How a tiny Balkan nation became a battleground for competing fascist and communist ideologies.
In 1939, Italy invaded Albania, sparking a complex conflict that evolved from an occupation into a brutal civil war. As Italian influence crumbled, Albanian resistance groups—ranging from communists to nationalists—fought both the occupiers and each other, ultimately shaping the country’s trajectory for the next four decades under Enver Hoxha.
World War II in Albania began on April 7, 1939, when Mussolini’s forces invaded the country. King Zog fled to Greece, and the Albanian parliament subsequently voted to unite the nation with Italy under King Victor Emmanuel III. Initially, the Italian occupation brought infrastructure investment and attempts to win public favor, but the reality of fascist control and the eventual German occupation in 1943 turned the population against the Axis powers. Resistance emerged from two primary, competing factions: the communist-led National Liberation Movement (NLM) and the nationalist Balli Kombëtar.
The ideological divide between these groups proved as significant as their fight against the occupiers. The NLM, led by Enver Hoxha, sought a communist future and eventually aligned with Yugoslav forces. Conversely, the Balli Kombëtar, a Western-oriented and anti-communist movement, advocated for a Greater Albania that included Kosovo. Although the two groups signed the Mukje Agreement in August 1943 to coordinate operations, the alliance collapsed almost immediately over the postwar status of Kosovo. The communists viewed the nationalists as collaborators with the Axis, while the nationalists branded the partisans as puppets of Yugoslavia.
By 1944, the conflict had escalated into a full-scale civil war alongside the struggle against German forces. The NLM’s National Liberation Army, which grew to 70,000 regulars by October 1944, systematically defeated nationalist forces and pushed out the German military. Tirana was liberated on November 17, 1944, and the entire country was cleared of German troops by November 29. Enver Hoxha, who had been appointed general secretary of the Albanian Communist Party in 1941, emerged as the dominant political figure. Following the war, he established a provisional government, cementing a communist regime that would maintain power in Albania until 1985.
Source: World War II in Albania
