https://www.bitchute.com/video/pNNA4IiJVnsK/
♰ በስመ አብ ወወልድ ወመንፈስ ቅዱስ አሐዱ አምላክ፤ ግንቦት ፲፪ ቀን በዚህች ቀን ቅዱስ ሚካኤል ሊቀ መላእክት፣ ኢትዮጵያዊው ንጉሥ እስክንድር፣ ሊቁ ቅዱስ ዮሐንስ አፈወርቅ፣ ቅዱስ መስቀል፣ ቅዱስ ሚናስ፣ ቅዱስ እስጢፋኖስ፣ የመላልዔል ልጅ ያሬድ፣ እንደዚሁም ጻድቁ አቡነ ተክለ ሃይማኖት ይታሰባሉ፡፡
የአባታቸንና የኢትዮጵያ ፀሐይ የፃድቁ አቡነ ተክለሃይማኖት ግንቦት፲፪ / 12 ከደብረ አሰቦ ወደ ደብረ ሊባኖስ አጽማቸው የፈለሰበት (ፍልሰተ አጽም) ይከበራል።
☪ በተጨማሪ በዚህች ግንቦት ፲፪ 1937 በፋሺስቱ ገዥ ሮዶልፎ ግራዚያኒ ዘመን ምክትሉ በነበረው ጄኔራል ፒዬትሮ ማሌቲ ክ፹፱/89 ዓመታት በፊት በኢትዮጵያ ለደረሰው አውዳሚ የደብረ ሊባኖስ እልቂት ጥቅም ላይ የዋለውን አርባ አምስት/45ኛውን የሙስሊም ቅኝ ግዛት ሻለቃ (ከሊቢያ፣ ከኤርትራ እና ከሶማሊያ ቅኝ ገዥ ወታደሮች የተውጣጣውን አስካሪ የሚባሉትን) ለክርስቲያኖች/ለመነኮሳት ጭፍጨፋ እንዲመራው አዘዘ።
ቪዲዮው ላይ ቀደም ሲል ያልታዩ ስድስት ፎቶዎች እ.አ.አ በግንቦት 1937 በኢትዮጵያ በደብረ ሊባኖስ ገዳም የተፈፀመውን የጅምላ ጭፍጨፋ ታሪክ ይዘግባሉ፤ ይህ ጭፍጨፋ ለብዙዎች ለረጅም ጊዜ የተረሳ ነው። ዘገባው በጥንቃቄ የሰራው አንቶኔሎ ካርቪጊያኒ ሲሆን እሱም የማይነገር የጅምላ ጭፍጨፋ ትዝታውን ሕያው አድርጎታል።
👹 እ.አ.አ በ1937 ቤኒቶ ሙሶሊኒ ራሱን "የእስልምና ጠባቂ" ሲል አውጇል።
- ☪ አለምን
እያናወጠ ያለው የእስማኤል እና የኤሳው ህብረት
ቀጥሏል!
- ❖ የሥጋ ሰዎች በመንፈስ ያሉትን በማሳደድ አንድ ሆነዋል!
ጋላ-ኦሮሞ እና እስላም ከ፭፻/500 ዓመታት በፊት የጀመሩትን የዘር ማጥፋት ጂሃድ እየቀጠሉበት መሆናቸውን እንዴት ነው ወገን ዛሬም መረዳት ያቃታው/የማይፈልገው? ለምንድን ነው እውነትን ለመደበቅ የሚሻው? ኧረ እግዚአብሔርን ፍሩ! ዋ!
ለመሆኑ አሰቃቂውን የደብረ ሊባኖስ ጭፍጨፋ አስመልክቶ በይፋ የተዘጋጀ ልዩ የመታሰቢያ ሥነ ሥርዓት ይኖር ይሆን? ሰባኪ፣ መምህር፣ ተጽዕኖ ፈጣሪዎች፣ ሜዲያ ወዘተ ተብየዎቹስ ስለዚህ እጅግ በጣም ታሪካዊ እና ከፍተኛ ሚና የሚጫወት አሳዛኝ ክስተት ይናገሩ ይሆን? ከአምስት ዓመታት በፊት ስለተፈጸመው ስለ አስኩም ጽዮን ጭፍጨፋ እንኳን አንዲትም ትንፍሽ አይሉም፤ የመታሰቢያ ሥነ ሥርዓቶችንም አዘጋጅተው አያውቁም፤ ሁሉም በጋር ዝም ጭጭ! ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ!
