Forsaken Albania

By Artan Lame
Tirana, 1942. World War has engulfed the entire continent, from La Manche to the steppes of The Ukraine. The Germans have reached a climax in their combat, in the battle for Russia, while in September they were to be halted in their tracks in front of the gates of Stalingrad, without neglecting here, the air offensive against London in the other extremity of Europe. The Italian allies, striving to imitate the Grand Master, have deployed 100.000 forces on the Russian Front; hold Albania, the greater part of Greece and parts of former Yugoslavia under occupation. Moreover, the Italians are fully committed to an extremely expensive war against the English in North Africa, in the deserts of Lybia and Tunisia. To top all this off, Viktor Emanuel the Third, was also the Emporor of Ethiopia, which translated into reality meant about a quarter of a million forces deployed there whom he had to feed as well as the local population.
Mussolini’s imperial dreams were turning out to be excessively expensive, with very little benefit, because the Italians were incapable of wresting revenue from the countries they had occupied, something that only their more sombre German allies were capable of doing with their Teutonic harshness. To cover up the draining cost of the war, the Italians with their talent to satisfy with operettas, invented something new every month, such as the incentive to plant all free areas of farmland in the country with breadgrain. This incentive was a product of Mussolini’s fantasy, but in a drive to show who was the more faithful to him, this initiative degenerated into even public gardens being planted with breadgrain, until, one day all public parks and historical gardens in Rome, with the exception of the Vatican, were planted in wheat crops. This incentive was then carbon-copied to the provinces of Italy, but also to the “provinces” of the Empire, until it reached Tirana. In the capital of the tiny Empire, the newly created gardens were planted with wheat, in the newly implemented town planning scheme of the city, chiefly areas of land in the zoen of Tirana e Re (New Tirana), that were still free.
The photo shows wheat harvesting and threshing in process of the crops tucked away around the corners of Tirana vilas, in June 1942. The tractor seen in the photograph, via a long transmission belt, sets the combine in motion. Behind the bundles of wheat rise the villas of the new Albanian merchants, who viewed the war exclusively as a one way ticket to riches; and away in the background rises the eternal peak of Mt. Dajti, the only thing that has not changed since then. However, the sacks of grain from Tirana could never save Italy from the catastrophe of one year later, September 1943. One year later, in November of 1944, the merchants tumbled into a ravine together with their businesses and villas.