by separate teams, but the Italians preferred to limit the inquiry strictly to the study of documents in Geneva. Aloisi argued that it would be difficult to verify misuses of the Red Cross

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emblem because a lot of time had elapsed since they had occurred and because many had left no permanent traces on the ground. In view of the ICRC’s insistence of at least the possibility of on-the-spot visits, Italy agreed to a compromise. The main inquiry would be held in Geneva and if field visits were deemed necessary, they could take place under the condition that the two concerned governments agreed. It was unlikely that this was ever going to happen, but Italy had demonstrated good will to accommodate the ICRC’s request. Aloisi was blunter in his diary in which he (Aloisi 1957: p. 363) confided: ‘I sabotaged the dispatch of the commission to the site by stating that it was preferable to work on the basis of documents in Geneva’. The second point was the most sensitive – the legal implications of the inquiry. Italy was not prepared to make a prior commitment to abide by the inquiry’s conclusions, even if they did not have arbitral value. Aloisi told the ICRC that it would be better to stick strictly to the wording of Article 30 of the Geneva Convention which only said that, once the violation had been established, it was up to the responsible party to put an end to it. In his view there was no need to add ‘interpretative things’ such as prior commitments of the parties.39 Here was a manifest disagreement on a crucial point to the ICRC but Huber did not insist on testing Italy’s real commitment. Instead, the two parties agreed that the planned inquiry should be realised ‘as surely and as quickly as possible’ and that the modalities of the adoption of the Commission’s report should be approved beforehand by the two governments.40 Postponing the solution of this important issue was an elegant way to avoid unpleasant discussions. The third point related to the cost of the inquiry – a subject which exposed the true feelings of the Italians. Ethiopia had informed the ICRC three times during the month of February about its reservations on the significant cost of the inquiry. Each telegram was promptly intercepted by Italy. The last one of 27 February, in which Ethiopia confirmed its incapacity to bear the cost, made its way even into the weekly briefing notes to Mussolini on 7 March. Aloisi took advantage of this privileged information and informed the ICRC delegation during their first meeting that the considerable cost of the inquiry had to be shared equally between the two states and if Ethiopia did not take its share, the inquiry would not materialise. To this he added in his memorandum the highly revealing comment: ‘As far as I knew Ethiopia had made some reservations on this point.’41 Huber and his colleagues sympathised with the idea of sharing the cost of the inquiry, but at the same time they were perfectly aware of Ethiopia’s negative response and must have realised that the Italian stand had killed the inquiry even before it had begun. There is no indication that this worried the delegation because the negotiations continued as if nothing had happened. The fourth point was dictated by military developments on the ground. At the time of the ICRC’s visit to Rome, dramatic events were unfolding on the battlefields. An Ethiopian defeat was now inevitable. Against this back-

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ground the Italians included a paragraph in the outline that the inquiry would be stopped ‘in case of armistice, cease-fire or any other suspension of hostilities’ and that it could be reactivated only upon the consent of both governments.42 In brief, the Italians had a clear strategy during the discussions in Rome. They were not interested in the inquiry but wanted to be seen as cooperating with the ICRC. At the same time they imposed enough reservations and conditions to forestall a quick realisation, if ever it was going to take place. The most delicate aspect of the negotiations was to hide the Fascist government’s real stand from the ICRC and, at the same time, convince the organisation of its good intentions. By the end, they had fully succeeded and Aloisi was very pleased. General agreement on the outline of the inquiry had been reached but the crucial points were still unresolved. Precious time had been gained, giving a free hand to the military in their war against Ethiopia. The ICRC was equally happy with the results and said so, not only to the Italians but also to National Societies in a Circular Letter following the Rome trip. Huber and his colleagues seemed not to have experienced any doubts about Italy’s sincerity, although they must have known that in the very best case it would still take months of negotiations, when there was no time left. The ICRC took the words of the Italians at face value and did not bother to test their real commitment by, for example, insisting more on the legal implications of the inquiry. As with the discussions of the bombings, the ICRC contented itself with registering the Italians’ concerns and wishes. This stopped Geneva from preparing an alternative strategy in case of non-realisation of the inquiry. All eggs were put in one basket. It is probably in situations like this that the political opinions of the ICRC members, discussed in the first Chapter, had their biggest impact and influenced their behaviour in a very subtle way. Convinced about the key role which Italy played in European affairs and lacking critical distance vis-à-vis their hosts, the delegation did not realise that Italy was playing for time and was not negotiating in good faith. The delegation returned to Geneva persuaded that the Fascists were cooperating and that the Ethiopians were the ones dragging their feet. In reality, the leadership of the ICRC had succumbed to the Italian strategy with its passivity and political naïvety playing into Italian hands. The trip to Rome was a turning point. The humanitarian organisation had been surreptitiously sucked into the Italian orbit.

‘Quella Benedetta Neutralità …’ The return from Rome was not followed by a period of calm as Huber had expected. On the contrary, April 1936 was very stressful because of the international controversy arising from the use of poison gas by Italy in the

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war with Ethiopia (see Chapter 6). During these tense days the ICRC’s position on the inquiry also came under scrutiny. The League of Red Cross Societies in Paris brought the mounting criticism to the attention of the ICRC. In a confidential note, given to Max Huber by Paul Draudt, the sister organisation summarised the prevailing mood. National Red Cross Societies complained about the lack of information regarding the progress made in the inquiry and the slow pace with which it was proceeding. Some Societies suspected: ‘The Committee’s reticence in the matter was seen … to reflect the desire not to be committed, and its prudence easily presented as reluctance to take responsibility’.43 Summing up the situation, the League diagnosed an undeniable malaise both in public opinion as well as in parts of the Red Cross. It was not difficult to guess from where this massive criticism came: from the National Societies whose field hospitals had been subjected to Italian bombing raids. The group was led by the Swedish Red Cross. In mid-April, Prince Carl, the President, had asked the ICRC not to remain silent in front of Italy’s open violations of international conventions. He suggested a manifestation of the opinion of the International Red Cross to protest against these violations which endangered future activities of the Red Cross. Such a protest was exactly what the Italians wanted to avoid at all cost. In response to renewed calls for another inquiry, this time by the League of Nations in April 1936, they resorted to a familiar tactic. While affirming their readiness to assist in establishing the truth, Italy’s Undersecretary of State Suvich proposed to the League of Nations to entrust the ICRC with an enlarged inquiry, comprising not only violations of international humanitarian law, but also other relevant treaties regarding the conduct of hostilities. The same Italians, who just one month before had asked the ICRC to strictly limit their inquiry to the Geneva Conventions, wanted to entrust it now with a wider inquiry. The Italians had, at first sight, a good argument. The humanitarian organisation had just concluded a round of negotiations which concerned a part of the enlarged inquiry under discussion at the League of Nations. In order to avoid duplication it made sense to charge the same organisation with the whole task, all the more since it enjoyed, in Suvich’s words, ‘undisputed moral prestige and presented the necessary guarantees of competence and impartiality’.44 The move was, in reality, very shrewd and had the same effect as in January. It demonstrated Italy’s willingness to cooperate with the international community and at the same time tied the ICRC’s hands even though the ICRC had not made up its mind on how to respond. The ICRC was in a dilemma: it was supposed to remain silent despite pressing calls to speak out. The organisation’s first reaction was to blame Ethiopia for lack of progress in the inquiry. The ICRC argued that the Ethiopian government had not responded to repeated calls to name a plenipotentiary with whom the matter could have been discussed. Indeed, shortly after the Rome meet-

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ing, a message to this effect was sent to Addis Abeba but no response was received. It was followed a few weeks later by yet another message, which – in supreme misjudgement of the military situation – arrived on the day after Haile Selassie had fled Addis Abeba. In July 1936, the ICRC rejected all responsibility for the failure of the inquiry in a letter to the British and Dutch National Societies, which had openly questioned the ICRC’s commitment. The ICRC charged that ‘the Ethiopian government met our repeated representations with total and unbroken silence’.45 However, the ICRC realised that its position had to be justified on a more fundamental level. Huber took it upon himself to write an article putting the controversy in the context of the Red Cross ideals. It was submitted to some of his colleagues for comments and later published in the International Red Cross Review under the title ‘Croix-Rouge et neutralité’. The ICRC President made two main points. First, in order to carry out its mandate of humanitarian assistance, the Red Cross needed to maintain relations of confidence with all parties involved. This required, at times, restraint which might astonish at first sight but which was dictated by the principles of neutrality and impartiality. This was particularly true for the ICRC, which acted as a neutral intermediary in times of international and civil wars as well as internal troubles. Secondly, given the Red Cross’s special relationship with the Geneva Conventions, it also had to be concerned about their faithful application. In this regard, the ICRC was the competent organisation to receive complaints about violations, but it ‘has no intention whatsoever of sitting in judgment. It is not a court of justice …’. If requested to act on such matters, the ICRC had to do it prudently. ‘This is not due to indifference or to lack of courage but is a result of the responsibilities devolving on an organisation which must always be in a position to afford all parties the guarantee of as unbiased a judgment as possible and of action free from every suspicion of partiality, political or other’.46 Should the ICRC be called upon to state the facts of alleged violations, i.e., under the form of an inquiry, it had to be carried out in ‘absolute discretion’ and in conditions of ‘objectivity and impartiality’. ICRC records show no reaction to the publication of Huber’s article. It had probably to do with the fact that many important English-speaking Red Cross Societies did not read it because it was originally written in French. More importantly perhaps, it did not address the real issue. Huber had described a Red Cross which operated in a world where neutrality, impartiality, objectivity and good faith were generally respected values. In such a world, the ICRC being above the parties, in somewhat Olympic serenity, had its place, but it was not the world in which Mussolini’s war against Ethiopia was fought. The real question was how to react to a party which paid only lip service to these values and did not apply them in reality. The ICRC’s role was not to remain at all cost above the parties, but to take side with those who had suffered from violations. Neutrality and impartiality were not goals

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in themselves, but merely means to achieve better respect for persons under the protection of the Red Cross. In such cases as the deliberate bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, Huber’s discourse sounded strangely out of touch with reality. Blaming Ethiopia for lack of progress in the inquiry and taking a rather detached view, founded in Red Cross reasoning, obviously did not solve the ICRC’s dilemma. The ICRC knew that Suvich’s offer for an enlarged inquiry was difficult to realise, considering that not even the limited inquiry as discussed in Rome had taken place. However, the organisation did not want to shut the door if such an inquiry was desired. This was said both to Italy and the League of Nations. While the League did not even bother to answer, the Italian response came swiftly. Suvich took note of the ICRC’s statement that the inquiry under Article 30 of the Geneva Convention had not been realised and offered Italy’s continued cooperation in drawing the lessons from the war. Behind this offer was much more than an act of good will, as Chenevière naïvely assumed when the matter was discussed in the Ethiopia Commission. Cremonesi made this abundantly clear when he commented to Vinci on Suvich’s letter that the Italian government was exploring whether the ICRC was interested in a kind of collaboration, with tangible second thoughts: ‘This offers indisputable advantages, it avoids the publication of documents and establishes a common line of action …’.47 The Italian suggestion was welcomed by the ICRC, particularly since the ICRC had already been thinking of what use to make of the Red Cross’ experiences in the recent war. The Ethiopia Commission, under Favre’s and Chenevière’s lead, agreed to take up the Italian proposal of collaboration, though with the addition that ‘the question of responsibilities’ should not be completely ignored. It was easier said than done. Drawing only the lessons from the war was hardly satisfactory to the Swedish Red Cross and other National Societies, while any form of criticism for past actions was unacceptable to the victorious Italians. After numerous discussions lasting for several weeks, the organisation finally decided to follow a double-track strategy intended to satisfy both camps: on the one hand, take stock of the lessons learnt in view of revising the Geneva Conventions and on the other, prepare what Huber termed ‘a white and red book of the International Committee’ regarding the question of what had happened during the war. As a first step, the ICRC informed Galeazzo Ciano, who had been propelled from commander of a bombing squadron to Minister of Foreign Affairs that it would not be possible to undertake the enlarged inquiry because the League of Nations had not responded on the matter. At the same time, the ICRC asked for Italian assistance to take advantage of its experiences in the war to the benefit of future Red Cross work. Finally, Italy was informed that the ICRC intended to make use of its own documents as seemed fit in the best interest of the Red Cross and in line with the principle of impartiality.

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This latter point made the alarm bells ring in Rome once more. Although the ICRC did not mean it as a threat, Vinci took it as such, skeptical as he was of the humanitarian organisation despite his professions of friendship. He recommended to Cremonesi to accept immediately the ICRC’s request so as ‘to avoid the publication of the dossiers which the ICRC detained’ and made an interesting proviso: ‘I would like to add that I am always concerned, despite my excellent relationship with the ICRC that it might be influenced by our adversaries out of regard for its damned neutrality, which is its constant concern’.48 Needless to say, Ciano, who had first hand experience about what had really happened in Ethiopia, promised full cooperation with any initiative which contributed to improving the Geneva Conventions. The strategy adopted by the ICRC to deal with the contradicting interests perhaps made sense at first sight, but was it wise and possible to realise? Were neutrality and the interest of the victims best served?

The White Book on the War – between a Cover-up and a Contribution to Peace Work on the ‘white and red book’ started in July 1936. Junod, who had just returned from Ethiopia, was asked to compile a comprehensive report on matters relating to the two Geneva Conventions as well as on methods of warfare employed by the belligerents. By mid-August he had finished (just before taking up the new assignment in the Spanish Civil War, which had erupted in the meantime and required the ICRC’s urgent attention). The responsibility for elaborating the White Book, as it now became known, was given to Vice-President Logoz. Junod’s report was examined first by the Ethiopia Commission and then in greater detail by the Legal Commission. On this occasion, Logoz outlined the planned content of the document. The introduction should explain what the ICRC had concretely done in view of the two inquiries and why they had not materialised. This was to be followed by Junod’s compilation, supported by different appendices, such as his report on the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross. In order to get as complete a picture as possible, Logoz proposed that the relevant National Societies and Italy should be given the opportunity to make comments before publication. Once more it was underlined that the White Book was supposed to cover the full range of issues which had been so sensitive during the war. The ICRC intended to lay its cards on the table. No sooner had work started in earnest, the first difficulties arose. The principle of equality of treatment demanded that Ethiopia should also be given an opportunity to comment, but given the fact that it had ceased to exist formally, this proved to be difficult. In addition, the part of Junod’s compilation dealing with methods of warfare appeared to Huber less con-

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vincing than the rest. As a consequence, the ICRC resolved to narrow down the original concept of the White Book to matters of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick, and, in particular, to the misuse of the emblem and the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals. Still, the ICRC reaffirmed its intention to publish the document. At this moment, the ICRC took a curious decision. It wanted to discuss the draft of the White Book in Rome before it was shared with the concerned National Societies. Paul Logoz was chosen for the job. The choice of Logoz suited the Italians who had already suggested the idea privately to him. Logoz had struck them during the Rome visit at the end of March as ‘an authority in the field and well disposed towards us’.49 After having overcome some objections, not least regarding the payment for his stay in Rome – Cremonesi assured Foreign Affairs that the ICRC would cover the cost of the trip entirely – everything was ready for this second ICRC mission to Rome in 1936. There is not one single document about this trip in the ICRC archives. Logoz apparently reported only orally to Huber, apart from a brief mention – three lines in the corresponding minutes – in an ICRC plenary session upon his return from Rome. All available information on this visit originates from Italian sources, especially notes of the responsible Foreign Affairs’ official, Tommaso Bertelé. Logoz stayed from 2–8 October in Rome and had three meetings with officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held at the headquarters of the Italian Red Cross. Unlike the trip six months before, the whole mission was shrouded in secrecy and did not go smoothly at all. When appreciating these discussions in Rome, it should be kept in mind that the Italo-Ethiopian war had moved out of the limelight. There were more urgent matters closer to home, such as how to deal with Hitler’s aggressive Germany, and especially the Spanish Civil War. The international community had resigned itself to Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia, the League of Nations had lifted sanctions and Haile Selassie had taken exile in the United Kingdom. Italy had won on all fronts and did not need to bother any more about negative repercussions on its image. Careful diplomatic manoeuvering, as during the war, was no longer required. Logoz felt from the very first moment that the wind had changed. Of the three parts of which the White Book was composed only the introduction was found to be acceptable. Junod’s compilation was considered ‘absolutely arbitrary and inadmissible’, the enclosures – Junod’s own report on Melka Dida and Valentin Schueppler’s on his experience with the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 – were either ‘insufficient’ or could ‘ not be considered as an impartial document’. In the end, the Italians judged the whole White Book as ‘absolutely unacceptable’.50 It was reviewed page by page and Logoz promised to establish a revised draft. Seven days after the meeting the new version was sent back from Geneva to Rome for more comments but

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the Italians were not in a hurry to answer. Only after an urgent reminder, Rome condescended. The new version had met with Italian approval, but was again corrected in three points. In the end, Bertelé thanked Logoz in a personal letter ‘for the wisdom you showed in the new draft’ and ‘for your very active contribution to general reconciliation’.51 Once more it was agreed that these discussions had to be kept confidential. Even Vinci, who inquired from Cremonesi about the results of the Logoz mission, was deliberately kept out of the loop. In a report to his superiors, Bertelé expressed the view that the ICRC had taken into account numerous observations and purged the document of any appearance of a systematic critique of Italy. That Bertelé’s assessment was not exaggerated and that he had fully carried the day becomes apparent when the final version of the White Book is compared with the draft brought to Rome by Logoz. Without entering into the details, the following observations can be made: In general, the ICRC had deleted any remark which contradicted Italy’s official version of events. This particularly concerned all eyewitness reports from the Ethiopian side. When deleting was not possible, damaging allegations were set against the official Italian standpoint, invariably attempting to show that the pilots had good reasons or at least acted in good faith. The result of these modifications was that the final version appeared sanitised, non-committal and showing understanding towards Italy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the section dealing with the bombing incidents – with the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross providing the most illustrative and puzzling example. Logoz had told the Italians in Rome that Junod was inclined to consider the raid intentional. In the first version of the White Book, Junod had said so, expressing the view that the Swedes had done nothing wrong. ‘The only plausible explanation’ with which Junod came up was that it was ‘an error caused by cloudy weather conditions’ and he suggested that moral and material compensation should be paid to the victims of the incident. However, in the final version of the White Book, corrected by the Italians, all this was omitted. The ICRC contented itself with giving a résumé of Junod’s on-the-spot investigation after the raid. This was followed immediately by the Italian explanation that the raid was directed not against the field hospital but Ethiopian soldiers encamped near-by. The ICRC then added that Junod had not been present when the field hospital was hit. Therefore, and in view of the fact that no proper inquiry had been made on the incident, the ICRC concluded that ‘the information presently at its disposal did not allow it to agree or disagree with either of the two accounts’.52 In defence of the ICRC, it must be noted that Junod himself had facilitated Geneva’s submission to the Italians. Over the last months of his mission, Junod grew increasingly weary of the Ethiopian government and people whom he described in colonialist and racist terms, quite typical for the time.53 He had witnessed the crumbling of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, the

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breakdown of law and order and had finally greeted with relief the Italian entry into Addis Abeba as did a large proportion of the foreign community. He was given full support by the Italians in the first few weeks after their arrival and had certainly many occasions to discuss the war with them. This might have led him to a reappraisal of the bombings which found expression in his end of mission report and later in the White Book. At this moment Junod no longer believed that Red Cross field hospitals had been deliberately bombed, not even the Swedish Red Cross in Melka Dida, the bombing of which he explained with the aforementioned ‘regrettable error’. Similary, the bombing of the Adventist Hospital in Dessie was turned from a ‘flagrant’ violation of the Geneva Convention into a simple ‘shooting error’. At this point a brief comment must be made. When Junod wrote his memoirs after the Second World War in his much acclaimed Warrior without Weapons, he returned to his original views on the bombings. The Dessie bombing again became intentional, this time in the words of an eyewitness to whom he lent credence. The Swedish Red Cross field hospital had again been ‘deliberately destroyed’ (Junod 1982: p. 49). While he had readily excused the Italian pilots immediately after the Italo-Ethiopian war, Junod (ibid., p. 54) wrote now of ‘the end of our illusions about the humanity of Italy’s airmen’. Junod had changed his views, most probably under the influence of the post-Second World War judgement of Mussolini and Fascist Italy, as well as perhaps of the realisation that he had too quickly glossed over their violations. At the end of October 1936, the so profoundly modified White Book was sent for comments to the six National Societies which had sent field hospitals to Ethiopia. Once more, this time officially, it was transmitted to Italy and the Italian Red Cross for the same purpose. As could be expected, the Swedish Red Cross, having received in the meantime Junod’s Melka Dida report in full, regretted the ICRC’s decision to drop the report from the publication and asked Geneva to reconsider the decision. The Norwegian Red Cross expressed a similar view, most probably in a show of solidarity with the sister society. To no avail. The ICRC responded that this could not be done without reopening a new round of consultations. Finally, the Swedish Red Cross complied with the ICRC’s request to complete the White Book with extracts of reports from its own eyewitnesses. They were published in the White Book’s appendix together with the responses of the other participating societies. As far as the Italians were concerned, they had had enough occasion to make their voice heard. When they were officially approached for their response to the White Book, they played the game and responded as Bertelé had suggested: ‘in general terms and non-polemic’ – not surprisingly since they had obtained satisfaction on most scores and knew well that they could not expect a full ICRC espousal of their position. The Foreign Ministry’s new Undersecretary of State,

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Giuseppe Bastianini, replied politely that the version of the facts as presented in the White Book could not be taken absolutely and were not based on the results of an inquiry. In reality the ICRC had applied a double standard in regard to both the form and substance of the White Book. While it had deleted whole sections from the British Red Cross’ response dealing with the Italian use of poison gas, the ICRC did not dare to do the same with the Italian answer. The Italians complained that the White Book had not dealt with other important subjects such as the treatment of Italian prisoners in Ethiopian hands and Ethiopian atrocities, despite the fact that the ICRC had specifically excluded these topics. Graver, however, was the fact that the ICRC had allowed Italy to substantially shape the content of the White Book in complete secrecy before it was shown to the others. The reasons why the ICRC did so were quite evident. The organisation was again in a dilemma. It had to acquit itself of the obligation to divulge its documents in one form or another. At the same time, such a publication should not do more harm than good; in particular, it should not revive old controversies, but rather re-establish understanding and harmony, at least in the movement of the Red Cross. It was, in fact, an impossible task. Retrospectively, it is clear that the ICRC had become a prisoner of its own promises. It had made the wrong choice, dictated probably by good intentions, but by very poor political judgement.54 The White Book brought the organisation dangerously close to siding with Italy. Such a publication hardly contributed to peace and reconciliation but rather to a cover-up of Italy’s violations. The better and more honest alternative would have been not to write the White Book at all but, strangely enough, this was not even considered. When the ‘ICRC report on the Italo-Ethiopian conflict and the Red Cross’, as the White Book had been renamed more unassumingly, was finally ready in January 1937, there was no more talk of making it accessible to the general public. On the contrary, it became a very confidential document. Only one single copy was sent to each National Red Cross Society and two to those which had dispatched field hospitals to Ethiopia – the second copy for their government. It was not even given to every ICRC member, but they were told to consult the document at the Secretariat. Under these circumstances the Italian Foreign Ministry, though considering it as a document of incontestable value, dropped earlier plans to make wide use of it. Even the concerned National Societies shelved the report unceremoniously, some undoubtedly with profound bitterness.

Revising the 1929 Convention to Reflect the Experiences of the War The White Book was one part of the double-track strategy which the ICRC had chosen in early July 1936. It was the highly sensitive part, dealing with

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the past. The other, concerned with the future – more promising in the eyes of the ICRC – had to do with taking stock of the lessons learnt in order to improve the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. In fact, the ICRC took this occasion to make the point on all pending legal matters since the last Diplomatic Conference of 1929. The result of this vast effort was Circular Letter No. 328, written by the ICRC’s legal expert Paul des Gouttes. It contained a review of already elaborated Conventions ready for discussion in an upcoming Diplomatic Conference provisionally scheduled for 1937,55 projects of Conventions under examination, as well as an item entitled ‘interpretation, revision and extension of the Geneva Convention of 1929’. The latter is of particular interest to this study since it concerns experiences of the Italo-Ethiopian war. How has the war influenced the Geneva Conventions?

Improving Article 30 on an Inquiry of Violations Article 30 of the 1929 Convention had clearly shown its shortcomings when it was applied for the first time. It was more an outline than an effective article, as the ICRC admitted in 1936. The main problem was that too much was left to the parties to the conflict to settle before the inquiry could actually take place. In October 1937, an expert commission examined the matter in the framework of the general revision of the 1929 Convention. They discussed the proposals of two reputed international lawyers, Åke Hammarskjöld and Dietrich Schindler. Their opinions differed widely. While Hammarskjöld put forward a procedure intended to give a judgement through the Permanent Court of International Justice, Schindler’s less ambitious proposal was limited to a procedure stating the facts as was originally foreseen in Article 30, under the responsibility of the ICRC or a committee established by it. The revision was a very sensitive matter touching upon the sovereignty of States and, not surprisingly, the experts were unable to find common ground. They therefore abstained from making a concrete proposal to improve Article 30, leaving the matter to be decided by the next Diplomatic Conference. Instead, they contented themselves with listing a number of principles under which such an inquiry should take place. These included, amongst other that a permanent body, established in advance, should be entrusted with its realisation; that the procedure should be started as quickly as possible and quasi automatically. Six out of the seven principles were adopted by the legal commission of the sixteenth International Red Cross Conference in London in 1938. It is interesting to note that the Italian delegate, Senator Giuseppe de Michelis, made a plea during these discussions for keeping Article 30 as it was, no doubt because it had served Fascist Italy so well during the Italo-Ethiopian war. Continuing in the same line, he expressed the wish that, if the Article should nevertheless be modified, the ICRC should be the competent body to be put in charge for mak-

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ing inquiries. Upon the specific request of the Italian delegation, the matter was put to a vote and adopted unanimously. The Diplomatic Conference of 1949 disregarded these painfully elaborated principles and no progress was made at all to mend the serious flaws of Article 30 of the 1929 Convention. After lengthy discussions, it was decided to leave the Article practically unchanged and to include it as a common Article into all four Geneva Conventions.56

Reprisals against the Red Cross Reprisals against Red Cross staff and patients under their care were already generally prohibited by the Geneva Convention of 1929 as a consequence of the principle of respect to which they were entitled. However, the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in December 1935, as well as the subsequent discussions with the Italians, provided the background against which the ICRC proposed that a specific clause prohibiting reprisals against personnel and material protected under the Convention should be introduced. The matter was approved by the aforementioned expert commission in 1937. The Diplomatic Conference of 1949 took it up and included in Article 46 of the first Geneva Convention such a general and absolute prohibition of reprisals against ‘the wounded, sick, personnel, buildings or equipment protected by the Convention’. A similar prohibition was also included in the other three Conventions.57

Protection of Medical Aircraft Even if the ICRC did not directly raise in its Circular Letter the question of protection of aircraft marked with the distinctive emblem, it was a matter to be given some thought in view of the ignominious fate of the Red Cross Fokker on the Korem airfield. Brown already sought Geneva’s opinion after the unsuccessful Italian attempt to destroy the Red Cross Fokker at the airfield of Dessie in February 1936. There was no immediate response, but Huber reacted strongly after he had received Junod’s report on the incident in Dessie. He commented that it was an extraordinary naïvety to leave a Red Cross plane on an airfield which was also used by military planes. Such an airfield was a military objective and even giant Red Crosses, as proposed by Brown, could not protect the plane legally. Junod drew from this the conclusion that camouflage was the only solution. This is what he did early in the morning of that fateful March day. After the bombing had started, he felt instinctively that camouflage was wrong and hurried to remove the branches at the first opportunity. Upon his return to Geneva in June 1936, Junod did not further question Huber’s view, despite the fact that he must not have been at ease with it. The Italians, interestingly, had the opposite view. For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the plane was not destroyed

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because it was on the same airfield as the Ethiopian Potez, but precisely because it was camouflaged. It was certainly a more logical view than the ICRC’s opinion because it implied that a plane with Red Cross markings had to be respected under any circumstances. It is not surprising that the matter had not been properly addressed in 1929. Using aircraft for medical purposes was a novelty and no plans had been made for detailed provisions in the Convention. Upon the insistence of France and the United Kingdom, the matter was settled summarily in Article 18 containing a general reference to the protection of such aircraft. Still, in Paul des Gouttes’ view, it was the main innovation of the 1929 Convention. In order to address the obvious shortcomings, the International Red Cross Conference in Brussels adopted, in 1930, the mentioned draft of an additional Convention to adapt the principles of the Geneva Convention to air warfare. It was handed over in 1931 to the Swiss Federal Council for discussion during the next Diplomatic Conference. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 did not change matters substantially and laid down very restrictive rules for the use of medical aircraft in Article 36 of the first Convention. Given the fear of misuse, the delegates of the Diplomatic Conference resolved that medical aircraft are protected under the Conventions only upon prior agreement between the parties to the conflict; otherwise, they operate at their own risk and peril (Pictet 1995: p. 288).58

To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen Circular Letter No. 328 also took up the question of whether a Red Cross field hospital should be camouflaged in front line areas. In this regard it is interesting to recall the experiences of the war. After the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Melka Dida, a heated debate took place at the Ethiopian Red Cross in Addis Abeba. The Swedes wanted to work camouflaged, while the ICRC delegates feared that this would constitute a dangerous precedent for the movement, an abdication of the Red Cross as Brown wrote to Geneva. The matter was only temporarily settled by the personal intervention of Prince Carl, the Swedish Red Cross President, who urged the Swedes to continue using the emblem. Brown was supported by John Melly of the British Red Cross field hospital, who banked on his large Red Cross flags and the belief that the first bombings were made by mistake. Very quickly it became apparent that no single policy could be upheld. Each field hospital did as it deemed fit. There was a red thread, however. Quite naturally, the hospitals operating close to or on the frontlines resorted to camouflage. This was particularly the case for the Ethiopian Red Cross medical units on the northern front. Even the Swedes did so, once they had redeployed to the field – to their benefit as the bombing of Ellot demonstrated (see Appendix 5). The field hos-

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pitals based well behind the frontlines such as the ones of the Dutch in Dessie, of the Egyptians and of the Finns in the Ogaden, continued to fly the flag to mark their stations. When this vital question was debated in Addis Abeba, Brown turned to Geneva for advice. The Ethiopia Commission found consensus from the onset. From the legal point of view, the answer was clear: ‘The use of the distinctive emblem is a privilege, a right, not an obligation. In renouncing it, it goes without saying the field units deprive themselves of the legal protection foreseen by the Geneva Convention.’59 The question was not really new for the ICRC, because there was a precedent from the First World War when British hospital ships had preferred at some point not to use the Red Cross signs for fear of being torpedoed. In line with this reasoning, the ICRC reminded its delegate that it was not the ICRC who should give advice or even instructions to the concerned National Societies, but it was up to them to decide whether to use the emblem or not. Such an answer was not of much help and could hardly satisfy Brown, who considered that the ICRC had to show more commitment. At the first opportunity, he went against Geneva’s prudent stand and told the concerned field hospitals to fly the Red Cross flag. His recommendation did not really change the minds of the directors of the field hospitals but it just added to Brown’s and Geneva’s irritation with each other. By the end of March 1936, Junod realised that the ICRC delegation had chosen the wrong approach. He noticed that north of Dessie it was impossible to find a flying Red Cross flag. All had concealed their presence: ‘Indeed it made sense, and we should have thought earlier of camouflaging our field hospitals on the front. The presence of a field hospital always signals that a group of soldiers is nearby and gives the enemy information on the adversary’s position’.60 It was an important lesson learnt, but at what a price! Junod’s conclusion coincided with a remark made already during the war by Vice-President Georges Patry, who was well connected to the Swiss army’s medical service. He mentioned that the medical service had opted for camouflage in order to be protected from air strikes. The whole matter was followed-up when the ICRC officially inquired in 1937 what the Swiss army’s position was on the subject. The response fully confirmed the Ethiopian experience. The Service de l’état-major général said that camouflage was preferable whenever the Red Cross sign indicated the presence of combat troops. The respective medical services had, as a consequence, the same obligation to conceal themselves as the troops. The Swiss army’s medical service agreed and added that this meant practically that Red Cross formations had to be camouflaged if they were operating at the level of the regiment or the division. Particular attention was paid to the question of the distance separating a Red Cross installation from a military objective. The Swiss Air Force felt that they should be at least 1.5 km apart; meanwhile,

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the Italian Air Force, less demanding and more experienced, recommended at least 1 km. When the revision of the Geneva Convention was debated in 1937, special attention was given to the issue of camouflage of Red Cross medical units. Some felt that the Convention needed to be more specific, but the Commission finally discarded it. The experts expressed the view that the Convention should not be overloaded with technical details and that such decisions had to be left to the military authorities. Thus, the question of camouflage was not taken up formally at the sixteenth International Red Cross Conference of 1938 in London. As was seen at the example of the Swiss army’s medical service, camouflage was standard procedure in 1936. The question arises why the Red Cross did not take this into account in the Italo-Ethiopian war and why it had to undergo such a painful learning process. There are two answers. First, the Ethiopian army had no modern medical service. The Red Cross had to fill the gap and was sucked into a role for which it was neither prepared nor properly mandated. The task was appealing because it was classical Solferino work, but the Red Cross did not sufficiently realise that the military circumstances had completely changed. They had only their faith in the emblem and their motivation. It was terribly insufficient. Secondly, the Red Cross’ role, as an auxiliary to the authorities, was not to be in the trenches but at the rear. As a consequence, information-sharing between the military and the Red Cross on such issues as camouflage – considered military matters – rarely took place. An occasion like the Italo-Ethiopian war forced the Red Cross to seek closer contacts with the military, but it was too late for the people in the field. While Brown was engaged in his dispute with Geneva, Junod, more practically minded, concentrated on a matter which seemed crucial to him: the size of the flags indicating a Red Cross presence on the ground. Perhaps they were not big enough and had not caught the Italian pilots’ attention? Junod’s idea was simple. A pilot should not have to look out for a Red Cross sign, on the contrary, the Red Cross sign should be large enough to catch the pilot’s eye. This was the case only for the British, the Dutch and particularly the Norwegian field hospitals, which displayed the record size flag of 18 by 18 m. Junod suggested that visibility tests of the Red Cross signs on the ground should be made. Subsequently, three such tests were made, one by Junod in Addis Abeba, the others in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, with the assistance of the respective Air Forces. Their results are not easy to interpret because all employed different sizes of flags, but they have one point in common. At the standard bombing level used by the Italian Air Force, i.e., between 1,000 and 2,000 m above ground, the Red Cross signs, the smallest of which measured 5 by 5 m, were still visible. The tests also confirmed that normal-size emblems on a truck disappeared at above 200 m and a larger one-metre flag displayed on a plane could not be

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seen above 400 to 500 m. Junod curiously abstained from interpreting the findings, but they corroborated what we already know: the signs used in the war could have been bigger, but they were big enough to allow detection by the Italian planes. In fact, even the flags of the Swedish Red Cross at Melka Dida, which Junod judged to be too small, were easily identified by the Italians. Junod’s later suggestion to regulate the size of the flags was discussed in the aforementioned attempt to revise the Geneva Convention in 1937. The relevant Commission found, however that it was too complicated to find agreement on such a technicality and abandoned the idea altogether. This discussion leads to a general and perhaps evident point, but one, which is important to recall in the light of the experiences of the Red Cross during the Italo-Ethiopian war. Technical answers and detailed legal provisions do not provide the key to the protection of the Red Cross in times of war. What counts is the political will to make the Red Cross idea work. Fascist Italy lacked precisely that political will and this was the real problem. In the absence of political will, there remains only one other argument to ensure the protection of the Red Cross – the capacity for an adversary to retaliate. Edmond Boissier,61 a long serving ICRC member, had understood this, as can be seen in a pertinent remark made in a letter to his colleague, Paul Logoz, shortly after the war. Boissier felt that one had to be careful not to give too much importance to the experiences of ‘exotic wars’ such as the Italo-Ethiopian conflict. ‘I imagine that in a European war the Italian Air Force, for example, would act with greater circumspection towards Red Cross units than it does in Africa, for it would know that the enemy could also bomb Italian field hospitals from the air and that reprisals would have to be feared, which was not the case in Abyssinia.’62

Sidney Brown, another Casualty of the War It was clear from the beginning that Brown was not expected to stay in Ethiopia for the whole period of the war. Geneva’s intention was that the secretary of the ICRC would introduce Junod, who was new to the Red Cross, get a first-hand impression of what was going on and return to his job at headquarters. Given the meagre financial resources of the ICRC, there was no question of employing additional staff – even temporarily. Brown himself expected to be back in Geneva by January 1936, but events in Ethiopia delayed his departure for several months and changed his life more profoundly than he ever imagined (Figure 4.1). Upon their arrival in Ethiopia, Brown and Junod were immediately drawn into the inexperienced and unprepared Ethiopian Red Cross. Although not at all in line with his mission instructions, Brown became

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Figure 4.1 Sidney H. Brown in front of the Red Cross plane in Addis Abeba. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 7)

deeply involved in the management of the Society. It was a job to his liking, giving him the opportunity to live the Red Cross ideals which he thought he embodied in a certain way. Despite the continuous stress weighing heavily on him, he was happy with what he was doing and told Geneva that for the first time in his Red Cross career he felt he was cooperating with something positive. At the same time, tensions with Geneva overshadowed the relationship and developed into a full-blown conflict in a very short time. There were many subjects of disagreement: Geneva accused Brown of not doing enough to investigate the misuse of the emblem, in particular, in the town of Harar; he was also criticised for defending his own line in the question of camouflage of the field hospitals without taking into account the instructions from Geneva. Brown was suspected to be behind indiscretions leaked to the inter-

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national press which enraged the ICRC (although they were more connected with the Addis Abeba telegraph office than Brown’s own doing). More worrying for Geneva was Brown’s involvement in the Ethiopian Red Cross. The ICRC resented that he behaved at times more as a representative of the Ethiopian Red Cross than as a delegate of the Committee, signing or cosigning protest telegrams on behalf of the Ethiopian Red Cross to the embarrassment of the ICRC and to the anger of the sensitive Italians. In early 1936, the Ethiopia Commission, pushed by Chenevière, feared that Brown had lost his objectivity and neutrality and that the delegation, including Junod with his key role in the medical field and his risky travels, had assumed too big a responsibility. It could become a liability for the ICRC. As far as Brown was concerned, the ICRC did not take the bombings of the various Red Cross field hospitals seriously enough and had too easily accepted the Italian explanations. For him, the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross in Melka Dida was the turning point. In view of continued bombings of Red Cross targets, he implored Geneva to ‘defend the interests of the Red Cross with a little bit more vehemence’.63 At the end of his mission, he was convinced that the Italians had taken the Red Cross ‘as targets of their bombing operations wherever they could find them’ and he painted a general picture of doom and gloom. ‘There is no longer any room for caritas inter arma, this is total war, with no distinction whatsoever between the national armed forces and the civilian population, and as for the poor Red Cross, it is quite naturally swept up in the tide …’64 This was not at all how Geneva understood the situation. Fearing that this whole matter would get completely out of hand, the ICRC decided shortly before the mission to Rome to recall Brown. The decision was supported by his mother, Jenny, who was worried about the health of her son. At the same time, Geneva asked Junod to reduce his engagement in the medical field and to take over Brown’s ICRC tasks in the Ethiopian capital. It must, however, be emphasised that although there were serious professional disagreements between Brown and the ICRC, including long-standing personal incompatibilities between him and some members, this did not mean that Geneva intended to dismiss Brown from the job. Huber needed him again in Geneva. The ICRC mission to Rome changed this plan abruptly. On 30 March 1936, Chenevière called Geneva from Rome and asked them to send an urgent telegram to Brown to return to Geneva immediately without making the planned stopovers on the way. Junod was informed later in a letter that a recent and precise fact had happened. What was it? Once more, there is no trace of this crucial moment in the ICRC archives. All relevant documents have been carefully removed. The primary sources for this section are again documents from Italian archives as well as a few, sometimes cryptic notes from the ICRC.65

