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Discl… well, you know that already.First of all, you’re making a bit of a mess with the premise: Balli Kombëtar and the (short-lived) Waffen SS Mountain Division “Skanderbeg” had nothing to do with each other, nor were they primarily “anti-Slav”.Albania througout the war: keep in mind that the Italian invasion[1] started on April 7th, 1939, partisan activities started in mid-1941, Italy later suffered a putsch and then descended into civil war, thus leaving Albania open to German occupation on September 8th, 1943, and Shkodra was finally “liberated” on November 29th, 1944.Soldiers from Zog’s Army and civilian volunteers retreat after putting up what resistance they could on April 7, 1939. The man in the first photo is Stavro Bojaj.[2]The three partisan movements were, in chronological order:Legaliteti (“Legality”, founded officially in April 1941) were Monarchist first and Nationalist second: they formed around the main platform of bringing King Zog and his régime back, simply enough; mostly made up of officers from the pre-1939 Albanian Army returning from exile and particularly strong in Zog’s Gheg (Northern) strongholds, especially in the region of Mat, where is Burrel (Zog’s hometown/fortress); especially popular early in the war, later surpassed in popularity by the ideologically richer platforms of Balli Kombëtar and of the Communists.Abaz Kupi from Kruja, Major of the Royal Albanian Army and founder of Legaliteti. As many smart people in his day, he seems to have been illiterate (he had a priest read dispatches), but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sharp guy.Balli Kombëtar (“National Front”, founded November 1942) were Nationalist, Irredentist, aiming at an economically laissez-faire (like Legaliteti, and unlike both Fascists and Communists) postwar régime, preferably a republic — in this respect, they were the representatives of the prewar anti-Zog faction; as nationalists, they obviously wanted to defend the enlarged borders negotiated by the Italians in 1941 (adding a strip of MK, one of MN and much of Kosovo, see map above), but they seem to have become the “Greater Albania” types mostly when it became clear (after the failure of the Mukje Agreement in 1943) that the Communists were fine with abandoning Kosovo and Albanian-inhabited territories in Montenegro and Macedonia to Tito — which put the Balli in an uncomfortable position of sharing some goals with the incoming German administration; popular especially in those border regions, as well as in Central Albania, secondarily also in Northern Albania. Ballists are easily identified in photos by their qeleshe bearing a badge with the Albanian eagle, on civilian clothing (Albanian Fascists also wore qeleshe with a similar badge, but did so on Fascist uniforms, to differentiate from their Italian counterparts);Ali Këlcyra, Mit’hat Frashëri and Thoma Orollogaj, the three foremost personalities of the Balli Kombëtar, in Berat in January 1944.the Communist Party of Albania was officially founded by gathering those few existing Albanian personalities under Tito’s envoys’ coordination on November 8, 1941; the Conference of Peza (September 16, 1942) led to the creation of the National Liberation Movement (LANÇ), an attempt at unifying all Resistance forces which however was, in fact, thoroughly Communist-led. Very strong in the deep South, present in the Center, quite unpopular in the Catholic North — the Catholics had had direct information and propaganda on the horrors of Communism in Mexico and Spain from before the war. Indeed, Father Zef Pllumi goes as far as to mention the theory that Enver Hoxha was chosen as figurehead because of the propaganda value of his religious surname (hoxha/hodža/hoca is the Sunni Muslim holy man in the Balkans). Which, if true, would be highly ironic, as Hoxha would bring about the only explicitly antitheistic State in modern history.After the peace, in 1945, the Democratic Front of Albania (FDSh) was a similar and more effective attempt at ensnaring non-Communists into a Communist movement for physical elimination or political neutralization, even though the Commies were de jure illegal until 1947 — they were talked about but nobody could point at one, until they enacted dramatic mobilization stunts (eg. activists planting the Parku i Rinisë — Park of Youth — in Tirana in one night) in that year, in order to show youths what wonderful and disciplined people they could become by joining the only political movement left in town. The CP became the Party of Labor (PPSh), as it is better known, only in 1948, after Stalin’s personal suggestion to a starry-eyed Enver Hoxha, who was madly in love with the guy his whole life.Tito’s lieutenants in Albania, Serbs Miladin Popović (L, standing) and Dušan Mugoša (L, crouching); their Albanian liason Enver Hoxha is crouching on the right, whereas the guy standing behind him seems to be (but I’m not sure) Nako Spiro, who was later victim of the second postwar purge, ie. that crop of intelligent Communists who would be eliminated (in his case, he was suicided) in 1947.Shoku Enver (“Comrade Enver”) during the war, as depicted in a pretty glossy book of memoirs from the 80s.The three groups fought together or along each other against the Italo-Albanian government in Tirana and the Italian Royal Army until September 8, 1943 and then, after the chaos of that fateful day, against the German Wehrmacht and the Albanian government propped by it, with the Balli occasionally teaming up with them for brief periods (in a manner not dissimilar from the Četnici in Yugoslavia occasionally allying with the Italians against the Ustaše or with the Germans against Tito).Another choice for the politically-conscious random Albanian of the day was, of course, Fascism. But if we are to talk about it, we need to distinguish Albanian Fascists from Italian Fascists (and the Albanian government from Italian government workers in Tirana); and we’ll need to make a short digression to the other side of the Adriatic.The Albanian Fascists (Albanian Fascist Party, PFSh) started out with the upper hand, of course: they had freedom of political propaganda in the cities, as well as material and intellectual support from Italy, until 1943, as well as the assistance of the Royal Italian Army and of diplomatic, military and engineering expert advisors: Tirana, a very small town at the time, was thoroughly rebuilt by Italian effort (most notably, the elegant buildings nowadays housing the various Ministries were built back then, as well as the University and most of the town center), and infrastructure — a desperately needed investment since independence in 1912: the Ottomans were not renowned as road-builders —was built from scratch throughout the country.Ëndrrat e Gherardo Bosios për Tiranën… (Foto). Gherardo Bosio was the architect behind most of Tirana’s urbanistic development.This slew of investments and improvements was not due to mere selflessness by the Italians, but rather finds its roots in the nature of Italian Nationalism and in the struggles of Italian foreign policy since 1861 (Italian Unification), of which the Italian foreign policy after 1922 (Mussolini comes to power) was a prosecution more intense, but following the very same lines: diplomacy aside, Fascist expansionistic policies were singularly unoriginal. First of all, Italy came to be seriously interested in Albania quite late, after WWI (talking about Albania in 1902, journalist Ugo Ojetti wrote that “the only constant in Italian foreign policy is its inconstancy”); in the eighty years from Unification to WWII, Italy mostly built her experience in dealing with overseas territories in Africa.Long story short, pre-Fascist Italy had come late to the scramble for colonies; and, unlike Germany, she couldn’t really give up on Africa since her position is connected by the Mediterranean to the Balkans and to Africa and separated by the Alps from Central Europe: the very first Italian overseas territory, Eritrea, was curiously enough bought from the private Rubettino company in 1872, but the next, Lybia, was conquered in 1911 for mere geopolitical constriction: after France annexed Algeria in 1830 (itself a domino causation, rather than an ideological choice) and then Tunisia in 1881 (frustrating great Italian investments and strong presence on the territory), and after the British took control of Egypt in 1882, Italy had to expand unless she wanted her extensive coastline at the complete mercy of those diplomatic heavyweights she already was struggling to coexist with. The ideological side came after, not before — and it had to find a way to explain how exactly resource-poor territories would make for “the best” of Empires…What these territories, as well as those others that Italy ruled (Somalia, the Dodecanese) or wished to conquer (Ethiopia), had in common was being expansionistic “leftovers” from other colonizers’ enterprises — and, as such, known to be poor in resources, and often also arid (Lybia, Eritrea, Somalia) or heavily mountainous (Ethiopia).As a consequence, Italian nationalistic pride started to rely a lot on two main goals: a) turning arid wastelands into fertile soil farmed with state-of-the-art methods and tools and settled through modern, rationalistic agricultural communities (this obviously wasn’t the case with Albania); b) humoring local populations, especially those of European stock, into developing their own specific cultures and economies under the guidance of Italian know-how and the aegis of a shared Roman past. The latter is obviously most appropriate in the Albanian case.An error that is often made is to believe that the Fascists “wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire”: no, they had their own ideas for a future “New World Order”, albeit less clear than their German comrades. What would be correct to say is that, already before Fascism, the Roman heritage was commonly brought up in terms of following their example as road-builders, engineers, agriculturers — in two words, investors and improvers. This “historical mission” almost seemed to confirm itself when the overseas territories bore relics of Roman engineering prowess, as in the above photo of the Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli: rescuing once-flourishing regions from the barrenness brought about by the locals’ negligence was what would make Italy stand out and shine among the Colonial Powers, not extracting unbelievable riches out of the Congo like the Belgians or ruling over a huge chunk of mankind like the British.In the words of Evelyn Waugh, certainly not a friend of Italy’s (retranslated into English, as I haven’t been able to find the original):“The idea of conquering land in order to work it, of treating an Empire as a place where one must bring things, a place to be made fertile, farmed and made more beautiful, rather than a place one can take away from, a place to plunder and depopulate; the idea of working rather than sitting idly like landlords, all of this was foreign to British thoughts, but is the principle underlying the Italian occupation.”Propaganda from the 1935 war with Ethiopia: work (and the abolition of slavery) is presented as a priority at a par with the conquest itself, if with a paternalistic/dismissive view of Africans that wasn’t adopted in Europe.Albania was not deemed a colony, of course, and her being listed alongside said African colonies was seen at the time as mere chronological coincidence; but Italian Nationalism had developed during its foundational years in these (colonial) conditions, and had come to prize the aforementioned two goals: and as a consequence of this history Italian Fascism had, when adapted to European scenarios, a distinctly korenistic inspiration, so to speak (I’ll use a better term when I can think of one…), ie. it aimed at building an indigenous Fascist régime in fellow European countries — under the “enlightening role of Italian cultural and technical achievement” — rather than colonizing, displacing or replacing them, as eg. the Nazis were keen on doing in their Slavic East.The 1930s saw the two-thousand-year anniversaries of Virgil, Horace and Augustus: to celebrate the first of these, here is the scene where the long-suffering Aeneas finds, on his way to Latium, an old friend and kinsman — Helenus of Buthrotum (Butrint, Albania), whose archeological site was being excavated in those days by Luigi Maria Ugolini — who finally indicates that his travails are soon to be over, and his goal is near: “Before you is the Ausonian land: go, set your sail toward it, now.” (Aeneis, III 477). To the right another half-line from III, 96: “Go consult the ancient Mother”.Albania in particular had been invaded almost “by chance”: it isn’t entirely clear what made Mussolini haste to undo decades of careful investments and influence-buiding for the sake of a military and institutional takeover, but one of the reasons is definitely Count Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law, sharp but not always effective, all too often forgiven by Mussolini for the sake of family) needing to make a name for himself: a successful conquest and positive development in Albania, and then maybe the conquest of Greece (Ciano planned to bribe the top Greek generals…) would make the charming, well-bred Count a darling to the Fascists as much as he already was to the gossip-inclined part of the population.The Greek Campaign, in fact, turned out to be a disaster: mismanagement, inefficiency and sheer imbecility at the top, combined with the last obstacle a foreigner would expect on the way to Athens — the crippling cold — and with a rugged defense by the Greeks made the frontline recede well into Southern Albania. The Albanian civilians in the Far South, whose early-century philo-Hellenism had cooled off after the Greek occupations during the Balkan Wars and the First World War, were soon exposed again to the miseries of war (they spent a whole year surviving on moldy bread in Korça, as I’m told), whereas the Albanians in the Royal Army had a great drop in morale. Still, despite some unease on the borders with Italian-occupied Greece, the setbacks of 1940 were soon forgotten due to the peaceful and promising new balance in the Balkans after 1941.What is clear, however, is that 40 mln Italians didn’t really have much to gain from “enslaving” 1 mln Albanians, from the relatively few natural resources, or from the fertile but badly-interconnected territory, as large, with the provinces added in 1941, as one of the larger of Italy’s twenty metropolitan regions (despite what later Communist propaganda may say, no more than 35 000 Italians lived in Albania during the union of the two crowns: hardly a colonization). What a diplomatically struggling country like Italy, and especially a much-boasting Fascist government, and even more so one shunned and sanctioned by the League of Nation since 1935 could really gain from Albania was the internal and external prestige of proving able to turn the most economically backwards Nation in the Balkans into a glitzy “Switzerland-on-the-Sea” of sorts: in an ideological war, this is worth more than gold.(Fascist policy in Africa was slightly different, as an additional component of ethnic colonization and countering the high rates of miscegenation was present; but there too, the goal was to present Fascism to the Arabs as a protector of Islam and to “civilize” black Africans into “African Fascists” and accomplished agriculturers — investments in Ethiopia were also predicted not to start paying back until the 1960s, whereas the Eritreans were celebrated as legendary warriors: “All of the Prussians’ virtues, without their many, annoying faults”).The new Savoy Kingdom inherited much from both Zogu’s ceremonial and symbology, as well as integrated some Italian traditions where necessary; but much of the country still lived a very simple and backwards lifestyle, and was hardly in touch with the cultural and aesthetic news from Tirana and Durrës:Photos taken in the North (probably in the famously inaccessible Theth region) by Italian photographer Giuseppe Massani in 1940: he was tasked with a photoreportage to help the Italian public familiarize with the newly-joined Kingdom, and his photos are perhaps the most artistically appreciable from the epoch before Communism.So, back to Albania and the Albanian viewpoint: the Italian authorities started out by gradually importing Italian Fascist institutions, with the goal of soon building the nuclei for authentically Albanian Fascist institutions: first of all the Albanian Fascist Party (PFSh), founded June 2, 1939, which seems to have been replaced, after September 8, 1943, by a Guard of Greater Albania, about which I can’t seem to find much. I would like to have precise information on exactly how popular it was with the public, but that too seems to be information hard to find.The PFSh logo is obviously inspired by that of the PNF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:National_Fascist_Party_logo.svg) (its Italian counterpart), but it has a few original features. As it seems, emblems and flags associated with the Savoy Kingdom of Albania bore the fasces near the Eagle, whereas Party-affiliated institutions bore the fasces right on the eagle’s breast. The distinction between Government organizations and Party organizations is (was) more important than may seem, in Albania as in other Fascist countries.Ripping another page from the March-on-Rome handbook, the Albanian Fascist Militia, the local chapter of the MVSN (“Blackshirts”) was also founded in the Summer of 1939, drawing initially from those few Italians living in Albania and then, as the indigenes familiarized themselves with the new way of life, replacing them with entirely Albanian personnel; the Militia was disbanded in 1943, as was predictable.Again, it isn’t easy to find too much information on this, and especially on whether the Militia was where the Albanian military units attached to the Italian Royal Army eg. in the Greek Campaign were drawn from: both seemed to have shared their uniform, a regular gray/green Italian Army/MVSN uniform with black shirt, black tie and black collar tabs (ie. the same as the MVSN) with only an enamelled badge[3] above the right breastpocket and a flat-topped qeleshe/plis, in the Central Albanian style, with a single-headed eagle to distinguish them from their Italian comrades:In the photo above, Italian and Albanian Fascists mixing: you can only tell them by the headgear and the small, round badges above the Albanians’ right breastpockets. The Italian with gray-green shirt and tie is regular Army.Right: Albanian militiaman, Left: Italian regular Army serviceman.In Kosovo and in the annexed strip of Macedonia there was also a volunteer milita, starting in 1941 under Italian control and continuing under German occupation until 1944, known as Vulnetari (Italian adaptation of the Albanian vullnetarë — “volunteers”).A Vulnetaro as depicted in German propaganda[4]: his affiliation is shown by the Red/Black/Red armband.The Hasa brothers, from Gostivar: Xhem (C) was the leader of that town’s Vulnetari: long before the war already an insurgent against the Yugoslav State, after Italy’s disappearance from the scene in 1943 he would pass to the Balli Kombëtar, one of the few groups offering protection for ethnic Albanians in mixed-population areas.In some isolated cases, traditional bajraktarë (chief of a bajrak or flamur — Turkish and Albanian for “flag”, respectively — ie. an Ottoman military/territorial solution, grouping more clans under a single military leader) led their “flag” into fighting as semi-independent warlords during the Italo-German-Bulgarian invasion of Yugoslavia. Prek Pjetër Cali, a Kelmendi veteran of the Balkan wars from Shkodra, led his men into Montenegro, taking over Gucia and Plavë (both Albanian-inhabited) before the Royal Italian Army came around to occupy them; he later mobilized again, in mid July the same year, to counter the uprising in Montenegro, supporting the Italian 19th Infantry Division “Venezia”. Weirdly enough, he later became burrazerë (blood brother) with a Montenegrin Serb Chetnik commander, Pavle Đurišić, who had fought on the other side on both occasions: they found themselves in agreement fighting Communists.A relic of a bygone era in Albanian history, he was eventually killed by the Communist partisans in the Spring 1945, as was Đurišić (in Croatia): both men’s supporters would keep on resisting, in the