Graziani played an important role in the consolidation and expansion of the Italian colonial empire during the 1920s and 1930s, first in Libya and then in Ethiopia.

[2] In February 1937, after an assassination attempt against him during a ceremony in Addis Ababa, Graziani ordered a period of brutal retribution now known as Yekatit 12.

Shortly after the Italy entered World War II, he returned to Libya as the commander of troops in Italian North Africa but resigned after the 1940–41 British offensive routed his forces; this campaign caused him other stress attacks, which he suffered from a snake accident during his military service in Libya a few years before World War I.

In 1950, an Italian court sentenced Graziani to 19 years of imprisonment for his collaboration with the Nazis; he was released after serving only four months.

Due to economic restraints, Graziani could not apply to the Military Academy of Modena and so decided to study law at university instead, at the urging of the father.

In 1906, he passed a competitive examination for reserve officers to be made regular and became a second lieutenant, stationed at the 1st regiment of Grenadiers in Rome.

However, Graziani's efforts in the south were secondary to the main invasion launched from Eritrea by Generale Emilio De Bono, later continued by Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio.

After an unsuccessful attempt by two Eritreans to kill him on 19 February 1937 (and after murders of other Italians in occupied Ethiopia), Graziani ordered a bloody and indiscriminate reprisal upon the conquered country, later remembered by Ethiopians as Yekatit 12.

Graziani's suspicion of the Ethiopian Orthodox clergy (and the fact that the wife of one of the assassins had briefly taken sanctuary at the monastery) had convinced him of the monks' complicity in the attempt on his life.

At the start of World War II, Graziani, now styled 1st Marquis of Neghelli, was still Commander-in-Chief of the Regio Esercito's General Staff.

After the death of Marshal Italo Balbo in a friendly fire incident on 28 June 1940, Graziani took his place as Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Italian North Africa.

However, faced with demotion, Graziani ultimately followed orders, and four divisions of the 10th Army invaded Egypt on 9 September against the British screening forces.

He was appointed Minister of Defence of the Italian Social Republic by Mussolini[11][better source needed] and oversaw the mixed Italo-German Army Group Liguria (Armee Ligurien).

When Mussolini fled northward on 25 April 1945, Graziani was left as the de facto leader of what remained of the Italian Social Republic.

At the end of World War II, Graziani spent a few days in the San Vittore Prison in Milan before he was transferred to Allied control.

[12] Although the Ethiopian Minister of Foreign Affairs gave the League of Nations irrefutable evidence of what the Italian military had done from within a few hours of its invasion on 3 October 1935 to 10 April of the following year, no action was taken.

The Ethiopian government felt it would have no difficulty from the sufficient amount of evidence it had to justify a trial against Graziani, especially for the massacres he ordered in February 1937.

The British government was the firmest supporter of that stance, and the United States pursued a policy "largely characterized by ambivalence towards Italian aggression".

[14][15] In 1950, an Italian military tribunal sentenced Graziani to 19 years in jail for collaborating with the Nazis, but he was released after only four months because his lawyers demonstrated that his actions had been only after he "received orders".

In the early 1950s, Graziani had some involvement with the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and he became the "Honorary President" of the party in 1953.

At midnight he went into a coma, briefly regaining consciousness at 4 am and stated his later words, ‘If my time has come, I’ll go calmly to be judged by God’.

Local left-wing politicians and national commentators harshly criticized the monument whereas the town's "mostly conservative" population approved.

On its release, it was banned by the Italian government because, in the words of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, it was "damaging to the honor of the army".