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What happened in Rome was the following: Huber and his colleagues in Rome were shown a letter addressed to Brown in Addis Abeba, written by a Swiss friend of his, Walter Bosshard. It was shocking news. Bosshard thanked Brown for the recent correspondence, in particular ‘report n. 6’. He expressed his satisfaction ‘for your perseverance and determination to continue the fight against “Mister Mussolini”. I really feared that you might grow tired of this political campaign because of the mess in Ethiopia and that you might become somewhat indifferent to the “fascist aggression” or even, in the long run, one of its supporters’. At the end of the letter, Bosshard advised Brown to remain diplomatic in his dealings with the ICRC because ‘I always fear that these swine (Schweine) might give you a hard time’.66 How did the Italians get hold of this compromising document? At this point, this study turns into a story which could not have been better imagined in a spy thriller and allows a glimpse into the hidden methods of Italian warfare. Badoglio explained how they found the letter and why they had only copied it instead of photographing it. Airmail at the time was delivered from Europe to Djibouti via aircraft which had to make a number of stopovers for refueling. One of them was Asmara, the capital of Italian Eritrea. The short break was used by the Italian officials to search the mailbag and in the process they encountered the letter. Given the very short time available, the Intelligence Office translated the text on the spot. The original was then forwarded as if nothing had happened.67 Huber and his colleagues must have been deeply embarrassed by this document. Brown had permitted himself a grave breach of confidence by passing visibly one of his reports, No. 6, written on 9 January 1936 – and perhaps other documents as Bosshard’s letter suggested – to a private person animated by deep anti-Fascist sentiments. This was the reason why they decided that drastic measures needed to be taken against Brown and it explains why he was ordered to return to Geneva immediately. Upon his return to Geneva at the end of April, Brown had a day-long debriefing before the Ethiopian Commission. On the same day he was informed by Carl Jacob Burckhardt, a family friend of the Browns that the ICRC wished to terminate his contract. Most probably in view of his merits in the Red Cross and in consideration of his family background, he was offered the possibility of resigning from the job. Brown requested another meeting with Logoz and Burckhardt for the next day, 30 April, in which he informed them that he had already considered leaving the ICRC on his own, given the profound differences of opinion on the role of the ICRC in the Italo-Ethiopian war. It was yet followed by another meeting on the day after which Brown called later a meeting of the inquisition. On this occasion, VicePresident Favre brought up the subject of Brown’s alleged homosexuality. At this point, a flash back must be made to Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate in Geneva. He was naturally well aware of the revelation made to

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the ICRC during the Rome mission. This gave him a long-expected opportunity to make Brown pay for an aborted deal dating back to the time of Brown’s departure to Ethiopia. Vinci had intended to talk the departing delegate into cooperating with him. As incredible as it sounds, he had engaged a detective ‘with strong influence on Mr Brown, who once had to turn to him for help in a trial regarding some moral questions’.68 The detective’s task was to offer Brown money in exchange for political and military information from Addis Abeba. Vinci, however, promised too much and told Cremonesi that the deal had been concluded before it was done. To his embarrassment, he had to admit later that it had not materialised, blaming Rome for not having sent the money in time before Brown left Geneva.69 Having failed in his original scheme to bribe Brown, the matter had brought Vinci, however, on a path well worth being pursued, his alleged homosexuality. He took the first good opportunity – most probably at the time of the Rome visit or shortly afterwards – to inform the ICRC about Brown’s sexual preferences which, according to Vinci, had landed him in serious trouble on various occasions with the police in Geneva.70 The ICRC, Vice-President Favre in this case, took the matter up with Brown in late April 1936, to Brown’s indignation as he considered it an entirely private affair. Vinci did not know about the dramatic turn of events in regard to Brown until Cremonesi asked him at the end of May to inquire at the ICRC about Brown’s fate. It was not a difficult assignment given his connections in the organisation. Vinci responded to Cremonesi that Brown had been dismissed from the ICRC and that he, Vinci, had contributed to this decision with his information on Brown’s homosexuality. The news about Brown’s dismissal was important to Vinci for another reason. He immediately drew the conclusion that under these circumstances Brown’s critical reports about the Italian warfare in Ethiopia had lost their value. The ICRC could hardly make use of them now, since Italy had proven that Brown had not lived up to the standards set by the ICRC with his partiality and association with Fascist Italy’s adversaries. Vinci had found his chance to take revenge on Brown whom he accused now – although this is highly improbable – of having taken the initiative to collaborate with Italy: ‘We must do our best to crash this shady character who first offers his services to us and then ends up working for somebody else’.71 Brown, more likely, had become the scapegoat for Vinci’s own failure to recruit him. When Brown was informed that the ICRC planned to dismiss him, he had little choice. It was best for him to leave the organisation under the face-saving formula. Too many influential members had taken a position against him. Although Huber hesitated for several days, he finally had to accept the majority’s decision, not least in the interests of the reputation of the ICRC. There is no proof that the Italians used blackmail when Brown

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was dismissed. The evidence against him was so overwhelming, aggravated by the deep disagreements over the attitude of the ICRC towards Italy and influenced to a lesser degree by Brown’s alleged homosexuality that the ICRC had little choice but to do as it did. There is, however, no doubt that the humanitarian organisation would have had to sail in very rough waters if Brown had been kept any longer. Brown’s dismissal was a severe blow for him and in the following months he fell into a deep personal crisis, thinking that he had lost his reason to exist. In the autumn of 1936 he decided to write down his experience of the Ethiopia mission, as if compelled by the ‘psychological need to settle my account with the Red Cross once and for all’, as he wrote many years later to his friend Burckhardt.72 The result was Für das Rote Kreuz in Aethiopien published in early 1939, probably the first book critical of the ICRC written by an insider. In the preface he (Brown 1939: pp. 9 and 11) recalled ‘the unbelievable violations of the Geneva Convention by the Italians’ and criticised the ICRC for its ‘diplomatic silence’, ‘inactivity’ and reluctance ‘to confront even the most obvious outrages committed by the stronger power’. The book itself was largely based on Brown’s reports to the ICRC from Ethiopia without major alterations to the text. In this respect it has to be said that Brown remained more faithful to his opinion than Junod, who substantially changed his views between summer 1936 and the time he wrote his memoirs after the Second World War. Interestingly, Brown did not resist temptation to reproduce Junod’s verbatim reports on the Dessie and Melka Dida bombings despite the fact that they were official documents of the ICRC and not intended for publication, certainly not upon his decision. Had he learnt nothing from the events of 1936 which made him leave the ICRC? When Brown’s book was published, the ICRC read it attentively but intentionally abstained from making any public comment. It was an episode, which had taken place three years before. More urgent matters lay ahead with the outbreak of the Second World War, barely one month away. Nobody had time to look back to the recent past and learn its lessons. This was regrettable because Brown had been substantially right in his assessment of Mussolini’s war against Ethiopia. From the beginning he had put his finger on the weak spot of the ICRC, but he messed matters up with rash judgement and insensitivity to Geneva’s concerns and he finally stumbled over his own shortcomings. In the end, both the ICRC and Brown had lost.

Humanitarian Action and Justice This chapter began with an examination of the practical effects which the Italian bombings of Red Cross field hospitals had in Ethiopia and ended with the discussion of humanitarian politics in Geneva and its diverse consequences on individuals like Brown and Junod. It has reviewed the range of

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measures available to the ICRC to ensure the protection of the emblem and the victims under the care of the Red Cross: notification as a means of preventing incidents and, in case of violations, transmission of complaints; humanitarian diplomacy as well as the most important instrument in the opinion of the actors of the time, an inquiry under Article 30 of the 1929 Convention. In fact, it was for the first time in ICRC history that all these measures had been employed in one single conflict. Substantially, they have remained unchanged until today and form what is now called the doctrine of the ICRC in case of breaches of the Geneva Conventions. This doctrine has been applied in various forms in every conflict since 1936. What has changed is the relative importance of the different measures. Inquiries are no longer considered to be the main instrument of enforcing international humanitarian law, as the developments of Article 30 over the last seven decades demonstrate. Confidential humanitarian diplomacy, complemented by public statements in case of need, have replaced them. In a further shift of emphasis, happening in the last decade of the twentieth century, judicial proceedings against violators of international humanitarian law take an increasingly important place, be it in the form of Special Tribunals or the International Criminal Court. In the Italo-Ethiopian war, legal considerations were the dominating factor of the ICRC’s reasoning, reflecting very much the spirit of the 1920s and early 1930s but perhaps even more the personality of the ICRC President. Huber’s strictly legal thinking has left deep marks on the ICRC. Neutrality and impartiality were the guiding principles. Violations of international humanitarian law would be denounced only if based on an inquiry which guaranteed fairness and objectivity. Nothing less than Iusticia with her blindfold eyes was the standard to be applied. If an observer places himself in this line of legal, maybe more accurately, legalistic reasoning, the position taken by the ICRC during the war made sense. However, the organisation did not take into account that some governments and their leaders may not be interested in abiding by these standards. Mussolini’s war in Ethiopia provided a good case in point, but the ICRC completely overlooked this eventuality. It is, therefore, not surprising that the ICRC, despite the incessant and pressing warnings from the field, was influenced by the stronger and ultimately victorious side. As Ethiopia grew weaker, Italy’s hold over the ICRC increased. It started with the unbalanced coverage given to the two belligerents in regard to publication of their complaints in the International Red Cross Review from Spring 1936 onwards; continued when the ICRC was outmanoeuvred in the negotiations in Rome on the modalities of the inquiry; and culminated finally in the improper and secret role which Fascist Italy played in the drafting of the White Book. The ICRC’s gradual shift in favour of Italy was more a consequence of its desire to apply strictly legal standards than a matter of being pro-Italian. Max Huber, the President, remained a judge throughout the period, but he

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lived so deeply in a world of right and wrong that he did not realise when he was manipulated. The ICRC unwittingly became an instrument of Italian policy, facilitated in a subtle way by its own political sympathies for Mussolini and his regime. Justice as conceived by the ICRC was in favour of Fascist Italy and not of the victims. The discreet bonds which developed between Fascist Italy and the ICRC had benefits reaching well beyond the Italo-Ethiopian war. At the beginning of January 1937, when the White Book was ready for dispatch, two Italian newspapers published news reports on the Spanish Civil War, accusing Marcel Junod of war profiteering and charging him with being partly responsible for the recent execution of some two hundred hostages in Bilbao. Burckhardt expressed the ICRC’s disapproval to Vinci. The Italian Red Cross delegate promptly reminded Cremonesi that the ICRC had shown ‘special regard’ towards Italy and that it was not in the country’s interest that the ICRC adopted a different attitude. Cremonesi who was aware of this matter, had already written to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He expressed the opinion that the allegations against Junod appeared doubtful or lacked in the least political judgement. He requested the authorities to take appropriate action with the Ministry of Press and Propaganda in order to avoid ICRC denials and resentment. There were other, more important occasions where the new relationship bore fruit. The Italian Red Cross supported the ICRC very strongly in November 1936 against an attempt of the League of Red Cross Societies to play a role of its own in the Spanish Civil War, similar to what had happened at the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war. The Italian Red Cross made it known that they preferred the ICRC alone to be in charge of the funds collected for the humanitarian operation in Spain. There were other occasions, too, outside the Red Cross. Carl Jacob Burckhardt, one of the members of the delegation to Rome, noted the positive effects of the ICRCItalian ties during his mission as High Commissioner for Danzig. In a letter to Huber in 1938 he (Stauffer 1991: p. 68) praised the support given to him by the Italians – still well inclined towards him from the time of the war against Ethiopia – in a matter relating to German policies in the port city. A heavy blow, however, was reserved for Cremonesi, the President of the Italian Red Cross, more loyal to the Fascist regime than to the ideals of the organisation which he represented. Upon the orders of his authorities, the National Society had sent three field hospitals and a surgical unit to the Nationalists under General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Barely three months after having been deployed, the first field hospital was bombed by the Republican Air Force in Sigüenza, killing, amongst others, one Italian Red Cross driver. Similar incidents took place over the coming months, reminding Cremonesi of the events during the Italo-Ethiopian war. The situation became so worrisome that he approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suggesting to denounce these incidents to the ICRC and obtain bet-

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ter respect for the Italian Red Cross’ medical installations. Unfortunately, the relevant records do not show what answer he received, but the underlying irony of history cannot escape attention. Less than two years after he had defended so staunchly the Fascist aviation’s attacks on Red Cross field hospitals in Ethiopia, he found himself a victim of similar incidents. Had Iusticia peeked over her blindfold?

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 9, 27 Jan. 1936, enclosure. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 10, 20 Feb. 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 3. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 7, 13 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 2. CICR, CR 210/687, 29 Jan. 1936. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 11, 12 March 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 2. ACS, CRI, c. 71, ‘F’, Suvich to Ministero Colonie, 1 Feb. 1936. The practice of notifying the adversary of the location of hospitals via the ICRC was continued throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). It is nowadays standard procedure. CICR, CR 210/373, 7 Dec. 1935. CICR, 323me Circulaire, 23 Jan. 1936, p. 6. Carl J. Burckhardt (1944: p. 256) repeated in his 1944 account on the ICRC activities in the Italo-Ethiopian war that complaints of both sides were published in the Circular Letters and the Review. This does not correspond to the findings of this study. Burckhardt portrayed an image of an impartial ICRC which did not exist. CICR, PV Séances plénières, 7 Jan. 1936, p. 2. CICR, CR 210/593, Huber to Mussolini, 7 Jan. 1936. ACS, CRI, c. 189/f. 3, Vinci to Cremonesi, 12 Jan. 1936. ASMAE, Archivio di Gabinetto 1923–1943, GAB 15, Appunto per il Capo di Governo, signed Suvich, 10 Jan. 1936, p. 5. Ibid., p. 10. CICR, CR 210/593, Mussolini to Huber, 16 Jan. 1936. ACS, CRI, c. 189/f. 3, Vinci to Cremonesi, 12 Jan. 1936, p. 2. International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and the Sick in Armies in the Field, Geneva, July 27, 1929, Treaty Series No. 36, London, 1931, p. 39. CICR, CR 210/593, Mussolini to Huber, 16 Jan. 1936. CICR, CR 210, Paris, Translation of the speech delivered by Mr Max Huber, 23 Nov. 1936, p. 4. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 11, Brown to ICRC, 12 March 1936, p. 6. ASMAE, Ethiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 146/f. 4, Ministero Affari Esteri to Delegazione Italiana-Ginevra, 14 Feb. 1936 (TVB). ASMAI, Gabinetto archivio segreto, c. 21, Relazioni settimanali a S. E. il Capo del Governo, 8 Feb. 1936. CICR, CR 210/900bis, Bombardements d’ambulances, 13 March 1936, p. 5. ACS, CRI, c. 71/ ‘G’, Vinci to Cremonesi, 28 Feb. 1936, p. 2. Paul Ruegger (1897–1988), international lawyer and diplomat, made his doctoral degree 1917 at the University of Zürich under the direction of Max Huber with whom he remained in contact throughout his life. Ruegger became, in early 1936, at the age of thirty-eight, one of the youngest Swiss ambassadors. He worked from 1943 to 1944 for the ICRC and presided over the organisation from 1948 to 1955.

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27 ACS, CRI, c. 73/11, Cremonesi to Ministro degli Affari Esteri, Pro-memoria relativo all’attività svolta dalla Croce Rossa Italiana in merito all’applicazione della Convenzione di Ginevra nell’recente conflitto Italo-Etiopico, 3 July 1936, p. 6. 28 ACS, CRI, c. 191/f: Rimpatrio ambulanza no. 5, Cremonesi to Foreign Affairs, Conversazione con i Membri del Comitato internazionale del 28 Marzo 1936, 31 March 1936, p. 1. 29 Cremonesi had already alluded to this possibility when he advised the ICRC about the dress code for the Rome meetings. 30 ACS, Segretaria particolare del Duce, Carteggio ordinario 1922–1943, Udienze, B 3123 Marzo 1936/ Aprile 1936, 30 March 1936. The shortest audience lasted five minutes with a Hungarian sculptor on 26 March and one of the longest, sixty-five minutes, with the French Ambassador on the same day. 31 These accounts are: Pompeo Aloisi’s brief and concise notes in his Journal (1957: p. 364; Chenevière’s summary in CICR, CR 210/1026, Résumée fait par M. Chenevière à la Commission d’Ethiopie sur la délégation du CICR à Rome, 6 April 1936; Huber’s few lines in a letter to Prince Carl of Sweden (CICR, CR 210/1131, 27 April 1936, p. 5). The Swiss Federal Archives in Bern (2200 Rom 22 Schachtel 9) mention a report written by Ruegger to Motta of 31 March 1936, specifically on the subject of the ICRC’s visit to Rome, but unfortunately there was no trace of it in the corresponding file. The accounts of Carl J. Burckhardt (1944: pp. 255–72) and Jacques Chenevière (1966: pp. 248–58) were written well after 1936. Chenevière, in particular, wrote a lively piece not devoid of humour. Caroline Moorehead (1999: p. 311) mentions the audience exclusively in relation to the poison gas issue which was only of marginal importance. 32 CICR, PV Séances plénières, 9 April 1936, p. 3. 33 ETH, Nachlass Dr Ernst Schürch, I Nachtrag von Dr Gerhard Schürch, 186.1–11, Gesprächsnotizen 1938–1940, 5 September 1938, pp. 3 and 1. 34 Archivio Angelo Del Boca, Mussolini to Badoglio, 28 March 1936. Special thanks to Angelo Del Boca who has kindly allowed me to use this telegram. 35 Burckhardt’s and Chenevière’s incorrect version was taken up by Huber’s biographer Vogelsanger (1967: pp. 178–80) as well as by Stauffer (1991: p. 67). 36 Stauffer (1991: p. 18) has treated this aspect of Burckhardt’s character in detail. 37 ACS, CRI, c. 71/ ‘G’, Promemoria per sua Eccellenza il Capo del Governo, Inchiesta circa le Convenzioni di Ginevra nella loro applicazione nel presente conflitto italoetiopico, unsigned, 23 March 1936. 38 ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 146, f. 4, Appunto per S. E. il Capo del Governo, unsigned, but most probably written by Aloisi, 26 March 1936 and Appunto per S. E. il Capo del Governo, signed Aloisi, 31 March 1936. 39 Aloisi (1957: p. 363) wrote: ‘3. quant aux résultats de la commission d’enquête, je lui [i.e., Huber] ai dit que nous les considérerons comme une sentence arbitrale;’ This is a manifest error. In reality it should read: ‘nous [ne] les considérerons [pas] …’ This is clear from the discussions as well as from an explicit note in ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di Guerra, c. 146, f. 4, Appunto per S. E. il Capo del Governo, unsigned, 26 March 1936, p. 2, which says: ‘Ho fatto presente al Sig. Huber, il quale ne ha convenuto, che tali conclusioni non [my emphasis] avrebbero potuto avere carattere arbitrale.’ 40 ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di Guerra, c. 146, f. 4, Appunto, signed Aloisi, 31 March 1936 and CICR, CR 210/1026, Modalités envisagées provisoirement pour l’enquête, 30 March 1936. 41 ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di Guerra, c. 146, f. 4, Appunto, unsigned, 26 March 1936, p. 1. 42 CICR, CR 210/1026, Modalités envisagées provisoirement pour l’enquête, 30 March 1936, p. 2.

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43 CICR, CR 210/1126bis, 24 April 1936, pp. 2–3. 44 CICR, CR 210/1201, Suvich to President of the Committee of Thirteen, 30 April 1936. 45 CICR, CR 210/1392, Huber to British Red Cross, 4 Aug. 1936. 46 Max Huber, ‘The Red Cross and Neutrality’, The Red Cross, Quarterly Review, London, July 1936, p. 75, partial translation of the article published in the Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge of May 1936. 47 ACS, CRI, c. 71/ ‘G’, Cremonesi to Vinci, 19 June 1936. 48 ACS, CRI, c. 73/12, Vinci a Cremonesi, 23 July 1936, p. 3. 49 ACS, CRI, c. 191/ ‘S’, Cremonesi to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 29 Sept. 1936. 50 ACS, CRI, c. 191/ ‘S’, Appunto per la Direzione Generale degli Affari Generali, signed Bertelé, 8 Oct. 1936, pp. 3 and 4. 51 ACS, CRI, c. 191/ ‘S’, Bertelé to Logoz, 21 Oct. 1936. 52 CICR, CR 210/1517, Rapport du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge sur le conflit italo-éthiopien et la Croix-Rouge, Décembre 1936, p. 17, 21 Jan. 1937. 53 ‘The League of Nations should never have admitted into its midst such a primitive, divided and ignorant people as the Abyssinians, who are often cruel and barbarous, and born looters … To put it in a nutshell, I would say that, at the beginning of the conflict, Ethiopia was overrated as a nation’ (CICR, CR 210/1424, Notes du Dr Marcel Junod pouvant figurer comme conclusion générale de tous ses rapports, p. 1, 19 Aug. 1936). 54 Quite typically for this attitude, even a person like Paul Logoz showed poor political judgement when he naïvely approached Cremonesi during the Rome trip with a private matter. He asked him whether his daughter Claire, arriving in mid-October in Florence to study Italian, could work benevolently at the local Red Cross chapter. Cremonesi, politically much more sensitive than Logoz, gave immediate instructions to Luigi Mazzucchelli, the President of the Florence chapter. He recommended that Claire Logoz should not be allowed to work at the chapter – ‘I do not think it advisable to use her in this way’ – but to treat her in the best possible way. Although the matter was private in appearance, Cremonesi continued, it had some interest for the Italian Red Cross given the delicate negotiations underway between Italy and the ICRC represented by Logoz (ACS, CRI, c. 191/ ‘S’, Cremonesi to Mazzucchelli, 19 Oct. 1936). 55 The first was a ‘Projet de Convention additionnelle à la Convention de Genève de 1929 et à celle de La Haye de 1907 pour l’adaptation à la guerre aérienne des principes de la Convention de Genève’. This draft Convention had already been completed in 1930. The second was a ‘Projet de Convention concernant la condition et la protection des civils de nationalité ennemie qui se trouvent sur le territoire d’un belligérant ou sur un territoire occupé par lui’, approved in 1934. The Diplomatic Conference was rescheduled for 1940 but was postponed because of the outbreak of the Second World War. It finally took place in 1949. 56 Significant progress was achieved only in 1977 with the Protocols additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Protocol I finally addressed the two crucial points concerning the authority in charge of an inquiry and the automatic procedure. Article 90 provides for what is called today the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission. The task of the fifteen-member independent and permanent body, established in 1991 when twenty contracting states had accepted its competence, is to examine alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions or of the Protocol and facilitate the restoration of respect for them. An inquiry is set into motion automatically through a prior declaration of the High Contracting Parties to recognise the competence of the Commission to inquire into allegations of violations of international humanitarian law in relation to any Party which has accepted the same obligation. Article 90 of Protocol I, though still not perfect, constitutes undoubtedly big progress

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57

58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66

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in legal terms over Article 30 of the 1929 Convention, but it must not be forgotten that it took the international community a long fifty-five years to overcome the shortcomings first experienced in the Italo-Ethiopian war. Several requests for an inquiry were made after 1936, but none of them was realised. Equally, in the ten years of existence of the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission and despite the fact that close to sixty States have recognised its competence, its services have not been used. This is not surprising because it is difficult to see why a belligerent should be prepared in the midst of a war to submit to an inquiry which risks exposing him of having committed a violation of international humanitarian law. Despite all the legal improvements achieved in this matter over the last decades, the basic question remains the same as in 1936. What benefit does an impartial inquiry give to a State which has resorted to illegal means, particularly when the violations are grave, repeated, even ordered or condoned by the highest authorities? The prohibition was reaffirmed in the 1977 Protocol I under Article 20, and the protection was extended to more concisely formulated categories of persons including religious personnel as well as material and equipment. Article 91 introduced the concept of liability to pay compensation in case of violation of the provisions of applicable international humanitarian law. Only Protocol I of 1977 addressed the sensitive issue of the restrictive use of medical aircraft. Article 26.1 stipulates that medical aircraft in so-called contact zones, either ‘physically controlled by friendly forces’ or ‘in and over those areas the physical control of which is not clearly established’ – a situation corresponding to what was the case in Korem on 17 March – can count on effective conventional protection only by prior agreement. There is, however, an important proviso that in the absence of such an agreement, medical aircraft ‘shall nevertheless be respected after they have been recognized as such’. In light of these later legal developments, it appears that Junod’s spontaneous reaction to uncover the Red Cross markings on the plane was right, after all. It was also in conformity with common sense. CICR, CR 210, Dossier rapporté par Junod, Letter signed Lucie Odier to Brown, 8 Feb. 1936, p. 2. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, pp. 7–8. Edmond Boissier (1864–1952) was a member of the ICRC from 1914 to 1939. CICR, Archives personnelles Max Huber, Extrait d’une lettre de M. Ed. Boissier à M. Logoz, 27 June 1936. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 5, 3 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 10. CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 25 March 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 3. Several months after this study was completed, I received a copy of Brown’s resignation letter from the ICRC (dated 3 May 1936). The letter confirms fully the description of the events outlined in this section. ASMAI, Direzione Generale Affari Politici, c. 6, f. 51: Conflitto italo-etiopico (Croce Rossa 1935–1936), Badoglio to Ministero delle Colonie, 10 Feb. 1936. The letter was written in German, but translated by the Italians into Italian. Ibid., Badoglio to Ministero delle Colonie, 20 March 1936. Five days later the Ministry advised Badoglio to make photographs or copies of the original texts of such documents in the future. It was not the only case relevant to Red Cross matters. On another occasion, just a few days later, the Italians found a letter written on 2 April 1936, by Gallagher O’Dowed, a reporter for the Daily Express, addressed to his office in London with pictures of the Harar bombing of 30 March 1936. O’Dowed informed the newspaper that the pictures were probably exclusive and that Brown helped him to go to Harar against the wishes of the Ethiopian authorities,

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under the condition that copies were sent to him at the ICRC in Geneva. The letter with eight negatives was hurriedly removed. The pictures were developed in Asmara and forwarded to Rome. They can be found now in AUSSME, D-1, c. 127/2, Bombardamento Harar, 6 April 1936. ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 1, Vinci to Cremonesi, 25 Oct. 1935. The story was not a simple invention by Vinci. Cremonesi had supported Vinci’s attempt to bribe Brown and had effectively managed to transfer to him 3,000 Italian Lire via the Italian Legation in Geneva for this and other purposes. In Vinci’s financial statement an amount of 100 Lire was paid on 31 October 1935 to a ‘detective Rochat’ (ACS, CRI, c. 192/ ‘D’ (Vinci), Conto corrente spese, 31 Dec. 1935, signed Vinci). Cremonesi later made thinly veiled threats against Vinci for not having informed him properly. ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 9, Vinci to Cremonesi, 8 May 1936. According to research carried out by the Archives d’Etat of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, Brown was not sentenced in the Canton for matters of morality during the period in question. ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 10, Vinci to Cremonesi, 27 May 1936, p. 3. CJB, ungeordnet, letter Brown to Burckhardt, 26 Oct. 1943. Special thanks to Paul Stauffer for having allowed me to use this document.

5 PRISONERS OF WAR: PROPAGANDA PREVAILS OVER REALITY


‘Ca custa lon ca custa’ Inscription (meaning ‘At any cost’) on the Italian-built bridge crossing Dogali River in Eritrea

Charges and Legal Questions The last two chapters examined how the two belligerents treated the Red Cross emblem and how the ICRC reacted to the grave violations committed during the war. While this matter fell under the first subject of international humanitarian law covered by the 1929 Geneva Conventions – wounded and sick soldiers – the present chapter will deal with the second subject: prisoners of war. Once more the subject is highly emotional and controversial, particularly for the Italian side. From the third month of the war, January 1936, the Italian government complained to the League of Nations of ‘unprecedented crimes committed in Ethiopia against Italian prisoners, in violation of all treaty-based and humanitarian rules’.1 Filippo Cremonesi, the President of the Italian Red Cross, amplified his government’s remarks by speaking of a horrifying massacre carried out by the Ethiopian troops against Italian prisoners. The Italian accusations received backing from an unexpected quarter – testimonies from the Ethiopian side. Foreigners in the service of the Ethiopian government, mercenaries and even Red Cross employees supported the Italian charges and contributed towards creating an image of an extremely cruel and savage Ethiopian army. Colonel Theodor E. Konovaloff, the White Russian adviser with Ras Kassa in Tigray, reported that the Ethiopians had killed in cold blood one hundred

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and fifty prisoners after the attack on an Italian column near Dembeguina. A Cuban machine gunner, Alejandro del Valle, with Ras Mulugeta at Amba Aradam, described a massacre of eight thousand surrendered Italians in two hours. Even the ICRC delegates in Ethiopia arrived at similar conclusions. Marcel Junod repeated Konovaloff’s story during his debriefing in Geneva and said that the Ethiopians massacred without pity the prisoners of war. Although his colleague Sidney Brown did not share Junod’s generalisation, he agreed with him that the Ethiopians did not take prisoners, for two different reasons: because they were selling them back to the Italians in line with their tradition and because the Italians preferred to fight to their death for fear of the enemy. Considering such information, even from normally trustworthy sources, the evidence against the Ethiopians appears overwhelming. When examining these charges, it must be emphasised from the outset that treating this subject presents difficulties of three types. First, two different concepts of justice oppose each other, the traditional Ethiopian concept which had developed over several centuries and the modern concept as expressed in the 1929 Convention on Prisoners of War. The two came to a head-on clash in the war between, on the one hand, an Ethiopia whose vast process of modernisation had been cut short and, on the other, Fascist Italy which considered itself the more advanced and superior nation. Secondly, practical difficulties hinder accurate research. Unlike the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, comparatively few in numbers and well documented, alleged incidents involving prisoners of war occurred over a vast theatre of operation. There is simply not enough evidence to enable the historian to check each allegation. More importantly, many of the alleged incidents occurred in the heat of battle, mostly as a result of hand-to-hand fighting. No independent observers were present and retrospectively it is almost impossible to find out what had happened, to separate truth from propaganda and reality from fiction. Therefore this study necessarily will concentrate on those cases for which there is sufficient evidence. Thirdly, nowhere else than here is the lack of Ethiopian sources more felt. Most information originates from the Italian side, in particular interceptions of Ethiopian communications. Although considerable in number, they probably are far from being complete. This analysis will begin with some remarks on the applicable international law. When the clouds of war first appeared in spring and summer 1935, the ICRC gave priority to Ethiopia becoming party to the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick – a condition for the recognition of the establishment of the National Red Cross Society and for qualifying for assistance under the Red Cross. This is what Max Huber wrote to Emperor Haile Selassie in early July 1935. No mention was made about the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. Suzanne Ferrière2 briefly raised the matter in the next ICRC meeting, but Paul des Gouttes argued

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that Ethiopia should not be pushed to sign the Convention on Prisoners of War for the time being, as several countries were party to the Convention on Wounded and Sick without being party to the other.3 Behind the ICRC’s reluctance lay the fear that Ethiopia already had enough difficulties in applying one Convention and that it should not be overburdened with another. This cautious – and retrospectively wrong – approach was quickly overtaken by events. Two days after the outbreak of the war, on 3 October 1935, Huber had to address himself again to the Ethiopians, drawing their attention to the fact that they were not yet party to the Convention on Prisoners of War. He advised them that, if they felt unable to do so, they should envisage at least a declaration of intent inspired by the Convention. It was too late for a response, Ethiopia’s attention was already fully absorbed by the war. The ICRC had missed a chance to obtain full legal coverage for all categories of persons protected under the Geneva Conventions. As a result, while Italy was a signatory to the Convention on Prisoners of War, Ethiopia was not. The African country was bound only by customary law and the specific articles of the Hague Convention and Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907, to which it had adhered a few weeks before the war.4

Prisoners on the Italian Side ‘A Bit of Pizarro Does Not Hurt; With Some People Terror Works Better Than Kindness’ These words, written by Alberto Woctt (Stella 1991: p. 106), an Italian officer serving in Eritrea at the time of the battle of Adwa (1896), reflect the spirit under which colonial expansion operated. In such a context there was no room for sentimentality and weakness, as the same officer noted in his reminiscences. Soon after the Italians set foot ashore at the Red Sea port of Assab in 1882 to found their first colony on African soil, they realised that the local populations did not welcome the benefits of modern civilisation without opposition. Expansion from Massawa to the highlands in 1885 was greeted with stiff resistance, and Ras Alula Engeda, the Ethiopian governor of the region, inflicted the first heavy blow to the advancing Italians in the coastal plain at Dogali in 1887 but the Ethiopians were ultimately unable to stop them from establishing the colony of Eritrea in 1890. Repression became an essential part of Italian colonisation, particularly strong in the first years when the local population opposed colonial rule and land expropriation, exemplified in the revolt of the local governor of Akele Guzai, Bahta Hagos.5

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During this period, the Italians established Eritrea’s main penitentiary on the Red Sea island of Nokra about 50 km east of the port of Massawa. Isolated, without drinking water sources, arid and extremely hot, with temperatures reaching 50° C in the summer months, Nokra was the place of choice to punish criminals and political detainees. Inhuman conditions of detention, ill-treatment and executions were used as means to subdue recalcitrant Eritreans into accepting Italian rule, leaving a trail of tears and blood still remembered in Eritrea. From the second decade of the twentieth century, Nokra was reserved exclusively for political opponents. Up until 1930, when the prison was temporarily closed, several thousand detainees had been incarcerated there. The mortality rate was very high – up to 58 percent of the total number of detainees according to one study (Ottolenghi 1997: p. 174).6 Nokra deserved to be called ‘a filthy and lethal lager’ (Del Boca 1991: p. 233). By the time of Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922, colonial rule was well established in Eritrea, but consolidation of power in Libya called for unprecedented measures of repression, already referred to in Chapter 3. All means were justified even if this meant, in Badoglio’s words (Rochat 1991: p. 61) that ‘the whole population of Cyrenaica should perish’. The population of the Al Jabal al Akhdar region was herded into sixteen concentration camps along the Mediterranean coast, with two camps holding more than twenty thousand people. One camp, at Al ‘Uqaylah, served as punishment camp for rebel prisoners, prominent members of the Senussite community and their families as well as opponents of colonial rule. It was by far the largest prison in the area, covering four square kilometres and housed over ten thousand individuals at some point. Mortality at Al ‘Uqaylah reached very high proportions – up to 52 percent of the male detainees and 12 percent of the women (Ottolenghi 1997: p. 174). In a measure later applied also to Ethiopians, the most important representatives of the local communities were interned in Italy in order to deprive them of their influence and facilitate the establishment of colonial order. By the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war in 1935, Italy, as the latecomer amongst the European nations with colonial possessions, had learnt how to deal with opponents and rebels. Although repression was an integral part of Italian colonisation from the beginning, it became more brutal and systematic with the advent of Fascism in 1922. This resulted in untold human suffering and staggering casualty figures which are difficult for many Italians to accept even nowadays. However, Italian colonialism had its ugly face hidden from the large majority at home and abroad through censorship and skilful propaganda, to which people like Georges Wagnière, a former Swiss Minister to Italy and ICRC member, had entirely succumbed. In his reminiscences Wagnière fully supported Italy’s claim for land in Africa with the argument that the country had given sufficient proof of its ‘human concern’ in its colonial undertakings.

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Orders and Responsibilities The Fascist government assured the outside world that the Italian army strictly observed the relevant laws of war in the conflict with Ethiopia, but a closer look at documents gives a different picture not only in regard to the respect of the Red Cross emblem but also to prisoners of war. Badoglio blatantly ignored these laws when he felt that the situation required or justified it. On 1 March 1936, one Ca.101 belonging to Galeazzo Ciano’s 15th Squadron was shot down by Ethiopian anti-aircraft fire in Tembien. The crew of four had been apparently killed and mutilated, according to first reports reaching the High Command from troops operating in the area. As a result, Badoglio informed Rome that he had ordered, in reprisal, seventy prisoners captured in the area to be executed, including a high ranking Ethiopian commander, Dajjazmach Meshesha Woldie despite the fact that the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War formally forbade such measures. However, it must be added that Badoglio revoked the execution order when he received confirmation shortly afterwards that the killed aircrew had not been mutilated. Graziani, the commander of the Southern Front, was even less concerned about laws of war which his country had agreed to honour. When he and his troops – Italians, Somalis and Libyans – were finally able to launch the decisive battle against the Ethiopian army in the Ogaden in mid-April 1936, they faced stiff resistance for more than two days. After victory was achieved, Graziani sent a summary report to the field commanders in which he indicated the dead and wounded of both sides. While the Italians had suffered more than six hundred and fifty casualties, the Ethiopians had several thousand killed. To this Graziani added the comment: ‘Few prisoners as is custom of Libyan troops’.7 The Libyans under the command of General Guglielmo Nasi were making war without giving quarter to the defeated enemy and Graziani condoned the fact as if it was business as usual. There are numerous other examples of Graziani’s lack of respect for prisoners captured in combat, particularly during the period of guerrilla warfare following the occupation of the Ethiopian capital. Summary executions of prisoners did not only happen on the southern but also on the northern front. In his book about the war, Indro Montanelli (1936: pp. 196–97), the renowned Italian journalist who served as an officer with the Eritrean Askaris, recalled an episode when some of his local troops, after a punitive raid, had remained behind with an Ethiopian prisoner wounded in the leg. When the Askaris joined the unit again they were without the prisoner. Asked about what had happened, they responded that the prisoner was shot, apparently while trying to escape. No further questions were asked by Montanelli and his superior. The executed prisoner was counted as killed in action. It comes as no surprise that under such circumstances prisoners of war, even wounded, were sometimes ill-treated. Before the decisive battles were

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fought on the northern front, the Italian High Command noticed that quite a lot of prisoners refused to give information to the forward units who had captured them while, later on, when they were interrogated in a correct way, they cooperated. As a result the High Command issued strict orders to all units ‘that any act of violence against prisoners, especially wounded prisoners, must be strictly forbidden’.8 These examples show that, contrary to official affirmations, violations of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War have occurred at all levels of the Italian military hierarchy. This recalls the earlier conclusions on the respect of the Red Cross emblem. The Italian military were, beyond doubt, well aware of their obligations under international law but when they had military reasons, even if they were very weak, they went against them in cold blood and without scruples. Special responsibility fell upon the military commanders themselves – and this included Mussolini – who were supposed to give an example to the troops but failed to do so. The commanders sometimes ordered violations of customary and conventional laws of war regarding prisoners and tacitly approved, even encouraged by their inaction the ones committed by the rank and file. Fascism’s cult of violence had also left its deep marks here. In this context it is interesting to note that the Ufficio Croce Rossa, established in Asmara in anticipation of the planned inquiry by the ICRC, had been able to do little for prisoners of war. Although the responsible officer, Giovanni Betteloni, informed Rome that some unspecified measures had been taken in favour of prisoners thanks to their initiative, they had no traceable impact on policy decisions. The task of the Ufficio was essentially propagandistic – to show to the ICRC delegates, if ever their inquiry would take place that Italy strictly applied international norms. Eduardo Borra, Betteloni’s colleague in Asmara, confirmed in an interview with the author that they did not receive a lot of cooperation from the military authorities and were not even allowed to visit Nokra where prisoners of war were permanently detained.

Treatment of Ethiopian Prisoners of War It is difficult to get a clear picture of this subject from the records kept in the Italian archives. All information needs to be collected painstakingly from the individual files of the High Command, the Intendenza, the Royal Carabinieri, the individual army units or other sources. During the research for this study not one overview on prisoners of war was found,9 contrasting strikingly with summaries on almost any other subject. This probably reflects the low priority attached by the Italian military to the matter. Since the ICRC was not allowed to deploy its activities on the Italian side during the war, no information is provided either from this source. Even secondary literature is skimpy.