respective highlands of origin, until the mid-50s.As for non-military mass organizations, the Djelmnia e Liktorit Shqiptar (Albanian Lictor Youth), modeled after the Italian Gioventù Italiana del Littorio, itself a recently-created organization that gathered within its umbrella the different stages of Italian youth organizations: Figli della Lupa (6–8), Balilla (M) and Piccole Italiane (F) (8–14), Avanguardisti (M) and Giovani Italiane (F) (14–18), Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (University students); I haven’t yet been able to find the names of the Albanian equivalents. Ligor Buzi was a notable leader of the DLSh.Let’s zoom back out of Fascist society, and consider the outlawed political/military choices along the above Fascist ones. The three partisan movements we’ve discussed (Legaliteti, Balli Kombëtar, Communist Party), as well as the Albanian Fascists thus had differences in a) constitutional b) territorial, c) socio-economic issues, roughly along these lines:L: a) Monarchy, b) prewar borders, c) free society;BK: a) Republic, b) ethnic borders, c) free society;CP: a) Republic, b) prewar borders/entering Yugoslavia as a Federated Republic, c) Communist economic and social engineering;AF: a) Monarchy, b) ethnic borders, c) Corporativist economy and social organization;Having said this, I must also add a caveat to those interested in studying this part of the war in particular: there is a fair bit of postwar Communist fog, created by later historiography both by pretending there was a mobilization and a distrust towards the Italians where there was scarcely any at all, and by lionizing its own role compared to others; it is on the contrary true that, before August 1942, there were extremely few sabotage or resistance operations, with barely a handful of victims combined; and even the most famous incident, Vasil Laçi’s attempt on the King-Emperor Victor Emmanuel on May 17, 1941 was not even taken seriously by its target, and Ciano even misrecords him in his diary as “Mihailoff, of Greek-Macedonian origin”.So much for the ideologies, but a quick overview of the Albanian government in Tirana is in order: Italian advisors commented, after the war, on how difficult it had been to make the aid, planning and diplomatic support from Italy coincide with the Albanian government’s own independent policies — some Prime Ministers were more patient and tactful (Vërlaci, for example), and thus openly discussed with the Italians the internal and border policies to be adopted (one of the most challenging tasks was working for the development of formerly-Yugoslav territories, beset by great underdevelopment and ethnic strife); others were more cunning and nationalistic, and acted of their own accord, despite promising the Italians to keep quiet, creating incidents and setbacks that their allies would struggle to remedy: PM Kruja was a particularly stubborn offender in this sense.The Albanian government 1939–1944 was made up of notable personalities who either were unhappy with Zog and consequently happy to have an alternative (with more chances at their own political independence, as the nominal King now resided in Rome) or diehard patriots who saw the chance to advance the country with desperately needed investments, protection, expertise from a neighboring, friendly, non-ethnic cleansing country with a more advanced degree of development (eg. the biography of Terenc Toçi[5], a staunch Arbëreshë patriot, is a great example of the latter).It went through two phases, the first being as a regency for King Victor Emmanuel, who didn’t personally meddle in Tirana’s affairs; Prime Ministers were:Shefqet bej Vërlaci (12 April 1939 – 4 December 1941);Mustafa bej Kruja (December 4, 1941 – January 19, 1943);Eqrem bej Libohova (19 January 1943 – 13 February 1943);Maliq Bushati (13 February 1943 – 12 May 1943);again Eqrem bej Libohova (12 May 1943 – 8 September 1943);Mustafa Asim Merlika bej Kruja, possibly the most influential and definitely the most nationalistic of the above[6].One of the best books I can think of on this issue are Carlo Umiltà’s memoirs: a carreer diplomat with twenty years’ worth of experience in Yugoslavia, he was sent as an expert advisor to Albania in 1941, visiting the recently-occupied regions of Çamëria (Italian occupation), Kosovo, part of MK and MN (Albanian annexation), until the Spring of 1943, when he was called back to Italy. A quick summary: in Çamëria the philo-Greek sentiment was strong, so the territory wasn’t annexed (PM Vërlaci understood the rationale, but this came to the great chagrin of stauncher nationalists like Kruja); Kosovo was on the brink of ethnic warfare, with both sides sharpening their knives — the Catholic Albanian clergy (as “neutral” a party as could be found ) and the Italian diplomatic intervention periodically managed to cool off the heads a bit; in Struga, Gostivar, Dibra, Tetova (formerly MK) coexistence was somewhat easier, if not natural, and the presence of the Bulgarian government beyond the border helped keep a measure of civility between the two ethnicities; the annexed strip of MN was in between the last two, with periodical clan feuds and village raids alternating with grudging cooperation. As for the government’s influence:Verso Natale del 1941 tornai a Tirana deciso a mostrare, specialmente al governo albanese, che i suoi pochi mesi di amministrazione nel Cossovo e nel Dibrano, attraverso il suo Alto Commissariato, non erano riusciti a migliorare la situazione delle terre recentemente annesse e che occorreva una sua più energica azione per tenere in mano, con maggiore fermezza e qualche buon risultato, un territorio così ricco e popolato. Ma, proprio in quei giorni, il Ministero di S. E. Verlazi si dimise e alla Presidenza del Consiglio Albanese fu chiamato il senatore Kruja, di tendenza molto nazionalista. Uno dei suoi primi atti fu la soppressione dell’Alto Commissaro Alizotti. Fu invece istituito il Ministero delle nuove provincie e delle terre liberate, che avrebbe dovuto interessarsi interamente dell’amministrazione di esse, d’accordo con gli altri Ministeri.[…]All’inchiesta [dopo degli scontri terribili nella porzione annessa di Montenegro nel tardo 1942, riappacificata solo da un inverno difficilissimo] deposero, oltre molti albanesi, anche non pochi slavi, e persino alcuni funzionari dell’ordine giudiziario del Montenegro.Riassumerò qui i risultati dell’inchiesta:la resposabilitaà iniziale risaliva al governo albanese, o meglio al Ministro Vlora che, contrariamente agli impegni presi, non aveva cessato dalla sua propaganda per l’annessione e aveva mandato nella zona mista bandiere e armi, ciò che aveva imbaldanzito i mussulmani e inasprito gli slavi;[…]Come si sa, nel febbraio 1943, a Roma ci fu un vasto movimento in tutto il nostro Ministero. Ciano lasciò il ministero degli Affari Esteri, che fu assunto personalmente dal capo del governo, il quale chiamò come sottosegretario agli Esteri, Bastianini, da circa due anni governatore della Dalmazia. In seguito ai cambiamenti nel ministero a Roma, anche il Luogotenente Generale a Tirana fu richiamato e sostituito dal generale Pariani. Ciò portò anche alle dimissioni del ministero albanese del senatore Kruja, che fu sostituito da un governo meno nazionalista, presieduto da Libahnovabey. Anche dalla Luogotenenza Generale a Tirana furono chiamati al ministero non pochi dei miei colleghi che vi prestavano servizio.Frattanto, nella seconda metà di marzo e nella prima di aprile, il Commissariato per la zona mista ebbe come lavoro più importante e più assillante, la sistemazione dei cinquemila rifugiati cui sopra ho accennato. Poiché la stagione lo permetteva, la massima parte di essi ritornò ai loro villaggi e alle loro case e si poté provvedere a ricoprire alla meglio una parte di quelle bruciate e a recuperare il bestiame che erasi salvato. Si continuarono a mandare soccorsi di vesti e di viveri e le autorità militari poterono inviare e mantenere numerosi reparti di nostri soldati a protezione delle popolazioni che, dopo lo sfogo di tanta ferocia, parevano tornate più calme. Più o meno volentieri i “cetnici” si erano ritirati nella zona del Montenegro e della Serbia dove avevano tenuto le loro bande nei primi due anni della nostra occupazione e, com’è naturale, cessò ogni propaganda per l’annessione della zona mista all’Albania.L’esperimento del “Commissariato per le regioni a popolazione mista” non aveva più ragione di continuare e alla fine di aprile 1943 io stesso chiesi al mio ministero di essere richiamato a Roma. Il generale Pariani fece qualche difficoltà alla mia partenza perché alcuni servizi erano ancora in piedi: da Roma continuai ancora per il mese di maggio a dare molte direttive all’ufficio stralcio del “Commissariato” che era rimasto per chiudere l’esercizio, ma già ai primi di giugno tutti i servizi di esso erano passati ai nostri militari dipendenti da Cettigne e da Tirana e il nostro ministero degli Esteri lasciava ogni onore e ogni responsabilità per l’andamento delle cose, nei paesi ai margini della vecchia Albania, alle nostre autorità militari.Il 25 luglio non era lontano.——Around Christmas, 1941, I returned to Tirana with the intention of showing, especially to the Albanian government, that its few months of administration of Kosovo and Dibra, through its High Commissariat, hadn’t yet managed to improve the situation in the recently annexed lands, and that a more energetic intervention on their part was needed to rein in, with more firmness and some good results, such a rich and populous territory. But, right in those days, the Ministry of His Eminence Vërlaci resigned, and to take the seat of President of the Albanian Parliament was called Senator Kruja, of strongly nationalistic tendencies. One of his first actions was demoving High Commissioner Alizoti. On the other hand, a Ministry for the new provinces and the liberated lands was instituted, which was to be entirely dedicated to their administration, in concert with other Ministries.