☪ ከአምስት መቶ/500 ዓመታት በፊት ወራሪዎቹ ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎች የሐረር ካሊፋት ሙስሊሞችን፣(ሶማሌዎችን ጨምሮ) እነ ቀዳማዊ ግራኝ አህመድን ፣ ሱዳኖችን፣ ቱርኮችን እና ሉተራኖችን ይዞ በአክሱማዊቷ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ዘመቱ፣ ብዙ የጂሃድ ጭፍጨፋዎችን አካሄዱ ከፍተኛ ውድመቶቹን ፈጸሙ።
☪ ከመቶ ሰላሳ /130 ዓመታት በፊት ደግሞ በከሃዲው ዳግማዊ ምንሊክ የሚመሩት ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎችና ኦሮማራዎች ከኢጣልያ፣ ከሉተራኖች፣ ከሶማሌዎች፣ ከሱዳኖች፣ ከግብጽና ከአረቦች ጋር አብረው በአክሱማዊቷ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ዘመቱ፣ ኑ፤ ከእናንተ (ከኢጣልያ) ጋር በሰሜን ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ጦርነት እንክፈት!” ብለው በጋራ ተስማሙ በአክሱም /አድዋ ዙሪያ አስከፊ ጭፍጨፋዎችን አካሄዱ፣ ምድሩን፣ ውሃውን እና አየሩን በከሉ፣ ሰሜን ኢትዮጵያን ለኢጣልያ እና ፈረንሳይ አስረከቧት።
☪ ከዘጠና/90 ዓመታት በፊት ደግሞ በከሃዲው አፄ ኃይለ ሥላሴ የሚመሩት ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎች እና ኦሮማራዎች ከኢጣልያ፣ ብሪታኒያ ከሉተራኖች፣ ከሶማሌዎች፣ ከሱዳኖች፣ ከግብጽና ከአረቦች ጋር አብረው በአክሱማዊቷ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ዘመቱ፣ "ኑ! ከእናንተ (ከብሪታኒያ) ጋር አብረን በሰሜን ኢትዮጵያ ላይ የዓየር ድብደባዎችን እናካሂድ!” ብለው በጋራ ተስማሙ፣ በአክሱም /መቀሌ ዙሪያ አስከፊ ጭፍጨፋዎችን አካሄዱ፣ ምድሩን፣ ውሃውን እና አየሩን በከሉ፣ ሕዝባችንን አፈናቀሉት፣ ለስደት ዳረጉት፣ ሰሜን ኢትዮጵያን ለአሜሪካ (ቃኛው ጣቢያ)አስረከቧት።
☪ ከሃምሳ ዓመታት /50 ዓመታት ጀምሮ ደግሞ በከሃዲው መንግስቱ ኃይለ ማርያም የሚመሩት ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎች እና ኦሮማራዎች ከሩሲያ፣ ከኩባ፣ ከኢጣልያ፣ ከሉተራኖች፣ ከእስራኤል፣ ከሶማሌዎች፣ ከሱዳኖች፣ ከግብጽና ከአረቦች ጋር ተናብበው በመሥራት በአክሱማዊቷ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ዘመቱ፣ በአክሱም /አድዋ ዙሪያ አስከፊ ጭፍጨፋዎችን አካሄዱ፣ ክርስቲያን ሕዝባችንን በረሃብና ጥሜት ፈጁት፣ ምድሩን፣ ውሃውን እና ዓየሩን ሁሉ በከሉ፣ ሕዝባችንን አፈናቀሉት፣ ለስደት ዳረጉት።
☪ ከስምንት/8 ዓመታት በፊት ጀምሮ ደግሞ በከሃዲው ግራኝ አብዮት አህመድ አሊ የሚመሩት ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎች እና ኦሮማራዎች አፍሪቃውያኑን ጨምሮ ከመላው የኤዶማውያኑ እና እስማኤላውያኑ ዓለም ሃገራት ጋር አብረው በአክሱማዊቷ ኢትዮጵያ ላይ ታይቶና ተሰምቶ በማይታወቅ መልክ ዘመቱ፣ ኑ፤ ከእናንተ ጋር አብረን ሁላችንም የማንፈልጋቸውን ጥንታውያኑን የሰሜን ኢትዮጵያ ክርስቲያኖችን ከምድረ ገጽ እናጥፋቸው!” ብለው በጋራ ተስማሙ፣ በአክሱም ጽዮን ላይ አስከፊ ጭፍጨፋዎችን አካሄዱ፣ ክርስቲያን ሕዝባችንን በረሃብና ጥሜት ፈጁት፣ ምድሩን፣ ውሃውን እና አየሩን በከሉ፣ ሰሜን ኢትዮጵያንና ቀይ ባሕርን ሙሉ በሙሉ ለኤዶማውያኑ ምዕራባውያን እና ለእስማኤላውያኑ አረቦች ለመስጠት በመሥራት ላይ ይገኛሉ።
😢😢😢 ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ! 😠😠😠
😢😢😢 ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ! 😠😠😠
😢😢😢 ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ! 😠😠😠
😢😢😢 ዋይ! ዋይ! ዋይ! 😠😠😠
😢 አስከፊው ታሪክ ተደገመ፣ ተደጋገመ
☪ በዘመናችን ደግሞ እነ ጆርጂያ ሜሎኒ በእጅ አዙር ሥልጣን ላይ የወጡትን ጋላ-ኦሮሞዎችን በመጠቀም ከህገ ወጡ ኦሮሚያ ክልል፣ ከኤርትራ (ቤን አሚር) እና ከሶማሊያ ሙስሊም ገዳይ ወታደሮችን ወደ አክሱም ጽዮን ላኩ፣ በመላው ትግራይ ክፍለሃገር ጭፍጨፋ አካሄዱ፣ ባጠቃላይ ከአንድ ሚሊየን በላይ ኦርቶዶክስ ክርስቲያን አባቶቻችን፣ እናቶቻችን፣ ወንድሞቻችንና እኅቶቻችን ጨፈጨፉቸው።
አምላከ ቅዱሳን በቅዱሳኑ ጸሎት ልመናና ቃልኪዳን ሀገራችን አክሱማዊት ኢትዮጵያንና ሕዝቦቿን ከጭንቀትና ከመከራ ይጠብቀን።
👹 In 1937 Benito Mussolini proclaimed himself "Protector of Islam"
- ☪ The Union of Ishmael and Esau that is shaking the world continues!
- ❖ People of the flesh are united in persecuting those of the spirit!