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During the war two phases can be distinguished with regard to the main northern front. The first phase, lasting from the beginning of the war to about the end of February 1936, was characterised by a casual and improvised handling of matters regarding prisoners of war, both in terms of policy and practical arrangements. This is not really surprising since in the beginning of the war there was considerable uncertainty as to how the campaign was going to develop, especially the time when the High Command was under the responsibility of Marshal Emilio de Bono. Two existing detention centres under the responsibility of the Royal Carabinieri were selected to accommodate prisoners from Ethiopia, one in the southern Eritrean town of Mendefera (called Adi Ugri at the time) and one in Adi Keyh. Mendefera, some 50 km from the border with Ethiopia on the main road to Adwa, received the first group of ten prisoners of war ten days after the start of the hostilities. They were followed in the weeks to come by other detainees such as civilian internees. Only by mid-December 1935, was a provisional concentration camp for detainees from Ethiopia established with forty-two inmates. However, numbers of detainees increased rapidly and the few Carabinieri were quickly overwhelmed, given the fact that they had also normal police duties to fulfil. Conditions in the camp in Mendefera deteriorated promptly. Two and a half months after the first prisoners had arrived, the authorities had to deal with the first serious emergency. In early evening of 31 December 1935, more than one hundred and fifty prisoners from Ethiopia, mainly internees, escaped from the concentration camp, apparently for fear of being executed or sent to Libya. In the ensuing chaos and the mop-up operation, which lasted for several days, nine escapees were killed and twenty re-arrested. The situation was not much better in Adi Keyh, situated on the main road to the Ethiopian town of Adigrat. By mid-February 1936, the responsible officer complained about the considerable number of prisoners of war who were absorbing valuable manpower. It resulted in overcrowding, as well as inadequate sanitary and hygiene conditions with grave consequences. In February 1936, coinciding with the big offensives of the Italian army in northern Ethiopia, it became clear that the arrangements made for prisoners of war were inadequate. Overcrowding of the two provisional concentration camps was one problem, but more inconvenient were the long distances separating them from the army which was operating deep inside northern Ethiopia. On the basis of a proposal of General Fidenzio Dall’Ora, the head of the Intendenza, the High Command reorganised the whole detention system for the remaining part of the war. On a first level, prisoners of war were kept in a mobile camp under the responsibility of the Army Corps who had captured them. They were to be interrogated and could also benefit from initial medical and sanitary measures. From the mobile camps, prisoners were transferred to the next level, the two camps under the Intendenza, located at Mekele and Adwa, where additional interrogation

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had to be carried out by officials of the High Command. Finally, prisoners were brought via the transit camps of Mendefera or Adi Keyh to the permanent concentration camp on the Red Sea island of Nokra. The High Command instructed the various units that maximum attention had to be paid to security measures in order to avoid the repetition of incidents such as the one in Mendefera. They included: barbed wire fences and machine guns ‘carefully placed in order to crush any attempted rebellion or mass escape’; rigorous discipline in the camps; surveillance by trustworthy infiltrators, as well as frequent inspections. In addition, the detention camps were not supposed to contain wooden constructions for security and hygiene reasons. Prisoners had to build their own accommodation with pieces of used tents and branches.10 The main innovation of the new plan was to reopen Nokra. The prison island which had been unused for six years was destined to accommodate long-term detainees. In early February 1936, work was initiated but progress was very slow. Towards the end of March, while construction of installations was still going on, the first prisoners were transferred. At the same time an order was given to increase its capacity to one thousand detainees. Probably in view of the harsh climate on the island, an exception was made to the rule of no wooden constructions. Two barracks had to be built, one for sick Italian military on service and one for fifty sick detainees. As regards the new medical organisation for prisoners of war, detailed instructions were given to each level of the chain. For instance, a concentration camp of an Army Corps had to reserve a section for treatment of about fifty wounded and sick as well as four tents for patients with contagious diseases. Hospitalisation was exceptional and decided on a case-bycase basis by the responsible medical officer. Particular attention had to be paid to disinfection and hygiene measures in order to prevent or contain communicable diseases such as smallpox, cholera and recurrent fever. A prisoner of war was expected to spend twenty-one days between first and second level camps, corresponding to a quarantine period, before being transferred to the permanent detention centre. This was particularly important since the island of Nokra did not have proper medical or surgical facilities because of its isolation. This was the theory. In reality the reorganisation of the detention system had been neglected and came too late. The situation was already out of control. On 24 March 1936, the overcrowded transit camp of Adi Keyh experienced an outbreak of smallpox, a communicable disease probably transmitted by some prisoners of war captured during the battle of Tembien. Despite this outbreak, the authorities decided to transfer a group of prisoners to the not yet finished camp on Nokra. One hundred and fifty detainees, men, women and even children, were crammed onto four lorries and brought to Nokra without supplies in a trip which lasted more than fifty hours. Five died even before they reached the prison island.11 The

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authorities in Massawa, where the prisoners embarked on a boat, noticed the poor condition of the detainees, some of whom were not only sick but also wounded. They informed the local medical authorities, but the latter were apparently not in a position to assist them. The disease promptly spread to the prison island with its inadequate medical facilities. As a result the High Command ordered on 30 March to stop all transfers of prisoners of war with immediate effect. General Dall’Ora excused the incident later with the argument that the whole group of prisoners had been in bad physical shape, either from the time of their capture or because of the conditions of detention in Adi Keyh. In any case, he felt that ‘given the need to evacuate prisoners from the temporary camp, it can be assumed that one could not make subtle distinctions about physical condition’.12 The grim reality differed sharply from the rosy way Dall’Ora described the new detention system.13 Food rations for prisoners of war were not clearly defined for the whole period of the war. One month before the occupation of Addis Abeba the Vice-Governor of Eritrea, General Alfredo Guzzoni, decided that each prisoner of war should be given 500 grams of flour, 15 grams each of tea, sugar and salt per day and once per week two lemons, 200 grams of meat, 60 grams of oil and five grams of red pepper. The High Command disagreed two days later and expressed the view that the rations for prisoners of war should be identical with the ones of political detainees, meaning that rations should include only 500 grams of flour and 16 grams of salt per day.14 There is no information on how the matter was finally settled and how much food actually reached each prisoner. It was probably to their advantage that the war ended quickly and that most were released in the weeks following Badoglio’s occupation of the Ethiopian capital. Finally, the question of the numbers of Ethiopian prisoners of war on the Italian side has to be addressed briefly. Given the fact that tens of thousands of soldiers were fighting and in view of Italian claims that the Ethiopians had suffered several thousand casualties after each major confrontation, one would expect the numbers of Ethiopian prisoners of war to be very high.15 Surprisingly this was not the case at all. At the end of the war, 852 persons were detained in the permanent detention centre on Nokra, amongst whom were prisoners of war and political detainees, including women and children; meanwhile in Somalia there were 729 prisoners.16 To these figures must be added an unknown number of prisoners of war kept in the detention camps of the Army and the Intendenza. Based on indirect information such as the planned size of the detention camps (the camp at Mekele, for example, was to be built for five hundred prisoners), as well as information from the military units after the major battles, it can be assumed that these numbers were more likely to run into the hundreds than the thousands. Thus, the total number of prisoners of war from 3 October 1935 to 5 May 1936, did not amount to more than a few thousand. This is

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an intriguing discovery, indeed. It means that the Italian army, in eight months of war, did not take many more prisoners than the Ethiopian army forty years earlier in one single day at the battle of Adwa, when one thousand nine hundred Italians and eight hundred Eritrean Askaris were captured. In the absence of precise information and pending more research on the matter, this study does not attempt to give reasons for this very low number.17

Unconventional Prisoners of War On 16 February 1936, very early in the morning, Black Shirts of the Division ‘23 Marzo’ encountered a frightened group of people in a cave on Amba Aradam which they had conquered the day before. It was the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 5, led by Maksymiljan Stanisław Belau, a Polish national. With him were his assistant, the co-national Tadeusz Medynski, four Ethiopian Red Cross employees and thirty to thirty-five patients, most of them amputees of an arm or a leg. It had been too late for them to join the retreating Ras Mulugeta because their mules were kept too far away. Instead the group chose to remain in the cave, the same cave in which Schüppler’s field hospital no. 3 had been bombed just a few weeks before. Thanks to a French-speaking Italian soldier with whom the encircled Red Cross people could communicate, they had a narrow escape. The next hours were extremely frightening for the two foreigners. Belau said in his later report to the Ethiopian Red Cross that they were each chained to an Ethiopian and brought, under threats of being executed, to the headquarters of the Division. There they were beaten by Italian officers, thrown to the ground, made to kneel down and were photographed. On this occasion their captors staged what Belau described as the first of several mock executions. It was too much for the Pole who had a breakdown (Figure 5.1). The ‘two European renegades, working for the barbarians’ were brought to the commander of the Division, Filiberto di SavoiaGenova (1938: pp. 54–55). ‘They were brought to me, a black and a white man tied together, of course, a black and a white man in pairs … Looking at those miserable wretches, who were on their knees mumbling prayers, white as sheets, I could not help thinking about our men, victims of those renegades of civilisation; I turned my back to them in spite.’ As of this moment, the two Poles were separated from their Ethiopian assistants. Nothing is known about the latter’s fate nor that of the patients left behind in the cave. The two captured foreigners were brought to Mekele where they were detained for the next three days and interrogated by officials of the High Command. They were transported to Massawa and imprisoned for another six days, together with common criminals, under a strict bread and water ration. Belau became seriously ill with high fever and had to be hospitalised

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Figure 5.1 Stanisław Belau and Tadeusz Medynski of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 5 kneeling in front of their Italian captors, shortly after having been made prisoners on 16 February 1936. (Filiberto di Savoia-Genova, La prima divisione Camicie Nere ‘23 Marzo’, Milano, 1938, p. 56)

in Massawa. While recovering, he was visited by Italian officers who threatened him with a war tribunal and execution unless he agreed to retract his signature from the famous protestation made at the time of the Dessie bombing. As a result of such circumstances and pressure, not in a spontaneous denial as claimed by Italian newspapers, Belau gave in and signed a manifestly false declaration which claimed that no bombs had hit the Dessie hospital during the raid on the town. At the same time, he added that he had been forced to sign the Dessie protestation by Haile Selassie’s Greek physician Iacovos Zervos. The now satisfied Italians put Belau and Medynski on the hospital ship Cesare Battisti which was bound for Italy. In Rome the two were finally released, given some assistance by the Polish

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Embassy and allowed to proceed to Geneva after an odyssey lasting more than three weeks. As soon as Belau arrived in Geneva, he retracted the declaration made in Massawa, saying that he had done so in order to save his life. Brown was the first to understand what had happened to the two Poles. Immediately upon hearing the news of their capture, he reminded Geneva of their status as medical workers under Article 9 of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. The article stipulated that such personnel should not be treated as prisoners of war which was exactly how the Italians categorised them. Not surprisingly, Belau’s retraction in Geneva created considerable confusion at the ICRC. It was fuelled by an intensive Italian campaign to undermine Belau’s credibility, amounting to what would be called today character assassination. He was accused of being a deserter, liar, impostor, thief and an agent of the Soviet Union’s secret service.18 But Brown could not be fooled. He wrote to the ICRC that Belau had succumbed to the Italians out of fear. Although more reserved at first, Junod rallied behind Brown after discussing the case in Addis Abeba with the Italians at the end of the war. In Geneva, the ICRC had extensive interviews with the two Poles and received interesting information about their capture, treatment and the use of poison gas, but the organisation was not sure whom to believe. Italy’s propaganda had fulfilled its purpose, to create sufficient doubts about the credibility of Belau and Medynski. Curiously the ICRC failed to go back to records in its possession of the time of the Dessie bombing. Junod’s report on the incident had described exactly the damage done to the Adventist hospital and would have confirmed that Belau’s new statement in Massawa could not have been accurate. This simple verification would have allowed the ICRC to make a judgement of its own and become more sceptical of Rome’s affirmations but it preferred not to do so. A sober assessment of the case would have been very useful for the Rome visit, taking place a few days after the interviews. While these wider implications of the case completely escaped the ICRC’s attention, the organisation made two specific interventions to the Italian Red Cross on their behalf. Shortly before the Poles arrived in Geneva, the ICRC, pushed by Brown, asked the Italian Red Cross why they had been detained and requested that they should be repatriated to Ethiopia in conformity with the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. Ten days later, after the interview with Medynski in Geneva, the ICRC President informed Cremonesi about the complaints of the two Poles and asked that Italy, in conformity with the Geneva Convention, return their confiscated personal effects and pay their wages for the period during which they were detained. The Italians did not even bother to respond on both matters. Regarding the medicines and medical material found in the cave on Amba Aradam, Badoglio informed Rome that it had been distributed part-

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ly to the frontline units and partly to the Intendenza. This was another violation of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick, Article 12, according to which medical personnel, their belongings and material had to be sent back to the belligerent of origin as soon as the situation permitted. It was left to the ICRC to draw Italy’s attention to this obligation. Although it was too late to restore the material to the Ethiopian Red Cross, orders were issued by the High Command to the units in the field that such captured material had to be returned to its rightful owner. It was not the only legal disposition of which the High Command seemed to be unaware. Badoglio made a revealing comment to Lessona in Rome when he informed him that the two captured Poles were medical workers, indeed: ‘Your Excellency can rest assured that had they been combatants, there would be no need to talk about them now’.19 Mussolini was not animated by nobler sentiments. In supreme disregard for international humanitarian law, he snapped to Badoglio upon hearing that Belau had told the world about the confession extorted from him in Massawa: ‘Those two wretched Poles, who are still alive thanks to our generosity, are now publishing disparaging letters. We should have shot them instead and thrown them into the heap.’20 The case of Belau and Medynski was all the more important since it was not the only one. Other Red Cross workers shared the same fate, in contravention of an obligation under the Geneva Convention. Georges Dassios, the leader of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 2 handed himself over to the Italians at Weldiya in April 1936. He was immediately detained and also put under heavy pressure because he, too, had signed the Ethiopian protestation after the Dessie bombing. He was brought to Asmara and released at the border with Sudan after three months of detention. Equally, the French male nurse, Albert Gingold Duprey, working with his small medical unit at the outskirts of Dessie, was detained by the Italians when they occupied the town in April 1936. He was imprisoned for fifteen days in Dessie and for another forty-five in Asmara. From there he was taken to Italy and expelled to France after the Italians had taken all his money – which was partly given back to him afterwards.

Detention after the Proclamation of the Impero, or How to Deal With Uncooperative Subjects When Badoglio had entered Addis Abeba at the head of his troops on 5 May 1936, the war was not over, as Graziani complained bitterly a few weeks later. In view of pressing appeals for the complete conquest of Ethiopia, Graziani drew Rome’s attention to the fact that the Ethiopian capital was still surrounded by several thousand fighters and that his troops were already involved in daily guerrilla warfare in the Harar region. Military operations on a vast scale needed to be mounted for the rest of

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1936 and the beginning of 1937. They were accomplished with little regard for the Ethiopians. In fact, the whole period of Graziani’s eighteen-month rule stands out in the memory of eyewitnesses for its merciless and cruel repression carried out at all echelons of the military hierarchy. General Guglielmo Nasi’s report on the so-called operazioni di grande polizia carried out in southeastern Ethiopia provides, as an example, the chilling statistics. In nine months, three thousand eight hundred Ethiopians were killed, ‘counted on the ground’ as the report specifically noted; two thousand five hundred were wounded and five thousand had given themselves up without indication as to their fate. A staggering number of six hundred Ethiopians were executed. In total the Ethiopians had sustained 11,900 losses, while the Italians had 1,868 casualties between killed and wounded for this particular cycle of operations.21 Graziani’s detention system for Ethiopian political opponents was based on two pillars. The first was internment in prison camps such as Nokra in Eritrea or more often ‘punishment colonies’ in Italian Somalia such as Obbia, Itala and particularly Danane. The latter had quickly acquired a reputation of being horrific. Danane, situated about 40 km south of Mogadishu on an arid stretch of land on the Indian Ocean coast, was set up as a prisoner of war camp by Graziani at the onset of the Italo-Ethiopian war, but remained practically unused because of the small number of prisoners. At the end of the war, in June 1936, the camp counted only 191 inmates. This was to change drastically after the attempt on Graziani’s life on the stairs of the former palace of Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Abeba on 19 February 1937. The wounded viceroy went into a violent fury. The ensuing repression took the lives of about one thousand persons in the capital – in Graziani’s estimation. In addition, he intended first to tear down old Addis Abeba and put the whole population into a concentration camp until it was rebuilt, but the project was not realised. Instead, his fury was directed against Ethiopians connected with the former regime, whom he considered responsible for the assassination attempt. These people were ‘a stubborn, ignorant and arrogant mob, rife with the decaying tenets of foreign doctrines’.22 They needed to be removed from the city for life and the place of choice was Danane. Over the following months more than one thousand five hundred men, women and children were transferred, mainly by road and under exhausting conditions, to the Somali detention centre. At the end of 1937 it was filled to capacity with two thousand five hundred people. Not surprisingly, this large influx created huge problems for the resource-stricken prison administration. There are no comprehensive figures of precisely how many people died during these months, but Italian documents found in the Graziani papers allow a glimpse of the harsh reality. In less than one month, from 22 June to18 July 1937, twenty-eight people succumbed, more than half of them of ‘heart problems’. This cause of death is very surprising

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because most were not old people at all, in flagrant contradiction to what a report on the death reasons alleged. They were men and women between twenty and forty-five years.23 Probably more responsible for the high death rate were the conditions of detention, inadequate food and medical facilities. Though theoretically individual food rations were supposed to be of good and sufficient quality, Ethiopian and even some Italian reports contest this assertion. Danane was used until March 1941 when British Forces occupied it, liberating one thousand Ethiopians and three hundred Somalis. The survivors, who were supposed to remain there for their entire life, returned to Ethiopia, while their captors became the inmates. Over three thousand Italian and local prisoners of war were detained in Danane before most of them were transferred to camps in India. Some three hundred Italian soldiers remained imprisoned there until the end of the Second World War. The second pillar of Graziani’s prison system was internment in Italy. It was reserved for the Ethiopian chiefs and high-ranking nobility under the former regime of Haile Selassie. The first was Ras Imru, one of the top commanders of the Ethiopian army on the northern front during the war, when he surrendered to the Italians in December 1936. He was taken to the island of Ponza as a prisoner of war. He was followed by more than two hundred Ethiopians, men, women, children and even servants who were kept in different places, such as the island of Asinara for most of them, Longobucco, Mercogliano, Palermo and Tivoli. Among the first big group of 187 persons was one of Haile Selassie’s daughters, Romanwork, the wife of Dajjazmach Beyene Merid, with her four underage children. She was interned with the Sisters of the Consolata in Turin, where, in 1940, she died of tuberculosis, completely unnoticed by the public, according to a note of the Interior Ministry. However, for practical reasons, large-scale internment in Italy was suspended by order from Rome in mid-October 1937, some ten months after it had started. Nokra and Danane were left as the only places to accommodate Graziani’s ‘stinking heap of human flesh’.24

Prisoners of War on the Ethiopian Side Treatment of Prisoners of War in Ethiopian Tradition At the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war, Ethiopia’s legal system was in the process of undergoing substantial modification. Although Emperor Haile Selassie had introduced the first modern penal code in 1930, its application took time, especially in the regions far away from the capital. Jurisdiction was more often based on the traditional legal code, the Fetha Nagast (the Law of the Kings), a compilation of texts in Ghe’ez language reaching back to the Middle Ages. It was composed of different sources of the Eastern

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Church such as Roman Law, the Scriptures, proceedings of Councils and even Islamic Law. Decrees of the Emperor completed this complex body. The administration of justice relied on quick corporal punishment very much based on the Mosaic tradition of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ and included flogging, branding of the face with a red iron and, for recidivist thieves, the amputation of a hand or a foot or both. The system contained an inherent cruelty of which foreign visitors were appalled. Emperor Menelik II, the founder of modern Ethiopia, reputed to be just, did not hesitate to resort to punishments such as cutting the tongue of a slanderer. Imprisonment in the modern sense did not exist in Ethiopia at the time. The first modern prison was built by Haile Selassie, but was left to the Italians to be inaugurated after the occupation of Addis Abeba (Perham 1969: pp. 138–50). By all accounts, it was a rough yet effective legal system, but it gave the country the reputation of being primitive and barbaric, providing crucial arguments to Fascist propaganda. However, the system did not exclude generosity and mercy. This becomes clear when examining the treatment of prisoners of war. Chivalry, respect for the defeated and taking of prisoners were well-known in Ethiopian society, not least because prisoners served as important sources of ransom or guarantee. In general, the Ethiopian warrior was reputed to be merciful, especially in regard to fellow Christians, but harsh and unforgiving in the treatment of animist tribes of the lowlands, traitors and rebels.25 At the battle of Adwa, the Italians had precisely this experience. On 1 March 1896, Italian expansion southward from the young colony of Eritrea towards the more fertile highlands of Ethiopia was brutally stopped in a day-long battle between Italian and Ethiopian troops. The battle was a landmark defeat for the Italian colonisers, showing that European armies were not invincible. The expeditionary corps had lost 50 percent of its strength against the crushingly superior Ethiopians under Emperor Menelik. A total of two thousand seven hundred Italian soldiers and Eritrean Askaris were taken prisoners of war. While the one thousand nine hundred Italians were treated with respect – much better than anyone expected – and divided amongst the different chiefs for custody, the eight hundred Eritreans were considered to be rebels and traitors, having opposed Ethiopian rule and sided with the enemy. The Ethiopians decided that they had to be judged according to the Fetha Nagast. Three days after the battle, each prisoner’s right hand and left foot were amputated. The site of the battle was turned for two days into another sea of blood and incredible human suffering. Only half of the Eritreans, 406, survived the ordeal and were sent home as a reminder to the others (Figure 5.2). The Ethiopians had made a point in line with their ancient law. It was this pitiless act which remained engraved in the collective memory, but the generous treatment of the Italian prisoners has often been ignored. In a march lasting for two

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Figure 5.2 Eritrean Askaris whose right arm and left foot had been amputated by the Ethiopians after the battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896. (USSME, Archivio iconografico, A.O. 592/127)

months they were brought to Addis Abeba, where they stayed until the peace treaty between Ethiopia and Italy was concluded on 26 October 1896. Later in the year, they were repatriated as part of the peace deal with the help of the Italian Red Cross Society.

Leaving Behind the Image of Adwa Records show that Emperor Haile Selassie realised from the beginning of the war the importance of respecting prisoners taken in battle. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister and Red Cross President Blatten Geta Heruy assured Brown shortly after his arrival in Addis Abeba that the Emperor had issued corresponding orders. This is confirmed in a dispatch which Haile Selassie sent during the war to Ras Kassa Hailu, the overall commander of the northern front. Ras Kassa was asked to send relevant data on prisoners. At the same time Haile Selassie added that Ethiopia was not intending to retaliate in-kind to Italy’s violations of the laws of war. Similarly, Haile Selassie gave precise instructions to Ras Mulugeta, the War Minister on Amba Aradam, on the treatment of prisoners of war. He ordered the Ras to guard them well and interrogate them thoroughly in order to get information. In addition, the Emperor said that according to ‘the law of the world it was not allowed to take the cloths of the prisoners.

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Italian propaganda portrays the Ethiopian soldiers as wild animals, not respecting the law, cruel. In order to dismiss such propaganda, attention has to be paid to the fact that the prisoners’ cloths were not to be taken from them. Do all the necessary to inform our soldiers about this’.26 Days before the last battle of the war was fought near Maychew, Haile Selassie asked his generals to respect enemy soldiers falling into Ethiopian hands (Steer 1936: p. 303, Pankhurst 17/1995: p. 188). Brown said later that the Emperor had promised money for each prisoner brought to him, while del Valle (1937: p. 135), the Cuban mercenary with Ras Mulugeta, spoke of twenty bullets given to the one who captured ‘a camel, a mule or an Italian soldier’. Haile Selassie had a good reason to press for adherence to international law. Ethiopia needed to show the world that it was able to uphold modern standards; maintain the sympathy of the League of Nations and international public opinion. Judging from the available records, his orders in regard to respecting prisoners of war were quite consistent throughout the whole conflict, contrasting with those of Badoglio and Graziani, who felt that they had the right to bend, at their convenience, the very same rules which they expected the enemy to apply. This is all the more noteworthy because Italy, not Ethiopia, was formally a party to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. However, special rules applied to deserters. A case in point was Dajjazmach Gesesse Belau who abandoned, with his troops, Ras Imru’s army in northern Ethiopia in early December 1935. Gesesse Belau returned to his base in Gojjam. In response, a loyal commander in Debre Markos received instructions to take strong action against the deserter and his followers. Special mention was made to avoid taking prisoners in the operation ‘because I believe international laws forbid killing them after they have been captured’.27 But one month later, Haile Selassie sent a counter-order to Debre Markos that Gesesse Belau alone, not his followers as tradition demanded, should be punished. He recommended executing the deserter by a hired killer. The instruction was not carried out and the local chief remained in rebellion until the Italians arrived a few months later. Although orders from the top regarding prisoners of war were clear, their application was a different matter. When Dajjazmach Ayeleu Birru, one of Ras Imru’s generals, informed Haile Selassie about the Ethiopian victory of Dembeguina on 15 December 1935, he added: ‘Many are the Italians killed, and those captured have been slaughtered with knives. There are only seven of them left.’28 This and another reference to killing of prisoners29 seem to indicate that such violations of international law have most probably also occurred on the Ethiopian side although the circumstances of Ayeleu Birru’s message were peculiar as will be seen later. Without intending to excuse such incidents, it must be added, however, that they had a lot to do with the composition of the Ethiopian army. It

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was a motley formation comprising regular and irregular troops, commanded by both traditional and modern-minded chiefs with considerable rivalry between them, a varying degree of authority over their subordinates and shifting loyalty vis-à-vis the central power. Haile Selassie was aware of the unsatisfactory state of his army. This might well have been the reason why he did not accede to the 1929 Convention on Prisoners of War. The Emperor probably feared that he was unable to enforce such a law, as the ICRC had apprehended, too. There is another issue which has to be addressed here. It concerns the fate of local soldiers in Italian service – Dubat from Somalia and Askaris from Eritrea – who often carried the main burden of the war. It is an important matter, particularly in view of what had happened to the Eritrean soldiers after the battle of Adwa. For lack of comprehensive information, it is impossible to come to a clear-cut conclusion, not least because Italian archives do not contain nominal lists of local soldiers missing in action or killed. However, it can be asserted that the Ethiopians did not have a policy to kill local soldiers of the Italian army. There are too many examples, which show that they were taken prisoner. Belau, the director of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital on Amba Aradam, mentioned that amongst the wounded he had treated were two Askaris. Several Italian reports spoke of Eritrean soldiers who were captured by the Ethiopians and who managed to escape and return to the Italian lines. This happened to three Askaris taken during the battle of Dembeguina. They were led to Dajjazmach Ayeleu who, in contrast to the aforementioned dispatch, ordered to bring them to his hometown of Dabat. There, they were detained for three months before they managed to escape. At the same time it must be underlined that there are no reports about mutilations of prisoners of the type that occurred at Adwa. On the contrary, the Ethiopian chiefs abstained from such harsh punishment as is testified by the following example. An Eritrean Askari told the Italians upon his escape from Ethiopian detention that he and a dozen other Askaris were brought for judgement before Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum in late December 1935. The latter expressed the opinion that the prisoners should be punished as their predecessors had been in Adwa, but the former, superior in rank, discarded it with the argument that the Askaris, as Italian subjects, had no choice but to serve the Italians. As a consequence they were left unharmed. Visibly, the Ethiopians were far more sophisticated than Italian propaganda led the world to believe.

Italian Prisoners of War in Ethiopian Hands In support of the theory that the Ethiopian government was unwilling and unable to prevent the killing of Italian prisoners, the Italian government cited several so-called eyewitnesses, chief of them members of the Egyptian

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Red Crescent field hospitals serving in the Ogaden region.30 At a first glance their affidavits look impressive, especially since they originated from the Ethiopian side, but when they are examined in detail, inaccuracies, errors and simple fabrications become evident. In order to prove this point, it suffices to examine just one of these affidavits. An Egyptian Red Crescent dresser, Labib Hassan Ibrahim, testified that he had seen on 10 December 1935, in Degeh Bur how a crowd of soldiers carried two headless Italian corpses in a procession through the town. In Bulale, to where he proceeded, he witnessed the ill-treatment of two Italian prisoners of war. All four were captured, according to the Egyptian, on 9 December 1935, when the Ethiopians destroyed two Italian tanks. On 13 December, the two ill-treated prisoners, in a pitiful condition, were presented to Emperor Haile Selassie who had arrived in the town, but he did nothing to stop their plight. Labib Hassan’s testimony was strongly contested by the director of the Egyptian Red Crescent mission, Prince Ismail Daoud. Ismail Daoud said that he, himself, had been in Bulale on 13 December and ordered Labib Hassan back to Egypt for insubordination. During his short stay in the area he had not seen any Italian prisoners of war. Equally, he denied that Haile Selassie was in the town on that day, but in Jijiga three weeks earlier, on 21 November.31 The story sounded suspicious even to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, which did some inquiries of its own, resulting in the information that no tanks were lost on the area in early December. A similar incident, in which three tanks were destroyed, had occurred four weeks earlier, on 11 November 1935, in Hamanlei, quite a distance from Bulale. According to the military authorities, no prisoners were taken by the Ethiopians during this military encounter but eight Italian soldiers were killed. Against better knowledge the Italian government transmitted Hassan Labib’s ‘testimony’ nevertheless to the League of Nations. None of the affidavits of Egyptian Red Crescent workers can be taken seriously. There are strong indications that the Italians took advantage of several disgruntled members of this medical mission, who had been repatriated to Egypt in January 1936 before their contract came to an end. According to Ismail Daoud, money had changed hands when these ‘testimonies’ were made in Cairo at the offices of the Italian newspaper Giornale d‘Oriente. The charge cannot be simply dismissed since one of the complaints of the dismissed Red Crescent workers was that they had not been paid. Other reports brought by the Italians in support of their thesis were even less credible than those of the Egyptians because they contained wholesale accusations and did not provide any verifiable information. It is difficult to say what impact these affidavits made on the general public but some chanceries such the British Foreign Office were not fooled: ‘The Italians are out to paint the Ethiopian blacker, all of which does nothing to whitewash the sallow-skinned Italian.’32

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Given the fact that the official Italian documentation does not help to shed light on prisoners of war in Ethiopian hands, the matter needs to be examined on the basis of other information. On the southern front there was the case of Tito Minniti and Livio Zannoni. Both were very well known in Italy because their fate became synonymous with Ethiopian cruelty. The two Italian airmen went missing during a reconnaissance flight on 26 December 1935. Later in the day, the Italians learnt through Ethiopian radio interceptions that the plane had been forced to make an emergency landing near Degeh Bur and that local people had killed the crew but it was never established whether they died defending themselves or whether they were killed after surrender. The incident marked the beginning of a series of reprisal bombings by the Air Force which included the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Melka Dida. Soon afterwards, the Italians circulated the first story about the extremely savage way in which Minniti, in particular, had been tortured to death, followed by other, often contradictory, versions. Amongst them was one of an Egyptian Red Crescent worker, promptly refuted again by his superior, Ismail Daoud. The Ethiopian government, in its response, maintained consistently that the two airmen had not been killed by regular Ethiopian soldiers, but by local people infuriated by Italian bombardments. Dajjazmach Nasibu Zamanuel, the Ethiopian military commander of the zone, undertook an extraordinary step to convey this point to the enemy. Fifteen days after the incident, he dispatched a letter to Graziani through a Somali tribesman who had been sent across the frontline with a white flag. Nasibu repeated the Ethiopian version of the incident and reassured Graziani that Haile Selassie had given orders personally to respect prisoners of war. Graziani did not respond and ordered that the messenger be arrested. Since Nasibu received no reply, he sent the same message again by radio. At the same time, Nasibu asked why his messenger had been arrested in violation of ‘military laws and the chivalry which should be the sign of a general’.33 The message was swiftly intercepted by the Italians. Graziani, impervious to this lesson, knew nothing better than to respond that the Somali had been arrested because he had crossed illegally from Somalia into Ethiopia in the spring of 1934, a full eighteen months before the outbreak of the war. The truth of the airmen’s deaths has never been established, not even when the Italians found their remains later in the war some 200 m from the burnt aircraft. Wild animals had left little to draw conclusions from. It was too late in any case, Italian propaganda with its horrific details on how the two were killed had easily carried the day over the less spectacular Ethiopian explanation. The Ethiopians were branded as torturers and killers of prisoners of war. There are no other credible and verifiable reports on Italian prisoners of war on the southern front. Attention is turned now to the main northern front. Here, four groups of prisoners can be distinguished (Table 5.1).

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Table 5.1: Italian Prisoners in Ethiopian Hands. Date of capture

Place of capture

1 15 Dec. 1935 Dembeguina

2 21 Jan. 1936 First battle of Tembien 22 Jan. 1936 Monte Lata

3 13–14 Feb. 1936

Cantiere Gondrand

4 20 Feb. 1936 Western Tigray

Total

No. of POW 7

5

3

2

Name

Remarks

Remo Guerrieri Egisto Francescutti Evaristo Perosa Giovanni Del Bel Belluz Vezio Giomi

All five were brought to Dessie and Addis Abeba where they were released

Luciano Forli 1 unknown

Died of wounds Fate unknown

Alberto Boato Luigi Petrarca Raffaele Matis

All three were brought to Debre Tabor and Fiche where they were released with (3) and (4)

Corrado Dalzini 1 unknown

Died of his wounds Apparently killed

Alfredo Lusetti Ernesto Zanoni

Brought to Dabat and Fiche where they were released with (2) and (4)

Gildo Valci

Died in air raid

Silvio Meloni Brought to Dabat Domenico Palazzo and Fiche where they were released with (2) and (3)

17 of whom 12 were handed over to the Italians after the war

4 died in captivity and 1 disappeared

The first group of prisoners of war was taken at the battle of Dembeguina, on 15 December 1935, where the Ethiopians scored their biggest victory of the war. Dembeguina is situated on the southern edge of the high plateau above the gorges of the Tekeze River in western Tigray. At the end of the day-long battle, the Italians had lost thirty-two soldiers and ten were wounded. The Eritrean Askaris had 245 dead and twenty-five wounded.34 Nine tanks were destroyed. After this battle Dajjazmach Ayeleu sent the already cited message to Haile Selassie in which he mentioned that his troops had killed Italian prisoners of whom only seven survived. Two issues must be examined in this regard.

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The first deals with the matter of prisoners of war apparently killed in cold blood. While Ayeleu Birru mentioned an unspecified number, Col Konovaloff, with Ras Kassa at the time and quite far away from the place of the actual battle, recorded having learnt that one hundred and fifty prisoners of war had been taken on this occasion. According to him, they had been disarmed and massacred. Junod, in his debriefing in Geneva, repeated the same story with gruesome detail, adding wrongly that Konovaloff had actually witnessed the massacre. In reality, a part from the fact that he was not an eyewitness, it is impossible that such massive killing had taken place. The Italians did not report such large numbers of soldiers as missing after the battle, certainly not Italian nationals nor Askaris judging from the available records. According to the nominal list of Italian soldiers missing in action, they were exactly ten,35 out of whom only eight were finally listed as dead.36 Two soldiers seem to have returned to the Italian lines at some point, but under what circumstances is unknown. The most probable explanation for the discrepancy between Konovaloff and the Italian army is that the Russian colonel had made a confusion with the corresponding Ethiopian war bulletin which announced the killing in battle – not the taking of prisoners – of one hundred and fifty Italian soldiers and two hundred Eritreans. This still leaves unanswered Ayeleu Birru’s contention that prisoners were indiscriminately killed. In this respect, little can be said for lack of precise information. It might well have happened. On the other hand, it cannot be excluded that Ayeleu Birru was boasting to Haile Selassie, particularly since he was already suspected of dealing secretly with the Italians. It could well be that he wanted to take the opportunity of the victory at Dembeguina to demonstrate his loyalty to the Emperor. There is good reason for this argument because, if the Ethiopians really had killed so many Italian prisoners, why did they spare the lives of the seven? The second issue relates to the number of seven Italian prisoners of war, the first ones taken by the Ethiopians since the outbreak of the conflict in October 1935. The number is corroborated by another source, Harald Nyström, the Swedish missionary doctor deployed with Ras Imru. Six of the seven prisoners of war are known by name. One of them, Corporal Luciano Forli, died of his wounds shortly after his capture, according to corresponding information provided by Nyström and the Ethiopians. The remaining six prisoners were marched to Dabat but one, whose name is not known, disappeared on the way without leaving any trace. Five prisoners finally reached Dabat. They were taken by air to Dessie where the ICRC visited them in January 1936, as will be seen later in his Chapter. The second group of Italian prisoners of war was captured in what is known as the first battle of Tembien, in central Tigray. They were Sub-lieutenant Alberto Boato and two Blackshirts, Luigi Petrarca and Raffaele Matis, taken on 21 and 22 January 1936 respectively.

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Konovaloff mentioned that five prisoners were taken by Ras Kassa’s troops during this battle, but one of them had died of his wounds while the other was slain after having killed an Ethiopian soldier. Junod learnt in Addis Abeba from Valentin Schüppler, the director of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3, about the existence of the three remaining prisoners who were treated like Rases, according to Schüppler. Junod was able to identify the fourth, Corrado Dalzini. However, the delegate expressed the opinion that the prisoners had been massacred in the chaos during the general retreat. In reality, he was wrong. The three Italian prisoners were put under the personal responsibility of Dajjazmach Asfawossen Kassa, a son of the commanding Ras and they were escorted unharmed to Ras Kassa’s capital, Debre Tabor where they were united with other prisoners of war, as will be seen. The third group of prisoners were not really soldiers, but mobilised road construction workers, captured in an attack on the Gondrand camp near Adwa on 13 February 1936. The unguarded camp had been attacked in a dawn raid by Ras Imru’s troops, who took the one hundred and thirty occupants by complete surprise. Eighty workers were finally counted as dead, twenty-seven wounded and four missing,37 assumed to be prisoners in accordance with news received from informers three days after the incident. However, only three of them are known. They were Alfredo Lusetti, Ernesto Zanoni and Gildo Valci, the latter wounded and unable to move on his own. The three prisoners were brought to Dabat. Since no other sources mentioned a fourth prisoner, no further attention is paid in this study to this information. The last group of prisoners of war was taken one week later, on 20 February 1936. Two Italian soldiers, Silvio Meloni and Domenico Palazzo were captured during a reconnaissance patrol carried out with their Askaris on the western high plateau of Tigray. Their case is particularly interesting because Meloni wrote down his extraordinary story upon his return to Italy. The two feared first that they would be killed but soon found out that this was not the intention. Instead they were very well treated. Palazzo’s uniform jacket, taken away upon capture, as was Meloni’s, was later returned and Meloni was given a light jacket in exchange. The two prisoners were brought to the rear together with the Ethiopian wounded. They received food, milk, eggs and even tej, Ethiopian honey mead, in the days after. Several times they were interrogated, by Ras Imru’s secretary and by Dajjazmach Ayeleu Birru amongst others. Their statements were duly noted down each time. Three days after the capture they were seen by a Greek doctor and the next day by Harald Nyström. From him they learned about the other groups of Italian prisoners of war. After one week Meloni and Palazzo were brought to Dabat, Ayeleu Birru’s capital, in a march, which lasted for eight days across rugged terrain,

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including a steep ascent to the high plateau of the Simien Mountains. In Dabat, they were united, to their big surprise, with the three prisoners from the Gondrand attack, Lusetti, Zanoni and Valci – still unable to move because of his wounds. The Ethiopians intended to transfer all six to Dessie by plane but the developments of the war made it impossible. At the end of February the military balance had definitely shifted in favour of the Italians and in early March 1936, Ras Imru’s troops were also on the retreat, constantly harassed by pursuing Italian planes. On 13 March 1936, a good week after Meloni and Palazzo had arrived in Dabat, the small town itself became the object of an Italian air raid by three Ca.101 dropping 900 kg of explosives. Meloni (1941: p. 44) described the raid. Early on that morning, the prisoners heard the roaring of aeroplanes. ‘We had not yet been able to identify where it was coming from, when heavy bombing hit the church ground, exactly where our shelter was. I gather three or four planes … dropped hundreds of bombs … We were not afraid of death, which would have truly liberated us, but we did not want to die at our brothers’ hands’. The four healthy prisoners managed to break the lock of the prison door and escaped into the open. They met a group of armed Ethiopians who led them to a nearby cave in which they found shelter for the rest of the day. When they returned to their prison, they found their worst fears confirmed. Valci had been mortally wounded by an Italian bomb and died on the following day. He was buried in the church compound by Ethiopian soldiers and Coptic priests.38 More bad luck was to come. In the successive days other bombings took place, culminating, on 19 March, in the destruction of an Ethiopian Potez on the airfield near the town,39 apparently the first of several aircraft which were supposed to bring the prisoners to safety. The four remaining Italian detainees were stuck in Dabat. Life in the town was made unbearable because of the incessant air raids. Italian flight reports confirm that Dabat had become a specific target. On 23 March, a pilot observed that only four houses with thatched roofs and three with iron sheets had remained intact. These were smashed on the following day when another pilot reported laconically: ‘Everything destroyed’.40 The people on the ground had no other option than to leave the town in ruins. On 26 March, the surviving four prisoners were on the road again, accompanied by Ayeleu Birru’s son, under whose responsibility they had been placed. On 9 April 1936, after almost two weeks and amidst an Ethiopian army in disarray, the four arrived in Debre Tabor where the prisoners were formally handed over to Asfawossen Kassa who was already in charge of the three prisoners of Tembien. On this occasion, all seven Italian prisoners were united for the rest of their Odyssey. The end of their story is quickly told. In view of the rapid Italian

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advances, Asfawossen Kassa and his brother Aberra, had to withdraw across the Blue Nile into the unoccupied Fiche area north of Addis Abeba. There they stayed with their prisoners for the next months. At some point, negotiations for their release started with the new authorities in Addis Abeba. They came to a successful conclusion when the Kassa brothers released the seven Italians on 23 November 1936, six months after the Ethiopian capital was taken. An incredible story had come to a happy end, at least for the Italian prisoners of war. In response, Graziani showed little regard and gratitude. When the two Kassa brothers surrendered to the Italians in Fiche one month later, General Ruggero Tracchia, in command of the operation, did not hesitate to execute them the same evening. Graziani assumed responsibility for the act, sealing an inglorious but not unexpected end to an extraordinary story.