[…]In the investigation [after terrible skirmishes in the annexed portion of Montenegro in late 1942, which only died down because of a very harsh winter] also testified, aside from many Albanians, no few Slavs, and even a few civil servants from Montenegro’s judiciary branch.I will sum up the investigation’s findings:the initial responsibility rested on the Albanian government, or rather, to Minister Vlora, who, in breach of the commitments, had not ceased his propaganda for full annexion, and had delivered to the mixed zone flags and weapons, which had made the Muslims cocky and the Slavs sour;[…]As is well known, there was in Rome, during February 1943, an ample reshuffling within all of our Ministry. Ciano left the ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was taken up by the Chief of Government [Mussolini] personally, the latter calling as undersecretary to Foreign Affairs Bastianini, who had been governor of Dalmatia for around two years. After these changes at the ministry in Rome, the General Representative in Tirana was also called back and replaced with general Pariani. This also led to the resignation of Senator Kruja’s Albanian ministry, which was eplaced with a less nationalistic government, chaired by Libohova Bej. Quite a number of my colleagues serving there were also called back from the General Representation in Tirana.Meanwhile, in late March and early April, the Commissariat for the mixed zone had as its foremost and most pressing task the management of those five thousand refugees [from former Montenegro] I mentioned before. As the season was now allowing for it, the greatest part of them returned to their villages and their houses and it became possible to rebuild as well as possible those that had been torched and retrieve the surviving cattle. We kept on sending aid in the form of clothes and foodstuffs, and the military authorities were able to dispatch and keep many units of our soldiers, tasked with protecting those populations which, in turn, after such a great outburst of ferociousness, now seemed to have become more calm. More or less of their own accord, the “Chetniks” had retreated to those areas of Montenegro and Serbia where they had kept their bands during the first two years of our occupation and, as is natural, any propaganda toward annexing that mixed area to Albania ceased.The experiment of a “Commissariat for the mixed-population territory” no longer had any reason to continue, and at the end of April, 1943, I myself sent word to my ministry asking to be recalled to Rome. General Pariani had some objection to my departure because some services were still working: through May I kept on managing from Rome the diminished “Commissariat” which had been kept going in order to shut down the operation, but in early June already all of its services had already passed to our servicemen, subject to Cetinje and Tirana, and our ministry of Foreign Affairs left all honors and responsibilities for later developments in the outskirts of old Albania, to our military authorities.July 25 was not far.Another observation that I deem extremely interesting has to do with the economy, the semi-free Fascist concept of Corporativism in particular:Le annessioni del Cossovo e del Dibrano erano quanto mai ragionevoli, perché la popolazione vi è indubbiamente in gran maggioranza albanese e mussulmana e lo sbocco naturale di tali regioni è verso l’Adriatico e i porti di Durazzo e Valona; e i nostri militari, dal 1939 e poi durante la guerra, le avevano congiunte a tali porti con bellissime e comode strade.Quando si parla dello sfruttamento che i capitalisti e i grandi industriali italiani avrebbero instaurato in Albania e poi nel Cossovo e nel Dibrano, si adopera una frase da comizio e non un argomento veritiero e sensato.Le grandi imprese italiane per costruzione di strade, bonifiche agricole, concessioni minerarie e petrolifere, avevano portato lavoro, guadagno e un grande benessere a gente fino allora povera e in condizioni di vita molto primitive; avevano associato ai capitali italiani anche molti capitali albanesi e si stava formando una grossa schiera di operai specialisti albanesi, alla scuola dei nostri specialisti, dei nostri ingegneri, dei nostri tecnici. Oltre un migliaio di studenti albanesi frequentavano le nostre scuole superiori e le nostre università, per formare una certa quantità di tecnici che stavano già trovando impiego, non solo in sottordine, ma anche in posti direttivi, nelle nascenti industrie in Albania. Nel Cossovo e nel Dibrano, alcuni di questi giovani erano già impiegati e il loro numero sarebbe certamente aumentato, nel lavoro dei tecnici specialisti per l’agricoltura e le miniere, per l’industria del legname e per l’allevamento del bestiame.Una grande massa della popolazione, nelle vecchie e nuove provincie albanesi, guardava con simpatia all’Italia. Insieme a non pochi opportunisti, erano però molto numerosi quegli albanesi intelligenti che vedevano nell’unione personale una garanzia di sviluppo e di progresso per il loro paese e che preferivano l’unione con un paese così grosso e civile come l’Italia, piuttosto che quella con i vicini del nord e del sud. Le relazioni commerciali e personali con le Puglie e con Venezia datavano da secoli. Mai l’Italia li aveva né oppressi né minacciati e altrettanto non potevano dire degli slavi e dei greci.Sembrava così che la strada buona fosse stata trovata dall’Albania e che, infine, aveva potuto unirsi in un blocco di popolazioni e territori albanesi di una certa consistenza, quale era il Regno, alla metà del 1943.Certo l’Italia non vi aveva portato soltanto esempi di buona amministrazione; ma cosa erano le nostre manchevolezze e, diciamo pure, i nostri errori, se gli albanesi li paragonavano alle amministrazioni e alle mancanze dei governi che ci avevano preceduto, sia nell’antica che nella nuova Albania?A quanto ho potuto vedere e sentire nei due anni che rimasi da quelle parti, l’unione personale e poi l’ingrandimento dello stato ci avevano procurato una infinità di persone riconoscenti e convinte che, tolti un po’ alla volta gli sbagli che si commettevano, l’Albania sarebbe divenuta un paese importante sia per la sua posizione geografica, sia per le sue notevoli ricchezze in via di sfruttamento onesto e utile per loro e per noi.[…]Ci fu invece un grande errore, da parte nostra, nel non lasciare una sufficiente autonomia economica ad una popolazione che cominciava appena allora a godere della libertà vera e propria e, da parte albanese, a voler ricopiare, senza capirne bene il senso e coglierne l’opportunità, la complicata impalcatura del regime italiano di quel tempo e tentare di imporla al proprio paese, che usciva allora da un lungo periodo quasi feudale e ne aveva avuto abbastanza di vincoli e di imperativi dall’alto.Tale errore fornì poi all’opposizione, in Albania e nelle nuove provincie, argomenti facili e di forte propaganda, per creare antipatie che prima non c’erano, sia verso l’unione con l’Italia, sia verso l’occupazione delle nostre truppe; ma ciò che ha più nociuto al consolidamento dei rapporti tra i due stati fu la politica eccessivamente autoritaria del ministero albanese, che tentò purtroppo e ripetutamente di forzare la mano alle moderate e ragionevoli suggestioni che gli venivano da Roma.Quando si formò il governo Libahova, il male era già fatto e la moderazione giunse troppo tardi.Per il momento la questione albanese non è ferma e l’Albania è entrata — io non credo spontaneamente — nella confederazione jugoslava [il libro è dell’inizio 1947], che ci è così palesemente ostile, per contrasti che vanno dall’Isonzo, lungo tutto l’Adriatico, sino ai confini con la Grecia.——The annexation of Kosovo and Dibra were undeniably reasonable, because the population there is undoubtedly in its great majority Albanian and Muslim, and the natural outlet of those regions is into the Adriatic and the ports of Durrës and Vlora; and our servicemen, from 1939 and on during the war, had linked them to those ports with beautiful and smooth roads.When one speaks of the exploitation that Italian capitalists and big industrialists supposedly established in Albania and then in Kosovo and Dibra, one is using a word good for political pandering, and not a truthful and sensible argument.The big Italian road-building, agricultural reclamation, mining and petroleum companies, brought jobs, earnings and great well-being to people who had until then been poor and lived in very primitive conditions; they associated Italian capital with much Albanian capital as well, and a great multitude of specialized Albanian workers was being trained after our specialists’, our engineers’, our technicians’ expertise. More than a thousand Albanian students would attend our High Schools and Universities, which were educating a number of technicians who were already finding work, and not just as subordinates, but also in leadership positions in the fledgling Albanian industries. In Kosovo and Dibra, some of these students were already employed and their number would certainly have increased, adding specialized technicians in agriculture and mining, the woodworking industry and cattle breeding.A great part of the populace, in the old as well as new Albanian provinces, looked with friendship at Italy. Along with not a few opportunists, there were many more of those intelligent Albanians who saw in the personal union a guarantee for development and progress for their country, and who preferred uniting with such a big and advanced country such as Italy rather than with their neighbors to the North or to the South. Trade and personal relations with Puglie and Venice went back centuries. Never had Italy oppressed or threatened them, and one can’t say as much of the Slavs or the Greeks.A good path thus seemed to have been found by Albania and it seemed, eventually, that she had been able to unite into a block of Albanian populations and territories of respectable size, as was the Kingdom around mid-1943.Of course, Italy had displayed examples not only of good administration; but how dire could our shortcomings and, let’s say it honestly, our blunders be, if the Albanians compared them to the administrations and shortcomings of the governments that had preceded us, in old as well as in new Albania?As far as I’ve been able to see and hear in the two years I have spent in those wherabouts, personal union and then the enlargement of the State had got us an infinite number of grateful people, convinced that, by taking away bit by bit the blunders that were being made, Albania would become an important country by virtue of her geographic position as well as her remarkable wealth, which was being exploited honestly and usefully for them and for us.