War

For thirty years the new country was mostly fought over rather than governed. The Balkan Wars and the long siege of Shkodër ran straight into the First World War, when Austro-Hungarian, Italian, French and Serbian armies all held parts of Albania and the Austro-Hungarian war press office photographed its occupation in remarkable detail. Italy invaded on 7 April 1939, Greece and Italy fought across the southern mountains in 1940–41, German forces took over in 1943, and the partisan war ended with the liberation of Tirana on 17 November 1944. Much of the surviving photography of Albania from these decades was made by the armies occupying it.

Part of Albania

132 moments in this segment.

1. 1912 - On the road to Durrës, November 1912. An Albanian drives a small flock past a Serbian soldier on the road to Durrës in November 1912, the month Albania declared independence at Vlorë. Serbian and Montenegrin forces were then occupying much of the north.
2. 1912 - Albanian refugees on the road to Turkey. Albanians driven from their homes during the Balkan Wars, travelling east towards Ottoman territory. The muhaxhirë displacements of 1912 and 1913 emptied whole districts.
3. 1912 - Albanian refugees at Salonica. Albanians who fled the advancing Serbian army, photographed at Salonica in 1912 on their way to Turkey. Many never came back.
4. 1912 - Ottoman positions on Tarabosh. Ottoman fortifications on the Tarabosh heights guarding Shkoder during the siege of 1912-1913. The garrison held out for months while the Balkan League carved up the empire's European provinces.
5. 1913 - The storming of Korçë, drawn in 1913. A Greek lithograph of 1913 shows the army entering Korçë in December 1912. The town stayed under Greek administration through the Balkan Wars and was contested again in the years that followed.
6. 1913 - Refugee women from Gjakova at Shkoder, 1913. Muslim Albanian women of the Krasniqi from the country around Gjakova, photographed as refugees in Shkoder in 1913. The Balkan Wars pushed tens of thousands of Albanians out of the newly partitioned northern districts.
7. 1913 - Montenegrin flag over the fortress of Shkoder. The Montenegrin flag flies over Rozafa after Shkoder surrendered in April 1913 at the end of a six-month siege. Great Power pressure forced Montenegro to hand the city to the new Albanian state weeks later.
8. 1913 - Montenegrin troops leave Shkoder. Montenegrin forces withdraw from Shkoder in 1913 after the Great Powers refused to let them keep the city. Their departure secured Shkoder for Albania at the moment the state's borders were being fixed.
9. 1914 - Armed Epirote band at Korce, 1914. Irregulars of the so-called Sacred Band photographed at Korce during the short-lived Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus. The southern districts were contested for months after Albania's borders were drawn in 1913.
10. 1914 - Albanian forces in the south. Irregular Albanian troops in southern Albania, photographed in the Dutch Military Mission material. The south was in open fighting through 1914 as Greek-backed forces contested the new border.
11. 1915 - Albanian irregulars under Italian command. A group of armed Albanian irregulars photographed during the First World War, when Italian, Austro-Hungarian, French and Serbian forces all operated on Albanian soil. Their own aim, the caption records, was freedom for Albania.
12. 1915 - Vlore, 1915. Vlore photographed in 1915 by the Italian navy's special office. Italy had landed at Vlore in 1914 and held the bay for much of the war.
13. 1915 - Narrow-gauge train on the Vlore line, 1915. A Decauville light railway train at Vlore in 1915, laid by the Italian army to move supplies inland. These military tracks were the first railways ever built on Albanian ground.
14. 1915 - Italian warships in the bay of Vlore. Italian naval vessels lying in the bay of Vlore in 1915. Control of the bay and of Sazan island was the strategic prize that drew Italy into Albania in the first place.
15. 1916-03-14 - Outside the Austro-Hungarian consulate at Shkoder. A man photographed outside the Austro-Hungarian consulate general at Shkoder on 14 March 1916. The Commons file notes his dress may in fact be Montenegrin rather than Albanian.
