Why Does Albania Have Hundreds of Thousands of Bunkers?

When Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha started building concrete bunkers during the Cold War, it was part paranoia and part propaganda. Learn more about these mysterious bunkers and how they're being repurposed today in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/albania-bunkers.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Vogelbaum here. In the wake of World War II, Albanian
dictator Enver Hooja began remaking his war torn country in
the image of Stalin's Soviet Union, which is to say
that he ruled with terrifying menace, stoking isolationism and Cold

(00:25):
War paranoia. In the nineteen seventies, with an ominous national
mood firmly in place, he began building the bunkers, large
bunkers and small ones. Underground bunkers and bunkers scattered openly
through the countryside, obvious bunkers and secret ones, all made
of reinforced concrete, most with a domed roof, as though

(00:48):
a strange spate of mushrooms had popped up all over
the republic. The stated idea was that these bunkers would
serve as defensive positions during an enemy invasion supposedly coming
any day. Ordinary civilians were trained to rush to the
bunkers in case of emergency, and conditioned by propaganda to
be ever vigilant against any and all foreign enemies. It

(01:12):
was part of Hoja's strategy of a people's war, which
relied on guerrilla war tactics executed by non soldiers. He
wanted his citizens always ready, and most were required to
do at least a little military training each year. Ultimately, though,
what was really happening was that they were being conditioned
to obey the hard line regime. There's a story that

(01:37):
says that after the first prototype bunker was built in
the nineteen fifties, Hoja asked the lead engineer how confident
he was in his creation. The engineer replied, very confident.
Hoja then ordered the engineer inside the bunker and instructed
a tank attack to test the building's integrity. The engineer
walked out unharmed, but no doubt shaken. After that, Albania

(02:02):
began its bunker building frenzy in earnest. Because of the
perpetual secrecy surrounding Hoje's administration, the bunkers were planned and
built with few public details. Engineers were moved among different
work sites to make it impossible for any one person
to fully understand the scope of the project. As such,

(02:23):
records are scarce and no one knows how many were constructed.
Numbers ranged from roughly one hundred and seventy five thousand
to nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand at the top end,
that would mean one for every four Albanians at the time.
Factory employees worked around the clock to make the necessary materials.

(02:44):
Some bunker designs were light enough to be carried piecemeal
into the mountains by mule. Others had to be dropped
into place by helicopter. Some expanded into entire underground towns
meant to survive nuclear strikes. The project was so massive
that it may have required three times as much concrete
as France's equally incredible Magino line, which tried and failed

(03:07):
to dwart Nazi hordes, which we'll have to do a
whole other episode about some time, and some experts estimate
that Albania's bunkers cost twice as much as the Magineu. Notably,
the bunker's strategy didn't sit well with officials in the
standing army, in part because the clunky and often cramped
bunkers weren't actually useful for professional soldiers, but that, of course,

(03:32):
was beside the point for the article. This episode is
based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with Elidor Mheely,
an associate professor of history at Hunter College, he said.
The bunkers were also about showing off the regime's military,
technical and strategic ability at a time when Albania was
increasingly alone geopolitically, and in that sense they did serve

(03:56):
a function. They were concrete things, but they also cared
read a kind of symbolic value. The official party propaganda
spoke of Albania as a fortress. The regime meant that
metaphorically in the sense of defending communism. Indeed, Hoja had
cut off relations with neighboring Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and

(04:18):
even China, feeling these countries had either strayed from the
hardline socialist path or else were warming relations with Western countries.
Having no allies made Albania one of the most isolated
countries on earth. The bunkers were allegedly to keep the
country safe from its many enemies, but they were in
reality just another form of propaganda. The regime knew that

(04:42):
they wouldn't have stood up contemporary war practices or technologies.
At one site, what started as a series of bomb
bunkers slowly evolved into what became an underground town. It
had huge rooms, interconnected tunnels and command centers and it
was meant to provide self sufficient shell for up to
ten thousand people. For half a year, the government regularly

(05:05):
conducted drills in which townspeople rushed to this huge labyrinth. Eventually,
they were so proficient in this exercise that the entire
town could sequester itself within seven minutes. Yet, because of
the way the underground city was intentionally segmented, no one
had any idea of how large it really was, not
even the construction workers who built it. Once inside, residents

(05:29):
were forbidden to move around. The bunker project ended with
the dictator's death in nineteen eighty five. In nineteen ninety,
the communist regime began to collapse. Two decades later, they
had joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and applied for
membership with the European Union. Today they have official candidate status.

(05:49):
Mihili said, Albania has undergone dramatic changes. Albania has become
an open society, which is a big deal since it
was one of Europe's most unforgiving dictatorships. At the same time,
the transition has not been easy. Many Albanians have left
the country since, seeking opportunities elsewhere, including here in the US.

(06:11):
In the meantime, the old bunkers remain. Given their inherent ruggedness,
it's too costly and time consuming to remove most of them. Instead,
Albanians are converting them, often in spite of government opposition,
for other purposes. In rural areas. Farmers use them to
shelter livestock or store grain around cities. Houseless people shelter

(06:35):
in them, kids play around them, teens smooth in them,
and beachgoers use their roofs as extra sunbathing space. Some
bunkers now serve as memorials and museums, which put the
horrors of the communist regime on display or bring beautiful
new artwork to communities. Others have been painted with murals

(06:55):
which were banned during the regime, or converted into coffee shops, bars,
pizzerias or lodging for tourists. And how do Albanians perceive
the bunkers today, Miheli said, I am not sure most
Albanians care about them. It's mostly tourists who are obsessed
with the bunkers as a kind of curiosity. Most Albanians,

(07:17):
i would say, are worried about corruption, poverty, and whether
there will be a better future for their children. Today's
episode is based on the article Albania's Doomsday bunkers fed
a Dictator's Paranoia on how stuffworks dot Com, written by
Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership

(07:39):
with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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