ONE OF THE MANY side-effects of the Second World War was to stimulate a new conception of Somali nationalism, to foster the nationalist aim of unifying the several Somali territories, and to provide conditions under which this aim could largely have been realized. In the course of the fighting in Africa, in August 1940, the Italians captured British Somaliland and added that territory to the Somali portion of their East African empire. This, however, was a short-lived success for seven months later the Protectorate was recovered, and Somalia and the Ogaden were occupied by the Allies during the East Africa campaign and liberation of Ethiopia. With the sole exception of French Somaliland which in 1942 declared for De Gaulle, all the Somali territories were now destined to remain for almost a decade under the British flag.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 319