16. 1916-03-14 - Albanian youths marching with flags at Shkoder. Young Albanians march out with flags at Shkoder on 14 March 1916, photographed by the Austro-Hungarian war press office.
17. 1916-04-26 - Hauling cableway parts across the marshes, 1916. Austro-Hungarian railway troops carry cableway components over a floating brushwood causeway through marshland in April 1916. The 44-kilometre aerial ropeway from Lezhe to Vore was built to move supplies where no road could be kept open.
18. 1916-04-26 - Hauling cableway parts across the marsh near Lezhë. Austro-Hungarian railway troops carrying the heaviest parts of the Lezhë to Vorë cableway over a floating causeway of cut brushwood, in April 1916. The forty-four kilometre line crossed swamp that no road could take.
19. 1916 - Italian troops in Gjirokaster. Italian forces in Gjirokaster during the First World War, published in the French illustrated paper Le Miroir in 1916. Southern Albania changed hands repeatedly between 1914 and 1918.
20. 1916 - Serbian troops waiting to embark on the Albanian coast. Serbian soldiers wait to board ship on the Albanian coast in 1916. The retreat of the Serbian army across the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic in the winter of 1915-16 cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides of the road.
21. 1916 - Durres in 1916. A panoramic view of Durres in 1916, when the port was fought over by Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces. It was Albania's main gateway to the Adriatic and briefly its capital in 1914.
22. 1916 - Artillery of Essad Pasha Toptani. Guns belonging to Essad Pasha Toptani, the landowner and politician who ran a rival government at Durres during the First World War. His shifting alliances made him one of the most contested figures of the period.
23. 1916 - Austro-Hungarian troops in Shkoder, 1916. Newly arrived Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching through a street in Shkoder in 1916. Austria-Hungary held northern and central Albania for the next two years.
24. 1916 - Austro-Hungarian troops enter Durres, 1916. A wartime illustration of the Austro-Hungarian battalion that entered Durres on 27 February 1916, driving out the last Italian troops. The port then served as an occupation base until 1918.
25. 1916 - Austro-Hungarian squadron shells Shengjin. An Austro-Hungarian naval squadron destroying Italian transports in the harbour of Shengjin, then known as San Giovanni di Medua, in 1916. The port was the main supply point for the retreating Serbian army.
26. 1916 - Changing of the guard in Tirana, 1916. The changing of the guard in Tirana in January 1916, Austro-Hungarian soldiers on one side and Albanians on the other. Tirana was still a market town of a few thousand people.
27. 1916 - Austro-Hungarian soldiers with the Albanian Legion. Austro-Hungarian soldiers posing with troops of the Albanian Legion, some of the Albanians wearing Austrian decorations. The Legion was raised locally in 1916 and used as an auxiliary force in the occupied zone.
28. 1916 - On the cableway west of Mamurras. A cable car crossing the marshes west of Mamurras on the Austro-Hungarian aerial ropeway. The line was one of the largest engineering works carried out in Albania during the First World War.
29. 1916 - Austro-Hungarian troops enter the burning Durrës. An illustration of Austro-Hungarian troops entering Durrës at dawn on 27 February 1916. The capture completed the Central Powers' occupation of central Albania during the First World War.
30. 1916 - Albanian troops enter Kavajë, February 1916. Albanian forces under Austro-Hungarian officers occupy Kavajë on 17 February 1916. Vienna raised Albanian units during its occupation and, unlike its neighbours, encouraged Albanian schooling and orthography.
31. 1916 - Mountain road used by Allied columns in Albania. A gorge crossing on a supply route used by Italian, French and Albanian troops during the First World War. Albania was fought over by several armies while its own state barely existed.
32. 1916 - Albanian troops on the march to Gjirokastër. Albanian soldiers under Italian command moving up the road from Sarandë during the First World War. Local levies were recruited by every occupying power in turn.
33. 1916 - Panorama of Korçë in 1916. Korçë seen across its rooftops in 1916, when the town was briefly an autonomous republic under French protection. The image comes from a damaged glass plate by the Manakis brothers.
