Briefly quoting Micheal Clodfelter’s Warfare and Armed Conflicts, pages 354–5:

After Mussolini had seized power, he determined to end the Libyan insurrection. […] Over 100,000 Senussi, nearly 50 percent of the tribe’s population, had died during the insurrection, most of them in Graziani’s concentration camps.

[…]

In the fall of 1935, Mussolini sent [an army] into Ethiopia to avenge the defeat of Adowa in 1896 and to expand the Fascist empire. […] Ethiopian military and civilian dead, many of them from the barbarous [Fascist] bomb and mustard gas attacks, were estimated as high as 275,000.

Although this history may seem elementary, I never see anticommunists even mention this, and I am willing to bet that you don’t either. That’s really all that I have to say.

  • Anarcho-BolshevikOPM
    3·
    3 years ago

    the Nazis didn’t have any involvement in Africa until WW2 was well underway

    Well, no, not quite (unless you consider 1931 the beginning of WWII). Egypt (Raiders of the Lost Ark was nonfictional in one way) was a notable exception; it was one of the few relatively open markets with growth prospects, and some Egyptian commodities, most notably cotton, attracted the interest of the Fascist markets. Thus, German capitalists increasingly negotiated with the capitalist gentiles of Egypt:

    ‘It appears from this example that rivalries between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were less severe in Egypt than in other markets. This assessment is backed by evidence from the rivalries between the German and Italian ports. Even though the ports of the North Sea and the Adriatic competed for the same transactions (see Chapter 8), this long-lasting battle did not prohibit German authorities from allowing the import of Egyptian agricultural products via Trieste, and even agreed to use the German-Italian clearing mechanism to pay for the goods Italian merchants bought in Egypt.’

    (Source.)

    Surprisingly, the Third Reich also sent a (modest) quantity of matériel to the Ethiopian army, not out of any sympathy for the Ethiopians — certainly not — but to prolong the war and convince the Kingdom of Italy that regardless of how it felt about a probable absorption of Austria, it needed the Reich’s help in the long run:

    ‘On the military level, it has now been established that Germany had helped Ethiopia to rearm prior to the outbreak of hostilities, in order to make sure that the country could fight against Italy. Hitler wished to avoid two extreme outcomes: defeat for Italy (which would shatter the prestige of European fascism in general) or a quick victory (which would enable Italy to use her newly-acquired prestige against Germany). The prolongation of the campaign enabled him to capitalise on his ‘good services’ to Italy, and to bring Italy closer to Germany by taking advantage of deteriorating Italo–British relations.’

    (Source.)

    I am glad that you brought this up, though, as it’s another topic that receives less attention than it should. On the face of it, friendly negotiations with any Africans may seem unlikely given that it doesn’t jive well with the Third Reich’s white supremacist bullshit, but at least until it could secure global dominance, Realpolitik had to be the order of the day.

    • RedSquid
      4·
      3 years ago

      Excellent post, I should have been more specific that it was fascist territorial expansionism/warfare in Africa that was an Italian affair, ‘involvement’ was way too vague and a poor choice of wording on my part.

      And yes, the Nazis were certainly willing to contradict their own racial bullshit - notably with their aid to the Chinese nationalists and then the Japanese, even going so far as to declare the later as Aryans.