France, Italy and Diplomatic End of Italo-Ethiopian War in League of Nations (May—July 1936)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the policy of France towards Italy and Ethiopia at the final stage of the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935—1936 and the question of the elimination of anti-Italian sanctions in the League of Nations. It was revealed that the great powers were mainly interested in restoring normal relations with Italy, while the defense of Ethiopia’s independence was only a “moral duty” for them, and in the clash of moral factors and real politics, the real interests of states won undoubtedly. It is argued that, taking ad-vantage of France’s interest in restoring stable Franco-Italian relations, Italy actually destroyed the political agreements of early 1935 and moved on to political rapprochement with Germany, which significantly changed the entire international situation in Europe and actually opened the way for the outbreak of World War II. In addition, for France, a significant political loss was the drop in the authority of the League of Nations, due to the helplessness of this organization in the face of aggression against one of the members of the League. The study is based on publications of Soviet, French, Italian and German diplomatic documents, documents of the League of Nations, memoirs of political figures of that era, as well as un-published documents from the Archives of the German Information Bureau (Germany).