East African Campaign of World War II

British, Commonwealth, Indian, African and Ethiopian forces fought Italian armies across East Africa after Italy entered the Second World War. Operations ranged from desert and mountain advances to the restoration of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia.

The Battle of Keren in Eritrea was among the campaign’s hardest engagements, with repeated assaults against strong mountain positions before the Italian defence broke in March 1941.

This context supports fiction about multinational imperial forces, mountain warfare, colonial armies and the connection between North Africa and the wider African theatre.