[…]There was, however, a grave error on our part, in not leaving a sufficient economic autonomy to a population that was only just beginning to enjoy freedom in the fullest sense and, on the Albanian side, in wanting to copycat, without understanding its deeper sense and best exploiting their predicament, the complicated scaffolding of the Italian régime of that time, and attempting to impose it on their country, which was only just leaving an almost feudal period and had had enough of limitations and imperatives from above.This error later supplied the opposition, in Albania and in the new provinces, with easy arguments and useful in terms of propaganda value, to sow divisions that did’t use to exist, both against union with Italy, and against occupation by our troops; but what has most harmed the strengthening of relations between the two States was the exceedingly authoritarian policy of the Albanian ministry, which unfortunately and repeatedly tried to force the hand of the moderate and reasonable suggestions coming from Rome.When the Libohova government was formed, the damage had been done, and moderation came too late.For the time being, the Albanian question is not yet over, and Albania has entered — I don’t believe spontaneously — the Yugoslav confederation [the book was completed in early 1947] that is so explicitly hostile to us, because of quarrels spanning from the Isonzo, along the whole of the Adriatic, up to the Greek border.Passport for the Savoy Kingdom of Albania.1 9 4 3 : the watershed year .1943 was a terrible year: in terms of players within Albania, four things changed, all during the late Summer. On July 25, a putsch within the Great Council of Fascism in Rome deposed Mussolini, who was later arrested: the war was going very badly, with the Allies not too far from Naples, and the King and his PM Gen. Badoglio, despite promising business as usual, were obviously looking for a quick way out of the war. An armistice was signed with the Allies on September 3, but Badoglio asked them to keep it secret, as he had no clear idea of what to do with the Germans or with his own soldiers: when the Allied radio finally broadcast the news, on the 8th, Badoglio and the King fled south to Allied territory (the latter leaving part of his family at the Germans’ mercy), the Germans invaded and took over within two days the whole Italian Metropolitan territory and then the Italian-occupied regions of Provence, Corsica, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece; 600 000 Italian servicemen were captured and taken to Germany as “Italian military internees”: Badoglio had broken the Pact of Steel but hadn’t declared war, so there were no PoWs to be taken — and the Geneva Convention need not apply.Italian troops at Sept. 8, 1943.What this all meant for Albania was:right after the July 25 putsch[7], the various Partisan movements realized that their enemy was going to become very weak, so, on 1–3 August, they all held the Mukje Conference, as an attempt to finally build an alliance once and for all;the British, having established a solid foothold in Southern Italy and knowing that Italy wanted out of the war, started sending SOE agents to Yugoslavia and Albania on top of dropping parachuted supplies;Italy leaves the scene as an active player, leaving behind stragglers and military refugees;Germany enters the scene in short time and with full force.Ballists, Communists and Monarchists sitting together at the Mukje Conference.The Mukje conference, organized with the help of British intermediaries (who wanted to copypaste the Yugoslav AVNOJ coalition), was a failure: an agreement on a coordinated resistance effort and on the future of ethnic Albanian borders was reached at first[8], with the constitution of a Committee of National Salvation, but there was dissent on the future of Kosovo; and, when the Yugoslav Communist leadership came to know of the result, it was denounced as “counterrevolutionary” by Montenegrin liaison Svetozar “Tempo” Vukmanović and immediately abjured in a Communist Party meeting and then at a conference, both in Labinot. This explicit dereliction of the National cause by the Communist Party and their LANÇ coalition forced the Balli Kombëtar, in the following months, to accept the idea of openly collaborating with the Germans.And it wasn’t an unexpected falling out, either: in recent months the Balli Kombëtar, aware of the Communists’ growing power, murky intentions and unproblematic morals, had been negotiating already in March with elements of the Royal Italian Army the (mysterious, and to this day controversial) Dalmazzo-Këlcyra Agreement for an anti-Communist collaboration. Mukje was the last attempt at finding a compromise that was proven to be impossible: the Communists would not stray from their Yugoslav puppetmasters’ policies, while the Balli could not forgo their foundational goals.Xhelal Staravecke shaking hands with Major Billy McLean at Shtylla, August 1943, during the first SOE mission to Albania. Behind them are Stilian and Stephan and, on the right, Major Peter Kemp.As for the official government of what passed, after the retreat of all Italian government aid and advisors (during the Summer and all before September 8), from an Italian-allied Kingdom to a German-allied Regency, four were the Heads of State, but only one for more than two months:Ibrahim Biçakçiu (September 14, 1943 - October 24, 1943) as Chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee;Mehdi Frashëri (October 24, 1943 – November 3, 1943), Biçakçiu’s successor in the same provisional role;Rexhep Mitrovica (November 4, 1943 – July 18, 1944) as Prime Minister;Fiqiri Dine (July 18, 1944 - August 29, 1944);again Ibrahim Biçakçiu (September 6, 1944 - October 26, 1944).Mehdi Frashëri was noted by the Germans for his “impeccable behavior”, but also for being in contact with the Allies all along: when the Germans offered to evacuate him by plane he refused, which the Germans took as a sign that he was awaiting a British landing; when the latter failed to materialize, he fled the Communists with his wife and the last German troops and was given a lift until Podgorica and then Vienna: he died in Rome in 1963. Biçakçiu, on the other hand, was the idealistic but not very politically savvy administrator who was in charge both of the transitional government after the Italian collapse and the final government before the LANÇ takeover: he bravely refused to abandon the country and in 1945 was condemned to imprisonment, which he underwent in the infamous Burrel Prison until 1962 — after which he was given a job as a public toilet cleaner in his hometown of Elbasan until his death in 1977.Left: Mehdi Frashëri; right: Ibrahim Biçakçiu. Their different fates were not too far from scenes seen elsewhere in Europe, where the few who chose to stay payed the tab for all who left.Perhaps more relevant than all these was Interior Minister Xhafer Deva, from Kosovo, who served under the tenure of fellow Kosovar Mitrovica, until Spring 1944. A later German report[9] singles him out among the “rather mediocre average”:The minister of the interior, Deva, had the requisite power and energy to be an effective instrument of German policies. In the awareness that any government without executive power was no government at all and that an iron fist was always needed to get things done in Albania, Deva created his own personal bodyguard of Kosovars and brought them down to Tirana. These savages from the mountains exercised quite a reign of terror upon the capital city, at least by European standards, but in the final analysis they probably got the situation under control. It was perhaps unadvisable, but it was understandable that the German Administration often complained about the excessive behaviour of this group of Kosovars in early 1944.Since the Albanians are in many ways very sensitive to political undercurrents, Deva’s adversaries soon gained the impression that he did not enjoy unconditional German support. In addition, as a northern Albanian, he was not that popular in Old Albania. The average Albanian, who sniffs at order and governance, felt ill at ease with his harsh ways. Thus, in the course of the spring and summer, all of Deva’s open and hidden adversaries rose in power. By mid-summer, the most useful piece had been wiped off the German chess board.Deva’s attempts in his homeland to create a national movement friendly to German interests were without practical effect, in particular in view of the coming end.Members of the Albanian Regency Council – From left to right: Fuat Dibra, Mihal Zallari, Mehdi Frashëri, Father Anton Harapi, Rexhep Mitrovica and Vehbi Frashëri — as hinted to by Dibra’s and PM Mitrovica’s surname, the kingless Albanian Regency (1943–44), the Germans, faced with very little support from “inner” Albania, started relying on the growing fears by Albanians from former Yugoslavia of having to return to that predicament, this time with the added burden of Communism; this is also the period when, disillusioned with the failure of the Mukje agreement, the Balli Kombëtar started contemplating collaboration with the Germans in its increasingly desperate struggle to defend “outer” Albanians from the Yugoslavs and “inner” Albanians from Communism.The same Umiltà, on visiting the Albanian borderlands, had observed three things: the abject poverty of the Albanian population there, the heightened ethnic strife, from both sides, and the general economic backwardness. As a way of example, his first impression on entering Prizren (May 29, 1941):La cittadina presentava un aspetto relativamente tranquillo, con molti negozi aperti e ancora abbastanza ben forniti di merci, non ostante il passaggio degli eserciti, prima il jugoslavo in fuga, poi tedesco e italiano che l’aveva attraversata e occupata da poche settimane. La sua popolazione era in festa per la recente liberazione e per il mio arrivo, dal quale si aspettava una prossima distribuzione di granoturco e sale, dei quali maggiormente difettava.Essa era composta di albanesi maomettani che ne costituivano la parte più misera e di un certo numero di slavi ortodossi — gli antichi padroni — che formavano la cosiddetta borghesia di funzionari e di commercianti di qualche importanza, insieme col numerosissimo clero ortodosso.