1935 — Italy Invades Ethiopia

Before dawn on October 3, 1935, Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia. Benito Mussolini, hungry to avenge Italy's defeat at Adwa in 1896, sent hundreds of thousands of troops across the border from Eritrea, with bombers, tanks, and poison gas. Against that modern war machine, Emperor Haile Selassie's soldiers fought back with rifles and cavalry charges, facing weapons their own armoury could not match.

The League of Nations called Italy the aggressor, then imposed sanctions with no teeth. Ethiopia, one of Africa's last independent states, fell under a five-year occupation. The invasion, and the world's weak answer to it, became a rehearsal for the world war to come, a warning written in advance and left unheeded.