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:
“Before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the north- east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)