ABSTRACT
The fighting that began in Abyssinia and East Africa in June 1940 is one of the World War II’s most overlooked military campaigns. Italy’s defeat and removal from the region represented a first victory for the British-led Commonwealth forces that had carried out the fighting. With the fighting largely concluded in just five months, the last remaining Italian garrison, which had been isolated at the entirely surrounded mountain outpost of Gondar, finally raised the white flag on 27 November 1941. This allowed the authorities in London to acclaim a military and political triumph that had been secured at minimum cost. The public recognition across the British Commonwealth was, however, almost entirely muted. The majority of opinions that were expressed portrayed the Italian forces as nothing more than a second-rate opponent. Privately some of the comments contained within letters written home by the victorious troops were even more scathing and entirely dismissive of their Italian counterparts. There was no real sense of any balanced assessment of what had, at times, actually proven to be a hard-fought campaign. This chapter considers why British popular attitudes towards the Italian military forces and how they had fought in East Africa were so disdainful and assesses whether this was, in fact, an accurate conclusion.
