By Ilir Ikonomi
One of the most important modern works ever written about Albania’s experience in the Second World War—Bernd Jürgen Fischer’s Albania at War, 1939–1945.
This is not just a history book. It is an act of historical rescue. Fischer lifts Albania from the shadows of European historiography and places it firmly on the stage, showing that—although small in size—Albania lived through a war as complex, as tragic, and as consequential as any other nation in Europe.
One of the book’s great merits is how Fischer restores context. He explains how Albania entered the war already fragile—a young country with a weak state, shallow nationalism, strong regional loyalties, and a monarchy that was both modernizing and deeply limited.
Then, with extraordinary clarity, Fischer shows how two foreign occupations—first Italian, then German—interacted with Albania’s internal divisions and transformed the nation.
Prof. Fischer’s narrative is built on primary sources, including documents from Italian, German, British, and American archives. He brings into the light materials that had long been inaccessible, and he treats every side—Italians, Germans, nationalists, communists, and ordinary Albanians—with a rare balance and fairness.
Fischer avoids propaganda, avoids ideology, and avoids the comforting myths of postwar Albania. He shares history as it happened, in all its contradictions.
Fischer shows how Italy’s invasion in April 1939 was not simply an act of fascist expansion, but the culmination of decades of political, economic, and diplomatic entanglements. His description of Count Ciano’s machinations, the duplicity of Italian diplomacy, and the tragic position of King Zog is gripping, almost cinematic.
But the real originality of Fischer’s work emerges when he analyzes the fragmentation of Albanian society under occupation.
He explains that Albania suffered more internal division than any other Balkan state during the war. Resistance groups formed, dissolved, cooperated with the occupiers, fought each other, returned to resistance, and repeated the cycle.
This is because Albania lacked a fully formed national identity. Local loyalties—tribal, regional, and family—were stronger than ideology. This is one of the most important insights Fischer gives us: Albania’s WWII experience cannot be understood without understanding Albania itself.
Fischer’s chapters on Italian repression and the emergence of organized resistance are among the strongest of the book. He shows how repression created resistance, how mistakes by the Italians fed the communist movement, and how the Allies struggled to understand whom to support.
The British, Fischer notes, were often confused, misled, or ill-informed. The result?
A slow but steady shift in support toward the communist-led National Liberation Movement.
Perhaps the most groundbreaking part of Fischer’s book is his treatment of the German occupation (1943–44). He overturns decades of Cold War myths by showing that the Germans did not simply impose a brutal regime. Instead, they created an occupation that was in some ways more independent, more administratively competent, and paradoxically more acceptable to many Albanians than the Italian one.
He shows how Germany exploited Albanian nationalism—particularly the dream of Greater Albania—to win support in Kosovo and northern Albania.
And yet, Fischer also shows the darker side: how this “independence” was a tool of manipulation; how it deepened divisions; how it created long-term problems that would echo for decades.
The final chapters—on German retreat and the rise of the communists—are essential reading for understanding Albania’s 20th century. Fischer demonstrates that the war was the crucible that forged the modern Albanian state.
Italy weakened Zog’s world. Germany elevated certain nationalist elites. But in the end, it was the communists who emerged unified, disciplined, and militarily dominant.
And perhaps the book’s most profound conclusion is this: World War II violently pulled Albania out of one isolation, only to push it into another.
The war’s experience became the foundation of Enver Hoxha’s regime—a system built on the myth of heroic resistance, the fear of foreigners, and the belief that Albania could rely only on itself.
Bernd Fischer’s Albania at War is much more than a narrative of military events. It is a story of a nation struggling to define itself—caught between great powers, torn by internal divisions, and transformed by the most catastrophic conflict in human history.
It is a book that brings Albania into the European conversation. It corrects the historical record. It challenges myths. It gives voice to a people whose wartime story was too long ignored.
For anyone who wishes to understand modern Albania—to understand its politics, its fears, its nationalism, and its place in the Balkans—Fischer’s book is indispensable.
Recently the book was reprinted and re-translated into Albanian after a long absence from the bookshelves. It comes with a fresh design along with the new introduction by the author.
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