Not even a year after the bloody occupation of Ethiopia that Benito Mussolini trumpeted as the “conquest of an Italian empire,” the invaders were still few in number, and not sleeping easily. The soldiers and the Fascists, together with the “native troops” enlisted in the colony, had never stopped fighting; for months they had crisscrossed the vast hinterland hunting down the still armed Ethiopian resistance. The other Italians, whether civilians or Blackshirts, were mostly holed up in the cities — and listened with apprehension to reports of dangerous “rebel bands” closing in.

Still, the repression of the resistance — euphemistically termed a “great colonial police operation,” but in truth responsible for a litany of killings, burnt villages, and destroyed crops — seemed to have borne fruit. Indeed, many resistance formations had been disarmed, their leaders and members eliminated or deported to the terrible internment camp at Danane, in also Italian-occupied Somalia. In short, the fledgling Fascist empire seemed to be on its way to slow normalization when the occupiers had a rude awakening.

On February 19, 1937 — Yekatit 12 according to the Ethiopian calendar — Rodolfo Graziani, viceroy of Ethiopia and governor-general of Italian East Africa, was on a stage in the capital Addis Ababa, in the middle of an official ceremony, when two patriots of Eritrean origin, Mogus Asghedom and Abraham Debotch, threw several hand grenades in his direction. Their action killed seven people and injured many others. Among the wounded was Graziani himself, who was quickly spirited away. On the Italian side, the bombing produced panic, a power vacuum, confusion in the chain of command, and a desire for exemplary revenge mixed with the need to fully reassert Italian authority as soon as possible. The result was a massacre — an atrocity that is still difficult to describe.