The Ethiopian Record Regarding Italian Prisoners of War During the Italo-Ethiopian war the Ethiopian army captured a total of seventeen Italian prisoners. Four of them died in custody and one disappeared. Twelve prisoners of war survived their ordeal against the predictions of many experts including Junod, the ICRC delegate. At the same time it must be underlined that the captives were very well taken care of. This is particularly astonishing if one takes into account that this happened during the worst time of the war, when the Ethiopians had been crushed on the battlefield and were in a disorderly retreat. Beyond doubt, the Italian prisoners of war owed their lucky escape to the fact that they were placed under the direct custody of the sons of Ethiopian commanding officers. Italian records support the theory that the Ethiopians did not hold many more prisoners of war. According to a list of Italian soldiers missing in action, established as the incidents happened, a total of forty-three were listed as dead (Table 5.2). This means that the Ethiopians could have killed them after their capture, but it is not the only possible explanation. These soldiers could also have died on the battlefield and were lost because, for instance, of lack of time to rescue them or because of the rocky terrain in which most fighting took place. In any case, this simply suggests the possibility – it constitutes no proof – that the Ethiopians may Table 5.2: Italian Missing in Action (MIA).41 Listed Italian MIA during the war Minus: – prisoners of war who survived (Giomi, Meloni and Palazzo) – eight who were not listed as killed after the war (i.e., who must have reappeared at some point) – one soldier who disappeared during an explosion on board the hospital ship Cesare Battisti Total Italian missing in action from 3 October 1935 to 5 May 1936

55 3 8 1 43

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have killed captured Italians. If such killings had taken place, they were not numerous, certainly not amounting to hundreds as contended by the Italian authorities and even historians.42 Such killings were clearly the exception not the rule. Another argument supports this finding. In the biggest Ethiopian victory of the war, in Dembeguina, Dajjazmach Ayeleu’s troops took no more than seven prisoners. In subsequent fighting a few more were captured. Two months after Dembeguina, the Ethiopian army started to crumble under the Italian onslaught and was hardly in a position to capture many more prisoners. Therefore, the larger number of prisoners of war must be expected on the Italian, not the Ethiopian side. This was the case but, as previously established, even the Italians had taken surprisingly few Ethiopian prisoners. In conclusion, research does not support the Italian claim of massacres of Italian prisoners of war. On the contrary, the Ethiopian record on the matter was much better than its reputation, but Italian propaganda managed to keep alive, until today, the myth of the Ethiopians as ruthless killers.

The Paradise of Emasculation? Emasculation of the killed enemy, the cutting of the male genitals, was a long-standing Ethiopian custom. Its purpose was to provide proof that the owner of such a trophy was a brave and fearless fighter. The crude procedure was employed not only against animists but also Christians. Emperor Haile Selassie was aware of this anachronistic custom and tried to forbid it during the war. In an instruction to Ras Mulugeta on Amba Aradam he expressly ordered not to mutilate dead enemy soldiers, but it was not easy to root out such methods banned by modern standards of warfare. First reports about the emasculation of Italian soldiers were received in December 1935 and caused alarm in the fighting force – especially after unauthorised photographs were circulated. While commanders in the field were instructed not to let the morale of the troops be affected, Rome decided to use emasculation as crying proof of the enemy’s backwardness justifying Italy’s civilising mission. As of mid-January 1936, emasculation became a main focus of the Italian propaganda campaign, not least to offset the very damaging Ethiopian accusations of Italian bombings of Red Cross hospitals. The League of Nations was repeatedly confronted with the matter and the ICRC was kept constantly informed. In the worst single and well-documented incident – the attack on the Gondrand construction camp – seventeen workers out of eighty killed were mutilated in such a horrific way. Photographs designed to shock were sent to the League of Nations although Fascist diplomacy carefully avoided indicating the precise number, most probably in order not to compromise the propagandistic effect. In addition, Italian medical reports alleged that emasculation had also been performed on people still alive.

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The Italian propaganda campaign had an undeniable effect. In the face of such overwhelming evidence, the Ethiopian Foreign Minister had to admit that some individuals had resorted to this means, adding that they did so in protest against the inhuman methods of warfare employed by the Italians. Some Ethiopians and foreigners later tried to blame the emasculations on ethnic groups such as the Oromos (called Gallas at the time) and the tribes of western Ethiopia. But the available evidence, including from interviews with eyewitnesses, does not support this explanation. Emasculations appear also to have been carried out by Amharas and Tigrayans. Perhaps even more negative was the impact of such news on people like Junod. The ICRC delegate, although he had not personally encountered evidence of this practice, found his own preconceptions about the Ethiopians confirmed. He concluded in his final report: The Abyssinian people are naturally cruel because they are primitive and barbaric. It was enough for me to see them treating their animals to realise it. The Abyssinian understands nothing about leading a horse or a donkey and he beats them like the ground. I did myself, one day, give a punishment to a Galla who was beating his donkey with a big stick. The Italian documentation is clear and the photos speak for themselves. Some mutilations have been practised on the living, some post-mortem. It is the habit of all populations in this region of Africa, to practice this type of war.43

When assessing this issue, it is important to note that, all in all, the Italians only complained about a few dozen mutilations. Some of them, especially those reported at the beginning, lacked sufficient evidence even for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Compared with the 2,652 soldiers – national and colonial troops – killed in action during the war, it was a small number.44 Emasculation was a limited phenomenon successfully blown out of proportion by adroit Italian propaganda. This was realised at the time by some foreign journalists, but for many others Ethiopia remained ‘the paradise of emasculation’, in the catchy words of the only woman war correspondent on the Italian side (de Bonneuil 1938: p. 276).

The ICRC and the Protection of Prisoners of War During the First World War, the ICRC’s focus of attention was on the hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war. The organisation’s activities were concentrated in three fields. First, the ICRC delegates inspected camps of prisoners from early 1915, as did the representatives of the protecting powers. These visits allowed the ICRC to gather information about the treatment of prisoners of war, obtain improvements in the conditions of detention and contribute to their protection from the cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals in which the warring parties were engaged. In fifty-four mis-

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sions during the war and immediately afterwards, 524 places of detention, spread over half of the globe, were visited by forty-one delegates, though it must be emphasised that the visits were neither systematic nor covered all the prisoners or categories. Secondly, the establishment of the Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre in Geneva permitted centralising information about captured soldiers mainly of the western front. The activities of this huge tracing agency which employed well over one thousand persons included the transmission of lists of prisoners; the establishment of millions of individual files; making of inquiries and, in the beginning of the war, the transmission of correspondence. The third activity consisted of bringing individual and collective relief assistance to prisoners of war (Durand 1978: pp. 25–36 and 51–63, Bugnion 1994: pp. 93–114). The heart of this humanitarian operation was in Geneva, from where itinerant missions were dispatched to the various countries holding prisoners. A few permanent delegations, especially in eastern Europe, were established to allow a more consistent humanitarian operation. After the First World War protection activities in favour of prisoners of war had a firm place in all conflicts in which the ICRC was involved. Sometimes the ICRC was only able to help a few, such as in the Manchuria conflict (1931–33) and sometimes thousands as in the war of the Chaco (1932–35). The interventions were invariably based on the model of the First World War. This changed only with the Italo-Ethiopian war when the modern type of ICRC delegation emerged with a permanent on-the-spot representation whose task was to take care of all aspects of a humanitarian operation which comprised relief, detention and tracing activities.

Expectations in Geneva, Perceptions in the Field and Action on the Ethiopian Side From the beginning of the Italo-Ethiopian war, expectations at the ICRC headquarters regarding matters of detention ran very high. Military preparations by both sides, but especially by the Italians were very visible and suggested that a major conflict in the Horn of Africa was in the offing, with several hundred thousand soldiers involved on each side. Although the ICRC was perfectly aware that the Convention on Prisoners of War was not, legally speaking, applicable to Ethiopia, it considered that its spirit had to be respected. In addition, Articles 3 and 4 of the Convention on Wounded and Sick provided a formal legal basis. The Articles stipulated that the belligerents were obliged to search for the wounded and dead after each engagement and protect them against pillage and maltreatment. Equally, they were under the obligation to inform each other of the names of the wounded, sick and dead. As a consequence, the delegates in the field were put under constant pressure to establish an effective protection activity on the Ethiopian side. This was considered necessary also in order to

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show the suspicious Italians that the ICRC mission in Ethiopia had its usefulness. Precise mission instructions were given to Brown and Junod in this regard. As of their arrival in Addis Abeba they were supposed to take care of matters relating to prisoners of war. Should the Ethiopians already detain some of them, the delegates were asked to visit them immediately and to check the conditions in which they were detained. In case of need, necessary improvements should be obtained. At the same time, the ICRC started to study the question of where potential prisoners of war should be detained. Suggestions for internment in neighbouring countries such as the Côte Française des Somalis and British Somalia, even Egypt, were made. They were discarded after a discussion with Jacques Auberson, the Swiss legal adviser to Haile Selassie who had returned home for health reasons shortly after the outbreak of the war. Auberson gave the Ethiopia Commission, eager for news from a distant and unknown theatre of operations, first-hand information. He advised against internment of prisoners of war in third countries for practical reasons and assured the Commission that the climatic conditions in and around the Ethiopian capital were perfectly safe to establish detention camps. At the same time, he told the Commission that Ethiopian public opinion had shown calm and restraint, but he expressed the opinion that the security of captured enemy soldiers could not be guaranteed, should the Emperor be killed. While Geneva planned for the big action, the matter looked quite different in Ethiopia. Upon their arrival in Addis Ababa, the delegates sensed little about the war because both sides were still preparing for the major battles. The priority was clearly on medical relief and not on detention, but a worried Geneva quickly requested news about prisoners. Brown discussed the matter with the Ethiopian Red Cross President and Foreign Minister Heruy in a board meeting at the end of November, but he was unable to satisfy headquarters’ demand for more information. As soon as the first big battle had been fought, at Dembeguina in mid-December 1936, Brown proposed the establishment in Addis Ababa of ‘a concentration camp for prisoners of war’. He reiterated his request to the authorities for news on captured soldiers, but to his growing frustration received none, though he doubted that there were many prisoners. Three months later there was still no news from the Ethiopians, except about five Italian prisoners of war captured at Dembeguina and brought to Dessie. Geneva asked ever more insistently about prisoners, but Brown could only respond that he had transmitted Geneva’s requests to the authorities. ‘I have followed up these requests through letters of all types, begging, imploring and threatening these gentlemen; I am going to the gibbi about twice a week to ask if there has been at last an answer but, so far, absolutely without success.’45

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In the meantime, Junod had collected very disturbing news during his field trips to northern Ethiopia. Marius Brophil, an Irish national attached to the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 told the delegate that there were no prisoners of war, but that ‘the Ethiopian troops brought numerous Italian soldiers’ uniforms to the headquarters of Ras Mulugeta, and that each uniform had a small round hole in the area of the chest.’46 This and similar information confirmed Junod and Brown in their belief that the Ethiopians were killing the captured soldiers without mercy and that this was the answer to the preoccupying question of why there were not more prisoners. The lack of response by the authorities to the repeated requests for news, further alimented by the astute Italian propaganda on the barbaric methods of the enemy, reinforced the idea in the field and in Geneva – not substantiated in reality – that something was terribly wrong.

The ICRC and the Italian Moves in Favour of Prisoners of War The battle at Dembeguina marked the beginning of the Italians’ preoccupation with the prisoner issue. Until then no special arrangements had been made in Rome. In fact, it was Guido Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate in Geneva, who started the process when the first news about Italian prisoners of war was received from Ethiopia. He requested that the ICRC immediately provide the Italian Red Cross with relevant information in conformity with the Convention on Prisoners of War. Cremonesi, the Italian Red Cross President, used the opportunity to inform the authorities about his decision to establish an Information Service whose task was to deal with such matters in conjunction with the ICRC. He had seized the first chance to play an operational role – however small – in the war from which his National Society had been deliberately excluded. Federico Baistrocchi, the Undersecretary of the Ministero della Guerra and a close relation of Cremonesi, lent his support to the initiative. By the end of January, the necessary arrangements were put in place in Rome and the tasks of the National Society’s Information Service were clearly defined with the concerned Ministries. In practice, however, cooperation between them and the Italian Red Cross left much to be desired. Soon after, Cremonesi vehemently complained to Baistrocchi that information on missing soldiers was released to the press before it was given to his organisation for follow-up. Although the Italian Red Cross’ special office ultimately had very little work to do, it allowed Cremonesi after the war to underline the ‘considerable services rendered to the Military Authorities and the families of our glorious combatants’.47 So far, only the various interventions made on behalf of Italian prisoners of war in Ethiopian hands were mentioned, but there was also the issue of Ethiopian prisoners in Italian hands. In view of the ICRC’s insistence on getting information about the former, Haile Selassie, demanding reciprocity,

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formally asked Brown during a meeting in Dessie in mid-January 1936, to intervene in Rome on behalf of the latter. Haile Selassie told Brown specifically that ‘he had no reason to implicitly believe that the Italians would treat their prisoners as well as he had treated his and he requested that an ICRC delegate went to check on site how they were dealt with.’48 Suzanne Ferrière, in charge at the ICRC of matters regarding prisoners of war, promptly conveyed the Emperor’s request to the Italian Red Cross, followed-up by a letter from Vice-President Favre to Cremonesi. However, both letters mentioned equal treatment only in regard to lists of prisoners, not to inspection of Italian camps by ICRC delegates, as Haile Selassie had requested. It was strange that the ICRC, which insisted so much on inspection of camps with the Ethiopians, did not do likewise with the Italians. Was it because the ICRC feared that such a request would have met with utter rejection, as had happened to the ICRC’s offer of service at the beginning of the war, or did it believe that there was no need for such inspections because the Italians treated their prisoners so well as they proclaimed? There is no indication in ICRC documents of what motivated this odd decision, but it would have been one more occasion to test Italian commitment to the respect of the Geneva Conventions. Instead, a precious opportunity was lost in order to effectively assist Ethiopian prisoners of war who were, after all, in dire need of protection as discussed earlier. Cremonesi’s immediate response was encouraging. He informed the ICRC that the Italian Red Cross had already undertaken the necessary steps to provide Geneva with ‘the amplest documentation on the prisoners captured by the Italian army in Eastern Africa’. At the same time he assured Favre that the captured Ethiopians were very well treated, ‘in conformity with our humanitarian traditions’ but expressed his fear that the Ethiopians were not doing likewise.49 However, Cremonesi had promised too much. Such documentation never reached the ICRC. When Huber and his colleagues went to Rome at the end of March 1936, detention matters were only a marginal issue given the importance of the planned inquiry. Still, the subject was brought up in a meeting with Cremonesi as well as in bilateral talks between Jacques Chenevière and Elsa Dallolio, the officer-in-charge of the Italian Red Cross’ Tracing Services. On both occasions, the need for Italy to provide information on Ethiopian prisoners was discussed. Cremonesi only responded that he had forwarded such a request repeatedly to the concerned authorities. To Cremonesi’s credit it must be said that Italian documents confirm his reply, but the matter was not pursued by either the Ministero delle Colonie or the High Command in Asmara. Haile Selassie’s demand for ICRC visits of Italian detention camps was not mentioned with one word. Yet there would have been a good opportunity to discuss the matter during the meeting with Cremonesi. The Italian Red Cross President informed the ICRC delegation that Ethiopian prisoners

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in several camps in Somalia had submitted to Italian rule and had agreed to take up arms against the Emperor. Instead of asking to visit these prisoners, the ICRC remained silent. Worse, it took the information at face value. Chenevière concluded in his report on the Rome visit that this fact made rather questionable their quality of prisoners of war. Cremonesi, far from being embarrassed by the manifest lack of Italian cooperation, went on the offensive and strongly attacked Brown, whom he accused of having shown little interest in Italian prisoners of war. Chenevière appeared to have realised that the question of reciprocity regarding visits to prisoners of war needed to be discussed at a political level, but it was not formally done apart from a brief mention – without results – in a meeting with Aloisi, the chef de cabinet in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In retrospect, it must be said that the ICRC had done the bare minimum when it requested Italian reciprocity regarding lists of prisoners of war. The humanitarian organisation did not dare to go one step further and request reciprocity for visits to Ethiopians captured in the fighting. It was an obvious double standard and a striking parallel to its attitude in regard to the inquiry under Article 30 of the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. The delegation in Rome shied away from pushing the matter beyond easyto-make verbal promises, contrasting sharply with demands made on Ethiopia. The Italians seemed to have more credit with the ICRC than the Ethiopians. Yet the ICRC should have had good reason to be concerned also about how the Italian military treated prisoners of war. The way in which they had dealt with the two Poles captured on Amba Aradam should have raised troubling questions. However, the ICRC chose not to scrutinise the evidence too closely, probably because the organisation shared the view that it was the Ethiopians, not the Italians, who were unable and unwilling to fulfil their legal obligations.

ICRC Visits to Prisoners in Ethiopia When Brown and Junod arrived in Addis Abeba, they found already one Italian soldier. He was known as Sergio Clemente but his real name was Sergio Costante. He had deserted two weeks before the start of the war and surrendered himself at the southern Ethiopian town of Dolo. He was interviewed by Ras Desta, the front commander, and then sent to Addis Abeba by plane, upon orders from Haile Selassie.50 Brown found him working as a car mechanic in the garage of a Greek national, quite bored and complaining about the fact that he was not allowed to move freely in the capital. Brown sent his picture to Geneva but did not communicate his name. He commented that the deserter had been well received by the Ethiopians ‘who abstained from making upon him the usual operation [i.e., emasculation]’ (Figure 5.3).

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Figure 5.3 Sidney Brown with the Italian deserter Sergio Costante in Addis Abeba. (International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Photothèque, PHT-1987-26-54, Guerre d’Ethiopie 1935–1936)

Geneva naïvely permitted Vinci to make a copy of the deserter’s picture, which he immediately sent to Rome with the remark that there was already one Italian prisoner of war in Addis Abeba, but Vinci wondered why the ICRC had a picture of the person without knowing his name. The reason was simple. When Geneva asked for the name, Brown replied that he preferred not to give it as he was actually a deserter, but he complied ten days later in a telegram. In the meantime, Brown begged Geneva in a report not to communicate his name to the Italians because ‘the young man in question does not want, at any cost, to return to Italy; he screams out loudly that he wants to stay here, that we leave him in peace, etc …’51 When this letter reached the ICRC in mid-January, it came too late to avoid the gross blunder already committed. Although Geneva knew quite well that

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Costante was a deserter and would face dire consequences if he fell into Italian hands, his name was communicated to Vinci. The Italian Red Cross informed the Ministero della Guerra which quickly realised that Costante was a deserter known to the military authorities in Somalia. The hasty notification by the ICRC, made most likely from a desire to prove useful, disclosed the particulars of the only Italian deserter in Ethiopian hands. Undoubtedly, the Italians would have found out sooner or later, but there was no reason for the ICRC to be the source of the disclosure. The issue suddenly became very sensitive, even a matter of life and death, when the Italians advanced on Addis Abeba in April 1936. According to Junod, Costante managed to escape from the capital shortly before it was occupied, but he was captured by Ethiopians along the railway line to Djibouti and was executed. If the information was true, it was a sad end to a sad story. The five real prisoners of war captured at Dembeguina had a better fate. One week after Brown learnt that the Italian soldiers had been brought to Dessie, he visited them in mid-January 1936, in the company of Thomas Lambie, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross. He found four of them housed in a tukul inside the compound of the Emperor’s residence, the former Italian Consulate which had been bombed six weeks before. They were Remo Guerrieri, Egisto Francescutti, Evaristo Perosa and Giovanni Del Bel Belluz (Figure 5.4). The fifth, Vezio Giomi, joined the group a few weeks later after having undergone medical treatment seemingly because of poison gas wounds sustained in an Italian air raid. The four told Brown how they fell into Ethiopian hands. When their tanks were immobilised, they chose to remain inside instead of trying to get out like their colleagues. At the moment the Ethiopians were about to overpower them, they had a reaction which saved their life in their opinion. ‘They had cried out “Christos” and “Haile Selassie” and had been very surprised to find that the Ethiopians were far less barbaric and savage than they had been told, that they had been brought to an officer who sent them on to someone else, etc …’.52 Their conditions of detention in Dessie were ‘really excellent’. They were given permission to cultivate the Emperor’s vegetable garden and they only complained that they were putting on too much weight. On the occasion of Brown’s visit they were allowed to write to their families in Italy. Two months later they were seen again, this time by Junod, who brought them more supplies purchased in the Ethiopian capital. Upon Cremonesi’s request, Geneva urged Brown to ask for their transfer from Dessie to Addis Abeba, but the Ethiopians would not allow it, to the displeasure of the ICRC. Geneva suspected that Haile Selassie wanted to use the five as human shields against Italian air raids. Shortly before the capture of Dessie in early April 1936, the five were

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Figure 5.4 Carl Gustaf von Rosen (far left) and four of the five Italian prisoners of war visited in Dessie by the ICRC. The picture also shows Lorenzo Taezaz, the Ethiopian liaison officer (third from right) and Thomas Lambie, the Executive Secretary of the Ethiopian Red Cross (far right). (Photothèque CICR-HIST-03503-33A)

transported to Addis Abeba where they arrived at the end of the month. An Italian spy known only as ‘Henry’ promptly reported the news to Rome, based on information received from Junod. Given the uncertain situation in the capital and the imminent fall of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, Junod approached the French Minister, Albert Bodard, with the idea of providing a safe haven for the prisoners in the Embassy grounds. Upon Bodard’s personal intervention, the Emperor agreed to the proposal just hours before he fled from Addis Abeba, apparently on the condition that they would be liberated only in exchange for a similar number of Ethiopian prisoners of war. After the Italians entered the Ethiopian capital on 5 May, lengthy negotiations started between Addis Abeba, Paris and Rome. There was nothing to discuss. The Italians requested the immediate and unconditional release of the five ex-prisoners of war. The French Minister complied on 12 May 1936 when he handed them over to the High Command. The Italian Red Cross President later sent a letter of thanks to the ICRC in which he expressed, on behalf of the five, the conviction that Junod’s interest and concern had saved their lives, especially during the sack of Addis Abeba. The ICRC presence in Ethiopia had made a precious difference for them.

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Tracing Italian Soldiers Missing in Action When Brown visited the Italian prisoners of war in Dessie, the Emperor agreed to set up an Information Office under the responsibility of Lorenzo Taezaz, one of his secretaries. The Office was supposed to centralise all information pertaining to soldiers missing in action but it worked unsatisfactorily. The ICRC had forwarded seventy-three Italian requests for information, but received only thirteen replies, all of which were given in one single letter. Some of this information was quite valuable, but in general it demonstrated that the Ethiopian headquarters, le Grand Quartier Général, in Dessie had little clue of what was going on. Alberto Boato, who was one of the prisoners of war detained by Ras Kassa, was notified as dead. In reality, Boato survived the war, as was already said, together with six other Italians. Brown realised that the Ethiopian communications were inefficient and that Dessie, let alone Addis Abeba, was not well informed. In addition, he blamed the Italians for the lack of success in tracing matters because they had bombed the Red Cross field hospitals which could have served as excellent sources of information. The argument was not altogether wrong, but it did not explain why the Ethiopian authorities were so badly organised from the beginning. The flow of information was constantly hampered by practical and technical difficulties. There were continuous suspicions towards foreigners who were kept in the dark about almost anything. Under such circumstances it does not surprise that the Ethiopians did not submit during the whole war one single request to the ICRC in order to trace their own missing in action, although this would have been theoretically possible during the first months. Earlier in this chapter the point was made that the Ethiopians could not have killed such large numbers of prisoners as the Fascist government claimed. This argument is supported by information contained in the files of the ICRC’s tracing agency. The Italian government submitted to the ICRC two lists of Italian soldiers missing in action for follow-up with the Ethiopians. The lists contained a total of twenty-nine names, the complete number of Italians missing in action to date, as was specifically mentioned, before the decisive battles in late February and early March 1936. This small number, in stark contrast to Italian propaganda, surprised Suzanne Ferrière in Geneva. She commented to the Italian Red Cross: ‘I was obviously mistaken in supposing that the number of those missing in action should be higher than it was …’.53 Curiously this very important information did not make the ICRC more critical in regard to the allegations of large-scale killings of Italian prisoners of war by Ethiopia. The matter completely escaped the attention of the Ethiopia Commission, probably because its own delegates confirmed the Italian allegations.

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Wrong Assumptions Lead to Wrong Conclusions The findings related in this chapter surprise again and turn the conventional wisdom upside down. While the highest Italian authorities claimed to respect applicable international law, in particular the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, they overlooked it in supreme disregard if they felt compelled to do so by military necessity. Contempt for international standards and law was part of the system, sanctioned – even ordered – by the top commanders starting with Mussolini, Badoglio and Graziani. Not least, it had roots in Italian colonial history. ‘At any cost’, as the inscription on the bridge over Dogali River in Eritrea said, not only meant at any material but also at any human cost. The organisation of a detention system for Ethiopian prisoners of war worth its name was neglected for quite some time. When it was done, it was too late. Contrary to what the Italians proclaimed, conditions of detention were inadequate. In contrast, Haile Selassie, conscious of the deficiencies of his composite army, tried to show respect for international law, on which his case rested entirely, and attempted to introduce modern standards. He was not successful in all respects, but punishments that had been inflicted on prisoners of war after the battle of Adwa were not repeated during the ItaloEthiopian war. Emasculation of fallen soldiers was clearly the exception and not the rule. The course of the war did not give the Ethiopians the opportunity to take a large number of Italian prisoners of war, which means that the alleged large-scale killing of prisoners cannot have taken place. According to all available information, the Ethiopian army held one deserter and did not capture more than seventeen Italians. These prisoners of war were very well treated despite extremely unfavourable circumstances, especially during the final stage of the war. From the beginning the ICRC was sceptical about Ethiopia’s capacity to apply modern standards regarding the treatment of their prisoners of war. Quite quickly Geneva fell victim to the persistent Fascist propaganda about the barbaric Ethiopians, confirmed in this belief, it must be repeated, by its own delegates stationed in Addis Abeba. Throughout the period Geneva failed to reconsider its views, although there were clear indications that the reality was different: the treatment given to the two Polish Red Cross workers during their captivity; the small number of Italian soldiers missing in action which clearly contradicted Italian allegations that the Ethiopians had killed so many prisoners. No wonder that the ICRC treated the two belligerents unequally. It completely ignored Ethiopia’s request that the ICRC also visit Ethiopian prisoners of war on the Italian side. Nevertheless, the humanitarian organisation helped to protect successfully the lives of the five Italian prisoners of war, the only ones of whose existence it was aware. The principal historians of the ICRC have accepted Geneva’s (and Italy’s) incorrect version concerning the treatment of Italian prisoners of war by

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Ethiopia. André Durand (1978: p. 247), when referring to Italian allegations on Ethiopian violations of respective international law, concluded – though with a note of caution – that ‘it does not appear that the central authority was in a position to stop these acts’. François Bugnion (1994: p. 166), reviewing the ICRC’s protection efforts during the war, summed up his findings with the comments that there were ‘only disappointing results’ and that ‘there was every reason to believe that the Italian soldiers were executed as soon as they were captured’. Both historians imply that the ICRC failed in its effort to protect Italian prisoners of war because of the Ethiopian government’s shortcomings. The conclusions of this chapter lead to the opposite. The shortcomings were not so much on the Ethiopian as on the Italian side and the ICRC did not fail to protect Italian but Ethiopian prisoners of war in Italian hands. The organisation believed Fascist explanations too readily and was not critical enough to look beyond Italian affirmations. It did not push for a balanced protection effort on both sides, which was necessary not only in view of the needs of Ethiopian prisoners of war but also for the sake of neutrality and impartiality of the Red Cross. The reason why the ICRC did not do so lies somewhere else although this is admittedly not easy to prove because of the fragmentary evidence. The ICRC probably shared Fascist Italy’s claim that the Ethiopians needed a European master for their own good. This view is supported by the fact that, once the war was over, the ICRC was completely disinterested in what was going on in Italian Ethiopia, despite reports on guerrilla warfare; mass executions in Graziani’s reign and the continued use of poison gas against the Ethiopian rebels fighting colonial rule. Ethiopia had ceased to exist for the humanitarian organisation.

Notes 1 LON, Atrocités éthiopiennes à l’égard des prisonniers italiens, Plainte du Gouvernement italien à la Société des Nations, C.151.M.89.1936, VII, 9 April 1936, Suvich au Secrétaire Général, 7 April 1936. 2 Suzanne Ferrière (1886–1970) was a member of the ICRC from 1924 to 1951. She was particularly active in the social sector. Already during the First World War she participated in the Agence internationale des prisonniers de guerre together with her uncle Frédéric Ferrière, himself a member of the ICRC from 1884 to 1924 (Fiscalini 1985: p. 162). 3 At the time forty-one countries had ratified or adhered to the Convention on Wounded and Sick but only five (Finland, Iraq, Japan, Peru and the USSR) did not do so in regard to the Convention on Prisoners of War. 4 Italy was a party to the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (23 March 1931) and the Hague Convention of 1899 (4 Sept. 1900). Ethiopia adhered to the (revised) Hague Convention of 1907 on 5 Aug. 1935. 5 According to Del Boca (1976: pp. 528–29), one thousand six hundred rebels faced one thousand two hundred Italian troops at the southern Eritrean town of Halai on

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18 Dec. 1894. They were severely beaten by the better equipped Italians. Bahta Hagos was killed in the course of the battle and the rebels retreated to the mountains to wage guerrilla warfare for some time. Ottolenghi’s information is often interesting and important, but it must be used with caution because his sources are not always indicated. ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 19, f. 21, Graziani to various commanders, 18 April 1936. AUSSME, D-5, c. 22/2, Comando Superiore A.O. to Comandi di Corpo d’Armata, 15 Feb. 1936. In February 1936, instructions were given to the High Command to establish such an overview because of numerous requests for information, amongst which one from the Italian Red Cross President, pushed himself by the ICRC. At the end of March 1936, the Intendanza had apparently complied but no report was found in the corresponding files. AUSSME, D-6, c. 203, Dall’Ora to Delegazioni Intendenza Adigrat and Adwa, 18 March 1936. ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Guzzoni to Badoglio, 4 April 1936; AUSSME, D-6, c. 243, Allegato No. 36, Magg. Gen. Medico F. Martoglio al Capo Ufficio, Intendanza, A.O., 31 March 1936. According to the latter report only two prisoners died on this trip, one arrived dead in Massawa, the other died during the transfer to Nokra. AUSSME, D-6, c. 203, Dall’Ora to Comando Superiore A.O., 1 April 1936. Fidenzio Dall’Ora (1937: p. 120) simply omitted to mention this tragic incident when he described the sanitary and medical measures taken for prisoners of war. In flagrant contradiction with reality he said about detention centers of the Army Corps: ‘In those camps, the prisoners and their clothing were carefully disinfected; they were vaccinated against smallpox and underwent scrupulous medical examination …’ Equally, according to him, Nokra was provided with an ‘infirmary that was well equipped for everyday needs’. AUSSME, D-6, c. 204, CSAO – Stato Maggiore to Intendanza A.O., 5 April 1936. For comparison, an Italian soldier received, amongst other, the following food ration per day: bread 700 gr, later increased to 750 gr, meat 300 gr, pasta 200 gr, vegetables 60 gr, coffee 20 gr, sugar 25 gr, salt 15 gr, fruit two to three times per week. More explicit is perhaps the comparison with the daily ration given to local troops: flour 600 gr, tea and salt 20 gr each, sugar 40 gr, meat (twice a week) 500 gr (Botti, F. La logistica dell’Esercito Italiano, Volume III, Roma, 1994, p. 602–5). The ration for prisoners proposed by the High Command was clearly insufficient in quantity and quality to maintain a person in good health. As an example, in the battle of the Genale Doria in southern Ethiopia (12–16 January 1936) twenty thousand Ethiopians, according to Graziani even thirty-five thousand, were beaten by almost twenty-five thousand Italians, including local troops (Del Boca1979: pp. 502 and 507). In his telegram to Lessona and Badoglio after the battle, Graziani claimed that the Ethiopians had suffered four to five thousand casualties, but mentioned only ‘about one hundred prisoners’. The Italians sustained a total of 175 casualties (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c.15, f. 21, 16 Jan. 1936). AUSSME, D-6, c. 205, Comando Superiore A.O. to Vice-Governatore dell’Eritrea, 12 May 1936 and ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Santini to Governatorato Generale Addis Abeba, 20 June 1936. A clear picture would only emerge from a systematic research at the Ufficio storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito – a very time-consuming task, made impossible, furthermore, by the restrictive rules regarding the number of files to be consulted per day. Giornale d’Italia, La precisa documentazione italiana della barbarie etiopica. La losca figura del falso medico polacco …, 14 April 1936.

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19 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6/2, Badoglio to Colonie, 18 Feb. 1936. 20 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Mussolini to Badoglio, 9 April 1936. 21 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 23, f. 29/7, Operazioni di grande polizia svolte nel HararArussi-Bale dal 15.6.36 al 21.3.37, signed Nasi. 22 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 41, f. 33/22, Graziani to Colonie, 28 Feb. 1937, p. 3. 23 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 41, f. 33/24, Azolino Hazon, Comando Superiore dei Carabinieri Reali to Governo Generale, 15 July, 17 July, 24 July, 1 Aug. 1937, as well as ibid., f. 33/29, Azolino Hazon to Governo Generale, 20 Sept. 1937. Death occurred for reasons such as ‘cardiac decompensation’, ‘cardioplegia’, ‘cardiac insufficiency and total cardiac decompensation’, ‘exhaustion and cardioplegia’. 24 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 41, f. 33/22, Graziani to Colonie, 28 Feb. 1937, p. 4. 25 Pankhurst, R. A Social History of Ethiopia, Addis Abeba, 1990, p. 156. 26 AUSSME, D-5, c. 22/2, Haile Selassie to Ras Mulugeta, January 1936. 27 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 20, f. 22/5, Dajjazmach Ighezu to Negadras Serzeuold, 3 Jan. 1936. 28 AUSSME, D-1, c. 250/allegati No. 104 to 103, Dajjazmach Ayeleu to Haile Selassie, 16 Dec. 1935. 29 The Italian Consul in Nairobi reported that one member of the Swedish Red Cross mission told him that Ras Desta’s troops in southern Ethiopia had killed all prisoners except four Italians to whom Ras Desta had accorded special protection. The information cannot be verified for lack of specific records (ASMAE, Ethiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 109/9, Turcato to Governo Generale Mogadishu, 19 Aug. 1936). 30 LON, Ethiopian atrocities and misuse of the Red Cross emblem in Ethiopia, Communication from the Italian Government to the League of Nations, C.104.M.45, 1936, VII, 10 March 1936. 31 On 13 December, Haile Selassie was in Dessie, according to all available records. 32 PRO, FO 371/20194, p. 216, Comment of a F.O. officer, 21 March 1936. 33 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 17, f. 21/5, Graziani to Lessona and Badoglio, 18 Feb. 1936. Dajjazmach Nasibu’s original letter is also contained in this file. 34 AUSSME, D-1, c. 15, Specchio delle perdite dal 1º dicembre 1935 al 5 maggio 1936. Badoglio (1936: p. 45) gives a higher number of Eritrean casualties, but a lower of Italian soldiers. 35 AUSSME, D-1, c. 188/1, Sf: Dispersi. 36 There are two lists of Italian soldiers killed during the Italo-Ethiopian war. One is the official Alba d’oro dei caduti per la fondazione dell’Impero, 1935–1937, Roma, 1941 and the second a very precise compilation made by Gian Carlo Stella (1989). 37 ASMAI, c. 181/20, f. 96, Guzzoni to Colonie, 4 April 1936. 38 It is interesting to note that in a funeral chapel of Asmara’s Italian cemetery, Valci’s name is listed together with the other persons killed in the attack on the Gondrand camp, as if he had been killed on the same occasion. 39 Meloni says wrongly that the destruction of the plane took place on 18 March and that it was parked inside a church compound. According to AUSSMA, the incident took place on 19 March and the plane was destroyed 2 km from the church of Dabat (AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 128, diario storico marzo, 19 March 1936). 40 AUSSMA, Fondo A.O.I., c. 100, f. Allegati al diario storico, 1 Jan.–5 May 1936, 24 March 1936. 41 AUSSME, D-1, c. 188/1, Sf: dispersi. Another list, comprising total losses during the war, was made after the occupation of Addis Abeba but it appears less precise. A total of nineteen Italian soldiers were reported missing for the northern and six for the southern front (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 23, f. 29/5, Perdite dal 3 ottobre al 5 maggio, 1936, undated, signed Generale I. Gariboldi). 42 See, for example, Pedriali (1997: p. 60): ‘The killing of hundreds of wounded and prisoners, both Italian and Eritrean, was the rule not the exception’.

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43 CICR, CR 210/1424, 4. Rapport du Dr Marcel Junod au sujet des procédés de guerre, p. 5, 19 Aug. 1936. 44 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 23, f. 29/5, signed Generale I. Gariboldi, undated; 1,234 Italians lost their lives in combat during the period 3 October 1935 to 5 May 1936. Another 879 died ‘for various causes’ and 2,855 colonial troops (1,418 in combat and 1,437 ‘for various causes’). 45 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 11, 12 March 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 8. 46 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 10, 20 Feb. 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 6. 47 ACS, CRI, c. 73/11, Pro-memoria relativo all’attività svolta della Croce Rossa Italiana in merito all’applicazione della Convenzione di Ginevra nel recente conflitto italo-etiopico, 3 July 1936, p. 7. 48 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 7bis, 20 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 3. 49 CICR, CR 210/778, Cremonesi to Favre, 17 Feb. 1936. 50 Ras Desta took the opportunity to suggest to Haile Selassie that Italian fuel depots in Italian Somalia should be bombed. Their location could be obtained from the deserter but the Ethiopian Air Force was not in a position at all to carry out such raids (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 20, f. 22/4, Ras Desta to Haile Selassie, 4 Nov. 1935). 51 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 5, 3 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 5. 52 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 7bis, 20 Jan. 1936, Brown to ICRC, p. 4. 53 CICR, SRI, 1994. 009.00008, SRI/I-E, CRI, Ferrière to Dallolio, 4 March 1936.

