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World War II in Albania

In Albania, World War II began with its invasion by Italy in April 1939. Fascist Italy set up Albania as its protectorate or puppet state. The resistance was largely carried out by Communist groups against the Italian (until 1943) and then German occupation in Albania. At first independent, the Communist groups united in the beginning of 1942, which ultimately led to the successful liberation of the country in 1944.

The Center for Relief to Civilian Populations (Geneva) reported that Albania was one of the most devastated countries in Europe. 60,000 houses were destroyed and about 10% of the population was left homeless.

Communist and Nationalist resistance[edit]

Origin of Communism[edit]

Faced with an agrarian and mostly Muslim society monitored by King Zog's security police, Albania's Communist movement attracted few adherents in the interwar period. In fact, the country had no fully-fledged Communist Party before World War II. After Fan Noli fled in 1924 to Italy and later the United States, several of his leftist protégés migrated to Moscow, where they affiliated themselves with the Balkan Confederation of Communist Parties and through it the Communist International (Comintern), the Soviet-sponsored association of international communist parties. In 1930, the Comintern dispatched Ali Kelmendi to Albania to organise communist cells. However, Albania had no working class on which the communists could rely for support. Paris became the Albanian communists' hub until Nazi deportations depleted their ranks after the fall of France in 1940.

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Aftermath[edit]

Albania stood in an unenviable position after World War II. The NLF's strong links with Yugoslavia's communists, who also enjoyed British military and diplomatic support, guaranteed that Belgrade would play a key role in Albania's postwar order. The Allies never recognized an Albanian government in exile or King Zog and failed to raise the question of Albania or its borders at any of the major wartime conferences. No reliable statistics on Albania's wartime losses exist, but the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration reported about 30,000 Albanian war dead, 200 destroyed villages, 18,000 destroyed houses, and about 100,000 people left homeless. Albanian official statistics claim somewhat higher losses.


Furthermore, thousands of Cham Albanians were driven out of Greece and accused of collaborating with the Axis occupation forces.


During the Nazi occupation, most Jews in Albania proper were saved.[32] During the Axis occupation of Kosovo, Albanian collaborators persecuted Serb and Montenegrin settlers.[33] Between 70,000 and 100,000 were expelled or transferred to concentration camps in Pristina and Mitrovica while nearly 10,000 are estimated to have been killed by the Vulnetari and other Albanian paramilitaries.[34][35]

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Albania under Italy

Besa tradition during World War II

The Holocaust in Albania

Participants in World War II

Timeline of Albanian history

Socialist People's Republic of Albania

Antonio Gramsci Battalion

Greco-Italian War

of Albania

Library of Congress Country Study

Bailey, Roderick (2008). The Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle. London: Jonathan Cape.  9780224079167.

ISBN

Bailey, Roderick (2000). "OSS-SOE Relations, Albania 1943–44". Intelligence and National Security. 15 (2): 20–35. :10.1080/02684520008432601. S2CID 154196298.

doi

Bailey, Roderick (2002). "Smoke Without Fire? Albania, SOE, and the Communist 'Conspiracy Theory'". In Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers; Bernd J. Fischer (eds.). Albanian Identities : Myth and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 143–157.

(1948). Sons of the Eagle: A Study in Guerrilla War. MacMillan & Co Ltd London. This book from a British agent with the Royalists during the war has no ISBN but is being reprinted.

Julian Amery

Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (1999). . West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-141-4.

Albania At War, 1939–1945

Fischer, Bernd J. (1991). "Resistance in Albania during the Second World War: Partisans, Nationalists and the S.O.E.". East European Quarterly. 25 (1): 21–43.

(1984). The Special Operations Executive 1940–1946. Pimlico. ISBN 0-7126-6585-4.

Foot, M.R.D.

Manelli, Gani. "Partisan Politics in World War II Albania: the Struggle for Power, 1939–1944." East European Quarterly 40, no. 3 (2006): 333–348

Pearson, Owen (2006). Albania in Occupation and War: From Fascism to Communism 1940–1945. Albania in the Twentieth Century. Vol. II. I.B. Tauris.  978-1-84511-104-5.

ISBN

(1984). Albanian Assignment. London: Chatto & Windus. Foreword by Patrick Leigh Fermor. The SOE in Albania by a brother-in-arms of Julian Amery and Neil "Billy" McLean. With numerous photographs.

Smiley, David

(1994). Irregular Regular. Norwich: Michael Russell. ISBN 0-85955-202-0. Translated in French in 2008. Au coeur de l’action clandestine. Des Commandos au MI6, L’Esprit du Livre Editions, (ISBN 978-2-915960-27-3). The Memoirs of a SOE officer in Albania and Thaïland (Force 136), then a MI6 agent (Poland, Albania, Oman, Yemen).

Smiley, David

Brigadier Edmund Frank "Trotsky" Davies. , Bodley Head, 1952.

Illyrian venture: The Story of the British Military Mission to Enemy-occupied Albania, 1943–44

One Man in His Time – The life of Lieutenant-Colonel N.L.D. ("Billy") McLean, DSO, Macmillan, London, 1990. Biography of a soldier, SOE agent and Scottish politician.

Xan Fielding

(1995), pp. 24–26

Albania in WWII by Julian Amery, from the Oxford Companion to the Second World War

Map

Map

World War II: Albania

Valiant highlanders

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