34. 1916 - Gun emplacements on Bardanjolt. Artillery positions on the Bardanjolt heights above Shkodër, photographed by the Austro-Hungarian war press office. The hills changed hands between Montenegrin and Austro-Hungarian forces in 1915 and 1916.
35. 1916 - Rifle cover on the Bardanjolt heights. Camouflaged rifle positions cut into the ridge north-east of Shkodër. Austro-Hungarian engineers fortified these slopes after taking the town in January 1916.
36. 1916 - Gun position with concrete bedding, Bardanjolt. A concrete-bedded artillery position on Bardanjolt above Shkodër. Permanent works like this show how long the front around the town was expected to hold.
37. 1916 - Montenegrin battery on the Bardanjolt saddle. A captured Montenegrin gun position on the saddle of the Bardanjolt ridge above Shkodër. Montenegro held the town from 1915 until the Austro-Hungarian advance of January 1916.
38. 1916 - The Bardanjolt heights seen from Shkodër castle. The contested ridge photographed from the walls of Rozafa castle at Shkodër. The castle commanded the confluence of the Drin and Bojana rivers and every army in the region used it.
39. 1916 - The Brdica sector towards the Drin. The approaches to the Brdica position north of Shkodër, looking towards the Drin. Austro-Hungarian photographers surveyed every sector of the front around the town in 1916.
40. 1916 - Brdica seen from Bltoja. The Brdica heights photographed from the marshy plain at Bltoja, north of Shkodër. The low ground between the hills and the Bojana flooded every winter and shaped the fighting here.
41. 1916 - Lone field station south of Durrës. A single hut serving as a halt on the narrow-gauge line ten kilometres south of Durrës. Most of the wartime network ran through empty marsh and scrub.
42. 1916 - A Gheg family travelling near Mamurras. An Albanian family with their animals on the new Lezhë to Vorë road near Mamurras. Civilian life continued along roads built for the army.
43. 1916 - The Ohrid road at the gate of Elbasan. The road towards Ohrid where it passes the old town gate of Elbasan. The walled core of the town still followed its late Roman and Ottoman plan.
44. 1916 - Positions on the Stoj plain. The flat ground of the Stoj plain outside Shkodër, looking towards the Bardanjolt ridge. Six near-identical survey frames of this sector survive in the same album.
45. 1916 - The north slope of Tarabos above the lake. The Tarabos massif dropping towards Lake Shkodër. The mountain dominates the town from the south-west and was fortified by every force that held Shkodër.
46. 1916 - Tarabos seen from Rozafa castle. The Tarabos heights photographed from the castle above Shkodër. From this wall the garrison could watch both the lake and the Bojana crossing.
47. 1916 - Supply column crossing the Black Drin. An Austro-Hungarian war postcard of a supply squadron fording the Black Drin in Albania in 1916. The country's roadless interior swallowed armies on all sides during the First World War.
48. 1916 - Italian soldiers in Vlore. Italian troops in the streets of Vlore during the occupation that began in 1914 and lasted until the Albanians drove them out in 1920. Vlore was the hinge of Italian ambitions on the Adriatic.
49. 1916 - Arrests in Vlore, 1916. Albanians accused of spying are led away in Vlore in 1916, under the Italian occupation. Civilians in the occupied zones were caught between armies that all claimed to be protecting them.
50. 1916 - Italian sentry in a mosquito net. An Italian sentry on the Albanian coast wears a face net and gloves against mosquitoes. Malaria killed more Italian soldiers in Albania than fighting did, and the coastal marshes remained a health emergency into the 1950s.
51. 1916 - The Italian road from Vlore to Saranda. The military road the Italians drove down the coast from Vlore to Santi Quaranta, today Saranda. It was the first hard road along the Albanian Riviera and remained the main southern route for decades.
52. 1916 - Italian troops resting on the coast road. Soldiers rest by the roadside on the Vlore to Saranda road during the First World War. Building and holding the road tied down whole divisions in a country with almost no infrastructure.
