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Albanian resistance propaganda. Top: Long live Albania! Bottom: Albania will be free! Down with the foreign invaders!
A Dawn of Red and Black
Rroftë Shqipëria! - Part 1
18 May is an infamous date for countless Albanians. It was the day they lost their country, the day they were erased from the map. The twin snakes of Serbia and Greece descended upon their homeland with fire and brimstone: they slaughtered their folk, tore down their buildings, and tore their flag apart. It was a war of conquest, of pure and unabated hunger for power. They thirsted for revenge, for they too had felt loss. But in their fearsome campaign for vengeance, the bicephalous eagle of Albania was slain by the coldness of their blade.
Serbia and Greece were utterly ravaged by the Weltkrieg. Sitting on the losing end of the table during the peace negotiations of Rotterdam, the terms were exceedingly harsh, more so even than their West European counterparts. Serbia was forced to abandon all claims on Bosnia, and ceded Macedonia to Bulgaria and Kosovo to Austria-Hungary. Montenegro was placed under occupation. Greece didn't had it any easier: their holdings in Southern Macedonia, Salonika and Chalkidiki were ceded to Bulgaria, while the islands of the Aegean - with the exception of Crete and Euboea - were given away to Ottoman Turkey. Beyond the humiliating loss of territory were the economic reparations: amounts of money so vast that they quickly crippled the feeble postwar economies of both nations.
The effects were clear for Serbia and Greece. Austro-Hungarian forces would abandon Montenegro and Bosnia in late 1921, leaving the League of Four - Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, and later Croatia - to occupy these territories. The destabilization of the old regime left a vacuum only very scarcely filled up by the Central Powers. However, it also reignited ethnic tensions which directly affected the politics and society of Serbia. These passions would culminate in 1922, when a Serbian army officer named Milan Nedić led a coup against the unpopular King Alexander I and proclaimed himself Regent. Nedić, an outspoken Serbian nationalist and irredentist, supported the territorial expansion of Serbia to encompass all ethnically-Serb regions of Europe.
In Greece, a civil war was brewing. The country was torn between the Royalists - supporters of the King - and Liberals, who adhered to the republican, irredentist, anti-socialist ideals of former Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos. It was a conflict which had been brewing since the onset of the Weltkrieg: King Constantine I was in favor of neutrality, while Venizelos ardently supported entering the war on the Entente's side. Pro-intervention elements would secure power in government, a grip which continued even after defeat came to be. However, when the Treaty of Rotterdam was signed, the blame was placed on the King: a distant, corrupt, and thoroughly ineffective leader, whose German sympathies were deemed unpatriotic, and ultimately the root cause of Greece's loss in the war. In 1923, the army would lead a coup which dethroned the monarch and established a civilian head of state and government, under the leadership of Venizelos, who took the post of lifelong Prime Minister. The Hellenic State was born.
In July 1924, the League of Four abandoned Montenegro, leaving behind the disastrously unstable Kingdom of Montenegro. Once the foreign armies left, the small country broke apart into anarchy. Nedić decided to act, occupying Montenegro and annexing that same August. Germany and the other countries barely batted an eye; after all, they had more serious issues at hand. This victory emboldened Serbia and solidified Nedić's regime. Soon, Belgrade set their eyes on bigger targets.
Kosovo, once a Serbian territory, was allocated to Albania following the Treaty of Rotterdam and the subsequent Treaty of Sofia, which brought peace to the Balkans. The territory was majority Albanian; however, there also was a sizeable Serb minority. Under King Zog I, these Serbs were subjected to forced relocation and lesser status: they were used to work the mines and fields of Kosovo while the ethnic Albanian elite reaped the rewards. This apparent mistreatment of Serbs was the cause of much tension between Serbia and Albania. Serbia was looking for any excuse to justify a war of aggression, and Albania knew it. Hollow promises of aid from Germany and Bulgaria did little to ease Albania's worries. It was a dark time for the people of both nations.
Tensions would reach a boiling point in December 1926, when Albanian authorities began uprooting Kosovo Serb communities to employ them as cheap labor in the Albanian interior. Many Serbs opposed this, organizing into armed bands that attacked Albanians and sabotaged the relocation process. Tirana accused Belgrade of aiding these groups. In January 1927, a radical Serb militia attacked an Albanian military outpost in the town of Besanë, Kosovo. 12 Albanian soldiers were killed, making it the largest and most ambitious attack out of the others. In retribution, Albanian troops rounded up 633 Serb civilians from nearby towns and villages, and killed them in cold blood.
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Serbian militias after a raid on an Albanian supply convoy, northwest Kosovo, January 1927
The Besanë Massacre was the turning point of relations between Serbia and Albania. For Nedić, it was all he needed to justify war. On 2 March, 130,000 Serb soldiers marched into Kosovo and northern Albania. It was a fearsome campaign of terror and violence.