[…]Nelle campagne, dopo le due riforme del 1915 e del 1925, per le quali la terra era stata data ai benemeriti della causa serba e jugoslava, era avvenuto che quegli slavi che erano dei veri agricoltori, coltivavano la loro terra; quelli invece che esercitavano altri mestieri, come: barbieri, calzolai, muratori, fabbri, ecc. e non sapevano o non volevano coltivare direttamente la terra ricevuta, l’avevano o affittata o fatta coltivare da salariati mussulmani e albanesi che, da proprietari grandi o piccoli, erano diventati o affittuari o mezzadri o braccianti.Così che sia nelle città che nelle campagne, l’elemento ortodosso costituiva la minoranza abbiente, istruita e dirigente, mentre i mussulmani erano ben più numerosi, ma analfabeti o quasi e, in generale, di una povertà e di una sporcizia indescrivibili. Ma la Jugoslavia non era riuscita a domarli e quando venne l’occupazione da parte delle nostre truppe, l’odio fra ignoranti e istruiti, tra ricchi e poveri, tra ex dominanti ed ex dominati era scoppiato in maniera impressionante. Gli albanesi avrebbero voluto sterminare gli slavi, e questi, che non intendevano perdere le posizioni di superiorità — che avevano più o meno giustamente acquistate durante il dominio serbo e jugoslavo e che non avevano ancora completamente consolidate — avrebbero voluto, alla loro volta, ricacciare gli albanesi nella situazione di servi o quasi.——The town appeared relatively calm, with many shops open and still quite well supplied with goods, despite the armies’ passage, first the Yugoslav one in flight, then the German and Italian ones that had crossed and occupied it a few weeks ago. Its population was celebrating the recent liberation and also my arrival, from which they expected a forthcoming distribution of maize and salt, which they were especially lacking.The populace was mostly made up of Muhammedan Albanians, who made up its most wretched part, and of a certain number of Orthodox Slavs — the old masters — who constituted the so-called bourgeoisie of civil servants and merchants of some importance, along with the very numerous Orthodox clergy.[…]In the countriside, after the two reforms of 1915 and 1925, after which the land had been distributed to those who had well deserved of the Serb and Yugoslav cause, it had happened that those Slavs who were true farmers, would work their land; but those who practiced other crafts, such as: barbers, shoemakers, masons, smiths etc. and didn’t know or didn’t wish to directly farm the land they’d received, had leased it out or had it worked by Muslim and Albanian hired workers who, having once been big or small owners, had now become tenants or sharecroppers or day laborers.Thus, both in the cities and in the countryside, the Orthodox element made up the wealthy, educated and ruling minority, whereas the Muslims were way more numerous, but illiterate or almost so, and, in general, living in indescribable poverty and dirt. But Yugoslavia hadn’t been able to tame them and when the occupation by our troops came, the hatred between ignorant and educated, between rich and poor, between former ruler and former ruled had burst to an imressive extent. The Albanians would have liked to exterminate the Slavs, and the latter, who didn’t want to lose their position of superiority — which they had justly or not acquired during the Serbian and Yugoslav rule, and hadn’t yet cemented — would have liked, in turn, to hound the Albanians back into their situation of slaves or almost so.The Italian troops left stranded in the country after the Armistice were hunted down by the Wehrmacht for deportation, and some were hidden by civilians (availing themselves of the tradition of mikpritja — “hospitality” — as well as their general friendship with Albanian civilians*), while 15 000 others went over to the Partisans; the latter formed the CITM (Comando Italiano Truppe alla Montagna, “Italian Headquarters Mountain-bound Troops”), resisted under General Arnaldo Azzi until broken by the Germans in November, and kept on fighting along the Partisans until repatriated by the British in August 1944, few months before the end of the war in Albania (late November).Some 2150 chose to keep on fighting in Partisan units until the end, even forming the entirely-Italian Antonio Gramsci Battalion (some 170-strong) within the Communist-led National Liberation Movement (Gramsci being a prewar Italian Communist whose family had come to Sardinia from Albania in the 18th Century: the surname is Albanian). The Italian brigade fought well in the Battle for Tirana (November 17, 1944), where it seems to have lost most of its numbers, to the point that its survivors were granted the honor of leading the victory parade.Which didn’t mean that some of these very partisans would not be arrested and tortured by the Communists in 1944–1948. As far as I know, though, most made it back home to Italy by 1948, and those who stayed in Albania did so of their own choice, and went through the same gauntlet as Albanian-born Albanians.(*a bizarre difference was that, while in “inner” Albania the occupying Italians had had very friendly relations with the civilian population, in mixed — formerly Yugoslav — areas they tended to side, despite orders from above, with the Slavs, for one very simple reason: single men in barracks want to make female acquaintances, and Slavic girls were less conservative than their Albanian neighbors, inviting their Italian boyfriends to their homes, where they were exposed to their families’ side of the story. This anecdote also comes from Umiltà’s memoirs).Even a few Wehrmacht deserters, mostly Caucasian from the Osttruppen (Armenians and Turkmen), but also a few Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen, Czechs, Poles, would with time bolster the ranks (and the armories) of the Partisan movements. As the LANÇ was mostly a Communist puppet organization, many ended up helping that side.The German occupation.What looks like an Albanian from Montenegro (?) speaking with a German soldier. The Germans were informed beforehand that they would encounter a lot of rifles, not necessarily interested in politics.A German booklet written in 1943 to help German troops familiarize with the country (quoted in the first pages of the divisional history of the 100th Jäger Division, July ‘43-March ‘44) said that Northern and Central Albanians had a generally good impression of Germans due to memories of the mostly correct behavior of the Austro-Hungarian troops in those regions during WWI: I have no way to confirm this, but I can imagine the average Albanian being very little interested in these late newcomers, especially as they mostly left the government in Tirana a pretty loose leash; but the ferocious policy of easily retaliating after even small-scale attacks didn’t win them many friends — most mentions I can find of the German occupation have to do with them burning houses (among which my family’s country mansion, which the Ballists had already torched once before).But the intervening military/political circumstances, as well as the Communists’ closemindedness at Mukje, turned out to play in the latter’s favor, as the Balli Kombëtar started openly siding with the Germans, from time to time (as the circumstances required), and the Communists consequently started winning more and more people (especially youths) over by selling themselves as those who “wouldn’t compromise with foreigners”, despite — we now know it, but it wasn’t known at the time — having been founded and still being ordered about by Miladin, Dušan and Svetozar, who passed on Tito’s orders.Let me mention here that, although politically uneducated, Albanian youths at the time were immensely nationalistic: the country had only been independent from the Ottomans for barely thirty years, the first decade of which had seen a slew of rebellions, three large scale wars, occupation by eight foreign nations (Serbs, Montenegrins, Greeks, Italians, Austro-Hungarians, Bulgarians, Frenchmen, one more I can’t remember) and a myriad of brigands of any nationality; patriotic literature — by the likes of Fishta and Noli, no less — had also finally become openly available, so… in short, youths were raised on bread and patriotism, and the former was rationed.As I said, it wasn’t known at the time just how zombiefied the Communist Party was toward the Yugoslavs, nor was “Communism” well defined in the Albanian political imagination: most people were neither well-versed nor much interested in political theory. Strange though it may sound, the Communists won because people mistook them for the most ultra-nationalistic of the bunch…A completely different situation and developments were those of the 21st Mountain Division of the Waffen SS “Skanderbeg”, mentioned in the question.Its story begins in Bosnia (united with Croatia in 1941-‘45 in the Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, “Independent Croatian State”), where the Waffen SS raised an indigenous division, as they were becoming more and more wont to do, in 1943: it was made up of local Muslims, the ethnicity who would be known in Yugoslavia as Bosniaks, except that the ruling Croatian Ustaše, who ruled the NDH at the time, considered and called them “Muslim Croats”.A very motivated, excellently performing unit[10], the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS “Handschar” (1st Croatian) (“handschar” or “handžar” meaning “scimitar”) was thus born. Among its members were a few Muslim Albanians from the old communities in Sandžak, a previously Serbian/Montenegrin territory that was at this time part of NDH.The usual labyrinth of ethnic labels so typical of Balkan history: the lad in the picture is a Muslim Bosniak, as is the old man next to him; the former is a member of the 13th Mountain Division of the Waffen SS “Handschar” (1st Croatian), which was made of Bosnians, yet bears the Croat checkerboard (“šahovnica”) on his sleeve because Bosniaks were thought by the Ustaše to be Islamified Croats — even though the Handschar had nothing to do with the Ustaše, as it was a German outfit, although recruited