53. 1916 - Italian coastguard and his dog on the Adriatic shore. A lone Italian coastguard patrols the Adriatic shore of Albania with his dog. The occupation stretched thin along a coastline that Italy wanted mainly to keep out of other hands.
54. 1916-09-10 - French infantry landing at Vlore, 1916. Men of the French 85th infantry regiment come ashore at Vlore on 10 September 1916. Albania spent the First World War as a corridor for French, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Serbian and Greek forces.
55. 1917 - Albanian hut on the Peqin road. A thatched Albanian dwelling on the road to Peqin, photographed around 1917 by the Austro-Hungarian war press office. Its photographers made one of the fullest records of central Albanian life during the war.
56. 1917 - Albanian men in Tirana, about 1917. Men photographed in Tirana around 1917 by the Austro-Hungarian war press office, in the years when Tirana was still a small town and not yet the capital.
57. 1917 - On the main square of Durres. Albanians on the main square of Durres around 1917. The port had been the seat of Prince Wied's short-lived government three years earlier.
58. 1917 - Albanian men at Lezhe. Men photographed at Lezhe around 1917. Lezhe is the town where Skanderbeg gathered the Albanian princes into a league in 1444 and where he is buried.
59. 1917 - Albanian deputation at Shkoder. An Albanian deputation at Shkoder around 1917. Austria-Hungary courted local notables with schools, an Albanian-language press and formal audiences of this kind.
60. 1917 - Men of Shkoder, about 1917. Men of Shkoder photographed around 1917. Shkoder was the largest town of the Catholic north and the centre of its printing and photography.
61. 1917 - Villagers at Rrogozhine. 1917, in white felt caps and homespun woollens.
62. 1917 - Albanian house at Rrogozhine. A village house at Rrogozhine around 1917, recorded by the Austro-Hungarian war press office alongside its portraits of local people.
63. 1917 - Men of Peqin. Men photographed at Peqin around 1917, on the old road that runs from Durres inland towards Elbasan.
64. 1917 - Address to the Albanian deputation at Shkoder. An Austro-Hungarian officer addresses an Albanian deputation at Shkoder around 1917. Such ceremonies were part of the occupation's effort to win over the northern tribes.
65. 1917 - Speaking to the notables of Tirana. An address to the assembled notables of Tirana around 1917. Two years later the same class of men would choose Tirana as the capital of the new state.
66. 1917 - Men of Kruje. 1917, in the hill town that held out against Ottoman sieges under Skanderbeg four and a half centuries earlier.
67. 1917 - An Albanian chieftain. A tribal chief photographed by the Austro-Hungarian war press office around 1917. In the north, the bajraktar system of clan leadership still carried real authority.
68. 1917 - Guard of honour inspected at Kavajë. An Austro-Hungarian party reviewing a guard of honour in Kavajë. Occupying commands staged such ceremonies to court local notables in central Albania.
69. 1917 - A street in Kavajë. A street of low shopfronts in Kavajë during the Austro-Hungarian occupation. The town lay on the road linking Durrës to the interior.
70. 1917 - Gravel mill on the road to Vorë. A gravel crusher set up beside the new military road to Vorë. Austro-Hungarian engineers built much of central Albania's first hard-surfaced road network during the war.
71. 1917 - Field railway leaving Vorë. A narrow-gauge military train pulling out of Vorë. The Austro-Hungarian army laid hundreds of kilometres of light railway across the Albanian lowlands to move supplies the roads could not carry.
72. 1917 - Address to the notables of Kavajë. An Austro-Hungarian officer speaking to assembled local notables in Kavajë. Winning over regional leaders was central to how the occupation governed.
73. 1917 - Motor railway leaving Durrës for Peqin. A petrol-driven train setting out from Durrës towards Peqin. This line was the main inland artery of the wartime narrow-gauge network.
74. 1917 - Sunken ships off the mole at Durrës. The mole at Durrës with wrecked vessels in the water behind it. The port was bombarded repeatedly during the Adriatic campaign and changed hands several times.
75. 1917 - Sailing ships in the harbour of Shëngjin. Wooden sailing craft moored at Shëngjin, the small northern port the Austro-Hungarians knew as San Giovanni di Medua. It supplied the Shkodër front by sea.
