On 9 May 1936, the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, proclaimed the formation of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, AOI), from Ethiopia after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the colonies of Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Â On 10 June 1940, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France, which made Italian military forces in Libya a threat to Egypt and those in the AOI a danger to the British and French colonies in East Africa. Italian belligerence also closed the Mediterranean to Allied merchant ships and endangered British sea lanes along the coast of East Africa, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. (The Kingdom of Egypt remained neutral during the Second World War but the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 allowed the British to occupy Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.) Egypt, the Suez Canal, French Somaliland and British Somaliland were also vulnerable to invasion but Comando Supremo (Italian General Staff) had planned for a war after 1942; in the summer of 1940 Italy was far from ready for a long war or for the occupation of large areas of Africa.