from NDH territory. A number of Muslim Albanians from Novi Pazar/Tregu i Ri had been part of the division, acquitting themselves very well in battle: most famously Sturmhauptmann Nazir Hodić, to the right in the picture below.Now, the Germans had come into Albania with relatively high expectations: Albanians, because of their history and mountainous homeland, were thought to be among the purest races in Europe (think of the Basques under the Limpieza de sangre, but with Slavs playing the Andalusian Muslims’ role), were known to be faithful and rugged warriors (another big plus) and were politically convenient, as they were the “little guy” whose friendship the Nazis should have easily been won by pitting them against the “top dogs” of yesteryear — all points I have already discussed in an old answer. They mostly recruited in Kosovo, less so in Northern Albania.There was a problem, though.Maybe the Albanians were worn by all the political wooing, the ongoing strife and uncertainty, or simply the natural exhaustion that comes with a war that started who knows where, is being fought over who knows what, will last who knows how much longer, and hasn’t really made life that much better (in fact, towns like Shkodra went through an economic boom of sorts, but conditions in Kosovo — where recruitment mostly took place — were as dismal in 1944 as they had been in 1941). This is hinted at by Division commander Brigadeführer August Schmidhuber in the summary report he wrote in October:Die Albaner hatten das Ende des Weltkrieges, den raschen Zusammenbruch Jugoslawiens sowie das schmähliche Zusammenbrechen Italiens erlebt. Sie erwarteten nun für Deutschland Ähnliches. Das auffallend rasche Herausziehen eigener rückwärtiger Teile, das Abwandern der OT, der Bergbaugesellschaft, allen deutschen weiblichen Personals usw. verstärkte bei den Albanern diese Meinung besonders deshalb, weil dieses Herausziehen einen recht fluchtartigen Eindruck machte.The Albanians remembered the end of the Great War; they experienced the swift collapse of Yugoslavia and the disgraceful implosion of Italy. They were expecting Germany to suffer the same fate. The noticeably swift withdrawal of some rearguard elements and the departure of the OT, of the mining company, and of all female German personnel etc. reinforced this perception among the Albanians because the retreat looked at times as if the Germans were fleeing.Maybe the Germans simply failed to interest quality candidates into lending their services to them somewhere far, maybe abroad, rather than looking after their own families and villages (Schmidhuber accused local prefects, mayors, as well as beys and aghas of sabotaging recruitment: “As to the call-ups, the deadlines for which were mostly not taken too seriously, only average and shabby men turned up. The muscle-bound farm boys stayed behind in their villages […] The prefects and mayors did nothing to force those called up to actually enlist. The great majority of the population interpreted this passive reaction of the prefects and mayors as an invitation to regard the formation of the Division as something unofficial and unimportant, and simply ignored it.”).Maybe brigands and thieves were the only people really interested in taking the newcomer’s money, at this point.Maybe, as Robert Elsie theorized, a good number of candidates were simply starving country boys who were looking for work, who had no idea what they were getting themselves into and would desert at the first chance.Maybe, as a very frustrated Schmidhuber would go on to write in his brief summary report on the Division in October 1944, five months after the recruitment drive and less than two months before the final German evacuation of Albania, the “invisible resistance of the [Kosovar] beys and aghas” (under whose “mediaeval feudal reign” Kosovar Albanians purportedly labored), as well as the lack of “self-definition as a nation” and an ingrained lack of discipline due to the fact that “The Albanians had never had any real regular troops in the German sense” made it all too optimistic to wish to build up a crack task force from the ground up over the course of a bit less of a single Summer:Die Albaner haben seit dem Tode ihres Freiheitshelden Skanderbeg (1468) sich nicht entwickelt, sondern vegetiert. Sie kennen heute noch kein ausgeprägtes Volks- und Staatsbewusstsein, sondern leben noch, wie einst die Germanen, im Sippen- und Stammesdenken. Das völkische Schicksal Albaniens nach dem Tode Skanderbegs lässt sich am besten einigermassen so vergleichen, als wenn Deutschland nach dem Cheruskenfürsten Hermann keinen anderen Führer mehr hervorgebracht hätte.Since the death of their national hero, Skanderbeg (1468), the Albanians have been vegetating rather than developing. They have no particular awareness of being a nation or country, but rather still live on, like the old Germanic tribes, in a clannish, tribal mindset. The history of the Albanian people since the death of Skanderbeg could be best compared to the state of Germany if the German nation had brought forth no leaders since the death of Arminius, chieftain of the Cherusci.— from the linked report.Maybe the British did successfully manage to arm and train local Montenegrin partisans specifically to neutralize the soon-to-be-formed Division (Schmidhuber again: “I suspect that the formation of the SS «Skanderbeg» Armed Mountain Division was the reason why the Anglo-Americans provided the partisans on the Albanian-Montenegrin border with more weapons, medical supplies and uniforms. This was evident in the first operation where the enemies were no longer bandits in the normal sense of the word, but regular disciplined and well-equipped troops with proper English uniforms, under a skilled and flexible command structure, and in superior numbers. One German machine gun was faced with about 30 English machine guns. […] It could easily be said that the troops and the bandits had exchanged roles in these fights.”). The same document also reports a rise in Communist and “defeatist” (ie. pro-Allied) propaganda after Romania, Bulgaria and Finland surrendered and switched sides, over this same Summer (“This reaction was seen primarily in a revival of the propaganda of the beys that was hostile to the Division. Their slogans this time were «Get away from the Germans in time!» and «No Albanians Fighting Albanians!»”).Maybe it was the fact that the best-performing part of the 6491-strong Albanian troop, the ethnic Albanian PoWs from the old Royal Yugoslav Army who had been freed only in May 1944 and even then on the condition that they would join up the Division, performed well as far as they had to, but were happy to desert at the first chance — as per the Pareto principle, once the best-performing portion of a group just up and leaves, the rest is as good as useless.Celebrations in a Kosovo village as the Albanian PoWs return home, May 1944.Whatever the explanation, the SS “Skanderbeg” Mountain Division, on which the Gemans had put so many hopes, turned out to be one of the most disappointing and short-lived Divisions within an organization that could count extraordinarily good units among its ranks. The “Skanderbeg” troopers, on the other hand, became renowned only for plundering, raping, deserting, stealing, and were dissolved before they could even see much real combat. There was talk in October 1944 of integrating the half of the Division that hadn’t deserted yet into local independent Albanian bands in Kosovo that were veering pro-Axis because of the expected Yugoslav/Bulgarian encroachment on the area — this would arguably make for a stronger and more professional defence of Central Kosovo by Albanian Nationalist forces against Tito even long after the Germans would have left — but the German evacuation was sped up and this never came to pass. Those recruits that hadn’t gone home of their own accord were sent home when the Division was finally disbanded, on November 1st, 1944.The two guys to the left are Handschar (one “Albanian battalion” from that Division was incorporated into the Skanderbeg), only the one to the right is from the Skanderbeg Division: the differences in uniform are the armband, the sleeve coat-of-arms, the right collar tab (depicting Skanderbeg’s helmet) and the peculiar hat (here not depicted, see below), an ugly gray variation on the Kosovar style of the qeleshe/plis traditional hat.As for the German Heer units, they fought what seems to have been low-intensity, mountain counterguerrilla mostly. In Tirana’s museum there is an MP40 submachinegune which seems to have belonged to Hermann Goering’s nephew, who fell in combat in Albania, but little else in the German occupation seems to have been particularly remarkable. The Germans eventually pulled out of the country in late Summer 1944, had a much tougher journey out of the rest of the Balkans, where they spent the rest of the war trying to keep a corridor open through Yugoslavia — which, if possible, was becoming even more of a “Wild West” than had been the case since 1941 — to get everybody out.As for the three Resistance movements, their fortunes followed their alliances:Legaliteti were initially seen by the British as the Albanian parallel to Draža Mihailović’s Serbian Chetniks, ie. the Monarchist status quo antea guys by definition. They consequently were seen as the primary partisan interlocutor and recipient of British aid until Tito rose to prominence in Yugoslavia, putting all other partisan movements under his shadow: whether because of ignorance, laziness or philo-Communism (don’t dismiss the last option: you still have a compelling thing to read below), they acted as if Albania were a carbon copy of Yugoslavia. Or maybe they simply bet with extraordinary shortsightedness on the strongest horse, who knows;As Legaliteti’s supplies started drying out, and as the other two main movements cornered the Partisan market, they entered the Communist-led National Anti-Fascist Liberation Movement (LANÇ): Abaz Kupi signed the Mukje Agreement on the LANÇ side;As the war in Albania neared its end, most Anti-Communist leaders fled to the mountains (waiting for Anglo-American reinforcements) or fled by boat to Italy to coordinate said reinforcements: Kupi took the latter path, along with his