76. 1917 - Road and field railway to Lezhë. The military road towards Lezhë with a narrow-gauge track laid alongside it. Rail and road were built as one system across the coastal plain.
77. 1917 - The new road to Vorë. A freshly cut roadway heading towards Vorë. Before the war almost no wheeled road existed between Durrës and the interior.
78. 1917 - Tent camp on the road to Vorë. Rows of army tents pitched along the Vorë road. Malaria in these lowland camps killed more Austro-Hungarian soldiers in Albania than combat did.
79. 1917 - Burnt ruins beside the Vorë road. The shells of houses destroyed by fire along the road to Vorë. Villages in the coastal plain were repeatedly burnt as the front moved across them.
80. 1917 - Mosque before the fortress command post. A mosque standing in front of a building taken over as a fortress command. Ottoman-era religious architecture was still the visual signature of every Albanian town in 1917.
81. 1917 - House with a well at Rrogozhinë. A single-storey house with its own well at Rrogozhinë. Photographs like this are among the earliest records of rural building in the Albanian lowlands.
82. 1917 - Cart road up to Krujë. A horse-drawn party on the climb to Krujë. The town's steep approach was the same one Ottoman armies had failed to force in the fifteenth century.
83. 1917 - Triumphal arch at Milot. A wooden arch erected at Milot for the arrival of an Austro-Hungarian column. The occupation regularly dressed Albanian villages for official visits.
84. 1917 - War bridge over the Mat river. A timber military bridge thrown across the Mat. Bridging the northern rivers was what made year-round movement between Lezhë and Durrës possible.
85. 1917 - Austro-Hungarian generator train on the Albanian 700 mm network. Generator train 112 of the Austro-Hungarian army on the 700 millimetre gauge line in Albania. This network was the country's first mechanised transport of any scale.
86. 1917 - Port command building at Durrës. The building taken over as harbour command at Durrës. The port was the hinge of the whole Austro-Hungarian supply system in Albania.
87. 1917 - Tented station of a field railway in Albania. A canvas station on one of the Austro-Hungarian light railways in Albania, from a wartime picture series. Everything about these lines was improvised and meant to be moved.
88. 1917 - Lezhe in 1917. Lezhe photographed by the Austro-Hungarian war press office around 1917, when the northern half of Albania lay under Habsburg occupation. The war left the country divided between five foreign armies.
89. 1917 - A street in Vlore, 1917. An ordinary street in Vlore photographed by the Italian army's photographic service in 1917. The town was the seat of the occupation administration and of Albania's first government five years earlier.
90. 1917 - Indochinese riflemen at Korce, 1917. Tirailleurs from French Indochina stationed at Korce in 1917, during the French administration of the town. The war brought soldiers from three continents into small Albanian market towns.
91. 1918 - Austro-Hungarian advance between Fier and Berat, 1918. A wartime illustration of Austro-Hungarian troops under Pflanzer-Baltin pushing Italian and French forces back between Fier and Berat in the summer of 1918, the last major operation of the Albanian front.
92. 1918 - Fighting near Berat, August 1918. An illustration of Pflanzer-Baltin's troops in action near Berat on 22 August 1918. Within months Austria-Hungary had collapsed and its army left Albania.
93. 1920 - Boy who lost an arm in the Balkan War. A boy in Tirana who lost his arm at the age of five in the Balkan War of 1912, photographed around 1920 after the Junior Red Cross found him a home. The wars of 1912-13 and the First World War ran together in Albania with barely a pause.
94. 1939 - Carabinieri post in a Gjirokaster garden. A small carabinieri house built in a private garden in Gjirokaster during the Italian occupation, put there to guard the bank building when the town grew unsafe. The occupation began with the invasion of 7 April 1939.
95. 1940 - Lapraka airfield, Tirana, 1940. An aerial view of the Lapraka airfield in Tirana published in 1940, the year Italy launched its invasion of Greece from Albanian airfields and ports.
