Golden Journal No. 39:
Legions of Zog
Scenario Preview
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
April 2024

We’ve published Panzer Grenadier games for twenty years now, and the game design has been around longer than that. During that time, I’d always hoped to someday create and publish a game about the Italian invasion of Albania. It’s not like I had any special connection to or interest in Albania: it just seemed a strange quirk of history that I might like to explore.

To the best of my knowledge, Panzer Grenadier: Legions of Zog is the only wargame treatment of the April 1939 invasion ever made. It’s a thing that really happened, and if not for the Golden Journal, we never would have touched it. The Golden Journal is a game designer’s playground, an excuse to publish the weird and the wonderful. It’s not very big, and it’s exclusively for the Gold Club, which isn’t that huge of a restriction since anyone who’s going to want it is already a member, or should be.

The Italian Army of April 1939 wasn’t very good, and so they spearheaded the invasion of Albania with a handful of Bersaglieri battalions chiefly because those could be mobilized quickly. The Royal Albanian Army was much, much worse. At least that’s what seems to be the case; while the Italian side has some solid documentation, the Albanian part of the story seems to vary depending on who you ask.

Let’s have a look at the scenarios.

Scenario One
Streets of Durrës
7 April 1939
The Italians stumbled ashore at Albania’s largest port without any real opposition; had they met even a small group with light arms the invasion could have begun with a disaster. Even so, the invaders were hard-pressed when the Albanians counter-attacked them after their landing.

Conclusion
Just what happened at Durrës is unclear, but what’s not disputed is that by nightfall the Italians had firm control of the town and port. Just because someone wrote it down doesn’t make it fact, and it seems unlikely that the Bernd Fischer claims of large-scale fighting resulting in hundreds of Italian dead are anything more than a nationalist fantasy. But they do make for a better scenario.

Notes
The Italians have the town, and the Albanians want to take it back. But to take it back, they have to attack the Italians, and the Italians want to eliminate Albanian units. The Italians also have the help of a battleship, which might smash their own guys instead of the Albanians.

Scenario Two
Fortress Shköder
7 April 1939
The ancient fortress-town of Shköder dominated northern Albania, making it an important objective for the first day of the Italian invasion. The fortifications had not been modernized since the Turks were ejected before the Great War, but the town remained a formidable natural position and held a special place in the Albanian national mythos. This would be one of the few places where the Albanians most definitely fought the invaders.

Conclusion
The Albanians fought through the first day of invasion until the next morning, by which point many of their troops had deserted. Two officers held out in the ancient fortress (the two Entrenchments) until they had run out of ammunition, but by mid-morning Shköder and its fortress were firmly in Italian hands.

Notes
The Albanians are dug in on a fortified hilltop, and the Bersaglieri have to knock them off it. Once again, the Bersaglieri are pretty good at war and the Albanians are really bad at it, but there are a lot of them and they have a cannon.

Scenario Three
Blackshirts at Sarandë
7 April 1939
The southernmost Italian landing, at Sarandë (Santi Quaranta to the Italians) right across the strait from Greek-held Corfu, was the only one to feature the Blackshirts of the MVSN, Mussolini’s party militia. The Albanians fought for Sarandë, the main port of a region inhabited by mostly Greek Orthodox Albanians with a large component of ethnic Greeks. They had no more love for Italy than the Muslims living to the north.

Conclusion
The Blackshirts were little better than the Albanians – a collection of poorly-trained militia with corrupt, apathetic officers. They would need the help of the regular army’s elite Bersaglieri to bring firm control to this section of Albania. Undeterred, the Fascist Party quickly began recruiting for a Blackshirt Legion made up of Albanian Fascists, offering cash inducements when enlistment lagged.

Notes
Blackshirts vs. Albanians may seem to mark some kind of new low for Panzer Grenadier, but the Albanians are Border Guards rather than Royal Army, which makes them only somewhat corrupt and cowardly. The Blackshirts have to convince themselves to attack and seize a number of objectives, in a battle with no artillery and no vehicles.
 
Scenario Four
Road to Tirana
8 April 1939
The Royal Albanian Army kept its greatest strength around Tirana, the capital. Three full infantry battalions surrounded the city to guard against rural rebels marching on Zog’s palace, while a Royal Guard battalion of four companies drawn from loyalists in all corners of the kingdom protected his royal person. Those defenses would also protect Tirana from an Italian advance. In theory, anyway.

Conclusion
The heart of the Royal Albanian Army did not beat for Zog; once their king had fled, his troops melted away rather than fight. Without their Italian instructors and officers, the Albanian infantry milled about and then went home; the Albanian crews apparently couldn’t operate their tankettes without Italian support. Even so the Italians came prepared for a fight, or at least as prepared as they came for anything in April 1939, with sufficient troops to overwhelm the Albanians. Tirana was spared death and destruction, and least for a time; there would be no Battle of Tirana until 1944.

Notes
Albania has a tank, so we needed a scenario that used it. This is the battle the Italians thought they might have to fight, but no one wished to die for Zog by this point (the second day of the invasion). You do get to match CV33 tankettes against each other.

And these are the Scenarios of Zog!

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold. Leopold was a good dog.

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