Giuseppe Di Vittorio drew the curtains and turned on the large chandelier, two of whose bulbs were out. The drafts from the windows let in the bitter cold of that evening in December 1938. The meeting room at the Italian Communists’ exile HQ in Paris soon filled up.

First to arrive was Ethiopia’s representative to the League of Nations, Lorenzo Taezaz. Then there was a large and noisy French delegation: Georges Mandel, recently appointed Minister of the Colonies; his chief of staff, André Diethelm; the Radical Party’s Pierre Cot, a politician who had good relations with Communist organizations and had been trade minister in the second Popular Front government; and Colonel Paul Robert Monnier of the Deuxième Bureau, France’s military intelligence service.

In front of the other Communist leaders, Di Vittorio outlined the mission headed for Ethiopia. He said that he had recruited a dozen experts during his time in Spain, but that three or four fighters would be setting off for Ethiopia.