Quoting Carl T. Schmidt’s The Corporate State in Action: Italy under Fascism, pages 135–6:
Yet despite the efforts of the Fascist régime to salvage property interests and promote recovery, Italy was in an unhappy condition at the end of 1934. For, after more than ten years of power. Fascism had been unable to solve Italy’s economic difficulties.
Mussolini was forced to admit: ‘We touched bottom some time ago. We shall go no farther down. Perhaps it would be hard to sink any lower. . . . We are probably moving towards a period of humanity resting on a lower standard of living. We must not be alarmed at the prospect. Humanity is capable of asceticism such as we perhaps cannot conceive.’23
Not long after, in inaugurating the Corporations, he announced: ‘One must not expect miracles.’24 Industrial production remained at low ebb, foreign trade still fell off, unemployment was at a distressingly high level and efforts to combat it had had little substantial effect. All this was very harmful to Fascist prestige.
Continued economic troubles and the inner pressures of Fascism impelled the Dictatorship to seek escape in foreign fields. War might be a kind of public works vastly more effective in reviving industry than anything tried before. With their attention focused on the glories of the battlefield, the people might be diverted from an uncomfortable concern over their domestic misfortunes. And certainly a military victory would solidify the Fascist movement and restore its fading glamour.
In this crisis, the rulers themselves would learn that the machine they had built under whose dominion men must live in constant spiritual tension, in fear and uncertainty is above all an engine of warlike enterprise.
(Emphasis added.)
For many Africans, this was the real start of World War II, and Fascism’s reputation in the liberal régimes would never be the same. Ethiopia was the only nation‐state in Africa to have successfully resisted European imperialism up until this point, and the invasion was so shocking to the world that even many otherwise profascist Japanese were appalled (for a while).
It cost the lives of at least 350,000 Ethiopians, involved numerous unpunished war crimes, and brought Europe’s two Fascist empires closer together, serving as an important inspiration to the Third Reich. Its importance can hardly be overstated, but I suspect that many of us know little to nothing about his tragedy thanks to Eurocentrist education.
Now, concerning the documentary: it is a bit crude and archaic at times, and being made for television it inevitably suffers from time constraints, but it is still quite good for beginners and anybody who is more orientated towards visual learning. It also provides examples of U.S. attitudes towards Mussolini pre‐1935, something that antisocialists rarely discuss.
Alternatively, Lion of Judah is an hour longer and is lush with precious archived footage, but it almost feels like a stereotypical nature documentary with its painfully long pauses between narrations, its lengthy shots of almost everything that the Italians and Ethiopians were doing (from dancing to pedestrianism), and the subtitles are difficult to read, but beggars can’t be choosers. (There are a few modern, amateur documentaries available, but I’m reluctant to recommend them given that the authors are centrist chumps.)
Further reading:
The Invasion of Ethiopia – Mussolini’s […] Plan For Restoration of the Roman Empire
My humblest request is that we not let the memory of this tragedy fade away. Where other educators have failed in their duty, we must not fail in ours.
Other events that happened today (October 3):
1894: Walter Warlimont, Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff of the Third Reich’s Armed Forces High Command, blighted the earth.
1904: Ernst‐Günther Schenck, SS doctor, joined him.
1940: The Vichy government promulgated the Law on the status of Jews, which reduced France’s Jews to second‐class citizens.
1942: An Axis V‐2 rocket reached a record 85 km (46 nm) in altitude.
1943: Axis forces massacred 92 civilians in Lingiades, Greece.