☪ Under the fascist Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, General Pietro Maletti commanded the 45th Muslim Colonial Battalion (composed of Libyan, Eritrean and Somali colonial soldiers, the so-called Askaris), which was used in the devastating Debre Libanos massacre in Ethiopia in May 1937.
♰ The Debre Libanos Massacre
• May 20, 1937
☪ Fascist Italy Used Muslim Soldiers to Massacre. 2,000 Monks & Pilgrims at The Debre Libanos Monastery
Debre Libanos 1937 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Italy)
This volume calls attention to the worst massacre of Christians that has occurred on the African continent, a 1937 attack.
Six previously unseen photos document the story of a massacre that took place in Ethiopia in May 1937, a massacre long forgotten by many. Report by Antonello Carvigiani, whose meticulous research has always kept alive the memory of an unspeakable massacre.
The massacre in Ethiopia in May 1937, specifically the atrocities surrounding the Debre Libanos monastery, represents a dark, often overlooked episode of the Italian occupation. Following an assassination attempt on Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani on February 19, 1937 (known in Ethiopia as Yekatit 12), Italian forces enacted brutal reprisals that culminated in a massive killing operation in May 1937.
While Ian Campbell’s research highlights the overall "Addis Ababa massacre" (February 1937), the subsequent repression in May 1937 was focused on crushing the spiritual heart of the resistance.
The Debre Libanos Massacre (May 1937): Between May 20 and 29, 1937, Italian fascist forces massacred approximately 2,000 monks and pilgrims at the Debre Libanos monastery, the most famous sanctuary of Ethiopian Christianity.
The Reprisal Logic: The attack was ordered by Viceroy Graziani, who suspected the monks of "conniving" in the assassination attempt, despite limited evidence.
Targeted Repression: Beyond the monastery, the Italian authorities launched systematic killings of Ethiopian intellectuals, nobility, and clergy throughout May and the following months, often using portable gallows.
Cover-Up: The atrocity was largely kept quiet in Italy, with official records reporting far fewer deaths than the actual count.
Long-Term Impact: The massacres of 1937 decimated a huge percentage of the educated population and decimated the clergy, aiming to break the spirit of Ethiopian resistance against colonial rule.
The event is extensively detailed by historian Ian Campbell, particularly in his work The Massacre of Debre Libanos, Ethiopia 1937: The Story of One of Fascism's Most Shocking Atrocities.
Graziani did not limit his reprisals to the streets of Addis Ababa. His suspicions soon fell on the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Convinced, without credible evidence, that church leaders had supported the attack against him, he authorized another mass killing.
