Catalogue description ALBANIA

In Albania, the considerable efforts of the Special Operations Executive Missions to promote an effective campaign of harassment of the occupying German forces were largely frustrated by the active hostility prevailing between the northern followers of the traditional tribal chieftains and the southern adherents of the Communist Enver Hoxha. SOE's repeated attempts to create a unified resistance movement were of no avail and the better-equipped (SOE arms supplies to the two factions were in direct proportion to their efforts against the Germans) forces of Hoxha, with an eye to the government of a post-war Albania, devoted much of their energies to the destruction of the northern tribal forces with a view to seizing power unopposed when the Germans withdrew. This they achieved, easing their passage by permitting the Germans to withdraw with their equipment intact.