Appendix I: The Final Toll

In 1946 the Ethiopian government submitted to the Paris Peace Conference the following Ethiopian death toll arising from the invasion and occupation, compiled by a joint team of Ethiopians and expatriates in Addis Ababa after the liberation.¹ The emperor thought that the actuals ‘could not be less than the statistics revealed’, and were probably ‘far more than alleged’.² It should be noted that since neither the Ethiopians nor the Italians maintained systematic records of Ethiopian fatalities, such figures will always be no more than estimates.

Table A.1:

Ethiopian Death Toll Submitted at the Paris Peace Conference

In 1945 the Ethiopian government had submitted to the Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers a total figure of 831,300 dead, incorporating a higher estimate of the civilian death toll,⁴ and in 2001 a total of one million dead was suggested by Imani Kali-Nyah,⁵ which has been adopted by the Global Alliance for Justice—The Ethiopian Cause.⁶ However, the present author has not seen the breakdown or rationale for either of these two higher figures, and to date no published scholars appear to have seriously challenged the 1946 figures, and so they are taken here as a basis for this brief review.

In the absence of information on the assumptions and sources on which these estimates were based, it is difficult to judge their accuracy, and it is beyond the scope of the present volume to attempt an independent assessment of the death toll. All that can be done here is to assess whether the figures are credible.

The ‘killed in action’ figure of 275,000

This category is clearly meant to refer to the Ethiopian soldiers fighting under military command, as opposed to Patriots, who are addressed in other categories below.

At the time of the invasion, Italian Military Intelligence, which, having had the benefit of a long-standing embassy and several consulates in Ethiopia, was well informed, calculated that Emperor Haile Selassie could mobilise 200,000–250,000 soldiers in the north and some 80,000–100,000 in the south, bringing the total to 280,000–350,000 men.⁷ Angelo Del Boca provides a figure of 350,000.⁸ As for how many of them died in action, Alberto Sbacchi quotes a certain Dejazmach Birru Amedé declaring that those killed in the war numbered ‘at least 250,000’,⁹ and this is consistent with the figure of 275,000 dead in the 1946 submission.

Some Italian sources considered this estimate an exaggeration, suggesting that Ethiopian losses were 40,000–50,000 on the northern war front, and 15,000–20,000 on the southern front.¹⁰ However, such figures are typically based on two incorrect assumptions: (i) that the war fought by the Ethiopian army ended in May 1936, and (ii) that the fighting was limited to the northern and southern fronts under Badoglio and Graziani respectively. In reality the fighting under military command continued well into 1937, and took place on a number of fronts, with very high casualties, the remaining Ethiopian military units in the field being virtually wiped out. Furthermore, Mussolini’s instructions to his commanders were not just to defeat the Ethiopians, but to annihilate the Ethiopian army, which they did, sometimes by getting the Italian Air Force to gas the retreating Ethiopians and at other times sending in mercenaries to slaughter them—and sometimes both at the same time, as at Maychew. It should also be recalled that after the first few weeks of the war, the Italians generally killed all Ethiopians who surrendered as well as those whom they defeated.

The conclusion is that the figure of 275,000 Ethiopian soldiers killed in the war, though representing a high percentage of the number of fighting men (79 per cent, based on a total force of 350,000), is plausible.

Patriots killed in battle: 78,500

It would be very difficult, and probably impossible, now to independently estimate the total number of Patriots killed, because the size of the resistance armies fluctuated from one day to the next, and the resistance was not centrally coordinated. The movement received a major boost in February 1937, then surged again after the massacre of Debre Libanos in May, and yet again during the church-burning pogroms of the second half of 1937. It declined in 1938 under the more conciliatory policies of the Duke of Aosta, to be boosted again in 1939, and yet again during the war of liberation. Thus the situation was volatile. Furthermore, there were several different groups operating throughout the Ethiopian highlands augmented by others in outlying areas. They operated relatively independently, were typically based on local loyalties, and each group fluctuated in size from less than one hundred to several thousand at various times.¹¹ Finally, even if the figures for the number of Patriots were available on an annual basis, there would be no way of knowing how many were survivors from the previous year, and how many were new recruits.

