Bunkers in Albania

I had never heard of Enver Hoxha until I listened to the episodes about him on the Real Dictators podcast. Very wild stuff. I find it really fascinating and rather sobering that these invasive authoritarian governments can one day take root and control most or all of the rest of your life. I fear that people's complacency or thoughts that "surely it can't happen here" are part of what lets them rise in the first place, and I wonder just how quickly you can find yourself inside of one.

I love Albania, for reasons related to my job I used to travel there multiple times a year until around 2010.

Those bunkers are absolutely everywhere, even right in the middle of nowhere (I guess that's useful if you happen to get lost in the wilderness while hiking).

In towns and cities they have been sometimes repurposed, e.g. I remember seeing that someone created a small cafe on the beach using one of the larger bunkers.

The problem with reusing them is that the vast majority of the bunkers are of the smaller type (mostly below ground level, and on the inside there is barely enough room for a couple of people) and it's hard to find a new purpose for those.

Ah Albanian mason who has been living in Italy since the 90s told me a story about bunkers. I cannot date it to a year nor assess its truth but here it is.

A Minister (maybe Defense? Army? whatever) went to check the new bunkers. They looked good but he asked to the chief engineer how he could be sure that Hoxha would be satisfied with them.

"You know, if he thinks they are not good I'm dead."

"They are very good."

"So you must get in. We will shell the bunker and check if it's really as good as you say."

The engineer was not happy with that but the choice was between getting in or die immediately. He got in and they shelled the bunker all day long. The bunker survived, the engineer eventually recovered from the experience (temporary deafness and other problems) and the Minister could bet his own life on those bunkers.

Albania is definitely worth visiting. BUNK'ART in Tirana is an easy way to see the bunkers for yourself.

Somewhat related: Famous Russian urbex photographer Lana Sator is still stuck in Albania, after being arrested for espionage while documenting Albania's abandoned cold war military infrastructure: https://archive.is/o7rgB

For what it's worth, she is a well known photographer. I've been following her work since the early 2010s.

> The construction of prefabricated bunkers alone cost an estimated two percent of net material product, and in total the bunkers cost more than twice as much as the Maginot Line in France, consuming three times as much concrete.

Incredible.

We are always fighting the last war, and, as Ukraine has proven, much has changed. The situation for Ukraine is dire, mostly due to a lack of manpower for the infantry. They are always on the retreat, getting holed up in cities where it is the tower blocks that become the bunkers. There are no 'big arrow' movements by the Russians, they only ever send out small groups of soldiers after lots of artillery preparation. Commonly available MANPADS mean that big tanks and planes don't go anywhere near the front. It is drone warfare.

From the point of view of the Russian side, imagine if Ukraine was littered with these bunkers, all of them filled with drone operators. I would say that this would be an upgrade on what Ukraine has with the trenches they have been building in the East since 2014.

I've not been to Albania yet, so I can't comment from observation, but I'm surmising that most all off these bunkers would be pretty useless militarily anyway.

A bunker, by itself, is not much of a defense. It kinda advertises the defender position. Without writing a paper on the subject, the short version is that they're useful as part of a defensive plan, occupied by troops trained in their use.

Having a random bunker, unsupported, in the middle if nowhere is not useful from a defensive point of view.

Rare Earth - The 750,000 Bunkers of Albania

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSEpkalRgvU

The problem with centralized totalitarian/socialist/dictatorial governments is that they can be hijacked by an idea and over-execute on it with no feedback from the people, until the resources really needed are blown out. In capitalism, companies specialize on human needs and if a need goes away, investments can go down rapidly, unless the feedback loop is guarded by some government regulation. But when government is doing the investing, the whims or corruption of politicians has no feedback loop.

Shameless plug (who would have thought): I've played hide and seek in Albania and used a bunker as a hideout. AMA :D That's one of the few experiences I remember when I was 3-5yo.

The relative ease one could tunnel underground these days are bunkers obsolete these days? Could one build a mini underground city that is reinforced with all the amenities

Not sure why Albanian bunkers are on the front of HN, but I've been living in Albania/Kosovo for the last couple of years working to use nickel hyperaccumulator plants to mine nickel (phytomining), while removing carbon with olivine minerals (enhanced rock weathering), with my company Metalplant...

