Vlorë in the First World War

Vlorë, a port on a bay in the south of Albania, was during the war an Italian bridgehead on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. The Italians occupied it in December 1914, while Italy was still neutral, and in 1915 the Allies promised it to them outright. Part of the Serbian army was evacuated through Vlorë, an Italian corps held its entrenched camp, and in its bay lay the ships guarding the exit from the Adriatic. The Italians did not leave until 1920.

A port at the mouth of the Adriatic

The town lies at the entrance to the Strait of Otranto, less than a hundred kilometres from the Italian coast, and whoever held it could close the exit from the Adriatic. It was here that the Albanians declared independence on 28 November 1912. Italy and Austria-Hungary had long coveted Vlorë and, each fearing the other, had backed an independent Albania that would keep the rival away from the strait. When Prince Wilhelm of Wied left the country in September 1914, the state fell apart: Essad Pasha ruled in Durrës, and the Greeks moved into the south. Rome feared that Vlorë would fall into Greek hands or give Vienna a pretext to intervene.

A neutral occupation

On 30 October 1914 Italian sailors occupied the island of Sazan, which closes the entrance to the Bay of Vlorë. In December, when Greek detachments began to threaten the Italian medical mission in the town, warships landed a force at Vlorë, and a regiment of Bersaglieri followed the sailors. The government of Antonio Salandra assured Vienna that the occupation was temporary and did not violate Albania’s neutrality. The force was named the Vlorë Occupation Corps.

The “temporary” occupation soon changed its character. In the secret Treaty of London of 26 April 1915 the Entente promised Italy full sovereignty over Vlorë, the island of Sazan and the territory needed to defend them. From 24 May Italy was at war with Austria-Hungary, and from the first months of the year the corps command had been fortifying an entrenched camp around the town and enlarging the port.

Gateway for the Serbian evacuation

At the end of 1915 the Serbian army was retreating across the mountains towards the Albanian coast. Rome formed a special corps for operations in Albania and on 2 December sent the first convoy from Taranto. Two days later the destroyer Intrepido and the transport Re Umberto, carrying troops, sank on mines off Vlorë. According to Italian accounts, by 12 December some 28,000 men stood at Vlorë, and from here the Savona Brigade set out overland to occupy Durrës.

That winter the Allies decided to take the Serbs off only from Durrës and Vlorë. Some units reached Vlorë on foot or in small boats and transferred to transports bound for Corfu. According to Serbian accounts, the shipments from Vlorë lasted from 28 January to 19 February. According to the Italian navy, more than 260,000 soldiers and refugees were carried from Medua, Durrës and Vlorë. On 27 February a convoy reached Vlorë with the garrison that had evacuated Durrës. The Italians kept Vlorë, and the government, against the wishes of the commander-in-chief, Luigi Cadorna, reinforced its garrison to three divisions, which in March formed the XVI Corps.

Entrenched camp and naval base

Vlorë became the main base of the Italian army and navy on the far side of the Adriatic. In the bay lay the battleship Regina Margherita, covering the entrenched camp, the base on Sazan and the barrage in the strait. On the night of 11–12 December 1916, leaving the bay, she struck two mines, and some 675 men died. The British correspondent Gordon Gordon-Smith wrote that after the capture of Bitola the front line ran almost unbroken from Vlorë on the Adriatic to the Gulf of Kavala on the Aegean. In 1917 the corps commander, General Giacinto Ferrero, proclaimed an Italian protectorate over all of Albania.

In the summer of 1918 the XVI Corps marched out of the entrenched camp in the offensive in Albania. The aim was to push the Austrians as far from Vlorë as possible. In response, on the night before the Austrian counter-offensive of 22 August, twelve Austro-Hungarian and German aircraft carried out the first large bombing raid on the town. The British warned at the time that without Vlorë the barrage in the Strait of Otranto could not be held, and the Italians brought in another brigade.

End of the occupation

After the war the Italians stayed at Vlorë for almost two more years. In the summer of 1920 Albanian insurgents repeatedly attacked the Italian units around the town, and on 3 September 1920, after the Italians had withdrawn, they entered Vlorë. Italy renounced its protectorate and left Albania, keeping only the island of Sazan, which formally remained Italian until 1947.