son Petrit. He collaborated with the CIA in an abortive attempt to infiltrate Albania, joined the “Free Albania” National Committee (along such men as Balli’s Mit’hat Frashëri) and continued his anti-communist activities until he died in New York City in January 1976. Those members of Legaliteti who had taken the path of the mountains kept on fighting until the mid-50s;the Balli Kombëtar were by now (early 1944) lowering their hopes to a mere defense of Albanian-inhabited territories from Yugoslavs and Albanian Communists, in hopes of managing to cripple either or both, or (more realistically) of Germany eventually gaining the upper hand and indirectly relieving a bit of pressure in the Balkans. As neither happened, they were faced with the same choice as Legaliteti: either the mountains or the boat. They split and scattered consequently;Balli Kombëtar forces enter Prizren, Kosovo, in 1944.Balli Kombëtar forces in Dibra, formerly (and again after the war) Macedonia.the Communists, as I explained above, kept on growing, as more and more youths joined them believing themselves to be finally ridding Albania of foreign interests once and for all, and perhaps curious about these tales of a “new world” that was to be rebuilt;The (increasing) Anglo-American supplies were also welcome, despite the Communists making big shows of not appreciating the Imperialists’ handouts either: one time, indignant over receiving an assortment of bedpans among the field hospital equipment parachuted by the British, they thought of nicknaming them after PM Churchill: “Pass me the çërçill” soon became Communist jargon. The Yugoslavs also started passing them some of their surplus weaponry, but that captured from Italians and Germans was not lacking, either;they even had the support of some of that weird, weird clergy that can only exist in Albania: people like Baba Faja Martaneshi, Bektashi baba and a likable “scoundrel,” who “delighted in singing partisan songs in his deep bass voice, especially after consuming large quantities of raki” (from David Smiley’s memoirs, an SOE agent whose experience is well worth a read). Martaneshi spent the war fighting and arguing for how religion and Communism are in no way incompatible — only to advocate for less religion within religious matters after the war.A Communist trench on the outskirts of Tirana during the fighting for the Capital, November 17, 1944.Politics (and the half century of horror that was to come) aside, for many youths who had bought into the Communist fraud, 1944 was a time of exhilaration like never before — or after. There is something about this photo in particular that expresses very well the dazzling beauty of what was, in fact, nothing but an empty lie.This lean, healthy young fella is prewar Enver, a bon vivant dropout in France (living large with Zogu’s scholarship money) and later a penniless French teacher at the Korça Gymnasium, where his pupils would often correct his bad French:And this is Enver at the end of the war, in 1944 — obese and suffering from diabetes at 36 years of age; the problem any guerrilla knows all too well is, you really, really get fat by fighting:Needless to say, most Albanians (most Europeans, in fact) looked like the first guy to the left, not like heroic Communist leaders.Comrade Enver would shed those extra kilos through the healthier living made possible by peacetime, but photos like this make some skeptics believe that the postwar Communist propaganda depicting the Ballists as “stealing chicken from hungry peasants” contained a bit of projection, and that it may in fact have been the People’s Army leadership who ate their way into scorched earth. Enver and his pal Koçi Xoxe sure do look like a good paring:Koçi Xoxe (pron. KO-chi DZOH-dzeh), Enver’s erstwhile right-hand man, was executed for pro-Yugoslav sympathies in 1949, that’s why you don’t hear often about him. Nako Spiro was another (healthier) important personality in the Communist Party — he was suicided in 1947, either because he wasn’t a good enough eater, or because he was against Xoxe’s proposal of tighter economic integration with Yugoslavia, with the ultimate goal of entering it as another Federated Republic:Don’t be afraid for Enver’s health, though: unlike the Kim dynasty, he quickly shed those fatty rolls and started resembling a normal Albanian of his day again; which must have done him great good, if he survived even as his closest friends and collaborators kept dropping like flies for the next forty years (one of the last was Mehmet Shehu, who was said to be a decent Communist, if the oxymoron is possible) until 1985, when his time came to kick the bucket:Why am I insisting so much on Enver’s lifestyle? Well, there are some unenthusiastic wretches who doubt his fundamental role in leading Albanians to freedom; they dare slander the Liberators by proposing that Enver and Koçi spent most of the war in their hideouts in Tirana or in Peza (which is next door), playing cards with Miladin and Dušan, passing on orders from Tito’s HQ, and leaving heroics to more naïve comrades. Heaven knows the truth, but something very ominous also happened the very moment the war (in Albania) ended.Communism was still de jure outlawed and the armed kids strolling down the streets were mere “Antifascists” — many of them too young to know the subtleties of their own political position beyond a generic “we want the foreigners out!” Priests, entrepreneurs, respected men, noblemen, merchants suddenly started disappearing — Catholic priests in Shkodra were among the first to be targeted, because that town was known to be very cold toward Communism (plus, trade with trade-deprived Kosovo and Serbia had made the city’s experience of war relatively less bad). Then some Partisan leaders also started disappearing. On December 25, 1944, as the Germans were still trying their hand against the Americans in the Ardennes, a Special Court was set up to unmask and punish without mercy the counterrevolutionaries hiding within an unsuspecting, celebrating capital.As Robert Elsie briefly summarized it:In late January 1945, the new communist rulers of Albania began a campaign to prepare and sensitize public opinion in the country for the Special Court for War Criminals and Enemies of the People. The daily newspaper Bashkimi [official organ of the LANÇ “nonpolitical” Anti-Fascist coalition] decried the leaders of Balli Kombëtar and Legality as traitors, noting on 2 February: “All without any exception will give accounts before the Albanian people and before Albania. Today or tomorrow the sword of Albanian justice will fall on their necks…” The Special Court, set up on 25 December 1944 by order of the Anti-Fascist National Liberation Council, opened its doors at the Kosovo Cinema, the building later to house the National Theatre, on 1 March 1945. On trial were sixty men.Foto të panjohura nga gjyqi famëkeq i 1945 — Koçi Xoxe reads the sentences.I think I may be related to this man, through my great-grandmother. Beqir Çela, execution by firing squad.One of these men looks like he may be my great-uncle Ramazan Marku, whose story I’ve told elsewhere: on the right, second rank, in the middle (the slightly balding man).He was sentenced to death by firing squad, later commuted into hanging. When he heard the sentence, the hired public started crying out: “Hang him! Hang him!”, to which he turned and answered: “Tomorrow I’ll hang, but the lot of you will hang every day for the rest of your lives”.Few people know that the very first Western intelligence operation of the Cold War was the Albanian Subversion: Monarchists, Nationalists, Fascists, Irredentists, the cream of the (surviving) Albanian youth were to be parachuted in at night, with orders to meet up with those ready to keep on fighting in order to free their country, and organize the resistance.But the British and American secret services, in that crucial first half decade after the war, were riddled with moles and double agents — most famous of all (and directly responsible for the Albanian catastrophe), Kim Philby, one of the Cambridge Five: the top British prewar public schools seem to have been fertile breeding ground for illiberal utopianism, and now that National Socialism and Fascism had become unpalatable, Communism was the only cause worth betraying for left on the table.As a consequence, every single parachute drop was forewarned, and found the Communist secret police waiting. The best blood Albania had to offer soiled the floor of torture chambers and execution chambers or yards. Not one of those heroes saw the light of day again.But that is a story — a terrible one — for another time.In 1948 Tito broke relations with the Soviet Union, which brought Albania’s integration into Yugoslavia into a frozen halt: Enver was a staunch Stalinist all his life. Schools stopped teaching Serbo-Croat as a second language, mixed Albanian-Yugoslav couples were in many cases split, never to see each other again for the next half century, the Albanian Lek had been depreciated to the level of the (less strong, at that time) Yugoslav Dinar for no gain. Tito meddling in Albanian wartime politics had brought him no gain, but would inflict great misery upon his southern neighbor. Nako Spiro had died for nothing, Koçi Xoxe had killed for nothing. Enver had expressly asked for Albania to be included in the Soviet sphere of influence — Albania had been listed among the Western countries at Yalta, alongside Greece, where Stalin let the local Communists be slaughtered to a man — for no gain, either: the USSR became an “ideological brother” until 1961, after which date they became Reactionaries, traitors, saboteurs of the Communist project. Or, if we are to go by the golden tongue of the very top of our glorious Party leadership: sons of bitches, faggots, motherfuckers, filthy curs.It was to be the first of three Winters of great solitude.Footnotes[1] Invasion of Albania • Axis History Forum[2] Albania 1939-1945 • Axis History Forum[3] ALBANIA - FASCIST MILITIA[4] ALBANIAN KINGDOM (Greater Albania) (1939-1944)[5] Tocci, Terenzio nell'Enciclopedia Treccani[6] Origjina e popullit shqiptar, sipas Mustafa Krujës[7] Historia ndryshe -[8] Historia ndryshe -[9] Final Report of the German Wehrmacht in Albania[10] Axis Re-enactment forum