Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie was a monarch of only 43 when his proud East African kingdom suffered one of the great outrages of the 20th century. While the League of Nations sat mute in Geneva in 1936, Italian troops overran the land and Benito Mussolini appeared on a Rome balcony to boast: "At last Italy has its empire!"
Ethiopia paid a high price for Il Duce's Caesarean pretensions. By the time British troops crushed the Italian invaders in 1941, 760,000 Ethiopians had been killed. Even so, Selassie ordered his people to treat the defeated Italians with "a sense of honor and...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
