Wärqenäh returned home to Ethiopia with World War II still raging in North Africa, the Middle East and throughout the world. Worldwide the news had been full of stories of the liberation of Ethiopia from Italian rule; significant because the empire was often described as ‘the first to be freed’ from Fascism. Wärqenäh, at that time, was a prominent critic of the British, accusing them of refusing to give Ethiopia the full independence she had been promised. Now nearly seventy-seven years old, he returned to an Ethiopia much changed by the Italian occupation. With his retirement to India in 1940, his public career appeared to be over, but he remained remarkably active and was often consulted as a statesman and elder especially from 1942 to 1945. A moment of real joy came to him in 1943:

As we shall see, Wärqenäh was occasionally urged to re-enter the political fray in Ethiopia, but these efforts did not bear fruit. 1944 and 1945 saw major turning points in both his public and private life. By this time his extended family was well established in the upper ranks of the Ethiopian bureaucracy and many were looked on with favor by the emperor.