The Ethiopian war as portrayed in the Italian fascist and antifascist press in Tunisia

The signing of the pact on 7 January 1935 between Benito Mussolini, leader of the Italian government, and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval led directly to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia later that year. On the diplomatic level, Il Duce had kept the door open to negotiations with France but his principal goal was a ‘far-reaching, violent solution’ which he had long envisioned in East Africa. It is within this context, and in spite of the initial lack of military progress and the increasingly heavy economic sanctions which followed, that Mussolini’s hostility towards the Hoare–Laval compromise and his almost total collusion in seeing it fail can be explained.