6 ‘RAIN THAT KILLS’: THE ICRC AND FASCIST ITALY’S CHEMICAL WARFARE


‘We appeal, on behalf of our brothers in Jesus Christ, against the inhuman and forbidden means adopted by the enemy, who is using gas against the brave Ethiopian people, and we beg His Holiness to pray our Lord Jesus so that these massacres, a disgrace for Christianity, end as soon as possible.’ Message of His Beatitude Kirillos, Patriarch of Ethiopia to His Holiness Pius XI, intercepted by Servizio Informazioni Militari (SIM), 11 April 1936. ‘His Holiness has received your telegram which has renewed his anguish at the plague of war. He appeals to the Most High and expresses his wish that a rapid cessation of the conflict will put an end to the evil it is causing.’ Response of Cardinal Pacelli, the future Pius XII, intercepted by Servizio Informazioni Militari (SIM), 17 April 1936.1

Chemical Warfare between the First World War and the ItaloEthiopian War Chemical warfare is not a phenomenon of the twentieth century. In the fifth century B.C., the Spartans were reported to have employed pitch and sulphur fumes against the Athenians. Since then similar methods have been used but were not an essential part of warfare. A quantitative and qualitative change occurred with the First World War, which marked the advent of modern chemical warfare. Poison gas2 was employed for the first time on an unprecedented scale, amounting to tens of thousands of tons used between April 1915 and November 1918. At the same time, the belligerents made great efforts to develop new types of gases in addition to chlorine and phosgene originally used. The best known amongst them is mustard gas

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which made its first appearance near the French town of Ypres in the summer of 1917. The yellowish liquid quickly became the chemical weapon of choice of the warring parties. In the beginning poison gas was a very deadly weapon. When Germany launched its first surprise attack on 22 April 1915 on French and Canadian soldiers, 35 percent died because of complete lack of protection. Thanks to the development of the gas mask, the casualty rate fell sharply in the following months, only to soar again to eight times that of the hitherto known gases when mustard gas was introduced. Again, improvements on protective gear were made and, at the end of the war, the casualty rate of poison gas victims fell to as low as 3 percent (Izzo 1935: p. 7).3 The weapon was loosing some of the horror attached to it in the early days. Although casualty rates of gas warfare were not as high as generally thought, it claimed almost one hundred thousand victims on all fronts and took a particularly heavy toll on the less prepared Russian army (Rochat 1991: p. 144). Still, at the end of the First World War, mankind had added to its arsenal of destruction a weapon, which had caused untold suffering and left deep marks on a whole generation. It was an arsenal which remained essentially unmodified until the Second World War. The abhorrence caused by this form of warfare led to attempts to outlaw it immediately after the war. The general clauses on the prohibition of poison gas contained in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 had not been sufficient to stop the belligerents from making use of it. More compelling and specific laws were required. Based on Article 171 of the Treaty of Versailles, a Convention between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan was signed in 1922 in Washington, prohibiting the use of chemical weapons. The convention, however, was never applied because France opposed it for a reason not related directly to the subject. Shortly afterwards, responsibility for the elaboration of the new law shifted from the winners of the First World War to the League of Nations, reflecting the belief that this was a matter of concern for the whole world and not only for a few. This led to the conclusion on 17 June 1925, of the Geneva ‘Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare’, signed by twenty-six states.4 It contained a categorical prohibition of chemical and biological warfare. The signing of the Protocol immediately raised high hopes that one of the world’s recent scourges was going to be eliminated, but ratification and accession progressed slowly.5 Several states, not trusting its faithful and forthright application, made important reservations, such as a reciprocity clause according to which the Protocol lost its binding character in case of non-application by the enemy. Both Italy and Ethiopia participated in the conference which established the Protocol. Italy had signed the Protocol and ratified it without reservations on 3 April 1928; meanwhile, Ethiopia did so only shortly before the

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outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, on 20 September 1935, bringing the total number of state parties to forty-one. During the preparatory meetings for the Conference of Disarmament in 1932, attempts were made to improve the shortcomings of the Gas Protocol, in particular the basic contradiction that production of chemical and bacteriological weapons was allowed while their use was prohibited. Since no common agreement was found on this delicate subject, the proposal was made to establish a system of effective sanctions against any state which violated the Protocol. However, in view of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Europe in the early 1930s, all attempts to improve the Protocol were postponed and finally abandoned. In the aftermath of the First World War, gas warfare increasingly became a concern of the general public because of its association with the rapid progress achieved in aviation. Aeroplanes, thanks to improved performance, had acquired the capacity to carry chemical weapons well beyond the immediate frontlines and could strike a defenceless civilian population. Such perspectives further increased the terror of the new weapon. Poison gas, to which the stigma of being treacherous and evil was already attached, became the obsession of a time. It reached a point where chemical warfare stood for the horrors of war itself. However, the military authorities of the various armed forces looked at the weapon with more detachment than the general public. They examined, mostly secretly and quite eagerly, its possibilities, especially since production was relatively easy for any developed country. Despite its formal proscription, poison gas was considered by many, politicians and military alike, as a means of warfare like any other. This was expressed, against the prevailing general opinion, at the 1907 Hague Conference by the United States representative, Admiral Mahan, who had made the argument that every new weapon had been qualified first as perfidious and cruel. In his view, it was illogical to be concerned about men asphyxiating from gas when it was generally accepted ‘to blow the bottom out of an ironclad at midnight, throwing 400 or 500 men into the sea to be choked with water, with scarcely the remotest chance to escape’ (Collins 1929: p. 12). A few years later, the Italian military strategist General Giulio Douhet advocated the strategy of massive air strikes over enemy cities, including the use of incendiary and gas bombs. The discrepancy between the general prohibition of chemical weapons and reality in the respective armies did not escape attention. The International Red Cross Review stated in 1936 the commonly known fact that ‘chemical weapons are accepted by all armies as logical, useful and necessary’. Chemical warfare had become an integral part of the military capabilities of the modern world. Under these circumstances it comes as no surprise that, after the First World War, poison gas had been used on several occasions but in distant theatres of operation and not on a large scale. Before the signing of the Gas

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Protocol, the British were reported to have used gas in the 1920s against insurgents in India; the Spanish and the French employed it in their colonial possessions in North Africa in 1925 (Veuthey 1983: p. 84). But it was Fascist Italy which broke the 1925 Gas Protocol formally for the first time. In January and February 1928, just two months before the ratification of the Gas Protocol, it had made limited use of poison gas against a rebel tribe in Libya. Two years later, in July 1930, General Pietro Badoglio, then Governor of Libya, authorised a gas raid against the oasis of Taizerbo to where rebels from Tripolitania were suspected to have escaped (Del Boca 1991: p. 238). Censorship and distance could not prevent these incidents from becoming known in Europe but they caused very little reaction. At the time of the Italo-Ethiopian war chemical warfare was not only morally condemned but also formally prohibited under international law. However, few in the civilised world really believed in the sole protection of the law, especially not at a time when the rule of force became ever more a tenet of international relations. Short of the abolition of war itself, the only practical and realistic protection was thought to come from the capacity to retaliate against an enemy in kind. This reasoning in terms of Realpolitik provided a better guarantee against gas warfare than conventions or the failing collective security system of the League of Nations. A serious problem would, in turn, arise for those who did not have such a capacity. Ethiopia would undergo this experience in seven months of bitter war.

Poison Gas in the Italo-Ethiopian War When in late 1934 the decision was taken to launch the war against Ethiopia, Mussolini outlined the strategy in a top-secret promemoria. All means for a short, fast and decisive war had to be readied, including: ‘Absolute superiority of artillery and of gas’ (Rochat 1974: p. 158). As a consequence, the necessary preparations were undertaken to give the Italian field commanders the capacity for chemical warfare, thinly disguised by the argument that Italy intended to be able to retaliate to an eventual – but nonexistent – Ethiopian capacity to employ gas against the Italians. At the beginning of the war, Marshall Emilio de Bono, the supreme military commander, did not use poison gas, most probably because there was no compelling military reason. On 27 October 1935, three weeks after the start of hostilities, Mussolini authorised Rodolfo Graziani, the commander of the southern front, to employ poison gas but he, too, had no reason yet to resort to this weapon. The situation changed when the Ethiopian army moved aggressively towards Italian positions in December 1935. On the northern front, Ras Imru’s troops had succeeded in crossing the Tekeze River unnoticed, seriously endangering the Italian southwestern flank. The battle at Dembeguina, mentioned in Chapter 5, marked the decisive turn. A

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few days after the battle, on 22 December, Marshall Pietro Badoglio who had replaced de Bono at the High Command in November, ordered the first gas bombings by aircraft against the advancing Ethiopian troops in the area, without awaiting Mussolini’s formal authorisation. On the southern front, at about the same time, Graziani realised the threat posed to his troops by Ras Desta Damtew’s advance on Dolo, on the Ethiopian-Somali border. Fearing that Ras Desta intended to join forces with the Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden, Graziani requested permission from Mussolini to employ poison gas against the deploying enemy troops. The authorisation was promptly granted6 and gas warfare was initiated on the southern front on Christmas Eve, two days after the northern front. Oblivious to a solemn international engagement undertaken in front of the community of states, Mussolini and his generals unleashed, from that point, an offensive and often indiscriminate chemical war, on a scale unseen since the First World War. It was directed against enemy troops, civilians, animals and communication links. Three types of chemical warfare agents were employed. The most important was mustard gas, a vesicant causing blistering and burning of the skin. It is an extremely penetrating and very persistent oily liquid with a pungent smell of mustard, hence its name. Short-term exposure to the gas was generally not fatal, but death would occur either directly from long-term exposure or indirectly as a result of pneumonia or septicaemia following severe skin burns. Although mustard gas can be detected easily by its odour, a particular danger stems from the fact that a person’s sense of smell is quickly dulled. According to Heinrich Zangger, an ICRC member and a specialist on chemical warfare, a deadly dose of the gas could be received before the victim realised the danger. The second type of gas was phosgene, a lung irritant with a suffocating effect and as insidious as mustard gas. Exposure to this gas quickly affects the eyes and the upper respiratory passages and leads to rapid and often fatal oedema because of the accumulation of fluid in the lungs. The third and least employed chemical warfare agent was arsine, belonging to the group of sensory irritants. It is spread through the heat of an explosion as toxic smoke, causing burning and pain of the eyes, nose, mouth and throat, but its symptoms disappear rapidly when an exposed person leaves the infected area. Due to this effect, arsenic compounds were mostly employed as harassing agents (Collins 1929: pp. 15–31). Chemical warfare in the Italo-Ethiopian war lasted for more than four months, from 22 December 1935 to 27 April 1936, when the Ethiopian resistance in the Ogaden had crumbled. During this period, a total of about 350 tons of chemical warfare agents were used, 330 tons by the Air Force and 20 tons by the artillery.7 The latter was mainly employed on one single occasion, during the battle against the mountain stronghold of Amba Aradam from 11 to 15 February 1936. The quantity of gas dropped by the

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Air Force, compared with the total weight of explosives used during the war, corresponded to a high ratio of one to five,8 surprising if one considers that it was an outlawed weapon. On the main northern front, Italian warplanes dropped poison gas almost daily, with the exception of sixteen days in March. Amongst the warplanes used for this purpose were the SiaiMarchetti S.81, the heaviest bomber plane Italy could muster, with a carrying capacity of 2,000 kg. On the southern front – the secondary theatre of operation – Graziani used about eight times less poison gas than Badoglio. Gas warfare was particularly intensive as of mid-February 1936. On the sixteenth, the day after the battle of Amba Aradam, forty-two mustard gas bombs of 280 kg (11.7 tons) were dropped on the routed troops of Ras Mulugeta and, seven days later, forty-four bombs (12.3 tons), a record in the whole war. During the second half of March, the Italian Air Force hit with particular intensity the Korem plain and the area around Lake Ashenge, weaving ‘a web of gas’, in the words of The Times correspondent George Steer (1936: p. 280). It was the staging ground of the last Ethiopian attempt to stop the Italian advance. The most widely used Italian gas bomb, the C. 500 T., was designed to explode in mid-air and release the mustard gas in a cloud of fine mist over an elliptical area of 500 to 800 m per 100 to 200 m. Inside this perimeter the bomb was expected to have a deadly effect (Rochat 1991: p. 157). Since the mid-air exploding mechanisms did not always properly function, especially in the beginning, many bombs fell directly to the ground, infesting a much smaller area than foreseen. Unaware of this malfunction, Ethiopians and foreigners concluded that there were two different methods of gas bombings, one by torpedo shaped canisters and the other by spraying gas directly from the airplanes. In reality, it was one and the same method.9 As the war progressed, the new gas bomb worked increasingly according to plan. Normally gas bombs were dropped together with explosive and incendiary bombs in order to conceal their use and enhance the terrorising effect. This was the case, for example, in the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Melka Dida, but occasionally only gas bombs were dropped. On 19 March 1936, two Ca.133, on a reconnaissance flight, bombed the southern Ethiopian town of Yrga Alem with just two C. 500 T. The Norwegian Red Cross team stationed in the town reported afterwards that they had found one bomb which had hit the ground. The following day, the team treated forty-seven patients, mainly civilians, burnt by the gas. The mastermind behind the chemical war was again Mussolini. Without scruples he directed the Italian war machine, keeping constant pressure on his generals. Having wanted this war, he needed to win it, because his own as well as Fascism’s prestige were at stake. From the start of the war until

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the end, Mussolini authorised, suspended and forbade the use of chemical weapons. His orders depended very much upon his appreciation of the political situation, especially of the deliberations at the League of Nations which threatened, in early 1936, to take tougher sanctions against Italy for violating the Covenant. Whenever such meetings were scheduled, Mussolini ordered the High Command to temporarily abstain from using poison gas. After the proclamation of the Impero, all restrictions were lifted. Gas warfare continued, with varying intensity, until March 1939. Although Mussolini was ultimately responsible for gas warfare, both Badoglio and Graziani played important roles in its use. Badoglio started chemical warfare in Ethiopia without formal authorisation of the Duce, while Graziani employed it on his own initiative, even against formal orders from Rome.10 In this regard all three reasoned in strict military logic. If the use of gas brought them faster to victory, it was good, regardless of whether it was legal or not. Chemical warfare did not make for unanimity in the inner circle of the Fascist regime, at least in the beginning. Opposition came in early January 1936 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose Undersecretary of State, Fulvio Suvich, advised Mussolini not to make use of poison gas as it was ‘prohibited rigorously by an international convention signed by us’.11 Military considerations, however, had priority over the recommendations of a diplomat. Disagreement on the matter subsided quickly in the face of the military achievements in the field. When confronted with the charge of using chemical weapons, the Fascist authorities initially reacted with silence and angry denials. Later, in view of credible reports coming from Ethiopia, they made the argument that the Italian military had responded to Ethiopian atrocities ‘with non-asphyxiating gases which put the enemy out of action only for some hours’, as Mussolini told Aloisi (1957: pp. 367–68) to say at the League of Nations. Even after the Second World War, officials of the former Fascist regime, amongst whom Badoglio and Lessona, continued denying the truth.12 Emperor Haile Selassie was well aware of the danger of chemical warfare. As early as July 1935, three months before the war, he cautioned the field commander in the Ogaden, Grazmach Afework Wolde Semayat about this possibility. If faced with chemical warfare, the Emperor advised him, the soldiers should urinate into a piece of cloth and cover their mouth and nose. At about the same time, a booklet in Amharic was printed in Addis Abeba in which basic principles of gas warfare were explained, including the use of gas masks. Despite this general awareness, at least at the level of high government and military officials, no practical preparations for gas warfare were made with the result that there were only few gas masks at the outbreak of the war. When gas warfare became a very serious problem for the Ethiopian army, the Ethiopian Women Workers Association fabricated improvised masks with the active participation of the wife of the

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British Minister in Addis Abeba. They consisted of an ordinary one-piece overall with a hood, coated in linseed oil, very much based on the first models of gas masks used in the First World War. Brown and Junod were full of admiration for this ingenious and practical effort. But it was too little, too late. By the time the first one thousand eight hundred home-made gas masks were dispatched to Dessie in April 1936, the Ethiopian front had collapsed. The use of poison gas took Ethiopian commanders and troops by surprise, as in the First World War when the weapon was employed for the first time. Ras Imru (Del Boca 1979: p. 490), on whose troops Badoglio’s warplanes had dropped gas for the first time, reported that soldiers and local people were hit by a ‘mysterious liquid’. ‘I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how to combat this rain which burned and killed’.13 The Italians – always well informed on what was going on through an extensive network of informers – registered that ‘a certain panic’ had broken out amongst Ras Imru’s troops because of mysterious deaths occurring in the area of the Tekeze River. On the southern front, an identical reaction was noticed. Ras Desta informed Haile Selassie that ‘the Italians throw gas bombs as well, which fall like hail’.14 Desta had been told by Hylander, the director of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital that the unknown weapon was poison gas. A few months later after Junod met the Emperor in his cave near Korem, he wrote to Geneva that Haile Selassie appeared ‘weary of the terrible war waged by the Italian aviation, wounding hundreds of soldiers and burning them with this terrible gas’.15 Caught unprepared, Ethiopian soldiers and civilians were not only burned by the gas bombings, but also as a result of ignorance and curiosity. Red Cross doctors observed how local people manipulated gas bombs on the ground (Figure 6.1). Junod watched such an incident with dismay on the Korem plain: ‘During this bombing I saw some Galla [Oromo] peasants and Abyssinian soldiers approach the hole which had just been made by the mustard gas bomb, smell this distinct odour while laughing, sitting on the edge of the bomb crater, commenting amongst themselves this strange phenomenon ...’.16 Even members of the British Red Cross field hospital fell victim to the same curiosity when they encountered for the first time the remnants of a mustard gas bomb on their way to Alamata. Its deputy director, J.W.S. Macfie, was slightly hurt on his ankles, but exposure to the gas was not sufficient to cause larger damage such as blistering of the skin. It is not surprising that the Ethiopian soldiers reacted to this unknown weapon with fear and horror. Lacking protective gear and proper medical care which could have mitigated the effects of the gas, they were unwilling and unable to fight such an enemy. Many preferred to run the risk of being caught as deserters rather than to die under such circumstances, others sought the relative safety of the Italian lines.

‘Rain that Kills’: the ICRC and Fascist Italy’s Chemical Warfare

Figure 6.1 An unexploded mustard gas bomb in Bale province to where the second Swedish Red Cross field hospital had been deployed. (Agge, G. Med Röda Korset i Fält, Stockholm, 1936, p. 120)

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With regard to the role which poison gas played in the defeat of the Ethiopians, it must be said that the Italian military did not undertake, as far as can be ascertained, an overall evaluation. The assessments of Badoglio and Graziani on the effects of gas during the war were all very positive but connected to individual operations. Italian soldiers, who participated in the war and were later interviewed, attached decisive importance to the use of gas (Taddia 1988: pp. 97 and 103), but some admitted that, at the time, they did not know about it. Foreign journalists, posted on the Italian side during the war or sympathetic to the Italian cause, generally played down the importance of poison gas. They mainly spread the official Italian version, according to which the gas was non-lethal and used in very rare instances (see Matthews 1937: pp. 212 and 257–58, Waugh 1985: p. 159). The Ethiopians, however, judged the use of gas decisive in their defeat. Emperor Haile Selassie said that his army would have been victorious were it not for the illegal weapon. Ras Nasibu expressed a similar opinion. Journalists like The Times correspondent Walter M. Holmes, in Korem in the last part of March during a period of intensive gas warfare, shared this view. Red Cross doctors, such as Macfie and Johannes Kvittingen, who both had vast first-hand experience of the effects of gas, stressed the terrible physical and demoralising effects of the weapon. Junod, who had personally experienced mustard gas on the Korem plain, was of the opinion that poison gas was not the only reason for the Ethiopian defeat but ‘it hastened beyond doubt the end of hostilities’.17 Italian historians (Rochat 1991: p. 161, Del Boca 1995: p. 149) came to the same conclusion. They pointed out that the Fascist victory was due to an overwhelming superiority in almost all fields, including gas. In addition, it was noted that Haile Selassie had committed a strategic error by waging conventional war on the Italian forces instead of resorting to less spectacular but more efficient guerrilla warfare.

The ICRC and Chemical Warfare until 1935 ICRC involvement with modern chemical warfare goes back to the use of poison gas in the First World War. Deeply worried about the continuous violations of the pertinent stipulations of The Hague Conventions, the ICRC took a bold initiative in the fourth year of the war. On 6 February 1918, the Committee launched a pressing appeal ‘first of all to Sovereigns, Governments, generals and, then, to the peoples’ against the ‘barbarous invention’ of poison gas. It denounced the fact that poison gas had become part of normal warfare and expressed its concern about the never-ending race for more powerful chemical weapons. Alarmed by the perspective that poison gas increasingly affected the civilian non-combatant population, the ICRC raised its voice ‘with all the strength of our soul against this method

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of warfare, which we cannot call other than criminal’. In addition the appeal touched upon the widely felt conviction that chemical warfare was perfidious and contrary to the traditional warring qualities of courage and valour. For these reasons, the ICRC called upon the belligerents ‘to renounce this atrocious way of waging war’ and requested them to conclude an agreement on the subject, eventually under the banner of the Red Cross. The significance of this emotional appeal lay in the fact that the ICRC had extended its concern from the traditional field of humanitarian assistance to the subject of how wars were fought. The ICRC had opened a road to ‘a new adventure’ (Durand 1978: p. 72) which was to stay with the organisation for the next two decades. In the first years after the First World War, the ICRC actively used the Red Cross’s prestige and moral weight for the promotion of an international agreement against poison gas. By the time the Gas Protocol was signed in 1925, the ICRC could claim that it had played a considerable role in its realisation. In the following years, the campaign against poison gas (and bacteriological warfare) became a concern for the whole Red Cross movement, and it was the subject of intense interest and discussion at the four International Red Cross Conferences of 1925, 1928, 1930 and 1934. The highest organ of the movement officially gave the ICRC three different mandates: the promotion of the ratification of the Gas Protocol, technical research against the effects of chemical war and the study of related legal issues. The fight against chemical warfare became one of the main preoccupations of the humanitarian organisation in the years before the Italo-Ethiopian war. The first mandate, the promotion of the Gas Protocol, was easy to fulfil. The slow progress of ratification and the major reservations of some state parties made the Red Cross fear that the Protocol was going to lose its value. Each International Red Cross Conference requested the ICRC to do its utmost to hasten the process of ratification and the ICRC addressed itself to the member states of the Geneva Conventions, urging them to also become party to the Protocol. At the beginning of 1935 the ICRC took note of the fact that the most important states had done so. The second mandate was extremely vast and ambitious. The Red Cross was tasked with searching for means ‘to protect and care for its personnel, the warring armies and, specifically, the civil population against the effects of chemical warfare’.18 It is interesting to note that in 1925, when the resolution was written, the military were still formally included in the groups of persons who were expected to benefit from such Red Cross action. However, shortly afterwards, the ICRC concentrated its efforts exclusively on the civilian population because the military took responsibility for themselves. They did not need nor desire the intervention of the Red Cross in a matter which was developing behind a curtain of secrecy. In two successive meetings of international experts on chemical weapons, a complete technical programme of civil defence measures was

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hammered out. It included projects for the construction of shelters against poison gas with special attention being paid to protection against aerial chemical warfare. In this context it should be mentioned that the second meeting, held in Rome in 1929, had as the honorary chairman Filippo Cremonesi, the President of the Italian Red Cross. Just six years later, he was again dealing with the ICRC on poison gas, but this time, he found himself on the bench of the accused – for belonging to the country which had broken the 1925 Protocol. Originating from this mandate, a Documentation Centre on Chemical Warfare was established at the ICRC as of June 1928. Its task was to centralise all relevant information on the issue. Under its auspices, an international contest was launched with the objective of finding a simple method to detect mustard gas. But the jury, composed of distinguished chemists, was unable to award the prize of 10,000 Swiss Francs. The submitted detectors responded only to very high concentrations of the gas and were not of practical value. Even less successful were plans for a contest for the best shelter and the best gas mask. They had to be shelved, owing to a lack of funds. These efforts led the ICRC to the sobering conclusion that it was almost impossible to provide efficient protection against chemical war by technical means and, more importantly that such matters were far beyond the capacity of the Red Cross. As a consequence, the ICRC shifted its attention to legal matters, in particular to the protection of the civilian population under international law. It was a field in which the Committee was at ease. The fourteenth International Conference of the Red Cross, held in Brussels in 1930, endorsed the initiative and gave the corresponding mandate to the ICRC. A year later, the ICRC welcomed illustrious lawyers to Geneva to discuss the legal protection of civilians against aerial chemical warfare. The round table found that there were important gaps in relevant international law, but the participants were unable to agree on concrete proposals to fill them. Instead, unanimity was only achieved on three principles. The first affirmed that the concept of civilian population needed to be preserved, threatened as it was by total war; the second that weapons, aiming essentially to terrorise the civilian population, were prohibited under international law. Finally, the experts came to the very general conclusion that it was more necessary than ever to eliminate war in favour of mechanisms allowing peaceful settlement of international disputes. The results of such round tables were sobering, indeed. As of the early 1930s, the ICRC started to realise that times were changing. Tensions in Europe were on the rise and the failure of the Conference of Disarmament signalled the beginning of the end of a period of relative peace. Civil defence and matters of chemical warfare were no longer left to an idealistic Red Cross movement, but they had become the exclusive concern of national governments, or, more precisely, the military. No wonder that the ICRC was only able to obtain meagre results, despite the eagerness and enthusiasm with which it had gone to work.

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By the time of the fifteenth International Conference of the Red Cross, held in Tokyo in 1934, the ICRC drew the National Societies’ attention to this preoccupying state of affairs, reflected by a lack of commitment on their part, as well as by serious funding difficulties for the projects already underway. Even the Documentation Centre on Chemical Warfare was short of funds, and from 1932 the ICRC had to cover its expenses from its own resources. However, when the ICRC informed the movement that it wished to be discharged of the technical mandate, the Conference convinced the reluctant organisation to carry on. By the time the Italo-Ethiopian war broke out, the role of the ICRC in the fight against chemical warfare and in mitigating its effects had undergone profound changes. From being at the forefront of the movement banning chemical warfare, the organisation became increasingly sidelined and less useful. The ICRC was clearly worried, even discouraged by this development but it did not fundamentally question its role. On the contrary, the cause remained an integral part of the organisation in October 1935. Interestingly, throughout the interwar years, the ICRC never asked itself how it would react if poison gas was actually used again in a conflict. The Italo-Ethiopian war provided such an occasion and challenged the ICRC’s commitment to the cause.

First Reports on the Use of Poison Gas: Discovering the Truth First information on the use of poison gas on the southern front reached Addis Abeba on New Year’s Day 1936. Ras Desta Damtew reported that, on the bombing site of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Melka Dida, pieces of gas bombs were found amongst fragments of ordinary bombs. The precise number could not be ascertained because the terrain was completely churned. Brown relayed the news to the ICRC on the following day but retracted it after he had talked to the leader of the Swedish Red Cross field hospital, Fride Hylander. Hylander told Brown that he could not personally confirm the use of gas. The information originated from local people who noticed that the day after the bombing some survivors suffered blisters on their body. In this context Hylander recalled an injury of an Ethiopian soldier who was treated in the field hospital a few days before the bombing of the field hospital. The soldier got splashes of ‘drops of yellow water’19 on his hands during another bombing raid. Despite the fact that the soldier had washed them immediately afterwards, blisters formed the next day. The Swedes suspected that they were caused by mustard gas. For further clarification, Hylander took a photograph of the man and gave a copy to Junod. During Junod’s fact-finding trip to the site of the bombed field hospital, the delegate met Ras Desta. The Ethiopian commander confirmed the use of gas, but could show Junod only one patient with a swollen hand ‘with a

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banal infection due to a shell splinter wound’. With regard to Hylander’s photograph of the soldier with the blisters, Junod dismissed the case hastily as ‘trophic troubles due to bad blood circulation’.20 He explained the blisters with the argument that the soldier had held his hands crossed over the gun for a whole day, without saying why he should have done so and concluded from this that there was no evidence of poison gas. Junod was wrong. The Ethiopian government protested without delay to the League of Nations about the violation of the Gas Protocol in Melka Dida. The allegation was flatly denied by Graziani’s press service. As a result of Junod’s report, Brown in Addis Abeba and headquarters in Geneva refused to believe the Ethiopian accusations against Italy. They suspected, instead that the Ethiopians had made it up for political reasons with the consequence that, for a considerable time, all reports about poison gas were greeted with disbelief. Valuable time was lost. This is all the more important because the Ethiopians were right. Graziani had ordered the use of mustard gas in the bombing of the Swedish Red Cross, in reprisal for the killing of the two airmen Minniti and Zannoni. The daily report of the southern front’s Air Force commander, Colonel Mario Bernasconi, noted meticulously that in this particular raid 3,134 kg of explosives were dropped, including ‘12 bombs of mustard gas of 21 kg each’.21 They had used older and much lighter gas bombs, not the new C. 500 T., with the result that the gas was not easily detectable, especially for people under shock from the bombing. It took two full months before the matter again received serious attention. On 29 February Brown informed Geneva that gas casualties had reportedly been treated at the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital of Georges Dassios, stationed at Weldiya. This time, unlike before, information about the use of poison gas came directly from a Red Cross source. Still, the delegates did not believe it and requested confirmation from the British Red Cross stationed near the same small town but they did not respond. It must be added here that, throughout January and February 1936, the Italians used poison gas almost daily on the northern front, but such information, if it reached Addis Abeba, was not considered credible. This is not really surprising because it was not easy for the delegates to get a clear picture on such a sensitive matter. Red Cross field hospitals were either far away from the places where these bombings had occurred or they were cut off from reliable communications. The British Red Cross field hospital had received its first gas wounded at the same time as Dassios. The number of patients increased significantly when they moved closer to the front in the last days of February 1936. In Alamata, they were confronted with the first massive influx of gas patients. In three days, from 28 February to 1 March, they treated some one hundred and fifty casualties. The Ethiopian Red Cross and the ICRC in Addis Abeba were kept in the dark about this development, but John Melly, the leader of

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the unit, had informed the British Legation in the Ethiopian capital.22 Also The Times was faster. Having its own correspondent at this moment with the British field hospital, the paper informed its readers about the sensational news on 5 March, at a time when the delegates in Addis Abeba were still expecting confirmation from their Red Cross colleagues in the field. Junod finally received detailed information when he made, a few days later, a one-day trip by air to Dessie to evacuate a sick British physician. In the town he met the American military attaché, Captain Meade, who had seen personally poison gas wounded at the British field hospital in Alamata. Although Junod still made the most express reservations, the two delegates were now clearly worried and they decided that Junod should check what was going on during the next field trip to the front. The hour of truth came for Junod on 17 March on the Korem plain. When the Italian Air Force attempted to destroy the Red Cross aircraft, he and the pilot, Carl Gustaf von Rosen, rushed to the plane to remove the branches covering the Red Cross markings. At this moment they came across ‘the strong smell of mustard gas’.23 Von Rosen was burned on one hand, while Junod sustained bronchitis from breathing the poisonous air. Despite his scepticism regarding Italy’s use of poison gas, Junod had been cautious enough to carry a gas mask to Korem, but he could not make use of it. The frightened Ethiopian mechanic, who had accompanied the two expatriates to Korem, had inadvertently made off with the gas masks when seeking cover from the bombing. This was not all. The next day, Junod met Haile Selassie at his cave. From there he was able to observe ‘an Italian plane spraying the area with an oily liquid which fell like fine rain and covered a vast area with thousands of tiny droplets. Each one that fell on the tegument caused a small burn which developed into a blister a few hours later. This is the vesicant substance known in English as “mustard gas”.’24 Now, after such a direct and unexpected experience with poison gas, there could be no longer any doubt. Upon his return to Addis Abeba, Junod sent a long telegram to Geneva about his extraordinary trip.25 As of this moment reports about poison gas reached the ICRC delegation in Addis Abeba from all fronts where Red Cross field hospitals had been deployed. By the end of March 1936, seven of eight foreign Red Cross field hospitals and five of seven Ethiopian Red Cross units had had more or less extensive experience with gas casualties.26

Experience in the Field with Poison Gas The bigger Red Cross field hospitals, such as the British or the Swedish, expected the possible use of gas and were prepared accordingly. Their staff was equipped with gas masks and anti-gas medicines were brought along.

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Lambie had acquired a crate of gas masks in London before returning to Ethiopia in the last days of September 1935. Later on the Ethiopian Red Cross purchased, according to Brown, a big amount of gas masks in Addis Abeba. Paradoxically, the ICRC which had dealt with matters of poison gas for so many years omitted to inform the participating National Societies of the possibility of gas warfare. Neither was specific advice given to the departing delegates. When Junod’s sister suggested he take a gas mask on the mission, he had shrugged it off with a smile, trusting that the Italians would not resort to such illegal means. There are numerous descriptions of the medical effects of mustard gas. The most affected parts of the body were the feet, hands and buttocks, or the head and shoulders, depending whether the victim had been exposed to the oily liquid on the ground or from the air (Figures 6.2 and 6.3). Macfie (1936: p. 77), the British Red Cross doctor, gave a poignant description when he encountered gas wounded for the first time:

Figure 6.2 Burnt by mustard gas. (RA, SRK, II, Informationsavdelningen, K 1, vol. 4)

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Figure 6.3 Legs of an Ethiopian child whose feet show the typical blisters caused by mustard gas which was dropped on Yrga Alem on 19 March 1936. (Photothèque CICR (DR)/HIST-02753-20A) On closer inspection the patients were a shocking sight. The first I examined, an old man, sat moaning on the ground, rocking himself to and fro, completely wrapped in a cloth. When I approached he slowly rose and drew aside his cloak. He looked as if someone had tried to skin him, clumsily; he had been horribly burned by ‘mustard gas’ all over his face, the back, and the arms. There were many others like him: some more, some less affected; some newly burned, others older, their sores already caked with thick brown scabs. Men and women alike, all horribly disfigured and little children, too.

Besides the burning of the skin with its typical blisters, mustard gas often had a blinding effect, normally only temporarily, affecting especially those who had been exposed to gas bombs exploding overhead.27 Numerous such patients sought medical help when Junod was near Korem. W.S. Empey (British Red Cross Society 1937: p. 36), another British Red Cross doctor, described the scene: ‘It was a pathetically memorable sight to watch the approach of long lines of these victims to our camp for treatment. They were led sightless, a chain of mutual misery over the narrow hilly path to our treatment centre by a guide, the chain being formed by those behind clutching the cloaks of those in front’. Treatment of gas casualties was relatively easy, provided that the necessary medicines were available and quickly applied. Junod reported that the standard medicine was Losantin, a German-made paste, based on chloride

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of lime which neutralised the gas. He obtained a very good result on a patient whom he had treated in Korem, thirty minutes after he had been exposed to mustard gas. Forty-eight hours later, the patient presented typical signs of second degree burns on face and hands and was admitted to the British field hospital. Three weeks later, Junod encountered the patient again, completely healed. This and Junod’s own brief experience with mustard gas made him underestimate the effects of poison gas. He considered it ‘not as terrible as one could believe’. According to him, no death resulted from poison gas until mid-April.28 Such a view is clearly contradicted by other Red Cross staff who had more occasions than Junod to treat gas wounded. Johannes Kvittingen, one of the Norwegian Red Cross doctors, confirmed the observations of the ICRC’s toxicologist H. Zangger that ‘gas was most certainly a deadly weapon. Within one hour people near the target were dead. I had many patients with lower doses who died within hours/days’.29 Equally dangerous were wounds which were not taken care of in time. Many gas patients died of untreated infections or suffered complications and permanent disability.30 For lack of reliable data, it is impossible to indicate the number of Ethiopians killed by gas. Even Haile Selassie spoke quite vaguely of several thousand in his speech to the General Assembly of the League of Nations, right after the war.31 The Ethiopian army’s modern medical service consisted of the fifteen Red Cross field hospitals, very unequally equipped and staffed. Some of them, especially the ones of the Ethiopian Red Cross, lacked not only qualified medical personnel, but also medicines. More often the army was without proper medical assistance, with tragic results, as is attested by an exchange of telegrams between Ras Desta and Haile Selassie after the Swedes had evacuated from Melka Dida. Ras Desta complained that there were no more doctors to take care of the wounded and that he and his people did not know how to treat gas patients. Haile Selassie responded two days later with the advice that gas wounded should be treated with lemon to be put on the body and the eyes and he promised to send special medicines. Ras Desta lost no time and ordered one thousand lemons from Yrgalem. They were promptly purchased and the juice was bottled but there is no information how the patients reacted to this uncommon treatment. How many gas casualties had received treatment from the Red Cross field hospitals? When trying to respond to this question, the following considerations have to be taken into account: first, medical records are not complete and more often missing altogether, except for the Swedish Red Cross.32 Secondly, the Red Cross had been able to reach only a fraction of those in need. Most field hospitals arrived at the front relatively late in the war and, very often, when their services were most required, they were on the retreat themselves, along with the beaten soldiers. According to available records, fewer than one thousand gas casualties were treated by the

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Red Cross teams for the whole period of gas warfare. It was a small number in comparison with the total number of gas casualties. In the absence of precise figures, the following approximation can be made. According to Melly, the British Red Cross field hospital treated in the period from 7 to 22 March 1936 – when the Italians gassed the Korem area with particular insistence – two to three hundred gas patients, with up to one hundred on 18 March alone.33 If one considers that at this time the Ethiopians had the best possible medical coverage and that the number of gas bombs corresponded to less than 10 percent of the total for the whole northern front, it can be said that for some 90 percent of the gas warfare in the north, there was only scanty or no medical care available. The same holds basically true for the southern front, even if there are less representative figures at hand. As often in such situations, the biggest part of the suffering took place in areas where there was no effective assistance. The merit of the Red Cross’s work in favour of gas casualties is not in the least diminished by the fact that it had been able to reach only a small number of patients. As in all wars, there was a gap between needs and relief. Melly (Nelson and Sullivan 1937: p. 240) alluded to this revolting fact on his return from the front to Addis Abeba: ‘This isn’t a war – it isn’t even a slaughter – it’s the torture of tens of thousands of defenceless men, women and children, with bombs and poison gas’.

Silence on Chemical Warfare during the Mission to Rome The ICRC in Geneva registered the first news of Italy’s use of poison in early January 1936, but made no follow-up. In early March, as reports became more frequent and insistent, the ICRC’s attention was fully absorbed by the preparations for the impending visit to Rome about the inquiry under the Convention on the Wounded and Sick. In the carefully made preparatory documents for these meetings, there are only occasional references to gas, which clearly indicates that it was not yet an issue for the organisation. This did not substantially change even after the interviews in Geneva with the two Polish nationals, Stanisław Belau and his assistant Tadeusz Medynski (captured in their cave hospital by the Italians on 16 February after the battle of Amba Aradam). Belau’s testimony about the Italians’ use of poison gas was particularly interesting because he had personally experienced gas warfare in the First World War. He told the ICRC about the unmistakable characteristics of mustard gas, as well as of two other chemical agents not known to him.34 Belau’s deposition was given to the delegation leaving for Rome, together with Junod’s long telegram about his own experience with mustard gas on the Korem plain. Thus, at the moment when President Huber, Vice-President Paul Logoz, Carl Jacob Burckhardt and Jacques Chenevière arrived in Rome on 24 March, they

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had in their luggage fresh first-hand information about the Italian use of poison gas. As described, the ICRC had been very satisfied with the results of its mission to Rome, crowned by a brief audience with Mussolini. It had obtained a basic agreement on the modalities of the envisaged inquiry. But what about poison gas? ICRC documents make no mention of it at all – neither Chenevière’s briefing notes nor the minutes of the meeting of the Committee after the delegation’s return to Geneva. Italian documents confirm that the delegation did not mention the issue. The Italians had been worried that the ICRC would table the matter, but in a simple and shrewd move, they pre-empted a possible formal discussion. Aloisi informed Max Huber in their first meeting at Foreign Affairs that the planned inquiry was limited, in the Italian view, exclusively to issues falling under the Geneva Conventions. This meant that methods of warfare, such as the use of poison gas, were eliminated from the discussion, as Aloisi commented in his Journal.35 There was little that the ICRC could do in this respect because the belligerents were free to set the agenda. But if poison gas could not be discussed formally, what about doing so informally? Here again, it seems that this was not done, despite the fact that there were a number of opportunities, such as the long meeting with Cremonesi, during which a tour d’horizon of ICRC concerns was made. Although the delegation took up in this meeting Belau’s and Medynski’s case, it did not mention their testimony on poison gas. Perhaps Cremonesi was expecting that the subject would come up. He made a specific remark at the end of his report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that no other subjects were discussed between the ICRC and the Italian Red Cross than the ones mentioned. It sounded as if he had been surprised himself. However, the issue may not have been totally forgotten. According to Chenevière (1966: p. 254), Max Huber had alluded to gas warfare during the short audience with Mussolini: I know exactly what he is going to say ... All the essentials are there: reprisals prohibited, even if apparently justified; immunity and care guaranteed for everyone hors de combat. In passing, I even catch the ‘explosive’ word mustard gas. The Duce gives a start. Max Huber continues, very calmly: ‘Just a general comment on methods of warfare’. Is he moved? Perhaps, but this may indeed not be inopportune.

It should be added here that Carl J. Burckhardt, in his own account published in 1944, on the meeting with Mussolini, made no such reference to poison gas at all. In any case, the matter is of little importance since the audience with Mussolini was a courtesy call, too short to allow a real discussion, especially not on such a controversial subject as poison gas. This is the only reference to gas warfare on record for the Rome visit. The question of why the ICRC remained so silent is intriguing, all the more

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since the delegation had learnt, in the meantime, from a confidential cable sent from Geneva to the delegation, via the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of yet another incident in which poison gas was used. This time it came from the Norwegian Red Cross in Yrga Alem.36 The message confirmed that gas was employed on both fronts and that it had become a very serious matter. In the absence of documented evidence, three reasons may explain why the ICRC abstained from intervening in Rome on a matter on which it had so solid information. First, the ICRC gave priority to the envisaged inquiry and did not want to compromise its chances of success, especially not with a matter which was known to be very sensitive for the Fascist authorities. The last thing the ICRC wanted was to be seen as anti-Italian. Secondly, like the delegates in the field in the beginning, some in the ICRC could not believe that Italy had actually employed poison gas. In their opinion it was hard to imagine that Italy, the cradle of law, would jeopardise its reputation by resorting to a banned weapon. Last, but not least, the strained BrownICRC relations had reached the point of no return after Italy’s revelations about Brown’s dispatch of ICRC reports to his anti-Fascist friend in Geneva. Such matters no longer allowed for a sober examination of information coming from his side. Still, it must be asked whether the ICRC was not looking too ‘quickly the other way’. Dismissing Brown’s credibility was one thing, even perhaps Belau’s, but Junod’s cable about poison gas in Korem should have convinced the ICRC that the matter needed to be discussed without delay. The ICRC had first-hand information about the use of an illegal weapon and had dealt for seventeen years with chemical warfare. What else did it need to raise the issue with the Italians? In addition, by not doing so the ICRC completely overlooked that much more was at stake – its ability to act credibly in times of war. In fact, Italy’s use of poison gas in Ethiopia should have opened the ICRC’s eyes. If Mussolini had authorised chemical weapons in flagrant violation of the Gas Protocol, he was likely to have been equally unconcerned about the Geneva Conventions, as the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals suggested. Could a man be trusted who had so manifestly shown his contempt for international law? Retrospectively it is clear that, while in Rome, the ICRC allowed itself to be manipulated into silence. It was naïve to believe that Italian cooperation could be obtained by such an accommodating attitude. The contrary was most probably the case. By not standing up over the use of poison gas, the ICRC gave Mussolini more reason not to care about international agreements. Did he not, the very day before the much-hailed meeting with the ICRC delegation in the Palazzo Venezia, authorise Badoglio once more ‘to use gas of any type and at any scale’?37 Ironically, the ICRC did not need to be so cautious. The Italians knew

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exactly what the ICRC knew, because they had intercepted Junod’s telegram about mustard gas,38 which Huber and his colleagues carried under lock and key to Rome.

