Italy's military and political humiliation at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 by Ethiopian peasant forces was a spiritual wound in the long list of grudges that underpinned its renewed desire for revenge on the world's stage. This time, it made extensive preparations for 40 years before advancing on Ethiopia.
Ian Campbell in his book, Addis Ababa Massacre: When Ethiopia run blood, writes that Italy built a chemical weapons factory on 30 acres of land near Mogadishu in Somalia. The quantities of lethal gases produced at that facility were so large that no fewer than 17 warehouses had to be propped up to store them. The Italians stockpiled 35,000 gas masks for their own safety.
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