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Albania
WORLD WAR II AND THE RISE OF COMMUNISM, 1941-44
Between 1941 and 1944, communist partisans and nationalist guerrillas
fought Italian and German occupation forces, and more often each
other, in a brutal struggle to take control of Albania. Backed
by Yugoslavia's communists and armed with British and United States
weaponry, Albania's partisans defeated the nationalists in a civil
war fought between Italy's capitulation in September 1943 and
the withdrawal of German forces from Albania in late 1944. Military
victory, and not the lure of Marxism, brought the Albanian communists
from behind the coulisses to center stage in Albania's political
drama. While Albanian writers never tired of pointing out that
the communists "liberated" Albania without a single Soviet soldier
setting foot on its territory, they often neglected to mention
that the communist forces in Albania were organized by the Yugoslavs
and armed by the West or that the Axis retreat from Albania was
in response to military defeats outside the country.
Data as of April 1992
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