The day the League of Nations failed Ethiopia

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I on June 30, 1936 before the League of Nations in Geneva. Keystone

Ninety years ago, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie stood before the League of Nations in Geneva and appealed for help in the Abyssinian War. Although his plea ultimately fell on deaf ears, his speech went down in history as a defining symbolic moment.

On June 30, 1936, diplomats from 41 countries gathered in Geneva for the assembly of the League of Nations. Yet, one guest drew far more media attention than anyone else: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie who had recently been driven into exile by the Abyssinian War.

That day, he made history as the first head of state to address the League of Nations.

Italian troublemakers in Geneva

The emperor had barely climbed the steps to the lectern and begun his opening address to the president when loud whistles and shouts erupted from the gallery. “Ce n’est pas votre place ici!”, “Viva Mussolini!External link” [It’s not your place here! Vive Mussolini!]. Italian journalists had come armed with whistles to disrupt the emperor’s speech and filled the assembly hall with fascist songs. “The agents in charge of security in the galleries had to intervene,” the secretary of the Department of Justice and Police wrote in his reportExternal link. But the ten journalists “refused to obey and continued to shout, hurl insults and sing as they were escorted from the assembly hall”. Selassie waited stoicallyExternal link for the commotion to subside before continuing.

The disruption from the Italian side came as no surprise. Selassie was speaking on behalf of a country that had only just fallen victim to Italian Fascism.

Historians regard the Abyssinian War as the first fascist war of annihilation. Swiss historian Aram Mattioli describes it as a key event in the history of violence in the 20th century. Italy had long set its sights on the territory of Ethiopia. In 1896, however, Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II inflicted a crushing defeat on Italy at the Battle of Adwa bringing the country’s colonial ambitions to a halt.

Italian fascism reignited Italy’s colonial ambitions. Mussolini’s government had been planning the invasion of Ethiopia since 1932. On the night of October 2, 1935, Italian troops crossed the Mareb River which marked the border between the Italian colony of Eritrea and Ethiopia.

No one came to Ethiopia’s aid in the war

This aggression posed a crucial test for the League of Nations, which was founded in 1920 to preserve peace. Ethiopia and Italy were both members, so one member state had attacked another. The League of Nations followed the procedure triggered by this breach by naming Italy the aggressor, setting up a committee and imposing sanctions.

But the sanctions were half-hearted. Britain did not close the Suez Canal to Italian ships, nor were war-critical goods such as crude oil or steal embargoed. Italy was able to transport its weapons to the war zone without restrictions, while the arms embargo applied to both parties to the conflict. Unlike Italy, Ethiopia had no domestic arms industry.

Haile Selassie – the last Emperor of Ethiopia – outside his hotel in Paris in June 1936, before travelling to Geneva to attend the League of Nations assembly. AFP

Canadian historian Susan Pedersen is an expert on the League of Nations. “The League of Nations was supposed to be a system of collective global security,” she told Swissinfo. “But as a large part of the world was colonised by European powers, it effectively functioned as a security system for Europe.” For countries like France, the main perceived threat came from neighbouring and increasingly militarised Germany. Together with Britain, French policymakers did everything they could to prevent Italy from drifting into Germany’s orbit. “Nobody wanted to go to war for Ethiopia, and Mussolini knew that,” said Pedersen.  

Italian troops brutally cracked down on the civilian population and deployed chemical weapons on a large scale: arsenic, phosgene and, above all, mustard gas. The Italian forces are believed to have used around 300 tonnes of chemical agents. “The lethal rain falling from the aircraft brought everyone it struck crashing to the ground screaming in pain. Those who drank poisoned water or ate contaminated food suffered terrible agony,” Selassie told the League as he described the use of banned chemical weapons.

Italy justified its invasion as a mission to bring “civilisation” to Ethiopia and combat slavery. But the army’s actions stood in stark contrast to this justification. “For many humanitarians, this was a moment of disillusionment,” said Pedersen. “They understood for the first time how such arguments were used by League of Nations countries to justify imperial ambitions.”

The Italian army advanced on Adwa, where the Italians had suffered a crushing defeat in 1896 during their first attempt to conquer Ethiopia. With the support of their air force and thanks to their technical superiority, they achieved victory in 1935. Keystone

Arena for new diplomacy

On May 5, 1936, Italian troops occupied the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, just three days after Selassie had fled the country. On May 9, Italy’s King Viktor Emanuell III was proclaimed “Emperor of Abyssinia”. The League of Nations was considering lifting sanctions against Italy altogether. Against this backdrop, Selassie decided to address the League of Nations assembly in Geneva in person “to bear witness against the crime committed against my people and to warn Europe of the fate that awaits it if it submits to a fait accompli.”

In his speech, the emperor criticised the League of Nations, in which he had placed his trust, for not supporting him. Furthermore, he tried to convince its members that it was “not only about ending Italian aggression.” “It is about collective security. It is about the very existence of the League of Nations itself. It is about trust that every state places in international treaties […]. In short, it is about international morality.“

The speech did not stop the League of Nations from lifting its sanctions against Italy. “Nevertheless, Selassie’s speech was an incredibly defining symbolic moment,” said Pedersen. It showed just how much the world had changed. “The fact that Selassie could speak before the assembly as a black head of state was a testament to the League’s claim to the equality of all sovereign states, and an expression of the global public sphere the club had created,” said historian Isabella Löhr, professor at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute in Berlin.

The League of Nations had committed itself to the concept of “new diplomacy” under which international relations were to be conducted publicly and transparently, in contrast to the secretive conference-based diplomacy of the past. For the first time, violations of international law could be brought before an international forum. Assemblies were covered by the media, and meeting minutes were open to the public. “Superpower politics now had to be legitimised, and public opinion was meant to act as a corrective force,” said Löhr.

Ethiopia’s fate sparked a wave of international solidarity. During the war, more than 6,000 letters as well as tens of thousands of postcards and telegrams were sent to the League of Nations secretariat. The “Hands Off Ethiopia” campaign became one of the first global anti-colonial movements. Solidarity actions for Ethiopia were organised in countries such as the US, Jamaica and South Africa.

Abyssinian troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 3 October 1935. The Italian war of conquest claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Ethiopia. Keystone

A foundation for the United Nations

What happened after June 30, 1936? Selassie would have liked to stay in Switzerland. An internal letter from the foreign ministry reveals External linkthat he repeatedly sought permission to settle in Vevey in western Switzerland. But Switzerland rejected his request as it did not want to jeopardiseExternal link its good relations with Italy. The emperor was not even allowed to spend a night in the country and was forced to leave immediately after his speech in Geneva. He went on to spend six years in exile in Britain.

The Italian occupying forces established a regime of terror that included concentration camps while Ethiopian forces waged a guerilla war against the occupiers. British and Ethiopian troops eventually liberated Ethiopia making it the first country to be freed from fascism. On May 5, 1941, Selassie was able to return to Addis Abeba.

As a security system, the League of Nations slipped into political insignificance after 1936. “Selassie’s speech was the final nail in the coffin on that path,” said Löhr. She stresses that the League of Nations should not simply be seen as a failed project. “It laid the foundations for the United Nations and for the way international politics would later be negotiated and legitimised in public in the post-war period.” Many of the institutions established by the League of Nations became predecessors of today’s UN agencies.

Edited by Benjamin von Wyl/Adapted from German by Billi Bierling/sb