Italian forces rounded up monks, deacons, students, and pilgrims. Over several days, they were taken to execution sites and shot. Estimates place the death toll between 1,500 and 2,000 people.
The victims were unarmed religious figures. The massacre struck at the heart of Ethiopian spiritual and cultural life and was intended to weaken national identity and resistance.
Graziani viewed the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as a threat because of its influence and deep roots in society. Under his rule, churches were closed, clergy were arrested, and religious leaders were executed or exiled.
Educated Ethiopians, nobles, and former officials were also targeted. Teachers, writers, and community leaders were killed or imprisoned. Graziani aimed to destroy any group capable of organizing resistance or preserving Ethiopian autonomy.
After World War II
After Italy’s defeat in World War II, Rodolfo Graziani was arrested. Ethiopia asked that he be extradited to face trial for the massacres and brutal reprisals carried out during the Italian occupation. The request was ignored.
Instead of being sent to Ethiopia, Graziani was tried in Italy on limited charges related to his collaboration with the fascist regime. He received a short sentence and served only a few months in prison. The man whose campaigns had left thousands dead in Ethiopia was never brought before an Ethiopian court and never answered directly for the violence of the occupation.
In the last years of his life, Graziani returned to public life. He entered politics through the Italian Social Movement, a party formed by former fascists after the war, and in 1953 he became its honorary president, largely because of his long career during the fascist period in Italy. He died two years later, in 1955, without ever facing trial in Ethiopia for the violence carried out under his command.
The memory of the atrocities committed during the occupation, however, did not fade. In Ethiopia, February 19 is commemorated each year as Martyrs’ Day, marking the anniversary of the 1937 killings in Addis Ababa that followed the assassination attempt on Graziani. The day honors the thousands of civilians who were killed during the brutal reprisals.
Controversy over Graziani’s legacy has continued even decades after his death. In 2012, a memorial dedicated to him was built in the Italian town of Affile. The monument sparked outrage in Italy and strong protests from Ethiopia, where many saw it as an attempt to honor a man whose campaigns had left thousands of Ethiopians dead during the occupation.
📖 “Holy War: The Untold Story of Catholic Italy’s Crusade Against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church”. By Ian Cambell
His stunning book explores the Catholic Church’s support for and encouragement of Mussolini’s campaign against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church during Italy’s invasion and occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1943. Italian forces targeted the Orthodox Church; they ransacked and destroyed hundreds of churches and summarily executed several thousand Ethiopian clergy. Amicable relations had long existed between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but the Roman episcopate embraced Mussolini’s regime and its aggressive foreign policy in the mid-1930s. In 1935, Pope Pius XI openly supported the invasion of Ethiopia as a crusade against a country of heretics, schismatics, pagans, and infidels. This papal support of the war, reinforced by church sermons across Italy, helped mobilize volunteers to join the Italian army to fight in Ethiopia. Eloquent and based on authoritative archival research in both Ethiopia and Italy, Campbell’s book sheds new light on a key episode in African history.
That Mussolini wished to conquer Abyssinia is well known; that Italy’s Catholic Church also sought the eradication of the venerable Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not.
In 1935, Fascist Italy invaded the sovereign state of Ethiopia—a war of conquest that triggered a chain of events culminating in the Second World War. In this stunning and highly original tale of two Churches, historian Ian Campbell brings a whole new perspective to the story, revealing that bishops of the Italian Catholic Church facilitated the invasion by sanctifying it as a crusade against the world’s second-oldest national Church. Cardinals and archbishops rallied the support of Catholic Italy for Il Duce’s invading armies by denouncing Ethiopian Christians as heretics and schismatics, and announcing that the onslaught was an assignment from God.
Campbell marshalls evidence from three decades of research to expose the martyrdom of thousands of clergy of the venerable Ethiopian Church, the burning and looting of hundreds of Ethiopia’s ancient monasteries and churches, and the instigation and arming of a jihad against Ethiopian Christendom, the likes of which had not been seen since the Middle Ages.
Finally, Holy War traces how, after Italy’s surrender to the Allies, the horrors of this pogrom were swept under the carpet of history, and the leading culprits put on the road to sainthood.
