Italy invades Albania

At dawn on 7 April 1939, Good Friday, Italian warships appeared off the Albanian ports of Durrës, Vlorë, Shëngjin and Sarandë. The troops of General Alfredo Guzzoni began to go ashore. Albania, a member of the League of Nations and formally Italy’s ally, had no chance of defending itself. Resistance came only from handfuls of gendarmes, sailors and volunteers, and by early afternoon all the ports were in Italian hands. King Zog I, whose son and heir had been born two days earlier, fled to Greece with his family that same day. On 8 April the Italians entered Tirana, and on 12 April an assembly convened under their supervision proclaimed a personal union with Italy and offered the Albanian crown to King Victor Emmanuel III. After Austria and Czechoslovakia, a third independent state had vanished from the map of Europe in little more than a year – this time at Mussolini’s hands.

The ultimatum and the last days of peace

The invasion brought to an end a crisis that had lasted two weeks. On 25 March Rome sent Tirana a draft treaty that would in practice have made Albania an Italian protectorate. Zog played for time, and on 1 April he received a second draft, milder in form, but he did not accept that one in full either. Benito Mussolini had already decided on a solution by force. The Spanish Civil War had just come to an end, and Germany, informed on 4 April of a “sudden deterioration” in relations with Tirana, assured Rome of its full understanding. The British, busy at that moment with their guarantee to Poland, had no intention of dying for Albania. The Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, who prepared the entire operation, even planned for a group of Fascist squadristi under Ettore Muti to stir up riots in Tirana that would provide a pretext for intervention. The plan was dropped because the capital was by then closely guarded.

The pretext therefore became the evacuation of Italian nationals. On orders from Rome, Italian civilians gathered in Durrës and Vlorë, from where Italian ships took them off on 5 and 6 April. Italian propaganda claimed that their lives were threatened by gangs sent by the king. In Albania the departure of the Italians caused panic. On 5 April the heir to the throne, Leka, was born, and at the sound of the artillery salutes announcing it, alarmed residents of Tirana poured into the streets. The news of the birth calmed them, but there was an anti-Italian demonstration that same day. On that day Zog appealed for help to the Western powers, and the following day to the states of the Balkan Entente, to no avail. In a handwritten telegram Mussolini set him a deadline: the ultimatum would expire at noon on 6 April.

On 6 April there were demonstrations in the largest towns. In the afternoon some hundred Italian aircraft flew over Tirana, Durrës and Vlorë, dropping leaflets urging the population not to resist. In Tirana a crowd demanded weapons and shouted that the country had been sold. Some officers and politicians left the country, among them the Interior Minister, Musa Juka (PL). The king, with parliament gathered in emergency session, refused to accept the terms and announced that the country would defend itself, while at the same time asking Rome for further negotiations. At around 4 p.m. Mussolini ordered the fleet to sail from Apulia, and in the evening he confirmed the order to attack, stipulating that the air force was to spare the towns and the civilian population. Late in the evening an Albanian proposal arrived to negotiate with General Alberto Pariani. Rome replied that the Albanians could send envoys to Guzzoni.

The Good Friday landings

The operation bore the code name O.M.T. (Oltremare Tirana). The Italians assembled about 22,000 men for the first wave, supported by several hundred aircraft and more than a hundred L3 tankettes; further divisions stood in reserve and in the follow-up waves. The core of the landing force consisted of Bersaglieri, Grenadiers and the marines of the San Marco Battalion. The Regia Marina fleet, commanded by Admiral Arturo Riccardi, provided two battleships, cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and transports. The ships were divided into four groups, each of which landed a “column” at one of the ports: at Shëngjin (Italian: San Giovanni di Medua) with Shkodër as its objective, at Durrës aiming for Tirana, at Vlorë aiming for Fier, and at Sarandë (Italian: Santi Quaranta) aiming for Gjirokastër.