So far as the present author is aware, the only published figure for the number of Patriot deaths is the Italian total of 76,907, which is based on monthly military statistics from 6 May 1936 to 10 June 1940. This figure is quite close to the estimate of 78,500 submitted by the Ethiopian expatriate team, and thus in the absence of any other published estimates, there appears to be no reason to reject this figure.

Civilians killed by bombing: 17,800

During the invasion the Italian Air Force typically flew ahead of the ground troops to bomb towns, villages and churches. Then during the occupation, after May 1936, Air Force operations were intensified, and military (as distinct from passenger-carrying) flights were focused mainly on the bombardment of civilian settlements during the exemplary repression of civilians (particularly in Northern Shewa and Gojjam), and the bombing of resistance fighters and adjacent civilian communities suspected of harbouring them. In both cases, a significant proportion of the bombs were gas-filled. Graziani’s telegrams often reported the destruction of several thousands of ‘tukuls’ in a single bombing, and there were many such operations over the six years concerned. Since it is well attested that the ‘tukuls’ were frequently inhabited at the time, and since incidents such as the bombing of Ziqwala are known to have resulted in heavy loss of life, a total of 17,800 dead civilians from bombing over the six years is quite possible, and could well be too low.

Massacre of February 1937: 30,000

The present author’s study of the massacre of Addis Ababa estimates that 18,000 to 20,500 people died over a period of several days.¹² But there were also massacres at the same time in secondary towns—in fact wherever Blackshirts were garrisoned—such as Dessie, Jimma and Mojo. Therefore, although these secondary massacres have not been studied, it is possible that their cumulative death toll could close the gap between the Addis Ababa figure of around 18,000–20,500 and the grand total of 30,000 submitted by the Ethiopian government. Thus, the figure of 30,000 for all the February 1937 urban massacres is plausible.

Patriots condemned to death by ‘court martial’: 24,000

This category was most likely meant to include (i) the victims of the ‘flying tribunals’, which were at least partially documented, (ii) execution of young educated Ethiopians, and (iii) dignitaries and community leaders hanged in Graziani’s widespread anti-Amhara pogrom that swept the countryside over several months in 1937.

Judging from Graziani’s telegrams, the number executed by the ‘flying tribunals’ throughout the occupation reached the low thousands. The number of educated ‘Young Ethiopians’ executed has been estimated at between 400 and 600.¹³ On the other hand, given the duration of the anti-Amhara campaign, which could be regarded as ethnic cleansing, and judging from the number of portable gallows utilised and the large number of photographs extant of victims hanged in rural towns, villages and settlements, it is more than likely that this pogrom resulted in the death of thousands, and possibly tens of thousands.

All that can be concluded without further data is that the overall estimate of 24,000 deaths in this category is plausible.

Persons who died in concentration camps from privation and maltreatment: 35,000

There were three penal institutions for Ethiopians classified by the Italian administration as concentration camps: Danane (in Italian Somaliland), Nocra (on the Dahlak Islands off the coast of Italian Eritrea) and Akaki (near Addis Ababa). The largest was Danane, through which an estimated 6,500 prisoners in total passed, with a death rate of around 50 per cent. Although Nocra was the most notorious penal institution, it was smaller than Danane, with a peak of 1,500 prisoners. Akaki was about half the size of Danane, but to avoid double-counting, it should be noted that Akaki was used largely—though not entirely—as a transit centre for Danane and other, smaller prisons.