The Defeat of the League of Nations on the Question of Poison Gas Despite the League of Nation’s condemnation of Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia and the imposition of sanctions, the spirit of collective action weakened increasingly as the war progressed. By the time chemical warfare in Ethiopia had became an international concern, in March 1936, the League had already lost much of its impetus. An Italian military victory looked ever more probable. To make matters worse, important developments were taking place in Europe itself. On 7 March 1936, Hitler’s army marched into the Rhineland, taking advantage of the international community’s preoccupation with the war in the Horn of Africa. All attention shifted again from Ethiopia to the heart of Europe. Hitler’s challenge led to a prompt reappraisal of Italy’s importance in Europe, reviving hopes that Mussolini would join France and the United Kingdom in an anti-German front. A further erosion of the League’s position was just a matter of time. The first Ethiopian protests to the League of Nations about Italy’s use of poison gas went unheeded. The turning point came for the League, as for the ICRC, only in mid-March 1936. In view of a new and pressing Ethiopian intervention, supported by credible press reports on the use of poison gas, the League’s Committee of Thirteen,39 under its Spanish President Salvador de Madariaga, decided to refer the complaint formally to the Italian government. De Madariaga reminded Italy of the pertinent provisions of the Gas Protocol of 1925. Public opinion in Europe was moved by the alarming reports coming from Ethiopia, particularly in the United Kingdom where the Parliament and the public put strong pressure on the government to take action against Italy. It is interesting to note that the British government had been receiving accurate reports on chemical warfare in Ethiopia for at least a month, but it had remained silent. This reflected the ambiguity of its position regarding the Italo-Ethiopian war. The British government, faced as most others with the dilemma to choose between upholding collective security and its own national interests, shifted, in the words of Anthony Eden, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, constantly between those who were in favour of Stresa40 and the ones in favour of the League of Nations. For this reason, the United Kingdom had avoided taking unilateral and decisive action such as the closure of the Suez Canal which was vital for Italy’s war against Ethiopia. Later in the war, in April 1936, the question of the closure of the Canal was discussed again in the British Cabinet, but the Prime Minister discarded such an extreme measure because it would have meant war with Italy.41 The

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British Government was of the opinion that the League, rather than individual governments, should be the lead organisation in checking Italy’s aggressive ambitions. France had similar hesitations, but had been more sympathetic to Italy’s Ethiopian enterprise from the onset as underlined by the Laval-Mussolini agreement of 7 January 1935, when the French Foreign Minister had indirectly given Italy a free hand for expansion to Ethiopia. Given the rise in tension with Germany in March 1936, France was even less inclined to change its position. On the contrary, the French government wanted to avoid collective action under the League of Nations because it needed Italy’s support against Germany’s warlike ambitions on the Franco-German border. As a result, France strongly opposed calls for tougher sanctions and championed the cause of a political solution to the Italo-Ethiopian conflict, despite the fact that this looked ever more impossible. When the Committee of Thirteen met on 8 April in Geneva, Anthony Eden presented testimonies from mainly Red Cross sources, especially British Red Cross doctors, about Italy’s use of poison gas. A clash with Etienne Flandin, France’s new Foreign Minister, became inevitable. While Eden called for an inquiry into Italy’s waging of chemical warfare and a tightening of sanctions, Flandin, repeating arguments already presented by Italy, questioned the competence of the Committee of Thirteen to deal with such matters and argued that the Committee should focus not only on Italy’s alleged violations of the Gas Protocol, but also on breaches of relevant international law committed by Ethiopia. Regarding the question of competence, the Committee of Thirteen decided, based upon an ad hoc legal opinion given by three League lawyers that it was, indeed, competent to make an inquiry on documents. It was part of its general mandate with which the Committee had been entrusted. The second argument was more complicated, because at heart was the fundamental question of whether chemical warfare was prohibited absolutely or whether it was justifiable in response to violations of other applicable international law. For Eden the case was clear: the Gas Protocol was not open to interpretation and the prohibition was absolute. The two issues, violations of the Gas Protocol and violations of other laws of war were distinct and should be treated as such. Eden argued that this was a point of principle, after all, and that the use of a prohibited weapon in Africa could also have repercussions in Europe. The British Foreign Secretary’s point was taken up in a letter written by the League of Nations to Italy. Not surprisingly, it was strongly contested by Aloisi on the grounds that the Committee had taken it upon itself to give ‘an interpretation of perhaps the most delicate and complex point covered by the Protocol of June 17th, 1925, which contained no provision prohibiting, in derogation of the general principles, the exercise of the right of reprisal for atrocities such as those of which the Italian soldiers had been

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the victims’.42 On closer inspection, Aloisi’s argument was weak as the Committee had stated only what the signatories of the 1925 Protocol had accepted. How could Aloisi forget that, in 1925, Italy had not objected to the point the Committee was now repeating and that it had ratified the Gas Protocol without reservation? How could he not remember that Italy had been prepared to go even further during the Conference on Disarmament when it had proposed that reprisals by means of chemical weapons should be prohibited altogether? In reality, Italy’s response was a thinly disguised attempt to hide Mussolini’s contempt for law – a law which he had taken into his own hands months before. By the time the League’s Council met again, on 20 April, it was clear that any momentum in favour of the defence of legality had been lost and that any planned common action against Italy’s use of poison gas was abandoned. The Italian army was victorious on the main front and was preparing to march on Addis Abeba. Haile Selassie’s army in the north was in complete disarray and the same fate awaited the Ethiopian forces in the Ogaden. In a final, mocking gesture Graziani’s aviation, on the same day as the Council met, carried out the second last gas bombing of the war with yet another 3 tons of mustard gas and phosgene. Two days before the Council assembled in Geneva, Mussolini had correctly assessed the radically changed situation. He told Badoglio that last minute efforts for a peaceful settlement of the conflict had failed and that tougher sanctions were unlikely to be taken against Italy. In view of the fact that victory lay ahead, Mussolini gave his commander in the field the famous order: ‘We shoot straight ahead’.43 In the Council of the League, Aloisi had an easy game. He skilfully played the card of Italian cooperation in Europe, for which – it was understood – Ethiopia was the price. With the active participation of Italy, the accused state, the Council elaborated a toothless resolution, reminding ‘that Italy and Ethiopia are bound by the Protocol of June 17, 1925, on the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and by the Conventions regarding the conduct of war to which these two States are parties, and emphasises the importance which has been attached to these instruments by all the contracting States’.44 This was all that remained of the outrage and indignation displayed barely three weeks previously. Military and political realities had carried the day. Force had won over law, sanctioned by the League’s member states, including the United Kingdom. The League of Nations had not only set a dangerous precedent, but it had shown to the world that collective security and common action were only words, not backed by deeds. The world body was, as Salvador de Madariaga (1972: p. 28) said, ‘a club of nations, a co-operative of sovereign States in which the collective sum of national power produced international impotence’.

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The League of Nations and the ICRC: Collective Security and Humanitarian Concerns Up until the Italo-Ethiopian war, the League of Nations and the ICRC had developed quite separately from each other. The two organisations were different in regard to their aims, means and set-up. Relations between the two were confined to specific issues such as the repatriation of prisoners of war in the aftermath of the First World War or the question of how common measures under the League against a state in breach of the Covenant would affect humanitarian operations of the Red Cross. With the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian war, the respective roles of the two organisations underwent radical changes. The fledgling League grappled to come to terms with the challenges, which Fascist Italy had thrown to the international community and with the preoccupying fact that war had become, once more, a means of pursuing national interests. The ICRC, in turn, became heavily involved in the first major humanitarian operation since 1918. From being a player on the margin of the international scene in the interwar years, the ICRC had advanced to centre stage. This inevitably had repercussions with the League of Nations and a clarification of the new roles became necessary. Chemical warfare in Ethiopia provided the opportunity. During the stormy deliberations in early April 1936, the Committee of Thirteen felt, in view of Italy’s refusal to cooperate on the reported use of poison gas that it needed more reliable information. Anthony Eden proposed that the League request assistance from the ICRC which was known to have its own people on the ground. Joseph Avenol, the Secretary General of the League of Nations, wrote immediately to the ICRC ‘whether it would be able to communicate to the Committee of Thirteen information emanating either from officers of the International Red Cross Committee, or from impartial persons such as the Red Cross ambulance doctors in Ethiopia in regard to infringements of the international conventions on the conduct of war signed by the two belligerents’.45 Avenol referred particularly to Junod’s report on the events on the Korem plain and to the account of the Swedish doctors at Melka Dida who were the first to allege that poison gas was used. The request placed the ICRC into an uncomfortable position. On one hand, it was in its interest that international agreements were upheld because its own activities relied on the respect of one such agreement. On the other hand, the ICRC did not want to become an arbiter between the League and Italy, as this would have inevitable consequences for its humanitarian operation in the field. Immediately after the request was delivered, hectic discussions took place at the ICRC. The matter was extremely urgent because an answer was expected the same afternoon in order to allow the Committee of Thirteen to proceed with its deliberations. Evidently the ICRC would not reply upon such

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short notice, but, luckily, the Ethiopia Commission had scheduled a meeting for the same afternoon, 8 April, and the Committee itself – the competent body for such far-reaching decisions – was to meet the following day. Max Huber, in Zürich at the time and unable to come to Geneva, was hurriedly consulted by telephone. He set the tone with the comment that the League had made an extraordinary demand and he expressed the view that documents intended for the envisaged inquiry should not be used for political ends, as would inevitably be the case when they were treated by the Committee of Thirteen. Huber’s argument was used in the ICRC’s hurriedly composed response to the League of Nations. Referring to the discussions under way with the two belligerents on the planned inquiry under the Geneva Convention, Vice-President Favre wrote: ‘Until a final decision – which we hope will achieve a positive result – has been reached, the International Committee cannot hand over its documentary material for the purposes of another enquiry bearing partly on the same facts’.46 A second point unequivocally told the League that it could not expect compliance: The neutrality which the International Red Cross Committee is bound to observe, makes it necessary for the Committee to exercise very great discretion. In particular, the International Committee does not feel that it can communicate information received from its own delegates, or information confided to it as being an international organ of the Red Cross, for any enquiry other than that for which the Geneva Convention itself makes a provision in the matter of establishing the facts regarding alleged violations.47

Finally, the ICRC told the League that it was not in a position to divulge information originating from concerned governments or National Red Cross Societies. It was up to each of them to decide whether to provide the information or not. Salvador de Madariaga took the response as an affront. He put his finger sharply on the weak spot of the ICRC’s reasoning by pointing out that the League’s own inquiry covered a subject with which the ICRC’s was not concerned, namely the conduct of hostilities which included gas warfare. As a consequence, the ICRC’s argument of neutrality could not be used for withholding information from the League. More important was, probably, the next point. De Madariaga expressed the Committee of Thirteen’s surprise ‘that such a reason should be invoked as a ground for declining to communicate information to an organ which is acting on behalf of the Council of the League of Nations’.48 The ICRC had challenged the authority of the world body with its refusal to cooperate. The ball was back in the ICRC’s court. The humanitarian organisation needed to further explain its position. This had become even more necessary because the League had resorted to a means of pressure which it knew would embarrass the ICRC. It published the exchange of letters with the humanitarian organisation. The dispute made headlines as expected.

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This time, the accomplished lawyers Huber and Logoz prepared a carefully worded response. Instead of insisting on the argument of the planned inquiry, they based their response on the fundamental level of the Red Cross ideals and the statutes of the ICRC: The aims of the International Committee of the Red Cross are exclusively humanitarian and non-political; its primary function is to endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of the victims of war. In order to attain those aims, it must adhere scrupulously to a line of conduct that will enable it to maintain relations of mutual confidence with the contending parties ... The International Committee likewise considers that it cannot depart from the principles stated above even in conflicts in which the right to wage war is denied.49

Through this reply, the ICRC distanced itself from the League of Nations. It made the point that political and humanitarian organisations had their own rights and duties which did not always coincide. The reactions to this bold stand were immediate. The Ethiopians, who had specifically requested the ICRC to share their documentation with the League, were deeply disappointed. Junod noticed that working relations with them degraded to strong opposition after the ICRC’s negative response to the Committee of Thirteen. Government officials close to Haile Selassie accused the humanitarian organisation of ill-will and of being pro-Italian. John H. Spencer, the American adviser in the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was even more outspoken. In his memoirs he (Spencer 1984: p. 50) considered the ICRC’s refusal to share information with the League of Nations as a ‘disgraceful and futile attempt to cover up an international crime’ and accused Huber of having ‘prostituted his own reputation and that of international law to the call of political convenience’. Disappointment on one side, satisfaction on the other. Upon hearing of the Committee of Thirteen’s request to the ICRC, Vinci, the Italian Red Cross delegate in Geneva, rushed to the ICRC to find out what it was going to say. Although unable to obtain precise information despite his good contacts in the ICRC, he managed nevertheless to pickup enough to calm his nervous people in Rome: the ICRC intended to remain intransigent in regard to the League and would do nothing which could damage Italian interests. Filippo Cremonesi, the Italian Red Cross President, perfectly aware of the crucial role which the ICRC was playing at this moment learned with relief of the negative response. So did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Equally pleased with the ICRC’s decision was Giuseppe Motta, the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was happy for a different reason. The ICRC’s refusal to the Committee of Thirteen had ensured that the already complicated Swiss-Italian relations were not charged with an additional contentious subject. Geneva had rendered Bern a precious service. Motta told Paul Ruegger, the Swiss Minister in Rome that the ICRC, by defending the neutrality of the Red Cross, had indirectly defended Swiss neutrality. Ruegger noted with satisfaction the increased prestige which the ICRC

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enjoyed in Italy because its ‘neutral and impartial attitude, demonstrated again in the correspondence with the Committee of Thirteen, is reflecting upon our country’.50 When evaluating the ICRC’s dispute with the League of Nations, an organisational matter must be considered. Nowhere else than in this dispute was the ICRC President’s physical absence from Geneva more felt. Had he been there from the beginning, the ICRC’s first answer to the League which had been focused too much on the argument of the inquiry would probably not have been written so. Precious time was lost until the second and wellfounded response was made. More importantly, however, was that Huber’s presence in Geneva would have allowed a prompt face-to-face meeting with the League’s representatives during which the ICRC’s point of view could have been better conveyed than in an impersonal letter. But it must be noted that this organisational shortcoming was not perceived as such at the time. It became an issue only during and immediately after the Second World War when Huber’s absence from Geneva was compounded by ill-health. With regard to the Red Cross movement as a whole, the ICRC’s handling of the dispute revealed a serious internal flaw. The ICRC did not consider it necessary to consult and coordinate with the National Societies which had staff in Ethiopia, despite the fact that the League’s call for information was also addressed to them. By simply leaving the matter up to each individual Society, the ICRC gave the impression that the Red Cross was unable to speak with one voice. This is exactly what happened. The British, Norwegian and Swedish Red Cross Societies allowed their personnel to communicate their testimonies on Italy’s use of poison gas to the League. When the ICRC finally explained its point of view in Circular Letter No. 325, published on 27 April 1936, the damage to the credibility of the Red Cross was done and the dispute was discussed in the public forum. To an outsider, the movement’s reaction appeared embarrassing, but it reflected the fact that the Red Cross was still at the very beginning of having a coherent response mechanism in times of war. With regard to the substance of the dispute, the ICRC’s response to the League of Nations was justified on two counts. First, from a political angle: by spring 1936, it was clear that the League was unable to stop Italy’s victorious advance in Ethiopia. The Council of the League bowed to this military fait accompli in its 20 April resolution, in which it effectively abandoned attempts to take measures against Italy for the use of poison gas. If the ICRC had shared the information in its possession with the League, it would have been, at best, a gesture of support for the international organisation, but it would have most likely alienated Italy – a risk better not to incur at a moment when its political importance as a European player had just been demonstrated. Secondly, from the point of view of the Red Cross principles: the ICRC was right to strictly separate its own humanitarian action from the League’s political goals, especially as

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the ICRC had good legal and statutory grounds for an independent stand. Mixing the two would invariably lead to an undesirable politicisation at a time when a strong, credible and neutral ICRC became a necessity in the prewar Europe. However, the analysis cannot stop here. By refusing to reveal first-hand information to the League about the use of poison gas, the ICRC played politically into the hands of Fascist Italy. Its silence protected an illegality under international law and, in Paul Logoz’ own words, ‘a means of combat which is atrocious’. After the dispute with the League of Nations, the ICRC had come under even stronger pressure than before to take some action in defence of true neutrality and impartiality. How would the humanitarian organisation avoid being seen as pro-Italian, politically naïve, or even covering up a violation of international law?

The ICRC Response: a Request for Gas Masks The day after the ICRC received Junod’s telegram about his experience on the Korem plain, another urgent telegram came from Addis Abeba. Brown transmitted a request from the Ethiopian Red Cross to provide, given the widespread use of poison gas, a large quantity of gas masks and literature on anti-gas protection. This very general request marked the beginning of five weeks of intensive discussions, by far the most demanding period during the Italo-Ethiopian war, pushing the founding organisation of the Red Cross to its limits. When it came to a close, the ICRC was a different organisation. The decision-making process on this request proved very laborious. Within two weeks three different positions were taken. When the request was first discussed, a reduced Ethiopia Commission, composed of Boissier, Odier and Audeoud, spontaneously supported it. The three decided to forward it without modification to all National Societies in conformity with the demand from Addis Abeba. The delegation in Rome was told by telephone about the Commission’s plan, but Huber stopped it at the last moment because he regarded gas masks as military material. Four days later, on 28 March, the Commission decided the contrary that it would be preferable not to forward the Ethiopian Red Cross’s request, because gas masks were ‘not medical material properly speaking’.51 After one positive and one negative decision, an enlarged Ethiopia Commission, which met on 8 April to discuss the use of poison gas by Italy, finally agreed on the matter and came up with a recommendation for Max Huber. Sharp divisions within the ICRC were the reason for this tortuous decision-making process. The minutes of the respective meetings of the Ethiopia Commission allow, for once, the reconstruction of the different opinions. There was general agreement on one point, namely that the ICRC could not

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supply gas masks to the Ethiopian army as may have been implied by the request of the Ethiopian Red Cross. The humanitarian organisation could not be held responsible for the lack of preparation by the Ethiopian government. Apart from this, two views clashed on 8 April. The first was mostly supported by the lawyers such as Max Huber and Paul des Gouttes who invoked legal arguments. In their opinion, the ICRC had to base its action exclusively on the Geneva Conventions of 1929, for which it had a specific responsibility and not on Conventions regarding methods of warfare, such as the Gas Protocol of 1925. Accordingly, the ICRC’s obligation was only to provide gas masks to persons protected under the Geneva Conventions, in particular medical personnel, wounded and sick. Des Gouttes went so far as to say that civilians were also excluded from such assistance because they were not a subject of the Conventions. Assistance to them could be interpreted by Italy in the sense that the ICRC supplied Ethiopia with a means of resistance. This view was strongly opposed by a second group of ICRC members including Vice-President Favre, Boissier and de Haller, who argued on the basis of general humanitarian concern and the wider role of the ICRC. Boissier, the only active ICRC member who had signed the 1918 appeal against poison gas, asked whether the ICRC could really remain passive when the use of poison gas was proven. According to him, the organisation was not only bound by the Geneva Conventions, but also by the mandate given to it by several International Red Cross Conferences to study measures of protection for the civilian population against chemical war. Boissier reminded his colleagues – against des Gouttes – that ‘the ICRC can hardly refuse to help a Red Cross Society to protect the civilian population from the effects of a means of warfare condemned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925’.52 He was supported by Favre, who pointed out that public opinion and the Red Cross movement would have great difficulty understanding the ICRC’s inaction on behalf of civilians purely for legal reasons. In the end the lawyers’ point of view prevailed, reluctantly accepted by the defeated group on the condition that the ICRC would take a position regarding the use of poison gas by Italy. The Committee itself agreed on 9 April. On the same day, the Ethiopian Red Cross was informed by telegram that the ICRC would forward the request for gas masks to National Societies provided that the gas masks were reserved exclusively for medical personnel, wounded and sick, in conformity with the first Geneva Convention. One day later the appeal was dispatched to the twenty-four National Red Cross Societies which had contributed to the Ethiopia operation. It had taken the ICRC seventeen full days – five meetings of the Ethiopia Commission and one of the Committee – to reach this decision. The result of the appeal was disappointing. The ICRC did not register one single reply nor did it receive the requested details from the Ethiopian Red Cross. Military developments in Ethiopia had overtaken events. In any case it

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would have been too late to send the gas masks because the Ethiopian government ceased to exist soon afterwards. However, the gas mask issue had sparked a major debate within the ICRC. It forced the organisation to determine its position regarding Italy’s breach of the Gas Protocol and, more importantly, to redefine its role in times of war.

Between the Spirit of 1918 and the Letter of the Law of 1929 Italy’s use of poison gas confronted the ICRC with a serious violation of an international convention in which it had taken a strong interest for almost two decades. It was not an entirely new matter. Violations had also occurred during the First World War. The ICRC had reacted at that time by making four public protests – the strongest measure it could take. One of them was the already mentioned 1918 appeal against poison gas. The common denominator of these protests was that they were based on incontestable facts of particular gravity, resulting from the deliberate policy of a government. Such a policy did not just violate a specific Article of The Hague or Geneva Conventions, but it threatened the legal system itself (Bugnion 1994: p. 126). Should this doctrine be applied in the case under consideration? The ICRC was, again, deeply divided. The first and smallest group was composed of those who doubted either that gas was used in the war or felt that the matter was unduly exaggerated in the press. Until 8 April, VicePresident Patry and Etienne Clouzot, the head of the secretariat, were of this view. It is surprising that Clouzot for so long doubted chemical warfare in Ethiopia, despite the fact that he had full access to relevant information from the field. Was he influenced by Italy’s arguments, of which he was kept well informed by Vinci? The two were certainly very close. This is underlined by an honour bestowed on Clouzot by the Italian Red Cross in November 1935, a month after the outbreak of the war. The head of the ICRC secretariat was made Cavaliere Ufficiale della Corona d’Italia, a largely honorific order, for his humanitarian work in the ICRC and the International Relief Union.53 Clouzot and Patry’s scepticism on chemical warfare in Ethiopia came to an end only when Junod’s complete report on the events on the Korem plain had reached the ICRC on 9 April. After this, there could be no further doubt. Although their opinion was marginal to the substance of the discussion, it had delayed its focusing on the real issue for several crucial days. The other two groups of ICRC members were divided along the same lines as in the gas mask question. The lawyers’ group with Huber, des Gouttes, Logoz, joined by Chenevière, based their argument once more on the fact that the ICRC had no legal grounds to intervene in methods of war-

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fare. It was exclusively concerned with humanitarian affairs falling under the Geneva Conventions. The two matters were different and should not be mixed-up. Huber, for his part, made the decisive argument that ‘the ICRC does not have to take a stand for or against any given method of warfare, but it has to concern itself with alleviating the suffering caused by war’.54 On the other side of the divide were Boissier, Favre, de Haller and the only woman involved in the Ethiopia operation, Lucie Odier. This group wanted to link up with the tradition of 1918, when the organisation, out of humanitarian concern, had made public its condemnation of chemical warfare. In fact, Odier pressed for a protest while Huber was in Rome, but Patry blocked the move with his argument that there was not sufficient proof of Italy’s use of gas. The discussion resumed in the Ethiopia Commission of 8 April, coinciding exactly with the debate on the same subject in the League’s Committee of Thirteen. Boissier made the main input. He countered the argument that there was no legal base for an ICRC intervention with the contention: ‘In 1918 the ICRC protested against the use of poison gas although no mandate had been conferred on it in this regard and no protocol prohibiting the use of gas had yet been signed. Can the ICRC now remain passive if the use of gas in the Italo-Ethiopian conflict is proven?’55 The group received support from Louis Demolis, the ICRC’s technical adviser on chemical warfare. Having listed the different reports from Ethiopia on the use of gas, he reminded the Committee of the specific mandates on chemical warfare given to it over the years and suggested that the ICRC protest without delay against this violation of an international obligation.56 At the heart of this debate was a dilemma with which the ICRC had to come to terms since the founding of the Red Cross. On one side was the distressing fact of human suffering, made worse in this case by a deliberate breach of an international convention. Such action called for a vehement public protest irrespective of how the perpetrator received it. On the other was the desire to bring relief to those in need, imposing restraint and circumspection with regard to the perpetrator, in order not to jeopardise the Red Cross mission. Defending the rights of the victims stood against the concern to assist them. Emotion stood against reason. Faced with this dilemma in which there was no middle ground the ICRC of 1936 chose the latter. The strictly rational and legal approach, centred on the Geneva Conventions of 1929, prevailed over the spirit of the 1918 appeal. The small, but important group of lawyers had imposed their view over their more heterogeneous colleagues. Admittedly, the situation in 1936 was very different from 1918, making it more difficult to apply the doctrine inherited from the First World War. In April 1936, an aggressive Italy, whose victory on the battlefield was imminent, was the only belligerent to be blamed for the use of poison gas.

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A public protest against Fascist Italy would have exposed the ICRC much more than the organisation wished. Eighteen years earlier, it was, in this respect, easier to be neutral because the ICRC’s protest was directed against all warring parties which were using poison gas. A public protest against Italy in 1936 would have required a lot of courage which the organisation did not have. This leads to another important difference. There were distinct personalities at the helm of the ICRC. In 1928, Max Huber had replaced an energetic and authoritarian Gustave Ador, who had worked for the ICRC since 1870. Being a man of public service, Ador was Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation in 1918 and temporarily relieved of his duty as ICRC President. When the appeal against poison gas was discussed, he was consulted and supported the initiative. Huber, in turn, was a prestigious professor of public international law and reputed judge but he was not a man of action. Deeply religious, he was given ‘more to reflection than action, maybe even more to meditation than reflection’ (Favez 1989: p. 53). Each decision was carefully weighed from all angles to the detriment of action, as Huber admitted to his friend Burckhardt in May 1936.57 Not surprisingly, the decision taken by the ICRC in April 1936 deeply carried Huber’s character traits. From a rather technical discussion over Ethiopia’s request for gas masks, the debate had shifted to the question of whether the ICRC should make a public protest against Italy’s use of poison gas. In the process, the organisation redefined, without even realising it, its role in times of conflict. It had broken with the tradition of the First World War in two respects. First, from now on, humanitarian action was based exclusively on the Geneva Conventions. Secondly, priority was given to relief over protest. These were the new pillars on which future operations were built. The modern ICRC was born. It was ready to face the storms ahead, not only for the period of the Second World War but also for many years thereafter.

An Intervention to the Italian Red Cross: Too Little, Too Late It was Guillaume Favre who, belonging to the defeated group in the gas mask question, proposed that the ICRC should express to the Italian Red Cross ‘its emotion and anxiety’ about the use of poison gas and demand an explanation. The suggestion was accepted and three days later, the ICRC sent a letter to the President of the Italian Red Cross. This letter of 12 April recalled the various resolutions of the Red Cross movement on chemical warfare since 1925, as well as recent reports from the field, in particular Junod’s precise description of the use of mustard gas on the Korem plain on 18 March. The ICRC said that it wanted to bring this information to the attention of the Italian Red Cross and concluded:

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‘The use of a prohibited weapon is liable to arouse emotions of a gravity which you cannot fail to recognise. According to our delegate, this might even paralyse all Red Cross activity in the regions affected’.58 This was all. Looking at the substance, the letter contained nothing new. In fact, it only repeated what the international press had reported for several weeks, including Junod’s own experience with poison gas. In addition, the very discreet and veiled request for an explanation represented a step already taken openly by the League’s Committee of Thirteen on 23 March, a full twenty days before. Finally, the intervention was not even directed to the government, but to a subservient Italian Red Cross, clearly incompetent in such matters, as was plain to the ICRC. Inevitably the letter did not satisfy Favre and his group. It was a far cry from expressing ‘emotion and anxiety’. When the draft was discussed in the Ethiopia Commission, Odier and de Haller promptly criticised that they would have preferred a more energetic protest against the use of poison gas. Chenevière, probably the author of the letter together with the secretariat and a supporter of the lawyers’ group, responded with the, by now, familiar argument that the ICRC had no legal base to intervene because poison gas was not a subject of the Geneva Conventions. The letter remained unchanged. It reflected exactly the ICRC’s internal situation. Torn between keeping silent and speaking out, the ICRC was unable to make a clear point. This was Geneva at its worst. This raises the (hypothetical) question of whether a forceful intervention of the ICRC would have had any effect on Mussolini. The answer is probably yes. Mussolini was clearly impressed by the international reaction to Italy’s gas war in Ethiopia. One day after the heated debate in the Committee of Thirteen on 8 April 1936, he ordered Graziani not to use chemical weapons until further notice. He closely monitored the execution of this order and even when the debate in Geneva died down towards the end of April, he banned mustard gas (though not poison gas altogether) for the immediate future. This demonstrated that the Fascist dictator was not impermeable to outside pressure, especially on a sensitive matter such as the use of an illegal means of warfare. If the ICRC had intervened decisively, especially at the time of the Rome visit, Mussolini might have been a bit more cautious, even though it is very doubtful that it would have had a lasting impact. As can be expected, the Italian government and its National Red Cross were unimpressed by the ICRC’s letter when it finally came. Cremonesi forwarded it immediately to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, carefully avoiding, in this case, a comment of his own, contrary to his habit. While the League of Nations received the official Italian response on the use of poison gas on 30 April, the ICRC had to remind the Italian Red Cross that it expected an answer. It finally came on 11 May, one month after the ICRC’s letter was written. During this time, the war with Ethiopia had ended and Mussolini had triumphantly proclaimed his Impero. The response by the Italian Red

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Cross reflected the diminished importance of the ICRC. It was a verbatim repetition of the relevant parts of the reply to the League of Nations, namely that the Italian government was abiding by the Gas Protocol of 1925, ‘bearing in mind, however, that this does not exclude the right of reprisal to repress such abominable atrocities as those committed by Ethiopian troops’.59 The Italian government stuck to its contestable interpretation of the Protocol with a small concession added by Cremonesi that the Red Cross was naturally excluded from such reprisals (although the Swedish Red Cross had made precisely the opposite experience in Melka Dida). Still, the letter of the Italian Red Cross had a certain importance, because the Italians had indirectly admitted that poison gas was employed, even if it was not true that it was used only in reprisal.60 Under these circumstances the ICRC felt more comfortable to reply. Given the sensitivity of the matter, Huber established a draft response, which was considerably modified in Geneva, probably by Logoz whom Huber asked to review it, together with Favre. In the final version, sent to Rome on 26 May, the ICRC explained that it did not wish, for lack of authority, to enter into a legal discussion of whether the violation of the Gas Protocol was justified in reprisal for violations of other applicable Conventions. Its argument was based on less controversial humanitarian grounds, according to which ‘we have to reaffirm that it is essential to ban chemical warfare absolutely.’ At the end of the letter, the ICRC acknowledged with satisfaction Cremonesi’s guarantee that ‘the formations of the Red Cross – that is to say, all its staff, the wounded, the sick and the equipment enjoying the protection of the Geneva Convention’ would not be the object of reprisal.61 It is interesting to compare this version with Huber’s draft. There are two striking differences. The first regards the matter of reprisals. As a conscientious lawyer, it was difficult for Huber to leave the Italian argument unanswered and he questioned, carefully avoiding giving a legal opinion, the law of reprisals. ‘Resort to this means of repressing unlawful acts always runs the risk of weakening all the rules that have been worked out with such difficulty in order to limit the horrors of war at least to some extent. From the humanitarian point of view, reprisals perpetrated against individuals ... should be regarded as particularly dangerous’. Secondly, when speaking of the ICRC’s and the movement’s humanitarian concerns, Huber pointed out clearly that ‘any use of poison gas can only be profoundly deplored by the Red Cross, quite apart from any legal considerations.’ Huber had realised that stronger wording was required, but his colleagues in Geneva purged the document of any openly expressed disapprobation of the Italians. Huber was not at ease with the chosen solution. When he learnt about the version sent to Rome, he made a comment which revealed both his intimate knowledge of the mood in the Red Cross movement as well as his sense for who really mattered: ‘The new wording is even less far-reaching

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than the previous version [i.e., his own], but it is not unacceptable to the Italians. The National Societies may perhaps find it too weak’.62 The National Societies were not in a position to form their own opinion, because the exchange of letters with the Italian Red Cross was never brought to their attention. This ended the matter for both sides. By applying its policy of sticking exclusively to matters of the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC unceremoniously avoided further discussion. In fact, it had abdicated a responsibility it had undertaken for so long time. Its reaction was not substantially different from the pious wishes which Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pius XII, had offered to the Ethiopian Patriarch, as cited in the epigraph of this Chapter. In any case, it was too late to change the course of action. Any intervention against the use of poison gas should have been made when gas warfare took place, not when it was over.

The Red Cross Movement Bows to the Inevitable In the midst of the dispute with the League of Nations, the ICRC received a disconcerting request from Prince Carl of Sweden. The President of the Swedish Red Cross was not only worried by the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, but also by Italy’s manifest use of poison gas. He suggested that the Red Cross movement take a position against this blatant violation of the Gas Protocol at the next possible opportunity, the meeting of the Board of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies in June 1936 and he concluded: ‘The Red Cross risks that its role and its authority in the world would be gravely compromised if it kept silent in front of such a spectacle and locked itself in a purely passive attitude’.63 The Swedish request pointed a critical finger at the ICRC’s cautious attitude. It questioned its leadership and lack of transparency, an impression widely shared in the movement as a whole. The humanitarian organisation did not appreciate this criticism from within the movement. Its first reaction was to stall the request. Huber, in his response to Prince Carl, raised formal and statutory arguments which made it difficult to deal with the matter as suggested. Furthermore, anticipating the negative reaction of the Italian Red Cross, he expressed his fear that such a discussion would be a repetition of the one held by the League of Nations and would assume aspects of a tribunal without having the necessary requisites. In particular, Huber referred Prince Carl to the ICRC’s Circular Letter No. 325 which was under preparation and was going to contain the ICRC’s point of view on the use of poison gas. Neither Huber’s personal letter nor the Circular Letter satisfied an angry and bitter Swedish Red Cross, whose field teams had suffered so much from Italian bombings during the war (including a brief experience with poison

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gas). The Circular Letter, above all, did not address the issue clearly. The paragraph dealing with the ICRC’s response on poison gas glossed over the relevant issue of how to react to Italy’s use of poison gas. The ICRC simply stated that it could not discuss the matter because it had been entrusted by both sides with an inquiry whose precise object was still under debate. The National Societies were left in the dark. At no time did the ICRC appear to consider informing its partners in the Ethiopia operation about the crucial discussions which had just taken place inside the ICRC and, particularly, about its decision not to protest publicly over the issue. A visibly annoyed Swedish Red Cross President, having consulted his Executive Board and his Foreign Ministry, reiterated his request, repeating, at times, exactly the same words as in the previous letter. Responding to the formal objections raised by Huber, he pointed out that no statutes could prevent an assembly of Red Cross officials holding a private meeting and to make known the results afterwards. Far from solving the problem, the ICRC had made it worse. By now, the ICRC was seriously worried that the meeting of the Board of Governors planned for mid-June in Paris would get out of hand. At best it would paralyse, at worst, split the movement between the Italian Red Cross and the others, as had already happened in the League of Nations. The situation was saved by Cary T. Grayson, the American chairman of the Board of Governors, who fell suddenly ill. The meeting had to be postponed to November 1936. ICRC documents do not reveal whether the organisation knew what had actually happened behind the scene, but Cremonesi disclosed proudly to Vinci that he had taken the initiative for the postponement in a very energetic way: the Italian Red Cross blackmailed the League of Red Cross Societies with withdrawal if the meeting went ahead as planned. As a result, the League, according to Cremonesi, decided to postpone the meeting under the pretext of the Chairman’s illness, trusting, in the words of Cremonesi, ‘that the common sense of the time would make up for the lack of common sense of mankind’.64 Precious time had been gained. As of that moment the ICRC appeared to have found a new dynamism, as if it had been relieved of a heavy burden. It engaged in what was termed ‘affirmative action’.65 The organisation embarked on a vast programme aimed at revising and extending the Geneva Conventions, based on the experiences of the Italo-Ethiopian war. At the same time Huber started to prepare for the November meeting. He initiated intense behind-the-scene negotiations with the Swedish Red Cross via Åke Hammarskjoeld, a Swedish colleague at the International Court of Justice and confidant of Prince Carl of Sweden. In August 1936, the breakthrough was achieved with the basic understanding that the meeting, again scheduled to take place in Paris, should address the issues important for the future, not the ones of the past and that it should express support for the ICRC. However, a Swedish Red Cross draft resolution still contained a ref-

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erence to the use of poison gas in the Italo-Ethiopian war. Additional negotiations over the coming weeks succeeded in getting removed this last mention of chemical warfare in Ethiopia. It was facilitated by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War which threw a new challenge to the Red Cross in Europe. Ethiopia was no longer relevant. When the Board of Governors finally convened, a ‘private meeting’ was held on 23 November 1936. The thirty-nine National Societies approved a resolution presented by Hammarskjoeld, devoid of any reference to poison gas in Ethiopia. Neither did it, as had been originally intended, protest against violations of the Geneva Conventions nor push the ICRC into decisive action. Instead, the resolution requested the ICRC ‘to take without delay the necessary measures to ensure for the Geneva Conventions their full value as a factor of humanitarian protection, even during armed conflicts in which all the means made available by modern military technology are used’.66 Months of Red Cross diplomacy had achieved what had previously seemed impossible. The once controversial subject of Italy’s chemical warfare in Ethiopia had disappeared from the movement’s agenda, just eight months after poison gas had been used, as it had disappeared much earlier from the League of Nations’ agenda. The ICRC carried the day on all fronts. Unity of the movement was preserved, with Italy, although absent from the Paris meeting, remaining an integral part. The movement had implicitly condoned the ICRC’s new role in times of war, i.e., to be concerned exclusively with matters pertaining to the Geneva Conventions. Finally, the ICRC had not only defended itself successfully against an attempt to challenge its leading role, but it had managed to strengthen its unique position and rally the movement behind it. Cremonesi had been right after all. Time had helped ‘common sense’ to prevail, but he could not undo the fact that this had been achieved at the expense of the victims of Fascist Italy’s gas war in Ethiopia.

Notes 1 ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza, 1936, c. 1B. 2 The term ‘poison gas’ is misleading because it describes only one possible manifestation of chemical weapons, the others being solid or liquid. The term has its origins in early chemical warfare when only gaseous substances were employed but it remains in use until today. Mustard gas, for example, the main chemical substance employed by the Italians during the Italo-Ethiopian war, is an oily liquid at normal temperature but it becomes gaseous if raised. Although ‘chemical warfare agent’ would be the technically appropriate term, this study uses the more familiar ‘poison gas’. 3 Rochat (1991: p. 144) mentions a mortality rate of 40 percent in April 1915, 6 percent in 1916 and finally 2.5 percent in 1918. 4 For the sake of simplicity, this study uses the term ‘Protocol’ or ‘Gas Protocol’.