The Albanian army numbered, by various reckonings, anywhere from a few thousand to well over ten thousand poorly armed soldiers. They were trained by Italian instructors, who in recent months had done more to sap the army’s will to fight than to prepare it. The king’s plan reportedly envisaged a defence in the mountains and the abandonment of the coast without a fight, but in practice no one was in command of the defence as a whole. Resistance came mainly from the gendarmerie and small groups of volunteers.

The heaviest fighting took place at Durrës, the country’s main port, where the column of General Giovanni Messe landed. The operation began at around 4.30 a.m. Instead of the planned garrison with artillery, there were fewer than five hundred men on the spot – gendarmes and volunteers – with small arms, a few machine guns and a coastal battery. They were commanded by Major Abaz Kupi, the commandant of the gendarmerie in Durrës. The Albanians fired on soldiers crowded on the quays, where the landing was proceeding in confusion: the units that were to land first had sailed on the slowest ship, a transport had taken the berth at the mole meant for the vessel carrying the tanks, and some ships drew too much water to approach the shore. Particularly remembered is Sergeant Mujo Ulqinaku of the Albanian navy, commander of a patrol boat, who for several hours fired on the landing troops with a machine gun until he was killed by a shell from an Italian warship. Only the fire of the ships’ guns and the tankettes, finally unloaded, broke the resistance. Durrës was taken before noon.

In the other ports there was little fighting. At Vlorë the Italians lost a few motorcyclists in an ambush outside the town, at Shëngjin there was a brief skirmish with a few dozen Albanians, and Sarandë was taken without serious resistance. By around 1.30 p.m. all the ports were in Italian hands. Ciano, who flew over Durrës and Tirana that morning, was enraptured by the view: a sea like a mirror, a green plain, snow-capped mountains, warships in the roadstead.

The king’s flight

Zog did not organise the defence of the mountains that some of his supporters had counted on. Queen Geraldine and her two-day-old son left Tirana for the Greek border even before the landings began. The king stayed a few hours longer: he broadcast an address on the radio calling for a fight to the end, which few Albanians heard because hardly anyone owned a receiver, and sent envoys to Guzzoni. During the day he set off after his wife and crossed the Greek border. He and his family took with them a substantial part of the gold reserves of the National Bank of Albania, which later did great harm to his reputation. When news of the flight spread in Tirana, a crowd opened the prisons and looted the royal palace.

The reception of the king’s envoys, incidentally, had an unwelcome consequence for the Italians. Guzzoni halted the march inland for several hours, infuriating Mussolini, who needed the capital taken quickly in order to play his political game. The delay was also caused by shortcomings in supply and communications: barrels of diesel oil had been sent to Durrës instead of petrol, and wireless operators called up from the reserve did not know how to work their equipment. The French press wrote that the Albanians had held up the Italians.

Tirana and the rest of the country

On the morning of 8 April a motorised column reached Tirana and entered the city without a fight. The soldiers of the Albanian garrison had earlier laid down their arms in the garden of the Italian legation, where the minister, Francesco Jacomoni, had held out through the night. Before noon Ciano landed at the airfield. He received delegations of Albanian notables, assured them that Italy would respect Albania’s independence, ordered the release of the Zog regime’s political prisoners and had money handed out to the poor. Over the following days Italian columns occupied Shkodër, Elbasan, Fier and Gjirokastër. Resistance was scattered and short-lived. The news of the king’s flight put an end to any thought of a defence in the mountains, and the soldiers returned to their barracks.

The losses on both sides are disputed. According to Italian reports, 25 Italians were killed and 97 wounded at Durrës; Jacomoni gave even lower figures. Residents of the town spoke of as many as several hundred Italian dead. Albanian losses are usually estimated at about 160 killed and several hundred wounded. All these figures are uncertain.

Personal union

Mussolini had prepared a plan for a regency, but on 9 April Ciano persuaded him to adopt a different solution: to form a provisional government, convene a constituent assembly and have it offer the crown to the King of Italy. The provisional administrative committee was headed by a former prime minister, Xhafer Ypi, who announced on the radio on 10 April that only Mussolini’s intervention had saved Albania from disaster.