Since no other category in the 1946 submission includes deaths in the other prisons, this category is presumably meant to include deaths in all detention camps and prisons. However, many of the victims in the temporary prisons in Addis Ababa died during the massacre in that city, and these have already been included in the figures for the ‘Graziani massacres’. The other prisons were mainly in garrison towns such as Debre Birhan, with at least one prison in Mogadishu, in Italian Somaliland. All of the prisons were under-provisioned, and most were badly run, visiting distress, hunger and disease on the inmates. However, in terms of numbers incarcerated, the other prisons were relatively small, and those who died in them—although high in terms of proportion—generally numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands. For this reason, the figure of 35,000 may well be too high for this category.

People who died of privation owing to the destruction of their villages during the five years’ occupation: 300,000

This figure is the major imponderable of the 1946 submission. If the definition is meant to cover only deaths that were unintended by-products of the destruction of villages, i.e., not deliberate, then the figure is almost certainly too high. If, on the other hand, this category includes:

•victims of the ‘reprisals’, which were homicidal and extensive (particularly in the Christian highlands and the lakes section of the Rift Valley), in which some 500,000 homes were reported in the 1946 submission to have been burned, not infrequently including the occupants;

•civilians killed in the massacres of Northern Shewa (including the church-burning campaigns and the Maletti–Mohammed Sultan jihad), exercises that are believed to have resulted in a total of more than 40,000 deaths;

•victims of the massacres conducted at specific churches and monasteries such as Debre Libanos, Debre Bisrat, Midr Kebd, Gursum, Hagere Maryam and Debre Assebot; and

•civilians killed by aerial spraying (not bombing) of yperite and arsine;

•then a death toll of 300,000 over the five years is plausible.

Conclusion

Given the above, while some of the categories might be somewhat under- or over-estimated, there appears to be no obvious reason to reject the estimated overall death toll of 760,300 submitted at the Paris Peace Conference, particularly as the submission did not include the number of people injured, or rendered invalids, who died later from their injuries.

Demographic Check

In the context of the population of Ethiopia at the time of the invasion, which, if we rely on the well-informed Adrien Zervos, was around 15 million,¹⁴ a death toll of 760,300 represents around 5 per cent of the population. Considering that (i) the majority of the population were concentrated in the highlands, where the Italians focused most of their fire-power, and since (ii) the overwhelming majority of highland Ethiopians were living in the rural areas, where it is common for households to report having lost at least one of their family members to military action during the invasion or occupation, a death rate of 5 per cent might be too low, in which case the emperor’s opinion that the actual figures were probably ‘far more than’ the estimate of 760,300 may have been justified.

Proportion of Christians

In the Ethiopian military, and in the Patriot resistance that eventually took over their role, Christians represented a high proportion of the total. This is because, although at the time of mobilisation in 1935 many different ethnic groups, representing various religions and creeds from across the Ethiopian empire, responded to the call to arms, many Muslims were in due course persuaded to go over to the Italians and even to fight for them. Moreover, the evidence from written and oral testimonies indicates that Christian highlanders were the most numerous in the Patriot movement.

Given that exemplary repression was at its most intense in the Christian highlands, and that Graziani made a particular point of attempting to crush the Ethiopian Church, Christians also accounted for the majority of non-combatant victims.

It can then be concluded that the majority—though by no means all—of those killed were Christians, of which most were Orthodox.

The 1946 submission reported the burning down of 500,000 homes and other properties, and a total of 2,000 churches ‘ransacked or ruined’.¹⁵ Given the widespread church burning in Shewa and Gojjam, this figure, representing at most 20 per cent of the estimated total of at least 10,000 churches in Ethiopia at the time of the invasion, is certainly credible.

There appear to be no published estimates of the total number of Orthodox clergy (including monks) killed by the Italian forces during the invasion and occupation. However, as we have seen, more than 1,000 clergy died in the massacre of Debre Libanos alone,¹⁶ and in many of the (estimated) 2,000 churches attacked, the clergy were slaughtered. Thus, since there were typically not less than five clergy in even the smallest parish church, the death toll for the Ethiopian clergy was certainly in the thousands.