How many bunkers in albania

By the time they liberated the capital Tirana in November , this rag-tag army of communists and nationalists was some 70, strong. After World War Two ended, Hoxha consolidated power, ruthlessly exterminating rival factions and even some of his fellow resistance leaders. It became a Soviet-aligned communist state. The small country then stumbled from one diplomatic crisis to another. In Hoxha broke off relations with neighbouring Yugoslavia, ostensibly because the less hard-line Yugoslavs were straying from the true path of socialism.

This honeymoon, too, was short-lived. By , the Chinese had withdrawn all their advisors, leaving Albania without allies — and the most isolated country in the world. It was against this backdrop that the bunkerisation began. But he had also made enemies of former friends.

An invasion could come from the Yugoslavs themselves, or their country could be used as a corridor for a Soviet invasion via Bulgaria. Many of the bunkers are now overgrown and left alone in the Albanian countryside Credit: Stephen Dowling. Hoxha instead called on the mobilisation of the general populace — most of whom had to do basic military training each year — to form a resistance in their tens of thousands.

In the days of the partisans, this would have been conducted from mountain hideouts, where small units would carry out attacks on the Italian or German outposts on lower ground. But Hoxha wanted to make sure that any potential invader would be put off from mounting an assault in the first place by creating a vast network of bunkers. From here, the people of Albania would contest every beach, village and crossroads. This national resistance would call for a monumental construction project.

Albania would become a land covered in bunkers. Designed to hold only one or two people, they were built from reinforced concrete. Zagali mounted a rounded cupola on the top of the bunker so that bullets and shell fragments would rebound off it, giving the QZ its distinctive shape. The QZs would be built in small groups that could defend each other. The parts were designed to be prefabricated in factories and then assembled on site.

In wartime, these would act as command posts for rows of smaller QZs. Even bigger bunkers were constructed to protect civilians in case of attack. Every town or city district would have underground concrete bunkers big enough to house hundreds of people. It was big enough to easily hold hundreds of people.

The bunkers were built in a frenzy of construction until the mids Credit: Stephen Dowling. He graduated as a civil engineer in and was one of the first engineers drafted straight into the army. That was starting in when we left the Warsaw Pact. And that was no small task; the army division Duraj was assigned to had 13, bunkers of various sizes to build. Constructing the bunkers was such a monumental task that almost every major factory in Albania was put to work.

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