I can confirm the bunkers are real. Albanians are some of the nicest people you will meet and are very friendly. Pretty much every stereotype you may have heard about them is wrong (except that they love Mercedes, that is 100% real). The country is beautiful with mountains in the North to beaches in the south that are pretty much the same as Greece and Italy (though rocky), with 3 Star Hotels for tens of Euros per night (they use a currency called Lek which is ~100:1 euro).

Everyone in the country seemingly knows each other and they are all like one big family. You'll notice things differ from other European countries in that they don't like lock up chairs from cafes, or have big like metal gates at bars and open air restuarnts. After hours everything is just like wide open its kind of wild to see. No one locks car doors, there is almost no petty crime, women will get up from the table to go smoke a cigarette outside and leave their purse at the table, etc...

The Albanian language is unique as well, look up a language tree and you'll see its the only one on its branch, they call it Shqip (and never Albanian, which was very confusing to me at first). Though nearly all of the young people speak English, and a good amount up to middle age, but not the much older people... One thing you would never know either is how much Albanians love America especially relative to how much Americans know about Albania.

Albanians have a deep gratitude to Americans because for 2000+ years they were stuck between the Roman and Ottoman Empires and had been fighting to protect their territory and keep their culture alive. But after the Ottoman Empire fell and WW1 was over they were occupied by Italy and others, and the "Great Powers" were about to carve up their territory. But at the League of Nations in 1919, Woodrow Wilson intervened and made sure they had a sovereign state.

So back to the bunkers finally, after WWII Albania was allied with the Stalinist communists and Enver Hoxha (who they call the "Dictator"), became increasingly paranoid about invasion from all sides including the Russians and NATO, so he started building these 700,000 bunkers. Some of them are small enough for only a couple of people, and whats crazy is where we are up in the mountains, you see just very small ones up a hill and in random spots. Later on, Hoxa allied with Chinese communists to keep Russia out, and then it stayed a closed country until the early 1990s, which explains a lot about why everyone feels treats each other like family and most outsiders don't know really know about Albania...Some people compare them to being a North Korea of Europe, though I don't like this description, but they were isolated and had to become self-dependent including growing nearly all of their own food etc.

But again, it is an amzing place that welcomes foreign tourists, especially Americans. I first traveled there at the end of 2020, during peak pandemic winter, and on the travel map of places you could go, it was one of the only countries that was Green and accepting Americans...

Okay that's a lot of fun facts about Albania. AMA on any others.

Now they’re building hundreds of gas stations every 100 meters. Gas stations with very unique architecture.

My dad was a military analyst in the Balkans in the 90s. I am telling this story second-hand, but I'll try to get it correct. While in Albania, my dad shared a taxi with an older Albania gentleman. The man recounted his time working in the Albanian military in the 60s. His platoon had constructed a large number of bunkers, more than any other platoon. The dictator Enver Hoxha was slated to visit, to give them an award for building the most bunkers in the whole country. When Enver arrived, he walked around, and looked at a bunch of the bunkers they had constructed. He pointed at the bunkers. "Look! You have not used enough rebar! Obviously, you are trying to jeopardize the security of our nation, by neglecting to use enough rebar! You are traitors to Albania!" He swiftly sentenced the entire platoon of young men straight to 30 years in prison, which they approximately served. This man, after serving this time, had just gotten freed from jail. The taxi was transporting him from the halfway house.

Since we're at it, I read a theory that Albanians may be the descendants of Dacians, from the Roman province: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Dacia

Their language is unique in Europe and probably originates in the Thrakian, Illyrian, and Dacian languages. With the important mention that one must not apply today's assumptions of a unified language when referring to something as "Dacian", think more of a situation like in today's Dagestan, where on a surface of 50,000 square kilometers, 3 million people speak no less than 40 languages.

The theory is that during the Roman retreat from Dacia, the population (estimated to as low as 100,000 and as high of 500,000 people, so not exactly a Biblical exodus), migrated to south of Danube and eventually today's location. The toponymy is strangely Albanian, like even the name of the Romanian capital "Bucharest" means "beautiful is" in Albanian.