A Noose for Benito

In the wild mountains behind Tirana, baggy-trousered clansmen gathered last week, 80,000 strong, knives in their sashes, rifles across their backs. In the villages a restive folk hanged Benito Mussolini in effigy. Schoolboys ran off to the hills to join the guerrillas. Fearful Italian troops clapped hundreds in jail, closed the schools, imposed curfews on the villages. Like the rest of subjugated Europe, the smallest Balkan nation was girding for liberation.

Rebellious Albania might be the least of Il Duce's worries, but it was the most chronic. A people whose "nationalism does not whisper because their country is small," the Albanians had never accepted the Fascist conquest of 1939. Now patriot resistance, fanned by new hope, was mounting. It could be measured by Rome's frantic hunt for a popular puppet leader. For Prime Minister in Tirana Mussolini chose tricky, turncoat Ekrem Libohova, once ex-King Zog's Foreign Minister. This was Albania's fourth "government" in 1943.

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