East African campaign

East African campaign (see Map 27). Soon after Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940, Italian forces, which had been occupying Abyssinia since 1936, captured the outposts of Karora, Gallabat, Kurmak, and Kassala, all on or near the borders of Sudan, as well as Moyale on the border of Kenya; and in August they occupied the Protectorate of British Somaliland, the first British colony to fall into Axis hands.

From the start the British were outnumbered. By August 1940 there were more than 92,000 Italian and 250,000 Abyssinian troops under arms; the British had only 40,000, nearly all of whom had been raised locally. The Italians also had more tanks, and they had 323 aircraft against the British total of just over 100. But, cut off from any reinforcement or supply, the Italians, commanded by the Duke of Aosta, soon fell into a defensive frame of mind. They failed to take the initiative even when events favoured them, and their ground forces became split between the conflicting tasks of fending off the British and suppressing Abyssinian rebels, or Patriots as they were called.

British strategy for the campaign was worked out at a conference in Khartoum at the end of October 1940. This was attended by Anthony Eden, General Smuts, the exiled emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, and the C-in-C Middle East, General Wavell. At the conference it was agreed that the C-in-C Sudan ( Maj-General William Platt) would use the 5th Indian Division to attack Gallabat in November and Kassala the following January and that the C-in-C Kenya designate, Lt-General Cunningham, would assess the possibilities of attacking Kismayu in Italian Somaliland the same month. It was also agreed that Haile Selassie should receive greater aid to help regain his country once the Patriots, who were being aided and trained by an SOE-inspired military mission (no. 101), had secured a sufficiently large area within it to which he could safely return. It was also recognized that the emperor would need a military adviser who would help train the local forces being raised to support him, and Major Wingate, while remaining subordinate to the military mission's commander, Colonel D. A. Sandford, was appointed to this position the following month.

Platt's attack on Gallabat, carried out by Brigadier Slim's 10th Indian Infantry Brigade, was launched on 6 November. It was intended to clear a route into Abyssinia, but though Slim succeeded in capturing the frontier post he was then driven back by heavy air attacks. However, the overall British position was not as desperate as the numbers arrayed against them might have indicated, for the Italians did not take advantage of their superior strength and stayed on the defensive. Three other factors also began to work for the British: in November 1940 the government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park broke the Italian Army's high-grade cipher in East Africa; and the same month the Italian Air Force's replacement cipher was broken by the Combined Bureau, Middle East (CBME). So complete and detailed was the intelligence now provided by CBME, and by one of its outposts in Nairobi, that the Cs-in-C in Cairo had on their desks the Italians' plans and appreciations as soon as they had been issued. The flow was so comprehensive and contained so much advance information that it was judged unnecessary to attach signals intelligence units to the forces that were to attack into Abyssinia.

The third factor was equally decisive. In December 1940 British forces had their first victory in the Western Desert campaigns when they defeated the Tenth Italian Army at Sidi Barrani, and this was followed by another at Bardia the next month. The demoralized Aosta requested, and was granted, permission to withdraw from the Sudanese frontier. This information, quickly decrypted, enabled Platt to start his offensive on 19 January 1941, three weeks earlier than originally planned. His Indian troops, led by Maj-General Noel Beresford-Peirse, were soon in hot pursuit of the retreating Italians and in the battle of the Lowlands they cut off the withdrawal of the 41st Colonial Brigade, capturing its commander, his staff, and 700 others.

General Luigi Frusci, the Italian commander in Eritrea, was now ordered by Aosta to make a stand in ideal defensive country south-west of Keren. To help him Aosta gave him one of his best units, the Savoia Division and it took Platt, who was reinforced by the 4th Indian Division, weeks of hard fighting in the mountains to break Frusci's resistance. It was 27 March before his forces entered Keren and 1 April before they entered Asmara. Though far from being the last, Keren proved to be the decisive battle of the campaign. Italian losses included 3,000 killed; British casualties amounted to 536 killed and 3,229 wounded.

With the British approaching the port of Massawa the six Italian destroyers stationed there left to raid Port Sudan, but were attacked from the air. Two were scuttled and the other four sunk, and on 8 April Massawa surrendered after a joint attack by Indian and Free French troops, the latter having joined the British forces from Vichy-governed French Somaliland after the fall of France.

While Platt was striking into Eritrea, Cunningham began his operations by harassing the Italians with raids from Kenya. He had at his disposal about 77,000 troops which included contingents from British East Africa (33,000), British West Africa (9,000), and South Africa (27,000), and which were supported from the air by six South African squadrons. Early in January he sent units of the 1st South African Division and an East African brigade into the Abyssinian province of Galla-Sidamo, hoping that the Patriots there would openly rebel. This did not happen and, though Moyale was recaptured on 18 February 1941, Cunningham's advance eventually petered out. However, his other attack along the coast, launched by two East African divisions on 11 February, met with startling success. The Italians immediately started withdrawing beyond the River Juba so that by 14 February the first objective, Kismayu, was captured. After overcoming light opposition at the Juba, Mogadishu was taken and Cunningham then struck northwards towards the Abyssinian town of Harar. To help shorten his supply lines a small force from Aden, supported by Royal Navy ships, took the port of Berbera in British Somaliland on 16 March. There was little opposition and the Protectorate was soon back in British hands; a West African brigade, after a series of brief skirmishes, then entered Harar on 26 March and the country's capital, Addis Ababa, on 6 April.

In a matter of eight weeks Cunningham's troops had covered 2,735 km. (1,700 mi.) and had defeated a large proportion of the forces under Aosta's command for the loss of 501 British casualties and 8 aircraft. But even more spectacular was the success of Wingate's small group of men. Initially in charge of special units (‘Operational Centres’) for training the Patriots, Wingate, now a lt-colonel, was the given the task of securing a stronghold in Gojjam for the emperor with a small band of local troops he christened Gideon Force. But he also intended to accomplish a much more ambitious plan with this force: to return the emperor to his throne. Through a mixture of brilliant guerrilla tactics and sheer bluff, he eventually achieved his objective and after receiving the surrender of an Italian-controlled army of African troops at Debra Markos on 6 April the emperor re-entered his capital on 5 May. Wingate then pursued the remaining Italian forces in the area, undertaking a series of actions which culminated in the surrender of 1,100 Italian and 7,000 colonial troops at Addis Derra on 20 May. But he had been, to say the least, evasive about his movements and had exceeded his orders, and later he was virtually relieved of his command.

While Wingate was employing his guerrilla tactics, for which he was later to become famous during the Burma campaign (see Chindits), the pincers of the two main British forces closed on Aosta's mountainous retreat at Amba Alagi. On 20 April Aosta rejected a call to surrender and for the next 25 days British forces and the Patriots attacked the fortified peaks one by one, pressing the Italians into a smaller and smaller perimeter. His troops finally exhausted, Aosta surrendered on 16 May 1941, but this still left isolated Italian forces in Galla-Sidamo, and at Gondar and Assab, and these were not all rounded up until November.

Besides providing the perfect example of the cryptographers' war, giving a welcome boost to British morale, and releasing vital forces for the Western Desert campaigns, the success of the East African campaign had important strategic consequences. With the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coastlines cleared of Axis forces, Roosevelt was able to declare on 11 April 1941 that these areas were no longer combat zones. US ships were therefore able to proceed to Suez, thus helping to relieve the enormous strain on UK shipping resources. See also land power.

Bibliography

Mockler, A. , Haile Selassie's War (Oxford, 1984).