East Africa
On 4 August 1940, Italy's forces in Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, AOI) invaded British Somaliland. The Italians took the British colony's capital city of Berbera on 19 August. The Italians also staged very minor attacks across the Sudanese and Kenyan borders in 1940.
Italian success in East Arica was short-lived. On 19 January 1941, British Commonwealth forces counter-attacked from Sudan in the north and Kenya in the south. On May 6, the capital city of AOI, Addis Ababa, fell. Haile Selassie had managed to enter the city on 5 May. On 18 May, Prince Amedeo, 3rd Duke of Aosta, the Italian Governor-General of AOI, surrendered in Amba Alagi which all but ended hostilities. Some isolated Italian units fought on. But, when the Italian forces under General Guglielmo Nasi in Gondar surrendered on 27 November, major Italian resistance ended.
Read more about this topic: Middle East Theatre Of World War II
Famous quotes containing the words east and/or africa:
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)