In the study of modern Italian history, the 1935–1936 invasion of Ethiopia and its aftermath may be the most painful and problematic chapter. No German or Croat elements cloud the accounts as they did in Italy's European darkest moments of the Second World War. In Ethiopia, no one but the Italians can be held guilty for the ugly atrocities that went into the establishment of the East African Empire. Ian Campbell's Holy War: The Untold Story of Catholic Italy's Crusade against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church ably recounts the ruthless and vicious acts that must never be forgotten. Campbell has contributed a number of works on the Italians in Ethiopia, and the one under consideration here attempts to bring the Catholic Church into the picture. This may, however, be a case of overreach—trying to build a case of questionable conclusions. To claim, correctly, that Italy's episcopacy and much of its clergy supported the invasion is one thing. But to conceive of it as a Holy War is something else. Campbell, unfortunately, muddies the water on definitions. His claim that “just war” was “. . . a concept that had been introduced into Catholic thinking centuries after the medieval notion of a holy war had run its course” (77) is simply wrong. How, furthermore, was Ethiopia a “holy war?” The Holy See was never “behind” the invasion of Ethiopia. Pope Pius XI never declared a “Holy War” as his predecessor Urban II did over 800 years before him. The aggression wholly sprang from the Duce's conniving and secularist brain and was, first and last, an expression of ultranationalist imperialism and fascism. Relations between the papacy and the fascist state reached a high point in 1929 with the Lateran accords and proceeded downhill from there. Campbell does not mention Pius's 1931 encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, which chastised the fascists for their violence. Besides Benito Mussolini, Campbell consistently and properly points the accusative finger at Rodolfo Graziani, the commander of the southern front during the invasion and then the Viceroy of “Italian East Africa” until Rome recalled him in 1937. With the exception of the Duce, himself, no one was guiltier than Graziani and some of his officers for the horror inflicted on the Ethiopians. He had already established a reputation for brutality in Libya, and now, according to Campbell, the viceroy, “was on the warpath . . . conducting his vendetta” mostly against his perceived enemy, the Ethiopian church (221). Campbell notes that the vendetta ended when Rome replaced Graziani with the more civilized and charming Duke of Aosta. Among the Italian clergy, Campbell finds fault in Milan's Cardinal Archbishop Ildefonso Schuster and, in Ethiopia, the “centurion-chaplain” and wildcard Father Reginaldo Giuliani, who died in the fighting, and Cardinal Archbishop Giovanni Maria Castellani, the pope's envoy in Ethiopia. Campbell appropriately questions Pius's choice of the pro-fascist Castellani to represent him.

Drawing from the works of Emma Fattorini and Lucia Ceci, Campbell understands Pius XI as a complex figure who does not deserve complete condemnation. He even concedes that the pontiff, who “champion[ed] . . . the Ethiopian community in the Vatican” and promoted the “development of indigenous clergy,” was “apparently not” a racist (303). The war, in fact, was a bone of contention between him and the Italian clergy, most of whom cheered the troops out of a (misplaced) patriotic fervor. Like other Italians, they felt that Mussolini was waging war on the plutocrat nations, above all Britain and France, which had already dirtied their hands in accumulating world empires. Italians, furthermore, liked to think that they were ending slavery, and they had a point. Emperor Haile Selassie, indeed, undertook some measures to terminate the shameful practice, in part out of pressure from the League of Nations. But many slaveholders demanded payment for manumission, rendering the effort moribund by the time of the invasion. Ironically, an abolition decree came from the fascist regime in April 1936.

That Campbell sometimes makes over-the-top denunciations, such as the “war-mongering Catholic clergy” (285) who appeared as “bank robbers, quarreling over their loot” with the fascists (270) does not help his argument. Nor do the errors; for example, Italy was not “created” in 1868 (33), and Graziani did not become the “chief of staff of the Italian Armed Forces and minister for war” (288). His positions came about in the Italian Social Republic—the German puppet state. Incomplete passages also mar Campbell's text. Ethiopia's embarrassing record on slavery (cited above) is barely discussed. Other unmentioned but key moments in relations between the two nations include the battle of Dogali in 1887 and the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928. Italy's difficult affairs with the Catholic Church are barely referred to, but are unfortunately central to Campbell's story. The “Roman Question,” vital to this question, is largely left unsaid. Starting with Mussolini, furthermore, the anticlerical wing of the Fascist Party was always very much alive. It is significant that when the Duce proclaimed the empire in May 1936, he never mentions the church or religion. And, as the author shows, the fascists dumped whatever amounted to the church's privileged position by 1937, even, as some charged, preferring the Muslims over the Catholics.