96. 1940 - Jacomoni and Verlaci in the 1940 yearbook. Francesco Jacomoni, Italy's lieutenant-general in Albania, with Shefqet Verlaci, the prime minister installed after the invasion, in the official Yearbook of the Kingdom of Albania for 1940. The pairing is the whole architecture of the occupation on one page.
97. 1940 - Rangefinder crew on the Albanian front. Greek soldiers work a rangefinder on the Albanian front during the winter war of 1940 to 1941. The fighting after Italy's invasion from Albania ran through Korçë, Gjirokastër and the Vjosa valley.
98. 1940 - Gun crew in action in Albania. A field gun crew at work during the campaign in Albania in 1940 or 1941. Southern Albania changed hands twice in six months before German intervention closed the front in April 1941.
99. 1940 - Evzones attacking on the Albanian front. Evzone infantry press an attack on the Albanian front in the winter of 1940 to 1941. The war was fought in mountain snow across Korçë and Gjirokastër, at a heavy cost to the local population.
100. 1940 - Cavalry charge before Korçë. A wartime lithograph gives a heroic reading of the fighting at Korçë in 1940. The town, the largest in southeastern Albania, was taken in November of that year and held until the following spring.
101. 1941-01-17 - The Albanian front at Bargullas, January 1941. An Italian position at Bargullas on 17 January 1941, during the Greco-Italian war fought across southern Albania. Italy's invasion of Greece from Albanian soil in October 1940 had stalled and then reversed.
102. 1941 - Albanian partisans in 1941. A group of Albanian partisans in 1941, the year the communist party was founded in Tirana and armed resistance to the Italian occupation began to organise.
103. 1941 - Victor Emmanuel III at Librazhd. Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy and, from 1939, self-declared King of Albania, at Librazhd during the war. Italy had invaded on 7 April 1939 and deposed King Zog.
104. 1941 - Watering horses on the Vjosa. Italian troops water their animals on the Vjosa near the Perat bridge during the Albanian campaign. The Vjosa valley carried the supply road to the Greek front.
105. 1941 - Pennants of the Pusteria alpine division. Unit pennants of the Alpini division Pusteria, which fought through the Albanian mountains in the Greek campaign of 1940-41.
106. 1941 - Building a mule track at Bargullas, 1941. Italian soldiers cut a mule track at Bargullas in 1941. Albania's roads were too thin for a modern army, and much of the campaign was fought at the pace of pack animals.
107. 1941 - Field mass at Bargullas, 1941. An open-air mass for Italian troops at Bargullas in 1941, during the winter fighting on the Albanian front.
108. 1941 - Leaving Erseke, 1941. Italian troops move out of Erseke in 1941. The town in the Korce district sat near the front line during the Greek counter-offensive into southern Albania.
109. 1941 - Blackshirt legion on the Albanian front. The 80th blackshirt legion Alessandro Farnese in Albania in 1941, one of the Fascist militia formations sent to shore up the stalled Greek campaign.
110. 1941 - Trench on Mount Tomorr, April 1941. A communication trench on Mount Tomorr in April 1941. The mountain, sacred to the Bektashi, was a strongpoint on the Albanian front.
111. 1941 - Troops entering Tepelenë, winter 1941. Soldiers move into Tepelenë in the winter of 1941, during the fighting in the Vjosa valley. The town on the river changed hands as the front swung back and forth through southern Albania.
112. 1942 - Internees from Kosovo at the Puke camp. Men interned at the camp at Puke in northern Albania in 1942. The camp held people deported from Kosovo during the Italian occupation.
113. 1942 - Yugoslav delegates with Albanian communist leaders. Miladin Popovic and Dusan Mugosa, delegates of the Yugoslav communist party, with Albanian leaders around 1942. Their mission helped weld scattered Albanian communist groups into a single party in November 1941.
114. 1942 - Partisans in Malesia, northern Albania. Fadil Hoxha with partisans in Malesia, the highland country of northern Albania, during the occupation. The mountains made the north the hardest region for occupying forces to hold.