On 12 April an assembly met in Tirana, made up largely of men sympathetic to Italy or in its pay. Ciano noted that before the vote many Albanian notables opposed the personal union, understanding that it meant the end of independence, and that the most recalcitrant, men from Shkodër, changed their minds on receiving packets of Albanian francs. The assembly unanimously proclaimed Zog’s deposition and a personal union with Italy, and offered the crown to Victor Emmanuel III. The new prime minister was the country’s largest landowner, Shefqet Verlaçi, once nearly Zog’s father-in-law and now his sworn enemy. Ciano spoke from the balcony of the legation and saw tears running down the faces of some Albanian patriots. “Independent Albania no longer exists,” he wrote that day.

On 13 April the resolution was approved by the Grand Council of Fascism, and on 16 April, at the Quirinal Palace, Victor Emmanuel III accepted the Albanian crown from a delegation led by Verlaçi. This was the same king who a few weeks earlier had advised against the whole venture as a risk taken for “four rocks”. To his titles of King of Italy and Emperor of Ethiopia he now added that of King of Albania. Albania left the League of Nations, and its complaint, sent by Zog’s representative in Paris, was ruled invalid by the League’s Secretary-General because it did not come from a recognised government. On 23 April Jacomoni became the king’s lieutenant-general – in effect a viceroy – and the Italians founded the Albanian Fascist Party. In June the Albanian Foreign Ministry was abolished and the Albanian army was placed under Italian command. A customs union put the country’s economy into the hands of Italian firms, and its oil went to the state-owned AGIP company.

A campaign that cost little and revealed much

Italian propaganda presented the conquest of Albania as a masterpiece of organisation and speed. In reality it was a display of improvisation. The commands learned of the operation a few days beforehand; soldiers were assigned to motorcycle units though they could not ride, and to signals though they did not know Morse code. Marshal Pietro Badoglio set out for Mussolini in writing the mistakes made in loading and unloading the ships. Ciano noted in his diary that the number of divisions was growing only on paper, the depots were empty, the artillery was obsolete, and the military “bluff” had deceived the Duce himself. His aide Filippo Anfuso is said to have remarked that if the Albanians had had a well-armed fire brigade, they would have driven the Italians into the Adriatic.

Significance

The invasion of Albania was Italy’s answer to Hitler’s occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Mussolini wanted to show the Italians that the alliance with Germany brought benefits to them too, and to show Europe that Italy was not merely Berlin’s junior partner. He gained complete dominance in the Adriatic: both sides of the Strait of Otranto were now in Italian hands, and Yugoslavia and Greece had the Italians on their borders. Diplomatically, however, the effect was the opposite of what he intended. In London and Paris the invasion convinced the last advocates of appeasing Mussolini that he could not be trusted. On 13 April Chamberlain and Daladier announced guarantees for Greece and Romania; in May Britain concluded a declaration of mutual assistance with Turkey; and on 14 April President Roosevelt mentioned Albania in his appeal to Hitler and Mussolini. The League of Nations did not even take up the matter. Rome drew closer to Berlin, and on 22 May Ciano and Ribbentrop signed the Pact of Steel.

For Albania five years of occupation began. On 10 June 1940 the country, as part of the Italian empire, found itself at war with Britain and France, and on 28 October 1940 the Italians attacked Greece from its territory, beginning the Greco-Italian War. The Greeks drove them back and occupied part of southern Albania. After Yugoslavia’s defeat in 1941 the Italians attached Kosovo and part of Macedonia to Albania, fulfilling for a while the Albanian nationalists’ dream of a “Greater Albania”. In September 1943, after Italy’s capitulation, the Germans occupied the country, and in November 1944 power was seized by the communist partisans of Enver Hoxha, who never let the king return to Albania. The personal union, so carefully dressed in legal forms, lasted four years.