Reviews
💭 ‘This stunning book explores the Catholic Church’s support for and encouragement of Mussolini’s campaign against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church during Italy’s invasion and occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1943. … Eloquent and based on authoritative archival research in both Ethiopia and Italy, Campbell’s book sheds new light on a key episode in African history.’ — Foreign Affairs
💭 ‘Holy War is one of the most significant—and most chilling—books you are likely to read on global Christian history.’ — The Christian Century
💭 ‘Three cheers for Holy War [which] has turned the caring Italian Army myth upside down and inside out in what is the perfect antidote to Louis de Bernieres’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. […] Holy War is the ‘go for’ book if you want to learn as much as you need to know about an invasion that helped shape the rest of the 1930s, a paving stone towards World War in 1939.’ — ColdType
💭 ‘A devastating, persuasive read. Campbell’s book exposes the Catholic Papacy’s complicity in Fascist forces’ unrestrained assault on Ethiopia, and its switch from cordial relations with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to attempting to destroy it.’ — Mia Fuller, Gladyce Arata Terrill Distinguished Professor of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
💭 ‘This book shines a revealing light on the ecclesiastical thinking of the 1935–41 period, the murky compromises it encouraged, and the savagery it condoned. Original and ambitious, it will have a significant audience in Ethiopia, Italy and beyond.’ — Paul Gifford, Emeritus Professor of Religion, SOAS University of London, and author of Christianity, Development and Modernity in Africa.
💭 ‘Exhaustively researched and eloquently written, Campbell’s Holy War is a hugely important contribution to our understanding of the violence involved in the Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s. It is moving, shocking and scholarly in equal measure.’ — Richard Reid, Professor of African History, University of Oxford, and author of Shallow Graves: A Memoir of the Ethiopia–Eritrea War.
Where Are Those Crowns?
by Ian Campbell. November 2021
In May 1937, troops under Italian command moved into the remote area around the monastery of Debre Libanos in Ethiopia. They had been sent there by Rodolfo Graziani, one of the commanders of the Italian invasion of the country in October 1935 and now the viceroy of Italian East Africa. In February 1937 he had survived an assassination attempt in Addis Ababa. In retaliation, the Italians had killed at least 19,000 people over the next three days (a fifth of the city’s population), a massacre that became known by the date on which it began, Yekatit 12. People were burned alive in their homes or beaten to death in the streets. Others were placed in detention camps, where conditions were appalling, and tortured or executed. But this wasn’t enough for Graziani. He claimed that his attempted assassination had been planned by the Ethiopian Church and, as he recovered in hospital, began to plan the destruction of its most important centre, the monastery at Debre Libanos, founded in the 13th century. The pretext for the attack was that the two men who had tried to kill Graziani in Addis had supposedly passed through the lands surrounding the monastery as they made their escape (Debre Libanos is sixty miles or so north of the city). The plan – which survives in the archives of the Italian administration – was to kill the entire religious community there. Graziani’s subordinate General Maletti was chosen to carry out the massacre, commanding a Muslim battalion made up of Eritreans, Libyans and Somalis. It is an uncomfortable truth for those on the far right who look up to Mussolini, while also promoting Islamophobia, that the Italian army enabled a form of jihad against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
Pilgrims gathered at the monastery every year to celebrate the feast day of its founder, St Tekle Haymanot, on 20 May. Maletti began to round up people as they arrived at the site. On 19 May, Graziani ordered the summary execution of ‘all monks without distinction’. ‘Please assure me this has been done,’ he went on, ‘informing me of the number of them.’ Orders were also given to burn the buildings and bodies. The massacre is described by Ian Campbell in Holy War, in horrific detail. In order to hide the extent of the killing, most of the victims were taken from the monastery in trucks. They were shot, mainly with machine guns, and buried where they fell in mass graves. Those who refused to get into the trucks were shot on the spot. Many of the victims were elderly, some were children and all were unarmed. Campbell estimates that between 1200 and 1600 ‘pilgrims and clergy’ were killed that day. He shows that what happened at Debre Libanos was part of a series of massacres aimed at destroying the Ethiopian Church as an institution. Villages and homes in other parts of the country were attacked; churches were burned down and sacked. Graziani reported back to Rome in bureaucratic language, repeatedly using the phrase ‘all prisoners have been shot.’ Italy’s ‘total war’ in Ethiopia prefigured the way the Nazi army would act; far from being a meek follower of Hitler, Mussolini was ahead of him.
Campbell underlines the parallels between historic crusades and the massacres, but there are closer comparisons. The burnings, the pleasure in violence, the extremity of the destruction are reminiscent of the methods used by the squads who brought fascism to power in Italy itself in 1921-22. In Ethiopia, these squads were given free rein against an ‘uncivilised’ and ‘heretical’ external enemy, and they went about their task with gusto and frightening efficiency. The violence and destruction seems to have brought pleasure to some of the perpetrators – many of them took photographs showing their victims with severed heads or limbs.