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5 Switzerland, although having participated actively in the Conference which elaborated the Protocol, ratified it without reservations only on 12 June 1932, after the main great powers; meanwhile, the United States did so as late as 10 April 1975. 6 Graziani justified his request to Lessona (and Mussolini) with the argument that ‘the barbarous Ethiopian hordes were ready to accomplish any horror in their advance’ (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 15, f. 21, 15 Dec. 1935). Mussolini agreed on the next day to the use of gas ‘for supreme reasons of defence’ (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 15, f. 21, 16 Dec. 1935). 7 The two main sources for this calculation are Rochat (1991: pp. 157–68) and Gentilli (1992: pp. 95 and 100). In this regard it must be mentioned that Rochat, who has carried out very extensive studies in the field, said that his figures were probably incomplete, but later research by Gentilli on the Air Force substantially confirmed his conclusions. Gentilli arrived at about 13 tons more than Rochat. The total quantity of poison gas is calculated in terms of gross weight which is more appropriate than the quantity of chemical substance alone contained in a shell or a bomb, i.e., 15 kg for the artillery gas shell containing about 1 kg of arsine and 280 kg for the C. 500 T. bomb of the Air Force with about 212 kg of mustard gas. Riche (1982: p. 128) says, based on Soviet sources that some 700 tons of poison gas were used in the war but omits indicating the precise source. 8 Italian sources indicate differing total amounts of explosives used by the Air Force in the war, as can be seen in Gentilli (1992: pp. 118–19). This study uses the data given in AUSSMA (Fondo A.O.I., c. 176, f. 2, Attività svolta dai reparti d’aviazione in A.O.I.), according to which the Air Force had dropped 1,529,355 kg of explosives from 2 October 1935 to 5 May 1936. 9 Among the numerous eyewitnesses of gas bombings, there are only two who unmistakably describe spraying: Emperor Haile Selassie, in his speech to the League of Nations on 30 June 1936 (LON, Journal Officiel, supplément spécial, nr 151, 1936, pp. 22–25) and the Swedish Red Cross pilot Carl Gustaf von Rosen (LON, C.201.M.126.1936,VII, 9 Mai 1936, p. 23). It remains difficult to explain why a pilot like von Rosen, having been in a position to observe an Italian gas-bombing raid, mixed up dropping of gas bombs with spraying. Italian researchers like Rochat and Gentilli have not found any archival evidence of spraying of gas during the ItaloEthiopian war, although the technique was known in Italy for several years. Giorgio Rochat, in a letter to the author (10 August 1996) gives an additional technical argument against the use of the spraying technique. Since mustard gas is a very dangerous liquid, it would have been too risky to fill poison gas into tanks inside or outside of an aeroplane, not to speak of the potential dangers during take-off and landing. Why should the Italians run such risks when they had the new and safer C. 500 T. bomb? 10 On 10 April 1936, Mussolini ordered Graziani not to make use of ‘chemical means’, but this did not hinder him from employing some 3 tons of mustard gas on 20 April, to the displeasure of Mussolini who requested Graziani to abstain from further use (ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 19, f. 21, Meregazzi to Graziani, 21 April 1936). 11 ASMAE, Archivio di Gabinetto 1923–1943, Gab 15, Appunto 10 Jan. 1936, signed Suvich. Based on his analysis of the international situation in the beginning of 1936, Suvich arrived at the following conclusion: ‘great determination in military matters, great calm at home and in international relations. When I say great determination in military matters, I exclude the use of gas which would inevitably have more negative political repercussions for us than immediate military advantages.’ 12 Italy, through the Minister of Defence, admitted as late as 1996 – sixty years after the war with Ethiopia – that poison gas had been used. The Minister was cutting short a long-lasting polemic which regularly flared up in the Italian media, such as the one between Angelo Del Boca and Indro Montanelli in Corriere della Sera, 12 Aug. 1995.

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13 This episode of the war is further detailed in a masterly written article by the same author: ‘Ras Immiru: Il suo ruolo durante la guerra italo-etiopica’ (Del Boca 1988). 14 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 20, f. 22/4, Italian interception, 2 Jan. 1936. 15 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 4. 16 CICR, CR 210/1424, 4. Rapport du Dr Marcel Junod au sujet des procédés de guerre lors du conflit italo-éthiopien, 19 Aug.1936, p. 1. 17 Ibid., p. 2. 18 Twelfth International Conference of the Red Cross, Geneva, 7–10 October 1925, Resolution V, 2. 19 ACS, CRI, c. 192, ‘C’, ‘The Ambulance of the Swedish Red Cross in Ethiopia’, Swedish Red Cross Review, May 1936, p. 9. 20 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 7, 13 Jan. 1936, Rapport du Docteur Marcel Junod au CICR sur le bombardement de la Croix-Rouge Suédoise par l’aviation italienne, le 30-12-35, à Melka-Lidar, handwritten nota bene. It is interesting to note that the ICRC published the picture of this soldier’s hands in the reprinted edition of Junod’s Warrior without Weapons (1982: p. 80). This time it was correctly labelled as ‘Hands of an Abyssinian soldier burnt by liquid mustard gas’. 21 ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 16, f. 21/3, Bernasconi to Comando Forze Armate Somalia, 30 Dec. 1935. 22 Melly, according to Junod, had sent three telegrams to the British Minister in Addis Abeba. Junod was able to obtain with some difficulty two of them while the third was given to him orally (CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 11, 12 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 1). 23 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 2 and von Rosen’s report in LON, C.201.M.126.1936.VII, 9 May 1936, p. 22. 24 CICR, CR 210, Rapports des délégués, No. 13, 24 March 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 3. 25 Junod (1982: pp. 55–56) gives the misleading impression that he first became aware of the use of mustard gas during this trip. He omitted to mention that one of the reasons for his trip to Korem was precisely to bring anti-gas medicines to the Red Cross field hospitals. The truth of the matter is that he and Brown realised only very late what was going on but Junod probably did not want to say so. 26 After the British and the Dutch Red Cross (who had one advance unit near Korem at the same time as the British), the second Swedish field hospital reported the use of gas on 17 March in Bale region, the Norwegian Red Cross from Yrgalem two days later. The Finnish Red Cross treated gas patients in Hararghe region. Information is only lacking from the Egyptian Red Crescent field hospitals in the Ogaden, but it can be assumed that they also had to treat gas wounded, given its use there by Graziani’s aviation. The only medical unit, which did not treat gas casualties, was the second British Red Cross field hospital in northwestern Ethiopia. With regard to the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospitals, no. 6 did not report the use of gas and Gingold Duprey’s small unit came probably too late to Dessie to find such patients. 27 Sources close to the Ethiopians reported about the blinding effect of poison gas often in an unqualified way, giving the impression that people remained blind forever (see, for example, Spencer 1937: p. 102). 28 CICR, Rapports des délégués, No. 14, 18 April 1936, Junod to ICRC, p. 4. Later on, Junod (1982: p. 61) had second thoughts on the matter and revised his judgement on the effects of poison gas. When he described the scene in front of the Emperor’s cave near Korem with the many wounded calling for attention and waiting for treatment, he wrote that patients were dying from poison gas: ‘Life was already leaving bodies burned by mustard gas.’ 29 Johannes Kvittingen, letter of 29 March 1995 to the author. 30 An eyewitness, Emmanuel Gabre Sillasse, interviewed in Addis Abeba on 30 July

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32

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37 38

39

40

41

42

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1992, mentioned as an example the case of his brother. He served with one of the Red Cross field hospitals in Korem where he got gassed. After having been cured in a hospital in Addis Abeba, he suffered from breathing problems for the rest of his life. Riche (1982: p. 128) mentions, based on a Russian source, fifty thousand people killed in the war out of which fifteen thousand killed by gas. The sources consulted for this study do not confirm such high numbers. Out of 10,801 patients only forty-six were wounded by gas, but it has to be noted that the two field hospitals of the Swedish Red Cross, especially the second one, were not working in a zone where large-scale use of gas was made (CICR, CR 210/1519bis, L’ambulance de la Croix-Rouge Suédoise en Ethiopie, 29 Jan. 1937, p. 4). On this day the Ethiopians were hit particularly hard as is confirmed by the following Ethiopian dispatch intercepted by the Italians: ‘During yesterday’s bombing, the Italians dropped highly toxic chemicals which had a terrible effect: many people suffered burns to the head and body’ (ASMAI, c. 181/26, f. 127, Gran Quartiere Generale to Ato Tesfae, Addis Abeba, 19 March 1936). One of the chemical warfare agents is described as an asphyxiating gas. It must have been arsine which was used by the artillery during the battle of Amba Aradam. No further information could be found in Italian records about the third type of gas, in Belau’s opinion a tear gas. ‘I have defined with Max Huber the basis of our work: … 2. I limited verification to the Geneva Convention, thus leaving out the question of asphyxiating gas’ (Aloisi 1957: p. 363). The Ethiopia Commission decided to forward Brown’s telegram, received on 23 March 1936 (CICR, CR 210/949), to Huber. Brown wrote: ‘Given increasing numbers of depositions from doctors, foreign ambulances concerning use of mustard gas by Italians, please … ask Italian government reason for non-compliance with Geneva Protocol.’ The Commission did not make a specific comment, but added the respective ratification dates of the 1925 Protocol for Italy and Ethiopia. ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Mussolini to Badoglio, 29 March 1936. ACS, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale Pubblica Sicurezza 1936, c. 1 A, inserito marzo 1936, Junod to ICRC, translated on 22 March 1936. The original message can be found in CICR, CR 210/948. The Committee of Thirteen was created at the start of the war by the League’s Council. It was entrusted to deal with matters relating to the conflict. The Committee was composed of thirteen member states, excluding Italy and Ethiopia, hence its name. At the Conference of Stresa (11–14 April 1935), Mussolini played the card of European cooperation with the United Kingdom and France against Hitler’s Germany which had just decided to reintroduce obligatory military service. PRO, CAB 23/083, 5 Jan.–9 April 1936, 6 April 1936, p. 431. In this context it is interesting to note that the British Government had known since mid-January 1936 that Italy had transported 269 tons of poison gas to East Africa through the Canal of Suez in the period 25 June–25 December 1935, as listed by the Suez Canal Police. The Suez Canal Company had collected, in the same period, dues amounting to 1,423,508 Egyptian Pounds from the 833 passages of Italian ships (PRO, FO 371/20164, p. 231, Statistics communicated by Suez Canal Police, 1 Jan. 1936). LON, Conflit Italo-Ethiopien, Extrait du Rapport sur l’Oeuvre de la Société présenté à la dix-septième session ordinaire de l’Assemblée, A.81.1935/36.VII, 29 June 1936, p. 9. ACS, Fondo Graziani, c. 18, f. 21/6, Mussolini to Badoglio, 18 April 1936. LON, Conflit Italo-Ethiopien, Extrait du Rapport sur l’Oeuvre de la Société, A.81.1935/36.VII, 29 June 1936, p. 10.

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45 CICR, CR 210/1042, Avenol to the ICRC President, 8 April 1936. 46 CICR, CR 210/1054, Favre to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, 9 April 1936. 47 Ibid. 48 CICR, CR 210/1102, de Madariaga to the President of the ICRC, 18 April 1936. 49 CICR, CR 210/1123, Huber to de Madariaga, 24 April 1936. 50 ETH, Nachlass Paul Ruegger, III, 15.3.3, Ruegger to Motta, 14 April 1936. 51 CICR, Commission d’Ethiopie, 28 March 1936, p. 2. The Commission was composed on this occasion of the aforementioned Boissier and Odier as well as Patry who had replaced Audeoud. 52 CICR, Commission d’Ethiopie, 8 April 1936, p. 2. 53 ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 1, Communicazione No. 10, Croce Rossa Italiana, Delegazione generale per la Svizzera, 14 Nov. 1935. Vinci made this communication to various newspapers in Geneva such as the Journal de Genève and the right wing L’Action nationale. There is no recorded reaction from the ICRC. 54 CICR, PV Séances plénières, 23 April 1936, p. 2. 55 CICR, Commission d’Ethiopie, 8 April 1936, p. 2. 56 CICR, CR 159, Guerre chimique, XVII, 2845, 30 March 1936. In view of the ICRC’s inactivity, Demolis reiterated his request more insistently on 20 April. Favre replied to Demolis on the same day that, in his own opinion, there was no doubt that Italy had used poison gas and that the ICRC ‘had the obligation not to remain silent’ (CICR, CR 210/1114). 57 ‘I always see the two bright and the two dark sides of what has to be done. This is the uncanny neutrality that pursues me’ (ZB, Nachlass Max Huber, 2.75, Umschlag IV/1936, Huber to Burckhardt, 25 May 1936). 58 CICR, CR 210/1073, Huber to Cremonesi, 12 April 1936. 59 CICR, CR 210/1203, Cremonesi to Huber, 11 May 1936. 60 As already mentioned chemical warfare was part of the Italian strategy from the beginning. During the war Mussolini justified the use of gas ‘as ultima ratio to overcome enemy resistance’ (27 Oct. 1935), ‘for supreme reasons of defence’ (16 Dec. 1935) and even just ‘in case of necessity’ (9 Jan. 1936). Arguments like ‘the enemy’s methods of war’ were used for the first time only on 28 Dec. 1935 (Rochat 1974: pp. 168–69). 61 CICR, CR 210/1249, Huber to Cremonesi, 26 May 1936. 62 CICR, CR 210/1243, Note of Max Huber, 25 May 1936. 63 CICR, CR 210/1087bis, Prince Carl of Sweden to Huber, 15 April 1936, p. 2. 64 ACS, CRI, c. 189, f. 10, Cremonesi to Vinci, 6 June 1936, p. 2. In fact, the Italian Red Cross’ intervention, upon instruction of Foreign Affairs, was motivated first by a secondary point of the agenda of the Paris meeting. This point dealt with the consequences following the recognition of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society by the ICRC, in the autumn of 1935. In view of the Italian take-over in Ethiopia and the fact that the Ethiopian Red Cross rapidly vanished from the scene, the Italians considered the point as an affront. Only later, the Italian diplomacy learnt about the really important subject on the agenda, the Swedish plan to protest against Italy’s violations of international conventions. 65 CICR, CR 210, Consultation de Paris, Ernest J. Swift to Paul Draudt, 21 July 1936. 66 CICR, CR 210, Consultation de Paris, 23 Nov. 1936.

SUMMARY

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CONCLUSION


The Belligerents and International Humanitarian Law During the Italo-Ethiopian war humanitarian considerations had little place in the Italian strategy. Italy’s aim was to win the war as quickly as possible, especially as the League of Nations had condemned Italy’s aggression as a breach of the Covenant and member states had imposed damaging sanctions. From the beginning Italian authorities considered the Red Cross field hospitals on the Ethiopian side as standing in the way of military operations. However, they were unable to openly block their use which had been specifically foreseen under the Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. During the war medical facilities under Red Cross protection, particularly those close to the frontline, were hit in fifteen Italian bombing raids, seven of which were aimed directly at the Red Cross. Forty-seven people were killed in these raids – the number could have been much higher were it not for lucky circumstances – and a considerable amount of material was destroyed, including the only operational Red Cross medical aircraft. Particular responsibility for these incidents must be attributed to the Italian leadership starting with Mussolini, Badoglio and Graziani, who had either ordered or condoned such raids, but also to the Italian Air Force, including individual crewmembers of the bombing planes. A similar conclusion can be drawn with regard to the treatment of Ethiopian prisoners of war. While the Italians claimed to respect applicable international law, in particular the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, they disregarded it in several instances, especially when they saw a military interest. Some Italian troops killed Ethiopian prisoners of war with the knowledge of their superiors and a number of wounded prisoners were illtreated. Again, as in the case of the bombings, contempt for international

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humanitarian law was part of the system, violations were ordered and condoned by the top leadership. In contradiction with public claims, conditions of detention for Ethiopian prisoners left much to desire and an unspecified number of them died as a consequence. Chemical warfare was an integral part of the military strategy despite a general prohibition of its use contained in the 1925 Gas Protocol, to which Italy was a party. Contrary to what Italian officials claimed, poison gas was not used in reprisal for Ethiopian atrocities but to arrest and contain Ethiopian offensives, or to destroy retreating troops. The violations of international humanitarian law and the Gas Protocol fit into a pattern typical of Fascist Italy. Mussolini and his generals had no use for international law in general and trampled on it whenever they deemed necessary. In their view, force prevailed over law and, worse, force made law. It was the negation of what the post-First World War order was all about. Ethiopia’s case rested on exactly the opposite approach. Being the weaker side in the confrontation with Italy, it was in Haile Selassie’s interest to uphold international law, not least to show that his country was, despite the odds, a member of the civilised world. For this reason Ethiopia hurriedly acceded to the first Geneva Convention and the Gas Protocol shortly before the outbreak of the war, though not to the Convention on Prisoners of War, possibly fearing that the government would not be able to enforce its application. The orders given by the Emperor throughout the war were consistent with this line of reasoning, both with regard to the respect of the Red Cross emblem and to prisoners of war. In practice, however, applying international humanitarian law was not easy in a country just emerging from feudal rule. While misuse of the immunity of the emblem by the Ethiopian military was either limited to the beginning of the war or to individual incidents (such as the one involving a Swedish Red Cross truck near Wadara), the Ethiopian government was not successful in eradicating the age-old custom of emasculation. Equally, some killings of Italian prisoners of war probably took place although the numbers were far from what the Italians claimed. With regard to Italian nationals taken as prisoners of war, the Ethiopian army captured a very small number, seventeen according to available records. They were very well treated despite extremely unfavourable conditions in the last weeks of the war. Contrary to loudly voiced Italian claims, it was the Italian rather than the Ethiopian army which engaged in numerous and severe violations of international humanitarian law. Insistent Italian propaganda managed to distort reality and create the catchy myth of the barbaric Ethiopians. The ICRC delegates, Junod in particular, also fell victim to this myth and even contributed to it by spreading unconfirmed reports about savage killing of prisoners of war. The myth became so powerful that it still lingers in the memory of many Italians and is also reflected in the historiography about the ICRC in the Italo-Ethiopian war.

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Humanitarian Action in Transition The Red Cross was able to mount an impressive medical relief operation. It was limited to the Ethiopian side because the Italians rejected any assistance. Twenty-eight of sixty-two National Red Cross Societies participated with cash contributions, medical material and field hospitals. Fifteen field hospitals were dispatched to the war zones. Eight were provided by foreign Red Cross Societies and seven were mobilised by the Ethiopian Red Cross, or worked under its wings. These hospitals practically formed the entire modern medical service of the Ethiopian army. Tens of thousands of patients received medical assistance during the war although the majority of them were civilians and not soldiers. This was due to the fact that many field hospitals were only able to reach the frontlines relatively late in the war, or were on the retreat when their services were most needed. Two different approaches to Red Cross medical assistance came to meet in the Italo-Ethiopian war. On one hand were the National Societies which dispatched field hospitals in line with a tradition dating back to the beginning of the Red Cross. They were independent of each other and normally reported directly to their respective headquarters and governments. On the other was an ICRC whose role as coordinator of relief efforts in time of war had been formally confirmed a few years earlier in the Statutes of the ICRC. While the ICRC automatically took charge of matters relating to prisoners of war, it did not do so for the medical relief operation, for fear of upsetting the delicate relations with National Societies. Not surprisingly, the ICRC reacted with contradictory instructions to its delegates when the question was discussed in the final stage of the war whether the ICRC should participate in the decision to withdraw field hospitals. The concerned National Societies had, on their part, different opinions on which role the ICRC should assume. Some would have wished that the ICRC took more responsibility, others, especially the bigger ones, preferred not. The road to a medical relief operation, which was fully integrated into the ICRC’s own action in the field, was clearly traced by the time of the Italo–Ethiopian war but it took several decades more until it became reality.

The ICRC and Its Humanitarian Action The Delegation: a New Feature It was a momentous decision when the ICRC decided in October 1935 to dispatch a delegation to Ethiopia. For the first time in its history it had its own people on the ground from the beginning of a war. The ICRC made this move for two reasons. First, the decision demonstrated its readiness to

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fulfil its role in times of war against attempts of the sister organisation, the League of Red Cross Societies, to play a role of its own – perhaps even to take the place of the ICRC. Secondly, the delegation had to prove, especially to a highly critical Italy that assistance coming from the Red Cross was properly used and did not end up in the hands of the Ethiopian military. The dispatch of a delegation to Ethiopia had unexpected consequences for the functioning of headquarters. It profoundly modified its role. In the past, the ICRC in Geneva was informed by the belligerents and their National Societies of what was happening on the battlefields. This time, information came directly from the delegates who were the eyes and ears of the organisation. Geneva was no longer above the parties but became directly involved. This also meant that the decision-making process became more complicated. Decisions were no longer the exclusive affair of members of the Committee. The delegates in the field also had opinions which needed to be taken into account for the sake of a coherent operation. However, the ICRC did not see it in this way. The organisation stuck to past practice and believed that the field was just the executive arm of headquarters, all the more since the delegates were, in its view, too close to the belligerents and, therefore, unable to have a balanced view – an argument which the ICRC made unmistakably to Brown in Addis Abeba. This point is illustrated by the fact that it was the Ethiopian Red Cross’s request for gas masks, not Brown’s or Junod’s reports about gas warfare which triggered the crucial discussions on the ICRC’s role in times of war. The tension that developed between Brown and the ICRC must be understood in this context. From the beginning, the ICRC was unwilling to allow Brown to participate in shaping the ICRC’s perception of what was happening in the war. Retrospectively this was a misjudgement by the ICRC as Brown was substantially right in his assessment of the Italian methods of warfare. The price paid by the ICRC was a complete breakdown in communication between headquarters and its chief delegate in the first operation functioning on this new ‘headquarters-delegation’ model. The conflict was made worse by Brown’s own shortcomings, in particular the fact that he did not resist the temptation to share his reports to the ICRC with his anti-Fascist friend in Geneva. The Italians who promptly discovered this breach of confidence did not hesitate to use it to their advantage. The new organisational set-up created the professional ICRC delegate. The delegates would no longer be recruited for short-term missions but they were employed for longer periods of time. Junod embodied this new type of the delegate. He was young, motivated, self-confident, practically minded and technically competent but unlike Brown, he lacked political sensibility and judgement. This is illustrated in the writings of the two delegates. While Junod excused Italian violations upon his return to Geneva in 1936, he outrightly condemned them ten years later, after the Second World War, in Warrior

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without Weapons. The book gave the false impression that Junod had realised all along what had happened in the Italo-Ethiopian war, as if he had never expressed a different opinion. Junod’s account became a classic of humanitarian literature, not least because of his dramatic experiences in Ethiopia, but Brown’s more truthful Für das Rote Kreuz in Aethiopien, highly critical of the ICRC, disappeared quite unjustly from the bookshelves. In this context it is useful to recall that Junod was not the only one to have suffered from selective memory. Carl Jacob Burckhardt and Jacques Chenevière succumbed to the same temptation when they misrepresented the reason of the ICRC’s mission to Rome and exaggerated its results. Both portrayed an ICRC as it should have been but not as it was.

The ICRC’s Reaction: Making an Inquiry and Redefining Its Role The ICRC reacted in two ways to the severe violations of international humanitarian law which occurred during the war. First, it agreed to carry out an inquiry under Article 30 of the first Geneva Convention. The ICRC had good reason to do so. The article was considered the most important innovation of the 1929 Convention on Wounded and Sick. The war in the Horn of Africa provided an opportunity to apply it for the first time and enhance respect for international humanitarian law. The ICRC trusted that such an inquiry would objectively clarify what had happened and who was to blame. The legal approach would allow the organisation to remain above the parties and credible to all sides. However, research for this study has shown that Fascist Italy had neither the will nor the interest to see such an inquiry materialise – a matter of crucial importance during the discussions in Rome between a high level delegation from Geneva and the Italian authorities. The ICRC completely overlooked this possibility as well as the fact that at least some of the bombings of Red Cross field hospitals could have been intentional. Lacking critical distance from Fascist Italy, the ICRC increasingly fell under Italian influence, culminating in the fact that Italy played an improper role in the preparation of what was supposed to be a White Book about the war. In reality the ICRC had succumbed to Italian influence and had become gradually and unwittingly its instrument, not without benefits for the ICRC and the movement once the war was over. Secondly, the ICRC redefined its role in times of war. The trigger was Italy’s chemical warfare against Ethiopia which had caused an international outcry. Despite the evidence collected by the ICRC’s own delegate and a preoccupation with chemical warfare dating back to the First World War, the ICRC decided that methods of warfare did not fall under its mandate and that it was solely concerned with the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, it decided to give priority to relief over protest. The ICRC had withdrawn to its core mandate and confined its role to the one of the Good

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Samaritan. However, the ICRC was not completely at ease with this decision. It felt obliged to express its views on poison gas to the Italians but its intervention was half-hearted and came too late. Strictly speaking, the ICRC had the right to redefine its role in war and declare that it was no longer concerned with chemical warfare, but the question must be asked whether the organisation could do so on its own. After all it had received several mandates on this matter from the International Red Cross Conference, the highest Red Cross authority. Even if the resolutions of the Conference had no binding force on the ICRC in legal terms, they limited nevertheless its liberty of action, all the more since the ICRC had been keen to obtain these mandates in the first place. The ICRC should at least have informed the next Conference, held in London in 1938, about the decision to redefine its role but the matter was not even raised. Internal cohesion within the ICRC was achieved at the price of heavy friction between those who favoured a strictly legal approach and those who wanted a more courageous and outspoken ICRC. Retrospectively the latter were probably right. They were in line with the position which the ICRC was going to take in the decades after the Second World War. Three reasons speak in their support. From a political point of view, the ICRC’s strategy, with its focus on the inquiry, played into the hands of the more powerful and victorious belligerent which happened to be the aggressor. This was especially important as the ICRC relied exclusively on this legal means to defend the interests of the victims and omitted to prepare an alternative strategy in case the inquiry should not take place or in case it should reveal itself inadequate to deal with the problem at hand. The ICRC missed several opportunities to demonstrate its independence and neutrality vis-à-vis Fascist Italy. The question here is not even so much whether the ICRC should have protested publicly against Italy’s violations of international humanitarian law, but it should, at least, have firmly defended its own interests through confidential humanitarian diplomacy, in particular, to state clearly that bombings against Red Cross installations had to stop. From a practical point of view, the ICRC lacked realism. By taking for granted that the belligerents wanted the application of Article 30 – despite indications that this was not the case – the ICRC adopted a passive attitude and trusted blindly that a process of law had been set into motion. The organisation felt that it was in a comfortable position to the point that the inquiry became a pretext for not taking action. The ICRC failed to understand that at least one and perhaps even both parties had no interest in seeing the inquiry take place. Nor did it appear to comprehend that, in order to effectively help the victims of the conflict, it needed to play an active role and to take risks, using its incontestable moral authority which even Mussolini had acknowledged.

Summary and Conclusion

309

In fact, the ICRC overemphasised the importance of law. International humanitarian law was not intended to restrict the ICRC’s liberty of action but to facilitate it. Nor was it the only instrument in its hands, but one of several, amongst which there were humanitarian diplomacy and, as a last resort, public protest. Only a combined use of these means would have stood a chance to have an effect on Mussolini. Finally, the ICRC acted against the founding spirit of the Red Cross. Henry Dunant’s humanitarian gesture in 1859 was the reaction to the suffering at that time and that moment. In 1936, there were different circumstances which required, in a certain way, a reinvention of the humanitarian gesture. It was not enough to apply international humanitarian law, there was also the need to fight against new manifestations of suffering, such as the suffering created by the wilful destruction of Red Cross installations and intentional contempt for codified law. Mussolini and his generals threatened nothing else than the ideals which stood at the heart of Henry Dunant’s action. Brown was right when he told Geneva that caritas inter arma under such circumstances was bound to be engulfed in the flames of total war but Geneva was not in a mood to listen.

Consequences of the ICRC’s Stand The Italo-Ethiopian war proved to be a turning point for the humanitarian organisation. Huber’s reactive ideal of the Good Samaritan had prevailed over a proactive, politically conscious and courageous ideal of humanitarian action. Huber also convinced important members of the ICRC such as Carl J. Burckhardt, the President in all but name of the later years of the Second World War. Burckhardt wrote in 1940 that expressing public protest was more a sign of weakness than of strength and repeated Huber’s argument that protesting only made sense if it was based on the conclusions of a legally binding inquiry. In 1947 – more than ten years after the Italo-Ethiopian war – Huber made the same point again when he explained why the ICRC had abstained from making public protests during the Second World War. The ICRC revised its rigid approach only many years later, in the late 1960s, when it was forced under the pressure of changed sensibilities, to increasingly resort to public denunciations of violations of international humanitarian law, in some cases similar to those which had taken place in 1935–36. Gas warfare again stood at the origin of this new development. Gas warfare, it must be recalled, was not an issue during the Second World War because the belligerents abstained from making use of it. In late 1966, during the civil war in Yemen, the ICRC received reports through its medical teams that poison gas had been employed. This time, unlike during the ItaloEthiopian war when even the personal experiences of its own delegate with

310

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

mustard gas had been insufficient to push it into action, the ICRC did not remain silent. In 1967, it twice publicly condemned the use of such an illegal weapon and followed-up with a memorandum to the signatories of the Geneva Conventions. A policy shift had occurred again. The ICRC had tacitly redefined its role and returned to the spirit of the 1918 appeal against chemical warfare. Methods of warfare had become again a concern of the organisation. The decisions taken in 1936 had grave consequences during the Second World War, haunting the organisation until today. By deciding that it was solely concerned by victims covered by the Geneva Conventions, i.e., wounded soldiers and prisoners of war, the ICRC omitted to undertake decisive action on behalf of civilians in need, particularly millions of Jews persecuted in Nazi concentration camps. The organisation abstained from a public appeal in their favour despite the fact that it had – a striking parallel with the Italo-Ethiopian war – good information about what was going on, although not the desired certitude provided by an impartial inquiry. The ICRC even envisaged making such an appeal at some point. However, political interference from the Swiss authorities and concern for its traditional categories of victims dissuaded the organisation from doing so (Favez 1989: pp. 514–20).1 The ICRC preferred to stick to a narrow and strictly legal interpretation of its role at the price of even more uncomfortable criticism after the Second World War than after the Italo-Ethiopian war.

The ICRC and Fascist Italy While the war was still going on, the ICRC came under heavy criticism that it was pro-Italian. Was this criticism justified? The question has to be answered on two levels. First, with regard to the approach chosen by the ICRC. Once the ICRC had decided to go for an inquiry, certain consequences followed automatically, in particular the obligation not to speak out because it would compromise the outcome of the inquiry. Although this favoured Italy – the belligerent who had most to fear from an inquiry – the ICRC cannot be blamed for it. A process of law had been initiated and the ICRC could not abandon it unilaterally. Seen in this sense, the reproach that the ICRC was pro-Italian, made amongst others by the Ethiopian government, is not justified. Secondly, with regard to the organisation. Here, curious contradictions appear, indeed. While the ICRC had chosen a legal approach to respond to the violations of the Geneva Conventions, it did not consistently apply it and favoured Fascist Italy from the beginning. In at least three instances the ICRC abandoned its impartiality: once, when it decided to send material assistance to Ethiopia instead of the requested cash; the second time when it failed to formally request the right to visit Ethiopian prisoners of war on

Summary and Conclusion

311

the Italian side as demanded by Haile Selassie; and the third time when it gave Italy more space in official publications to voice its complaints about the adversary’s alleged violations of international humanitarian law. Throughout the period under study Fascist Italy had more credit with the ICRC than Ethiopia. This does not mean that the ICRC deliberately subordinated its operational decisions to political motivations. There are no indications that this happened. It would have been extremely surprising because Max Huber was too much a judge to allow such direct interference. However, the pro-Italian sentiments which animated the majority of ICRC members appear to have influenced the organisation in an indirect and very subtle way. They slipped naturally into the decision-making process. This is supported by the fact that the matter apparently did not strike the ICRC and that there was no discussion at any time about what we, today, perceive as a violation of its impartiality. The ICRC lacked not only critical distance towards Fascist Italy but above all towards itself. The ICRC would have desperately needed members who came from a different background and who were able to break the dominating mould. As a result, the ICRC chose an approach which satisfied Red Cross principles as defined in 1936 – which is why the dissenters in the Committee eventually rallied behind the lawyers’ point of view – and also avoided political complications with Fascist Italy. This was not only important for the ICRC and the Red Cross movement but also for the Swiss government with regard to its relations with Italy, a genuine concern of Max Huber. The ICRC’s line of action was a compromise, ensuring a minimum of trouble for the ICRC, not a maximum of protection for war victims. No wonder not everybody outside the Committee approved, starting with Brown (1939: p. 222) who suspected the ICRC of having had ‘a policy to keep silent’ about Italian violations. While this interpretation goes too far – there was no policy as such – it leads to another point. With its silence on the bombings of Red Cross installations and on chemical warfare, the ICRC appeared to condone Italian violations of international law. By walking a very thin line between its own interests and those of Fascist Italy, the organisation came dangerously close to complicity, by abstention, with the power which had committed these violations.

‘We didn’t know the truth’? When the Committee discussed, two months after the war, Max Huber’s article on the Red Cross and neutrality, Lucie Odier expressed understanding for those who would have wished for a more assertive ICRC. She wondered how their legitimate concerns could have been taken into account and how the ICRC could have conciliated the obligation to refrain from public statements with the one to express the feelings of human conscience? To

312

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

which Max Huber responded: ‘We remained silent because we didn’t know the truth’.2 Huber’s response resumed in a nutshell the ICRC’s stand. It was understandable from the perspective of a judge who wanted to have the certainty of an inquiry but it did not correspond to what was going on in the real world. A more realistic approach would have been to say that the ICRC would probably never know the truth in Huber’s sense but that it had come as close to it as was possible. Seen in this light, the ICRC had sufficient information to take action. The basic problem with the ICRC was that it did not understand what really had happened in the Italo-Ethiopian war. It failed to look behind the smokescreen which Mussolini and his generals had created. The ICRC was composed of people of good intentions but they were blind towards Fascist Italy. Yet, it would seem that the ICRC should have seen the writing on the wall. A sober examination of Mussolini’s actions leading to the war against Ethiopia as well as of the way the war was fought should have made the ICRC suspicious of the Duce’s soothing words. After all, the ICRC was in a privileged position to know what was going on in the field. Humanitarian operations in war provide an excellent insight into the nature of the belligerents. If the ICRC had taken the information coming from the field more seriously, it would have understood how dangerous Mussolini and his regime were for the Red Cross and it would have taken action to clearly dissociate the organisation from them. In reality and as a final irony, the ICRC had much more in common with Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia than with Mussolini’s Fascist Italy. Both were engaged in the same combat, the defence of legality but the ICRC of 1936 pretended not to see.

Notes 1 How difficult it was for the ICRC to come to terms with this painful issue is reflected in its response to Favez’ study (1989: pp. 523–27). 2 CICR, PV Séances plénières, 3 July 1936, p. 6.

APPENDICES


1. Chronology of Political and Military Events (For the complete list of bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, see Appendix 5)

28 September

1923 Admission of Ethiopia into the League of Nations with French and Italian support.

2 August

1928 Signature of the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of Friendship, Conciliation and Arbitration.

2 November

1930 Coronation of Tafari Makonnen who takes the name of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

5 December

30 December

1934 Armed clash over disputed water wells between Italian and Ethiopian soldiers at Wal Wal on the Somali–Ethiopian border. Over one hundred Ethiopians and some thirty Italian local troops are killed in the incident which marks the beginning of the Italo-Ethiopian dispute. Upon Ethiopia’s request, the League of Nations is informed of the matter. Mussolini outlines, in a top-secret promemoria, the blueprint for Italian aggression against Ethiopia. The aim is to establish the Italian Impero. Massive Italian troop move-

314

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

ments to the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somalia start in early 1935.

7 January

16 March 11–14 April

25 May

27 June

15 July

31 July– 3 August

15–18 August

4 September

1935 In the secret Laval–Mussolini accord Italy receives a free hand for expansion to Ethiopia from the French government. Hitler reestablishes obligatory military service in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. At the Stresa Conference between Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Mussolini reaffirms his loyalty to the Locarno Pact and supports cooperation against Nazi Germany. Mussolini interprets the absence of reaction by the British head of delegation to Italian plans for expansion to Ethiopia as tacit consent, although other British officials expressed their government’s opposition. After the conference Italian military preparations against Ethiopia are intensified. After many delays and four days of intense negotiations, the Council of the League of Nations obtains Italian and Ethiopian agreement for an arbitral procedure of the Wal Wal dispute including a timetable. The results of the Peace Ballot in the United Kingdom strengthen the government’s hands: the British public largely supports collective security under the Covenant of the League of Nations. Ethiopia becomes party to the 1929 Geneva Convention on Wounded and Sick. The Ethiopian Red Cross is created later in the month. Extraordinary meeting of the Council of the League of Nations: the Wal Wal Arbitration Committee should restart its activities, but limit them solely to the Italian demand of investigating the 1934 incident without determining the question to which country the disputed locality belonged. The Three-Power negotiations in Paris end in failure. Mussolini rejects a plan worked out by Laval and Eden according to which Ethiopia should undertake reforms under the League of Nations and Italy should receive extensive economic privileges in Ethiopia. Meeting of the Council of the League of Nations: a Committee of Five is established in order to find a solution to the Italo-Ethiopian dispute. Italy rejects its conclusions later in the month.

Appendices

11 September

18 September 26 September

3 October

6 October 9–11 October

15 October 19 October

5 November

6 November

8 November

28 November

6 December

315

British Foreign Secretary Hoare affirms in the General Assembly of the League of Nations the British government’s fidelity to the Covenant. Part of the Home Fleet takes up position in the Mediterranean Sea in the following days. Ethiopia becomes party to the 1925 Gas Protocol. The Council of the League declares that it has failed in its conciliation efforts. A Committee of Thirteen is established in order to draft a statement on the facts of the dispute and recommendations for a settlement. Italy initiates hostilities without formally declaring war. Ethiopia calls for general mobilisation. Over the past months the Italians had prepared a crushingly superior force, both in numbers as well as in material. All in all some 500,000 men (Italian and local soldiers, mobilised workers) confronted a largely traditional Ethiopian army numbering between 250,000 and 350,000. The northern front becomes the main theatre of operations. The Italian army occupies Adwa where it was defeated in 1896. One of the Italian goals is achieved. The League’s General Assembly confirms, with fifty votes for and four votes against that Italy had resorted to war in breach of the Covenant and that sanctions should be taken against the aggressor by each member state. The Egyptian Red Crescent, as the first National Society, dispatches a field hospital to Ethiopia. The Sanctions Conference decides on a set of financial and economic sanctions to be taken against Italy, as well as an arms embargo. Italian forces from Italian Somalia enter Gorrahei in Ethiopia’s Ogaden province. The advance comes to a temporary halt a few days later. The two ICRC delegates, Sidney H. Brown and Marcel Junod, arrive in Addis Abeba and open the first ICRC delegation on the African continent. Italian forces from Eritrea enter Mekele, the capital of Tigray. Marshall Emilio de Bono gives preference to the consolidation of the Italian positions against Mussolini’s wishes. Mussolini pushes for a rapid advance. Marshall Pietro Badoglio replaces de Bono as Supreme Commander. On the same day Haile Selassie leaves Addis Abeba for Dessie where the Ethiopian military headquarters is established. Bombing of Dessie during which the hospital is hit.

316

12 December

15 December

18 December

22 December

30 December

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Meeting of the Sanctions Committee: in view of ongoing peace negotiations, the discussion on additional sanctions is postponed. First major Ethiopian victory at Dembeguina by troops under the overall command of Ras Imru. Thirty-two Italian soldiers and 245 Askaris are killed in a daylong battle. The Italian High Command is gravely concerned by this Ethiopian advance threatening the right flank. Haile Selassie rejects the Hoare-Laval peace plan foreseeing the partition of Ethiopia. Italy had first cautiously welcomed the plan, motivated partly by fear of the oil sanction. Giornata della fede in Italy in protest against the sanctions. Millions of Italians donate their wedding rings in a show of solidarity with the regime. First use of poison gas against Ras Imru’s troops, two days later gas is also employed on the southern front. A quick Italian victory seems far away. Bombing raid against the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in southern Ethiopia upon orders of General Rodolfo Graziani.

