The Last Redoubt at Gondar

November 1941. The Italian Empire in East Africa exists only on paper. Since the spring, British, South African, and Indian columns, along with the Ethiopian Patriots, have overrun the vast territories conquered five years earlier. Addis Ababa has fallen, the Negus Haile Selassie has regained his throne, and the great Italian garrisons have capitulated one after another. Only one pocket remains, clinging to the highlands of northwestern Ethiopia: the region of Gondar, commanded by General Guglielmo Nasi.

There, in a maze of mountain passes, forts, and peaks defended for months, Nasi holds on. His men—Italian soldiers and colonial askaris—have repelled assault after assault, inflicting heavy losses on attackers who are nevertheless far superior in numbers and matériel. But the noose is tightening. Supplies are running out, ammunition is counted round by round, enemy aircraft dominate the skies, and no resupply can cross the lines anymore. The fortress-villages that screened Gondar are falling one by one under the fire of the Patriots and Allied artillery.

The general knows that organized resistance is drawing to a close. Before him lie mountainous terrains well suited to dispersal, but his wounded are piling up and his starving columns will not hold out much longer. The hour of decision has come.