Despite this savage repression, resistance to the Italians continued. In fact, the strategy of massacres backfired, pushing the Church in Ethiopia (what remained of it) into a much more active role against the Italian occupiers. This, in turn, led to a policy reversal by the Italians, who tried to incorporate the Ethiopian clergy into the occupying regime. But the damage had been done. ‘Catholicism, now clearly identified with the enemy, had become as unpopular there as it had been after the religious wars of the early 17th century,’ Campbell writes. ‘For the Roman Church, the great crusade had been a disaster.’
In 1941, the Italians were kicked out of Ethiopia after a humiliating military defeat. Haile Selassie, who had lived in exile in Bath since leaving the country in 1936, returned and in his first speeches remembered the ‘young men, the women, the priests and monks whom the Italians pitilessly massacred’. Ethiopia tried several times in the 1940s to have named Italians charged through the UN War Crimes Commission, not just for these massacres but for the use of poison gas and the bombing of hospitals during the initial invasion, as well as the ‘total destruction of Abyssinian chiefs and notables’, as Graziani put it in a telegram to another army officer. But their efforts were thwarted by geopolitical considerations. Britain played a leading role in this: Ethiopia wanted Pietro Badoglio, Graziani’s predecessor as viceroy of East Africa and the prime minister of Italy between 1943 and 1944, to be tried, but after the war Britain considered him a valuable counterweight to Italian communism.
Campbell’s account of the massacre of Debre Libanos is the centrepiece of more than twenty years of work. He has travelled to many of the massacre and burial sites over a period of decades, talked to the last surviving witnesses and examined the Italian archives. He argues that the systematic destruction of the Ethiopian Church was part of a holy war launched by the Catholic Church in alliance with the fascists. At times, this interpretation is pushed too far. The Church’s support of fascism – especially after the Lateran Pacts of 1929, which ended the historic split between the Catholic Church and the the Italian state – is sometimes seen as amounting to complete backing for Italy’s actions in Ethiopia. Certainly, some Catholics and clergy were in favour of the slaughter as part of a so-called ‘civilising mission’. But this wasn’t true of the whole Church; the pope, Pius XI, seems to have been reluctant to lend his support.
Graziani still has a reputation in Italy, and even abroad, as a heroic soldier, seen separately from the regime he served so faithfully. He is not often remembered as a war criminal. There is even a mausoleum and memorial park in his native village of Affile, south of Rome, opened only ten years ago and built with the help of public funds. Somehow, the idea of Italy as a nation of Captain Corellis, mandolin-carrying, reluctant invaders, still survives.
One of the most fascinating episodes in the book concerns the looting of artefacts and relics from Ethiopia (the Italians also purloined cash for their own bank accounts). When Graziani returned to Italy in 1938 he took 79 crates of stolen material with him. Campbell describes some photographs of an exhibition at the Museo Coloniale in Rome in 1939 in which a number of what look like Ethiopian crowns can be seen in a glass case. They were almost certainly pinched from Debre Libanos, which, as one of the holiest places in the Ethiopian Church, housed a number of treasures. But it is another photograph that really raises questions. This one depicts two famous Italian partisans next to what appear to be the same crowns, still with their museum labels attached.
As Mussolini and Graziani fled north in the wake of the liberation of Italy in 1945, they took as much money and as many treasures with them as they could carry. When Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans disguised as German soldiers in April 1945, near a place called Dongo on Lake Como, he had money and other possessions with him, which became known as the Gold of Dongo. Mussolini was shot the next day, probably by the communist partisan Walter Audisio, who is one of the men standing in front of the crowns. But what happened to the Gold of Dongo? Nobody knows. Where are those crowns now?
In defeat Graziani was much smarter than Mussolini. He made sure he surrendered to the Allies, rather than being captured by the partisans. This meant he survived, and despite being sentenced to nineteen years for collaborating with the Nazis he only served a few months in prison (there was no equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for Italian fascists). After his release he became an active member of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, and wrote a bestselling memoir in which he claimed he had merely been ‘defending the fatherland’. For many, he remained a war hero, his image encapsulated in the much reproduced photo of him in uniform, hair swept back, jaw jutting, sleeves rolled up. At his funeral in 1955 there was an open show of fascism on the streets of Rome for the first time in years, with mourners raising their arms in the fascist salute. Nobody mentioned Debre Libanos.
