Hoxha Bunkers
These bunkers, which are an extremely common sight across Albania, were part of a national defense project under Enver Hoxha, Albania’s paranoid and isolationist ruler of four decades (1944-85). As a hard line Stalinist he eventually fell out with Yugoslavia, the USSR, and then China (not to speak of the NATO countries) until, to all appearances, it was Albania against the world.
In this climate of fear—which Hohxa used to bolster his own rule—he ordered the construction of hundreds of thousands of bunkers for a people’s war that would defeat any invasion from the US or USSR. Before he died and construction ceased over 180,000 were built all over the country, and today they are literally everywhere: fields, cities, front yards, beaches, and etc.
These were in fact only a fraction of those he intended to build, although there were something like one for every dozen citizens, who in the event of invasion would have been expected to man and woman them. When we were in Tirana we went on a free walking tour and the local guide made a dark joke that summed up the absurdity of this: after the collapse of communism, when Albania opened up, the same people who had been told to prepare for invasions from the US or USSR were surprised to learn that the rest of the world didn’t know that Albania existed.
Hohxa bunker in Tirana, Albania.
Hoxha Bunkers
These bunkers, which are an extremely common sight across Albania, were part of a national defense project under Enver Hoxha, Albania’s paranoid and isolationist ruler of four decades (1944-85). As a hard line Stalinist he eventually fell out with Yugoslavia, the USSR, and then China (not to speak of the NATO countries) until, to all appearances, it was Albania against the world.
In this climate of fear—which Hohxa used to bolster his own rule—he ordered the construction of hundreds of thousands of bunkers for a people’s war that would defeat any invasion from the US or USSR. Before he died and construction ceased over 180,000 were built all over the country, and today they are literally everywhere: fields, cities, front yards, beaches, and etc.
These were in fact only a fraction of those he intended to build, although there were something like one for every dozen citizens, who in the event of invasion would have been expected to man and woman them. When we were in Tirana we went on a free walking tour and the local guide made a dark joke that summed up the absurdity of this: after the collapse of communism, when Albania opened up, the same people who had been told to prepare for invasions from the US or USSR were surprised to learn that the rest of the world didn’t know that Albania existed.
Hohxa bunker in Tirana, Albania.