115. 1942 - Jewish families sheltered at Kavaje, 1942. Five Jewish families photographed at Kavaje in 1942 by Mosa Mandil, himself a refugee photographer. Albania was the one country in occupied Europe to end the war with more Jews than it had before it, hidden under the obligation of besa.
116. 1943 - German coastal guns on the Albanian Adriatic. A heavy 100 mm coastal battery on the Albanian Adriatic shore in November 1943, weeks after German forces replaced the Italians along the coast.
117. 1943 - Montenegrin and Albanian partisan commanders. Partisan leaders photographed together around 1943, among them Enver Hoxha, who would head the Albanian communist party and then the state for four decades.
118. 1943 - German soldiers with captured Italian tanks in Albania. German soldiers beside Italian tanks in Albania in September 1943. When Italy signed the armistice that month, German forces disarmed the Italian garrison and took over its equipment.
119. 1943 - German machine-gun position in Albania. A German machine-gun post dug in on Albanian ground in September 1943, at the start of the German occupation.
120. 1943 - Eqerem Qamili Shehu, commander in Mallakaster. Eqerem Qamili Shehu, a resistance commander in the Mallakaster district, photographed in 1943.
121. 1943 - Enver Hoxha and Vasil Shanto. Enver Hoxha with Vasil Shanto, co-leaders of the communist resistance. Shanto was killed in Tirana on 1 February 1944, so the photograph must predate that day.
122. 1943 - German tracked tractor in Tirana. A Raupenschlepper Ost hauls a trailer through Tirana around September 1943, in the first weeks of the German occupation that followed the Italian surrender. The partisan war intensified sharply from that autumn.
123. 1944 - German mountain troops with a pack gun in the Albanian mountains. SS mountain troops and Albanian volunteers move a 75 mm pack gun by mule train through the Albanian mountains in September 1944. Germany had occupied Albania after Italy's surrender the previous year.
124. 1944 - Staffs of the First Macedonian and First Albanian brigades. The command staffs of the First Macedonian and First Albanian partisan brigades photographed together in 1944, when the resistance in Albania was coordinating across the Yugoslav border.
125. 1944 - Forming the Fourth Kosovo brigade at Kruma. The Fourth Kosovo brigade is formed at Kruma in northeastern Albania in October 1944, in the last months of the occupation.
126. 1944-11-17 - Partisans enter Tirana. Partisan units enter Tirana on 17 November 1944, at the end of a nineteen-day battle for the city. The communist-led National Liberation Movement took power within weeks.
127. 2005-07-18 - Albanian special forces training with the US Navy. Albanian special forces fast-rope from an American helicopter during Exercise Adriatic Engagement off the Albanian coast on 18 July 2005. Joint training of this kind ran through the decade of Albania's push into NATO, which it joined in 2009.
128. 2008-04-08 - Damage at the Gërdec munitions site. Assessment specialists examine the blast field at Gërdec near Vora in April 2008, after a demilitarisation depot dismantling surplus ammunition exploded and killed twenty-six people. The disaster became a defining scandal of post-communist Albania.
129. 2013-01-20 - Albanian military police and an army helicopter. Members of the Albanian military police in front of an army helicopter. Albania joined NATO in 2009 and rebuilt its forces around alliance commitments.
130. 2018 - Austro-Hungarian submarine wreck in the Bay of Vlore. The wreck of an Austro-Hungarian submarine lost in 1916, photographed on the seabed of the Bay of Vlore in 2018. The bay was one of the most heavily contested anchorages of the Adriatic war.
131. 2022-12-03 - Albanian armed forces band at the independence centenary-and-ten. The band of the Albanian armed forces plays in Tirana on 3 December 2022, part of the celebrations for 110 years since the declaration of independence at Vlorë. Bands from eight countries took part.
132. 2024-08-24 - Memorial to the Cham victims at Kllogjer. A monument at Kllogjer to the Cham Albanians killed and driven out of Epirus at the end of the Second World War. Tens of thousands crossed into Albania in 1944 and 1945 and never went back.