1936 Mussolini orders Badoglio not to use poison gas in view of a planned League of Nations meeting on tougher sanctions against Italy. 9 January Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum reach Abi Adi, the administrative centre of Tembien in central Tigray. A major battle is imminent on the northern front. 12–16 January First major Italian victory in southern Ethiopia in the battle of the Genale Doria. Ras Desta’s army is severely beaten and sustains four to five thousand casualties while the Italians, according to their own reports, have only 175. Graziani’s advance of several hundred kilometres is halted on 26 January at Wadara upon orders from Rome. 18 January Bombing of the Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital no. 3 on Amba Aradam. 20 January The Sanctions Committee of the League of Nations refers the question of an oil embargo against Italy to a group of experts. The day before Mussolini authorised Badoglio to make use of ‘all means of war’, including poison gas. 20–24 January First battle of Tembien: the Ethiopian offensive launched by Ras Kassa is halted by the defending Italians. According to the Italian army the Ethiopians lost five thousand men, the Italians close to one thousand one hundred. 5 January

Appendices

317

3–12 February Meeting of the Sanction Committee’s oil experts. Governments ask for time to study the Committee’s report. 10–15 February Battle of Amba Aradam (also known as battle of Enderta): Ras Mulugeta’s forces are ejected from the mountain fortress. According to the Italians, the Italian army had approximately eight hundred casualties, Ethiopia between five and six thousand killed. A few days later Ras Mulugeta is killed during the retreat. 27–29 February Second battle of Tembien: Ras Kassa’s and Ras Seyoum’s troops are beaten in central Tigray. The Italian army sustained some six hundred casualties, the Ethiopians eight thousand, according to Italian reports. In the following days, the retreating Ethiopian troops are severely bombed by the Air Force. 29 February– Battle of Shire: Ras Imru’s army in western Tigray is beaten 2 March and has to retreat. The Italian army reports almost one thousand Italian and four thousand Ethiopian casualties. As a result the largest part of the Ethiopian forces is crushed on the northern front, except Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard which is concentrating around Korem. 3 March The League’s Council Committee launches a fresh appeal for negotiations and cessation of hostilities. Ethiopia accepts the day after, while Italy agrees ‘in principle’ five days later. 4 March Bombing of the British Red Cross field hospital on the Korem plain. 7 March Hitler denounces the Treaty of Locarno and marches into the Rhineland. All attention is suddenly shifted back to Europe. 17 March Italian aeroplanes destroy the only Red Cross medical aircraft on the Korem plain. 20 March The last Red Cross field hospitals, severely battered and in need of reorganisation, decide to evacuate from the northern front. 23 March The League’s Committee of Thirteen requests information from Rome about the alleged use of poison gas. 29 March Strategic bombing of the town of Harar by a record number of thirty-three Italian warplanes. 30 March Mussolini receives an ICRC delegation led by Max Huber for a brief audience. 31 March Battle of Ashenge (or Maychew): Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard is beaten in a day-long battle north of Lake Ashenge. The Italians sustain, according to their own information, almost one thousand three hundred casualties, the Ethiopians over eight thousand. The entire

318

8 April 10 April

15 April 15–30 April

20 April

30 April 1 May

2–4 May 5 May

8 May 9 May 12 May 17 May

22 May 1 June 5 June

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Ethiopian northern front has collapsed. The end of the war is in sight. The League’s Committee of Thirteen debates Italy’s use of poison gas and requests information from the ICRC. In view of the discussions in the League of Nations, Mussolini orders Graziani not to make use of chemical warfare but Graziani disobeys. Fall of Dessie. Graziani’s offensive against Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden under the command of Dajjazmach Nasibu ends with the fall of Degeh Bur. The last Ethiopian army is beaten. Italian estimates put the number of Ethiopian casualties at more than five thousand, Italians losses amount to over two thousand. Meeting of the Council of the League of Nations: in view of the imminent fall of Addis Abeba, no new efforts to uphold the Covenant are undertaken, sealing the defeat of the League of Nations in what was called ‘the dispute between Ethiopia and Italy’. Haile Selassie returns to Addis Abeba after the defeat at Ashenge. Meeting of the Ethiopian Council of Ministers. During the night of 1 May Haile Selassie flees from Addis Abeba to Djibouti aboard a special train. Sack of Addis Abeba. Badoglio’s motorised column enters the Ethiopian capital in the late afternoon. The Italo-Ethiopian war comes officially to an end. The Italian army reported 9,106 killed and wounded (of which 2,652 national and local soldiers were killed in combat; 2,316 died ‘of various causes’). The number of Ethiopian casualties can only be guessed but runs into several tens of thousands. Graziani’s troops occupy Harar. Mussolini proclaims the Impero. The Council of the League of Nations postpones for one month the discussion of Italy’s annexation of Ethiopia. First use of poison gas after the proclamation of the Impero. Poison gas is employed against Ethiopian positions with a varying degree of intensity until March 1939. Graziani, promoted Marshall and viceroy of Ethiopia, takes over from Badoglio. Liquidation of the Ethiopian Red Cross upon Italian orders. Junod departs from Addis Abeba. The ICRC delegation in Ethiopia is closed.

Appendices

30 June

18 July 2–8 October 22 October 23 November

16 December

23 December

27 December

19 February

24 February 8 April

11 December

5 May

319

General Assembly of the League of Nations: Haile Selassie accuses Italy of having employed illegal means of warfare and deplores that the community of states had allowed force to win over law. Despite his call for continued sanctions, the Assembly decides to lift them on 4 July. General Francisco Franco takes control of Las Palmas. Beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Vice-President Logoz visits Rome for discussions about the ICRC’s White Book. The first Italo-German agreement is signed in Berlin. Mussolini, a few days later, speaks of an axis. Meeting of the Board of Governors of the League of Red Cross Societies in Paris: the Red Cross movement buries the long-debated question of protesting to Italy over its use of poison gas in the Italo-Ethiopian war. Ras Imru, one of the most important Ethiopian commanders, surrenders to the Italians in western Ethiopia. He is sent to Italy for internment. Switzerland, as the first of the states which had declared sanctions against Italy, recognises de jure and de facto Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia. Johannes Kvittingen, the last remaining doctor attached to a National Red Cross field hospital dispatched to Ethiopia during the war, leaves southern Ethiopia. 1937 Attempt on Graziani’s life on the steps of the ex-Emperor’s palace. The viceroy is wounded. He orders violent and brutal repression. Ras Desta, the last of the principal Ethiopian commanders, is captured and executed. The Rector of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, presents Mussolini with an honorary doctoral degree in Rome. Italy leaves the League of Nations. 1941 Haile Selassie returns to Addis Abeba, putting an end to the five-year Italian occupation of Ethiopia.

320

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

2. Glossary Abyssinia

Askari

Dubat Fetha Negast Galla

Ghe’ez Gibbi Hakim Shifta Tej Tukul

Old name of Ethiopia, especially employed by foreigners. The word derives from habesha, as the inhabitants of the Ethiopian high plateau call themselves. Local Eritrean soldier in the Italian army’s service, of Christian or Muslim belief. The word originates from Arabic and means ‘soldier’. Local Somali soldier. The Law of Kings, the traditional Ethiopian legal code. The largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, of Cushitic origin, nowadays called Oromo. The Raya and Azebo of southeastern Tigray belong to this ethnic group. Liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. Generally a nobleman’s compound, often translated as palace. Doctor in Amharic. Bandit. Often strong alcoholic beverage made of honey. It is served in a tej biet (tavern). Thatched roofed hut.

Ethiopian Military Titles (listed in decreasing importance)1 Negus Ras Dajjazmach Grazmach

King; the Ethiopian Emperor carried the title of Negusa Nagast (King of Kings). Head of an army. Commander of the gate, a politico-military title. Commander of the left (wing).

Ethiopian Court Titles Bitwaddad Blatten Geta Lej

‘Beloved’; counsellor. A title given to government officials at the ministerial level. ‘child’; often translated as prince.

Note 1 The spellings of titles used in this study are based on Zewde (1991: pp. 232–34).

Appendices

321

3. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in October 1935 (In brackets the year they joined the ICRC) Max Huber, President, Doctor of Law, former President of the Permanent Court of International Justice (1923) Paul Logoz, Vice-President, Doctor of Law, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Geneva, Colonel (G.S.) (1921) Georges Patry, Vice-President, Doctor of Medicine, Colonel, former divisional medical officer, Attaché to the Army’s General Staff (1929) Guillaume Favre, Vice-President, colonel divisionnaire (1932) Edmond Boissier, Colonel (1914) Paul des Gouttes, Doctor of Law, lawyer (1918) Bernard Bouvier, professeur honoraire à l’Université de Genève (1919) Jacques Chenevière, homme de lettres (1919) Lucien Cramer, Doctor of Law (1921) Giuseppe Motta, Doctor of Law, Federal Councillor (1923) Suzanne Ferrière, Secretary of the International Migration Service (1924) Rodolphe de Haller, banker, treasurer (1924) Georges-Elie Audeoud, Doctor of Medicine, former divisional medical officer (1925) Lucie Odier, ex-cheffe du service des infirmières-visiteuses de la CroixRouge Genevoise (1930) Franz Rodolphe von Planta, Colonel (1930) Heinrich Zangger, Doctor of Medicine, professeur à l’Université et directeur de l’Institut de médecine legale de Zürich (1932) Carl Jacob Burckhardt, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor at the Geneva Institut universitaire des hautes études internationales (1933) Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli, engineer (1935) And co-opted in 1936: Georges Wagnière, Doctor of Law, former Swiss Minister to Italy

Honorary members Frédéric Barbey-Ador, Swiss Minister to Belgium Marguerite Frick-Cramer

Director

Robert Hockman

Georges Dassios

Valentin Schüppler

Ralph Hooper

Stanisław Belau

Kálmán Mészáros

Albert Gingold Duprey

Unit

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 1

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 2

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 3

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 4

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 5

Ethiopian Red Cross no. 6

French unit

1 male nurse

1 doctor 1 assistant

1 doctor 1 assistant

2 doctors 2 assistants

2 doctors 3 assistants

3 doctors

3 doctors 1 vet. surgeon 2 assistants

Expatriate staff incl. the director

a) Field Hospitals under the Ethiopian Red Cross

Dessie

Bati, Mille River area

Amba Aradam

Negele, Yrga Alem

Abi Adi

Weldiya

Degeh Bur

Place of work

Beginning of March until mid-April 1936

7 Dec. 1935 to mid-April 1936

mid-Nov. 1935 to 16 Feb. 1936

12 Nov. 1935 to the fall of Addis Abeba

mid-Nov. 1935 to beg. of April 1936

mid-Nov. 1935 to 10 April 1936

mid-Oct. 1935 to end of May 1936

Dates2

4. Red Cross Field Hospitals on the Ethiopian Side during the Italo-Ethiopian War1

Fell into the hands of the Italians when Dessie was taken

The expatriate assistant left the unit after a few days

Captured by the Italians

Hooper was replaced by P. H. Roberts

One assistant was repatriated because of sickness, one assistant left the unit before it deployed

One doctor left the unit because of sickness, one was only working for a short period

There was only one doctor at a time working in the unit

Remarks

322 Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Charles Winckel

Ismail Daoud

Dutch Red Cross

Egyptian Red Crescent

doctors orderlies adjutant transport officers base officer doctors Indian assistant surgeons 4 transport officers

3 doctors 2 assistants

13 doctors 2 pharmacists 8 head-nurses 60 nurses 1 accountant 1 director

4 doctors 4 nurses 1 manager

Expatriate staff incl. the director

6 6 1 4 1 II) Pierce James Kelly 3 2

British Red Cross I) John Melly

Finnish Red Cross Richard Faltin

Director

Unit

b) Foreign National Red Cross Field Hospitals

24 Dec. 1935 to 24 April 1936

Dates3

mid-Dec. 1935 to 29 May 1936

11 March to 16 April 1936 (departure from and return to Gallabat)

Weldiya, Korem

Gonder

Degeh Bur, Arrived 6 Feb. in Dire Jijiga, Harar Dawa to 20 May 1936 (departure from Harar)

Harar, 15 Oct. 1935 to Jijiga, 15 May 1936 Bulale, (departure from and Degeh Bur, return to Egypt) Dagaha Moda

Dessie, Korem

Place of work

Entered Ethiopia via the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

Main unit

Main period of work in Harar

Ismail Daoud was replaced by Abdul Hamid Bey Said in March 1936, following disagreements in the unit

The only unit which left Ethiopia before the fall of Addis Abeba

Remarks

Appendices 323

Gunnar Ulland

Norwegian Red Cross

The whole unit was composed of: 4 doctors 2 assistant medical officers 4 nurses 1 administrator 1 mechanic 1 pilot

2 doctors 3 nurses

Expatriate staff incl. the director 20 Jan. to 13 June 1936

Dates3

Melka Dida, 20 Nov. 1935 to Ellot 15 May 1936

Yrga Alem, Wadara

Place of work

The two units joined in April 1936; they left Ethiopia via Kenya together with the Norwegian unit

Left Ethiopia via Kenya together with the Swedish unit; one doctor remained with the Ethiopian troops for a few more months

Remarks

1 Four comments must be made to this list: (1) The Ethiopian Red Cross had organised a seventh field hospital (2 doctors, 1 assistant) but it was never sent to the field. (2) The National Society assumed also Harald Nyström under its staff. Nyström, in charge of the medical service of the Imperial Guard, was called to serve with Ras Imru’s troops in northwestern Ethiopia. He did not formally lead an Ethiopian Red Cross field hospital but did comparable work. (3) There was one mule transport unit under the Ethiopian Red Cross, led by Gerald Burgoyne. A second unit with one expatriate in charge was set up but was too late to be deployed. (4) Shortly before the fall of Addis Abeba, the Ethiopian Red Cross organised a forward medical unit in support of a last Ethiopian attempt to hold back the Italians. Valentin Schüppler, with two assistants from an Evangelical mission, led the unit. The unit did not treat any wounded and had to withdraw because of the quick collapse of the Ethiopian defence line. 2 Date of departure from and return to Addis Abeba. 3 Date of arrival in and departure from Ethiopia.

Notes

Swedish Red Cross I) Fride Hylander II) Gunnar Agge

Director

Unit

324 Between Bombs and Good Intentions

1

Swedish Red Cross field hospital

Swedish Red Cross, clearly identified

Destroyed; 28 killed immediately and about 50 wounded; number of deaths increased later to 42, incl. one Swedish male nurse

No damage

By 4 Ro.1 and 6 Ca.101 with 3,134 kg of explosives out of which 252 kg mustard gas from 500–700 m above ground

Machine gunning of field hospital area by one Ro.1

Major direct bombing

By 18 Ca.101/111 with over 7,500 kg of explosives from 1,000 m above ground

4 30 Dec. 1935 Melka Dida

5 bombs hit the hospital; one a tent of the near-by field hospital; numerous explosions in the whole compound

Minor direct hits

Indirect and Adventist hospital; ERC strategic bombing units no. 2, 3 and 5

Strategic bombing by 14 Ca.101 from over 1,000 m above ground, in particular on the area of the gibbi, close to the clinic

Remarks

3 22 Dec. 1935 Melka Dida

Dessie

1 6 Dec. 1935

Damage

Clinic marked with the Red Contested Cross emblem, but apparently only on the wall

Unit

Indirect and ERC field hospital no. 4 in Minor damage to the house By 15 Ca.101 from 1,500 m strategic bombing ‘the largest house in Negele’; above ground with 936 no mention of Red Cross bombs (3,152 kg) signs2

Adwa

3 Oct. 1935

Category

2 14 Nov. 1935 Negele

Place

Date

(Case studies are marked in bold; ERC stands for Ethiopian Red Cross Society)

5. Bombings of Red Cross Field Hospitals and the Transport Unit during the Italo-Ethiopian War

Appendices 325

Indirect bombing

Indirect bombing

6 31 Dec. 1935 Bulale

Degeh Bur

Weldiya

Amba Aradam

Dessie airport

7 4 Jan. 1936

8 15 Jan. 1936

9 18 Jan. 1936

10 9 Feb. 1936

No damage

No damage, but some bombs hit the water holes in the riverbed close to the hospital3 Second day of a reprisal raid, again by 8 Ca.101

Bombing of Bulale from 1,500 m above ground as part of a reprisal raid by a total of 8 Ca.101

2 British Red Cross trucks Egyptian Red Crescent field hospital

11 Feb. 1936 Bulale9

Red Cross plane

ERC field hospital no. 3

ERC transport unit under Major G. Burgoyne, encamped at the outskirts of the village5

No damage

Shrapnel damage on fuselage and tail

7 wounded and damage to medical material

2 tents and the medical chest destroyed

11 bombs exploded near-by; machine gun fire hit the unit

The two trucks were apparently bombed8

By one S.81 with several small bombs and three 31 kg bombs from around 200 m above ground7

The Red Cross signs were clearly identified two days before6

Bombing of campsites and the village of Weldiya by 3 S.81 with 1,554 bombs (4,326 kg) of 31 kg and 2 kg

ERC field hospital no. 1, The hospital area and 2 tents Bombing of Degeh Bur from reinforced by one surgeon of were hit by shrapnel; several 1,500 m above ground by the Egyptian Red Crescent bombs exploded 150–200 m 4 Ca.101 from the hospital.4

Egyptian Red Crescent, as 5

Egyptian Red Crescent field hospital, set up across a riverbed from Bulale town and its fortified positions

10 Feb. 1936 Road near Kobo

Minor direct bombing

Major direct bombing

Indirect bombing

Indirect bombing

5 30 Dec. 1935 Bulale

326 Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Place

9

Korem plain

Area where BRC was bombed on 4 March

British Red Cross field hospital (BRC)

13 4 March 1936 Korem plain

5/6 March 1936

12 British Red Cross trucks parked near one large Red Cross flag on the ground

12 3 March 1936 British Red Cross Bombing not camp near Alamata realised

Major direct bombing

Damage

The trucks were observed in the morning; one Ca.133 was ordered to bomb them in the afternoon, but low lying and dense clouds did not allow the raid to take place

The pilot of an S.81 desisted from bombing after he noticed a Red Cross flag on the ground, but he was ordered to return and bomb the supplies; having no bombs left, he returned to base10

22 bombs exploded near-by; machine gun fire hit the unit

Remarks

None; the unit had evacuated to a camouflaged site.

The renewed bombing took place because of alleged antiaircraft fire against overflying planes

5 Ethiopian patients killed, By one Ca.133 with 774 kg several (re-)wounded; of explosives 2 trucks burnt and 35 tents damaged/destroyed; part of the medical and surgical equipment was lost

Egyptian Red Crescent field Material damage hospital

Unit

One Red Cross flag extended on the ground near various supplies

Category

Bombing not realised

11 12 Feb. 1936 Dessie airport

12 Feb. 1936 Bulale

Date

Appendices 327

Afarare (Irba Modo)

Harar

17 29 March 1936

6 June 1936

Jijiga

16 22/23/24 March 1936

Wadara

Korem plain

15 17 March 1936

4 or 5 May 1936

Ellot (Foca, Ilan Serar)

14 17 March 1936 Red Cross Fokker plane

Second Swedish Red Cross field hospital Destroyed

Big tent destroyed11

Unintentional bombing

Direct bombing?

Norwegian Red Cross

Norwegian Red Cross

Indirect and Egyptian Red Crescent strategic bombing hospital; ERC hospital; Swedish Mission hospital

Three-day bombing from 2,000 m by 28, 14 respectively 26 planes with over 20,000 kg of explosives

Destroyed in five waves; Red Cross signs were clearly noticed

By 2 Ca.133 with 316 kg of explosives from 3,000 m above sea level

None; during the raid one bomb fell near the field hospital

None; the real field hospital worked close-by14 By 2 Ca.133 from 1,500 m above ground with 480 kg of bombs15

7 big and about 40 small By 33 planes with over incendiary bombs fell on 12,000 kg of explosives from the compound of the 2,000 m above ground Egyptian Red Crescent causing little damage; one bomb hit the big Red Cross in front of the ERC hospital; the Swedish mission, outside of town, got hit by 2 bombs in the compound13

Indirect and Egyptian Red Crescent and Bombs fell close to the strategic bombing Finnish Red Cross Egyptian Red Crescent hospital on 24 March12

Major direct bombing

Minor direct bombing

328 Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Appendices

329

Notes 1 According to an eyewitness, Theka Ghebreghziabiher, interviewed in Adwa on 15 March 1997, there was no damage done to the clinic, which still existed at the time of the interview, but Haile Selassie in his autobiography says that the Red Cross station was set on fire. 2 The information is from Alan Webb, a member of the field hospital composed entirely of Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) missionaries. 3 The Ethiopian news agency announced that the field hospital was bombed but, in reality, some bombs fell close-by. This is confirmed by an intercepted telegram sent by the leader of the unit, Ismael Daoud, to Cairo. 4 Dr Amin Buktor Rufail made a precise drawing of the bombs falling in the vicinity of the field hospital. He contradicted Italian allegations that Italian warplanes strictly refrained from bombing the surroundings of the field hospital ‘despite the fact that armed Ethiopians converged on the hospital to seek cover’ (ASMAE, Etiopia, Fondo di guerra, c. 103/f. 6, Suvich to Italian Embassy London, 13 Feb. 1936). It is unusual that no specific report on this bombing is contained in the AUSSMA files. 5 Although Burgoyne said in his telegram, dispatched just after the bombing that his camp was bearing large Red Cross signs, this appeared not to have been the case. In addition, on the morning of the bombing, he was just about to erect his small camp at a new site. Junod, when visiting Burgoyne later at yet another site, considered the bombing as an accident and noticed that Burgoyne’s campsite had only one small Red Cross sign. 6 The site of the field hospital was included in the bombing of other targets on Amba Aradam. The precise number of aeroplanes involved nor the quantity of explosives launched – it was a minimum of 3,000 kg – cannot be ascertained for lack of detailed information. 7 The Italian observer in the plane claims that he verified (from as low as 150 m above ground) that the aircraft on the ground did not have Red Cross signs. Von Rosen, who observed the attack, commented that the Italian pilot should have seen the emblems from such a low altitude. 8 The information originated from Marcel Junod, in Weldiya at the time, who informed John Melly in Dessie. The incident is difficult to verify. Italian flight reports of the same day mention the bombing of one truck each on two different occasions, not of two trucks driving together. The pilots did not report having observed Red Cross signs on the trucks and they said that, in both instances, the trucks were trying to hide under trees. Melly was not sure whether the trucks had Red Cross signs painted on the roof. 9 These bombings, not mentioned by the ICRC delegates, were contained in the Ethiopian protestation to the ICRC and the League of Nations. Graziani denied that on 11 February 1936 any flights were made out of Gorrahei air base and said that, on 12 February, only two Ro.1 flew up to Bulale, bombing a camel caravan. Research in AUSSMA confirms substantially Graziani’s response with one difference. The pilot of one of the involved warplanes reported that some bombs fell close to the four tents of the Red Cross field hospital at Bulale. 10 The Italians had received information that, on 12 February, an Ethiopian plane was going to bring one thousand anti-aircraft cartridges to Dessie. The interception of the Ethiopian plane failed, but one Italian plane discovered supplies marked with a Red Cross on the Dessie airfield. 11 The tent with a Red Cross flag on the ground was clearly identified on 7 March by a Ro.37 reconnaissance plane. The flight record of the bombing on 17 March did not mention that a Red Cross flag was noticed. 12 Brown’s allegation of larger damage, including patients killed at the Egyptian hospi-

330

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

tal, was not substantiated by either the Finnish Red Cross or the Egyptian Red Crescent, which worked both at the Catholic Maltese mission. The mission buildings, outside town, were intentionally spared from bombing, according to an Italian report. Ethiopian documents after the war make no mention of this incident. 13 The bombing was concentrated entirely on the town of Harar. Targets were identified beforehand and special orders were issued to avoid the Swedish hospital, the British Consulate and the French Leprosary, all outside the town. No mention was made of the hospitals inside the town, notified by the ICRC to Italy three months earlier, such as the ones of the Egyptian Red Crescent and the Ethiopian Red Cross. It was sheer luck that there was only material damage and that nobody was killed in these buildings under Red Cross protection. 14 After discussion with Ras Desta, the Norwegian Red Cross team set up a camp with a Red Cross flag in the open, but worked under cover at a safe distance. The camp in the open was bombed on the same afternoon, according to a communication of 29 March1995, made to the author by Johannes Kvittingen, one of the two physicians present during the incident. The consulted files in AUSSMA make no mention that a Red Cross sign was sighted on the indicated dates. They speak only of a reconnaissance flight over Wadara by two Ca.133, having taken place on 5 May 1936. The incident, therefore, cannot be verified. 15 The Red Cross field hospital was identified by the Italian pilot at about 3 km from the village of Afarare. On the return flight, the small warehouses of the village were bombed.

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332

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1.2. Interviews and Correspondence with Eye-witnesses Bitwoded Asfaha Woldemichael Dr Edoardo Borra Dr Emanuel Gabre Sillasse André Evalet General Jakob Gebreluul Anders Joëlson Dr Johannes Kvittingen Rev Manfred Lundgren Lidj Michael Imru Tekle Tsadik Mekuria Theka Ghebreghziabiher

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Veeneklaas, G.M. Doktoren op Marsch, Nijkerk, 1936. Verslag Aangaande de Ambulance van het Nederlandsche Roode Kruis naar Ethiopië van 3 December 1935 tot 19 Mei 1936, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1937. Veuthey, M. Guérilla et droit humanitaire, Genève, 1983. Vogelsanger, P. Max Huber. Recht, Politik, Humanität aus Glauben, Frauenfeld und Stuttgart, 1967. Wagnière, G. Dix-huit ans à Rome, Genève, 1944. Walters, F.P. A History of the League of Nations, Vol. 2, London, 1952. Waugh, E. Waugh in Abyssinia, Harmondsworth, 1985. Wienholt, A. The African’s Last Stronghold, London, 1938. Winckel, Ch.W.F. and C.A. Belmonte. Het Nederlandsche Roode Kruis in Ethiopië Waar Onze Vlag Eens Waaperde, Amsterdam, 1936. Zangger, H. Die Gasschutzfrage, Bern, 1933. Zewde, Bahru A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1974, London, 1991.

INDEX


(biographical references are marked in bold; Ethiopian and Arabic names are listed as they are used, i.e., the name, followed by the father’s name) A Aberra, Kassa, 244 Ador, Gustave, 293 Afework, Woldesemayat, 53, 267 Agge, Gunnar, 76, 86 Aghegnehu, Inghida, 41 Ahmed (Dr), 81, 139 Ajmone Cat, Mario, 113, 125, 142, 146, 148, 152, 153, 162 Allander, Kurt, 100n. 43., 108 Aloisi, Pompeo, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 251, 267, 280, 283, 284 Alula, Engeda, 221 Argyropoulos, Georges, 53, 56 Asfawossen, Haile Selassie, 80, 123 Asfawossen, Kassa, 242, 243, 244 Auberson, Jacques, 14, 40, 49n. 25., 52, 248 Aubert, Théodore, 22, 23 Audeoud, Georges-Elie, 28, 47n. 11., 289 Avenol, Joseph, 285 Ayeleu, Birru, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 245 B Badoglio, Mario, 73 Badoglio, Pietro, 72, 73, 101n. 60., 111, 112, 113, 116, 117, 119, 132,

138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 152, 153, 162, 163n. 14., 179, 185, 188, 209, 218n. 67., 222, 223, 230, 231, 236, 256, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 281, 284, 303, Bahta, Hagos, 221, 258n. 5. Baistrocchi, Federico, 249 Barton, Sidney, 43 Barton (Lady), 56 Bastianini, Giuseppe, 200 Belau, Stanisław, 81, 89, 96, 124, 228, 229, 230, 231, 237, 279, 280, 301n. 34. Benzi, Camillo, 141, 142 Bernasconi, Mario, 131, 274 Bertelé, Tommaso, 197, 198, 200 Betteloni, Giovanni, 184, 224 Beyene, Merid, 233 Boato, Alberto, 241, 255 Bodard, Albert, 254 Boissier, Edmond, 21, 28, 47n. 11., 48nn. 12, 17., 178, 206, 217n. 61., 289, 290, 292 Bonna, Pierre, 48n. 17. Borra, Edoardo, 43, 112, 113, 184, 224 Bosshard, Walter, 209 Briquet, P.E., 48n. 13. Brophil, Marius, 81, 139, 249 Brown, Jenny, 208

Index

Brown, Sidney, Hamlet, xv, 3, 18, 23, 25, 34, 40, 55, 56, 59, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77, 78, 90, 93, 98nn. 6, 10., 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 124, 125, 126, 128, 152, 162, 166n. 70., 167n. 84., 170, 171, 176, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 217n. 65., 218nn. 67, 69, 70., 220, 230, 235, 236, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 255, 268, 273, 274, 276, 281, 289, 300n. 25., 301n. 36., 306, 307, 309, 311 Brown, Sidney, W., 68 Bührle, Emil, 10 Bugnion, François, 257 Burckhardt, Carl Jacob, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 98n. 8., 99n. 19., 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 209, 211, 213, 214n. 10., 279, 280, 293, 307, 309 Burckhardt, Walter, 12 Burgoyne, Clarissa, 100n. 55. Burgoyne, Gerald, Achilles, 71, 80, 86, 89, 94, 95, 101n. 58., 118, 167n. 84. C Cardelli Rinaldini, Renzo, 166n. 65. Carl, Prince of Sweden, 193, 203, 296, 297 Castellani, Aldo, 101n. 61. Cerutti, Mauro, xiv Chamberlain, Neville, 13 Charles, Emperor of Austria, 14 Chenevière, Jacques, 21, 22, 28, 29, 34, 46, 48n. 12., 75, 105, 177, 178, 182, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 195, 208, 250, 251, 279, 280, 292, 294, 307 Ciano, Galeazzo, 15, 113, 138, 164nn. 22, 23., 195, 196, 223 Ciraolo, Giovanni, 62, 98n. 14., 186 Clouzot, Etienne, 291 Collier, C.S., 49n. 25. Conrad, Christoph, xiv Costante, Sergio, 251, 252, 253 Cramer, Lucien, 22, 23, 47n. 9., 48n. 12., 99n. 26. Cremonesi, Filippo, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 42, 48n. 19., 57, 64, 73, 124, 138, 153, 165n. 42., 171, 172, 173,

339

174, 175, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 195, 196, 197, 198, 210, 213, 214, 215n. 29., 216n. 54., 218n. 69., 219, 230, 249, 250, 251, 253, 272, 280, 287, 294, 295, 297, 298 D Dallolio, Elsa, 250 Dall’Ora, Fidenzio, 225, 227, 258n. 13. Dalzini, Corrado, 242 Dassios, Georges, 39, 56, 89, 100n. 51., 124, 168, 231, 274 Dawkins, Cuthbert, 89 De Bono, Emilio, 225, 264, 265 De Felice, Renzo, 117 Del Bel Belluz, Giovanni, 253 Del Boca, Angelo, xiv, 111, 117, 300n. 12. del Valle, Alejandro, 52, 95, 101n. 58., 220, 236 De Michelis, Giuseppe, 202 Demolis, Louis, 292, 302n. 56. des Gouttes, Paul, 18, 19, 21, 126, 181, 201, 203, 220, 290, 292 Desta, Damtew, 79, 87, 100n. 43., 107, 128, 129, 133, 135, 138, 166n. 65., 251, 259n. 29., 260n. 50., 265, 268, 273, 278 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 79 Douhet, Giulio, 120, 263 Draudt, Paul, 17, 46, 65, 193 Dunant, Henry, 16, 25, 309 Durand, André, 257 Dylan, Bob, vi E Eden, Anthony, 13, 282, 283, 285 Emmanuel, Gabre Sillasse, 301n. 30. Empey, W.S., 150, 157, 277 F Faltin, Richard, 79, 89 Farinacci, Roberto, 113, 163n. 21. Favez, Jean-Claude, xiv Favre, Guillaume, 19, 21, 22, 24, 28, 29, 44, 47nn. 9, 11., 48n. 12., 176, 177, 178, 185, 195, 210, 250, 286, 290, 292, 293, 302n. 56. Ferrière, Frédéric, 257n. 2. Ferrière, Suzanne, 220, 250, 255, 257n. 2.

340

Filiberto, di Savoia-Genova, 228 Flandin, Etienne, 283 Forli, Luciano, 241 Francescutti, Egisto, 253 Franco, Francisco, 214 Frère, Armand, 138, 166n. 65. Frusci, Luigi, 131 G Galland, Emmanuel, 99n. 26. Gatward, S.O., 94 Gebremariam (Dajjazmach), 81 Gesesse, Belau, 236 Gielgud, Lewis de, 45 Gindler, Hans Heinrich, 10 Gingold Duprey, Albert, 231, 300n. 26. Giomi, Vezio, 253 Grayson, Cary, T., 45, 46, 297 Graziani, Rodolfo, 5, 72, 73, 94, 108, 111, 112, 117, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 137, 139, 142, 143, 162, 163nn. 16, 17., 165n. 58., 187, 223, 231, 232, 233, 236, 239, 244, 256, 257, 258n. 15., 264, 265, 266, 267, 270, 274, 284, 294, 299nn. 6, 10., 303 Guerrieri, Remo, 253 Guzzoni, Alfredo, 227 H Haller, Rodolphe de, 22, 48n. 12., 290, 292, 294 Haile Selassie I, 6, 8, 10, 14, 34, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43, 49nn. 25, 26, 31., 50, 52, 53, 55, 68, 70, 71, 78, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 98n. 5., 101n. 58., 108, 116, 117, 119, 122, 124, 125, 126, 129, 143, 156, 158, 162n. 5., 169, 182, 185, 189, 194, 197, 199, 220, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 256, 260n. 50., 267, 268, 270, 275, 278, 284, 287, 299n. 9., 304, 311, 312 Hall, David, 55 Hammarskjöld, Åke, 201, 297, 298 ‘Henry’, 254 Heruy, Woldeselassie, 38, 175, 235, 248 Hickey, James, 139 Hitler, Adolph, 23, 184, 188, 197, 282 Hockman, Robert, 77, 78, 89, 95, 109,

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

163n. 9. Holmes, Walter, M., 270 Holt, H.B., 95, 101n. 56. Hooper, Ralph, 77 Hubbart, Wynard, 120, 122 Huber, Max, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 37, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48nn. 17, 18., 57, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 75, 99n. 19., 126, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 202, 203, 209, 211, 212, 213, 215n. 26., 220, 221, 250, 279, 280, 282, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 309, 311, 312 Hylander, Fride, 76, 78, 86, 99n. 36., 127, 128, 132, 268, 273, 274 I Ilg, Alfred, 8, Imru, Haile Selassie, 233, 241, 242, 243, 268 Ismail, Daoud, 238, 239 J Joëlson, Anders, 155 Junod, Marcel, 3, 26, 37, 40, 43, 55, 56, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 82, 87, 89, 95, 97n. 3., 99n. 29., 101n. 63., 105, 109, 120, 125, 126, 127, 128, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 165nn. 45, 58., 168, 170, 181, 183, 187, 196, 197, 198, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211, 212, 213, 217n. 58., 220, 230, 241, 242, 244, 246, 248, 249, 251, 253, 254, 268, 270, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 285, 287, 289, 291, 294, 300nn. 22, 25., 304, 306, 307 K Kassa, Hailu, 79, 144, 219, 235, 237, 241, 242, 255 Kirillos (Patriarch), 261 Konovaloff, Theodor, E., 101n. 60., 219, 220, 241, 242 Kvittingen, Johannes, 81, 270, 278 L Labib, Hassan Ibrahim, 238

Index

Lambie, Thomas, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 49nn. 25, 34., 53, 57, 60, 77, 86, 95, 105, 124, 174, 253, 276 Lessona, Alessandro, 116, 153, 184, 231, 267, 299n. 6 Loeb (Dr), 124 Logoz, Claire, 216n. 54. Logoz, Paul, 21, 29, 37, 176, 177, 185, 186, 196, 197, 198, 206, 209, 216n. 54., 279, 287, 289, 292, 295 Lundgren, Manfred, 127 Lundstroem, Gunnar, 94, 127, 136, 165n. 52. Lusetti, Alfredo, 242, 243 M Macfie, John, William, Scott, 80, 144, 145, 149, 152, 268, 270, 276 Madariaga, Salvador de, 282, 284, 286 Magliocco, Vincenzo, 142 Mahan (Admiral), 263 Makonnen, Haile Selassie, 123 Makonnen, (Ras), 104 Mannerheim, Carl Gustav, 22, 59 Maria José, di Piemonte, 32, 101n. 61., 186 Matis, Raffaele, 241 Matricardi, Attilio, 157 Mattioli, Guido, 103 Mazzucchelli, Luigi, 216n. 54. McClintock, James, 67 Meade (Captain), 115, 275 Medynski, Tadeusz, 228, 229, 230, 231, 279, 280 Melaku, Bayen, 52, 96, 97n. 3., 124 Meloni, Silvio, 242, 243, 259n. 39. Melly, André, John, Mesnard, 36, 49n. 25., 51, 77, 78, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 106, 143, 144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 203, 274, 279, 300n. 22. Menelik II, (Emperor), 8, 36, 234 Menen, (Empress), 56, 93 Meshesha, Woldie, 223 Mészáros, Kálmán, 81 Micheli, Jacques-Berthélemy, 47n. 11. Minniti, Tito, 131, 132, 239, 274 Mohamed, Al Saoui Gomaah, 95, 101n. 59. Montanelli, Indro, 223, 300n. 12. Motta, Giuseppe, xiv, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 48nn. 17, 18., 60, 62, 287

341

Moynier, Gustave, 28 Mulugeta, Igazu, 52, 95, 101n. 56., 139, 144, 220, 228, 235, 236, 245, 249, 266 Mussolini, Benito, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 31, 32, 35, 47n. 10., 57, 64, 88, 94, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 138, 139, 153, 161, 162, 163n. 14., 164nn. 22, 23., 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 194, 199, 209, 211, 212, 222, 224, 231, 256, 264, 265, 266, 267, 280, 281, 282, 284, 294, 295, 299nn. 6, 10., 301n. 40., 302n. 60., 303, 304, 308, 309, 312 Mussolini, Bruno, 113 Mussolini, Edda, 164n. 23. Mussolini, Vittorio, 113, 144 N Nasi, Guglielmo, 223, 232 Nasibu, Zamanuel, 54, 82, 103, 239, 270 Nicole, Léon, 23 Nyström, Harald, 53, 81, 98n. 5., 241, 242, 324n. 1. O Odier, Lucie, 21, 28, 29, 58, 67, 78, 98n. 8., 175, 178, 289, 292, 294, 311 O’Dowed, Gallagher, 218n. 67. Oeri, Albert, 12 Oltramare, Georges, 34, 48n. 13. Omar, al-Muktar, 111 Orlandini, Luciano, 156, 157 P Pacelli, Eugenio (Pius XII), 261, 296 Palazzo, Domenico, 242, 243 Pankhurst, Richard, 117, 164n. 31. Patry, Georges, 204, 291, 292 Pavolini, Alessandro, 113, 163n. 22. Payne, John, Barton, 44 Perosa, Evaristo, 253 Petrarca, Luigi, 241 Pictet, Jean, 66 Pinto, Donato, 157 R Reynold, Gonzague de, 22 Rochat (detective), 218n. 69.

342

Rochat, Giorgio, 117, 299n. 9. Romanwork, Haile Selassie, 233 Roosevelt, Franklin, D., 60 Rosen, Carl Gustaf von, 63, 128, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 275, 299n. 9. Ruegger, Paul, 13, 25, 186, 215n. 26., 288 S Sbacchi, Alberto, 117 Schindler, Dietrich, 201 Schüppler, Valentin, 79, 80, 96, 139, 140, 141, 142, 167n. 90., 197, 228, 242, 324n. 1. Schürch, Ernst, 188 Seyoum, Mengesha, 237 Sjoeborg, Eric, 137 Smith, Eric, 127, 128 Sorensen, Manuel, 124 Spechel, Gino, Augusto, 177 Spencer, John, H., 287 Stadin, Elfrida, 95 Stadin, Ragnar, 95, 122, 124 Steer, George, 53, 266 Stokes, David, 89 Sulzer, Jenny, 68 Suvich, Fulvio, 57, 116, 137, 178, 179, 195, 267, 299n. 11. Svensson, Josef, 99n. 36., 100n. 43. T Taezaz, Lorenzo, 254, 255 Talice, Rodolfo, 99n. 26., Tamaro, Attilio, 11, 12, 13 Tecle, Hawariat, 38 Townshend-Stephens, R., 169

Between Bombs and Good Intentions

Tracchia, Ruggero, 244 V Valci, Gildo, 242, 243, 259n. 38. Vedovato, Guido, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156 Vinci Gigliucci, Guido, xv, 23, 33, 34, 35, 42, 63, 64, 106, 124, 138, 162n. 6., 174, 178, 179, 180, 182, 185, 186, 195, 196, 198, 210, 213, 218n. 69., 249, 252, 253, 287, 291, 297, 302n. 53. Vinci Barbiano di Belgioiosa, Leonora, 34 Virgin, Eric, 49n. 25. Vittorio Emanuele III, 186 von der Flüe, Niklaus, 25 W Wagnière, Georges, 8, 9, 10, 21, 22, 47n. 9., 48n. 12., 64, 99n. 19., 222 Wahib Pasha (General), 82 Warknah (hakim) alias Charles Martin, 52 Waugh, Evelyn, 104 Wienholt, Arnold, 80, 81, 100n. 44. Winckel, Charles, 81, 82 Woctt Alberto, 221 Z Zangger, Heinrich, 265, 278 Zannoni, Livio, 131, 132, 239, 274 Zanoni, Ernesto, 242, 243 Zeitlin, B., 152, 167n. 84. Zervos, Iacovos, 56, 229