During the Axis occupation of Greece between 1941 and 1944 parts of the Cham Albanian minority (, , ) in the Thesprotia prefecture, northwestern Greece, collaborated with the occupation forces.Meyer 2008: 705 "The Albanian minority of the Chams collaborated in large parts with the Italians and the Germans".Mazower, Mark. After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960. Princeton University Press, 2000, , pp. 25–26. "During World War II, the majority of Chams sided with the Axis forces..." Fascist Italian as well as Nazi German propaganda promised that the region would be awarded to Albania (then in personal union with Italy) after the end of the war. As a result of this pro-Albanian approach, many Muslim Chams actively supported the Axis operations and committed a number of crimes against the local population both in Greece and Albania. Apart from the formation of a local administration and armed security battalions, a paramilitary organization named Këshilla and a resistance paramilitary group called Balli Kombetar Cam were operating in the region, manned by local Muslim Chams. The results were devastating: many Greek and Albanian citizens lost their lives and a great number of villages were burned and destroyed. It appears that the Mufti and many beys did not approve of the Cham helping the Wehrmacht to burn Greek villages. With the retreat of the Axis forces from Greece in 1944, most of the Cham population was expelled to Albania and revenge attacks against the remaining Chams were carried out by Greek guerrillas and villagers.Baltsiotis. The Muslim Chams of Northwestern Greece. 2011. When the war ended, special courts on collaboration sentenced 2,106 Chams to death in absentia."Examining policy responses to immigration in the light of interstate relations and foreign policy objectives: Greece and Albania". In King, Russell, & Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers (eds). The new Albanian migration. Sussex Academic. p. 16. However, the war crimes remained unpunished since the criminals had already fled abroad. According to German historian Norbert Frei, the Muslim Cham minority is regarded as the "fourth occupation force" in Greece due to the collaborationist and criminal activities that large parts of the minority committed.Frei 2006: 483
According to the Lieutenant Colonel Palmer of the British Military Mission in Albania, 2,000–3,000 collaborated in an organized manner, while a report of Pan-Epirotic EAM-Commission names 3,200 Cham collaborators from the Dino clan.
Although not everyone in the community actively collaborated, historiography agrees that the Cham minority completely accepted the Axis occupation and benefited from the presence of occupation troops by providing them with guides, connections, informants and other forms of support.: "it been admitted by all sides that the Albanian population as a whole, even though it did not actively collaborate with the occupiers, they accepted them with hope and expectation for the materialization of the promises which had been cultivated for decades; they benefited from their presence in the region and provided them with indirect support with guides, connections, informants etc. A German officer was to admit later that the Albanians were favorably disposed towards them while the Greeks fought against them." Mainly due to their collaboration in World War II the Chams later became a controversial if not suspect community for the leaders of the People's Republic of Albania (1945-1991).: "The least that can be said is that for Hoxha and generally for the Albanian communists, the Çams comprised a controversial if not suspect community, due to their collaboration with the German and Italian occupiers during World War II."
Background The region inhabited by the Chams, known among Albanians as "Chameria", consisted chiefly of the Thesprotia prefecture in Greece, as well as a few villages in southwestern Albania. Before 1945, the region had a mixed Greek and Albanian population dating to the migrations of Albanian tribes into the area in the 13th and 14th centuries. Many of the Chams, originally Orthodox Christians, were Islamicized in the 17th to 19th centuries,King 2005: 87 with Crypto-Christianity persisting as late as the early 19th century.
Given the Ottoman social structure, Muslim Cham landlords were a privileged part of the society and owned much of the most fertile land.Roudometof 2002: 157 Apart from the beys it seems that the majority of the Muslim Cham population consisted of middle sized land owners and also included families with ownership of small land parcels, few fields or animals and located in villages.Baltsiotis. The Muslim Chams of Northwestern Greece. 2011. "Although there is no sufficient written proof to support the idea, it’s almost certain that families owning very small parcels of land, or just a few small fields and a small number of sheep, were not an exception and were also present in villages" A degree of antagonism existed between the two communities and conflict occurred on certain occasions.
Despite the claims of Greek and Albanian nationalists alike, surveys of the region of Thesprotia repeatedly noted the lack of "nationalisation" among the population; the Albanian speaking Christians referred to themselves not as Greeks but as "kaurs", while Albanophone Muslims did not call themselves "Albanian" but instead "Muslims" or "Turks"; even as late as the 1940s, the Muslims lacked any sort of Albanian consciousness and continued to describe themselves as "Turks"; Albanian nationalist ideas were espoused by a "minority of the educated and landowning class" but even these were divided between republican and royalist factions.Tsoutsoumpis, Spyros. "Violence, resistance and collaboration in a Greek borderland: the case of the Muslim Chams of Epirus." (2015). Pages 121-127 Muslim religious authorities were conservative and of pro-Turkish persuasion, and accordingly they obstructed the growth of Albanian nationalism in the region.
Once Epirus passed to Greek hands in 1913 as a result of the Balkan Wars however, the Muslim beys lost their political influence, while retaining their economic weight. During the Interwar period, the Greek state did not take any serious effort to encourage their assimilation, although a number of complaints by the Chams to the League of Nations bear witness to a sense of grievance.Mazower 2000: 25 However, there is little evidence of direct state persecution at this time.Roudometof 2002: 157. During that time though, members of the Cham community suffered from discrimination due to severe expropriations of their lands.Baltsiotis. The Muslim Chams of Northwestern Greece. 2011. "A concrete description of the lives of the Muslims is clearly referred to in a special report drawn by K. Stylianopoulos, the “Inspector” in charge of Minority issues, who was directly appointed by the Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and was accountable to him. The report relates to us in graphic terms that “[…] persecutions and heavier confiscations, even led to the decision of classifying as chiftlik the town of Paramythia […] and in that way small properties and gardens had been expropriated against the Constitution and the Agrarian law; not a single stremma was left to them for cultivation and for sustaining their families, nor were the rents of their properties paid to them regularly (some of them being even lower than a stamp duty). They were not permitted to sell or buy land, and were forced to evaluate their fields at ridiculously low prices (as low as 3 drahmi per stremma), […], only to be imprisoned for taxes not paid for land already confiscated or expropriated..... Report, 15.10.1930, Archive of Eleftherios Venizelos, Minorities, f. 58/173/4573. See the more detailed report on illegal real estate expropriations and confiscations and the financial results upon the Muslim population at the documents contacted by the General Inspector of the Central Department (of the Ministry of Agriculture) to his Ministry, dated 13. 01. 1932 and 07.08.1932 (HAMFA, 1935, f. A/4/9/2), where he underlines that even plots of 2-3 stremmata had been expropriated."
Relations between the various social groups were complicated in the region and were characterized primarily by an intense honor culture featuring clans and blood feuds among all major groups, antagonisms between the pastoralist (Vlach) and sedentary (Greek and Albanian) populations, religious rivalries between landowning Muslims and often land-starved Christian itinerant farmers who worked in "deplorable" conditions, and the exploitation of religious affiliations by both Christians and Muslims to win disputes. At the same time there was a high rate of interreligious clan alliances, friendships, blood-brotherhoods, adoptions (where the adoptee retained their parents' religion despite the parents practicing another) and interreligious marriages. Muslim peasants often gave their children Christian names and attended Christian services, while Christians likewise would consult Muslim clergy.
In the early 20th century, the bonds between the various Christian and Muslim communities began to weaken as clergy on both sides railed against interreligious relationships. Further stress was placed on interreligious relationships by conflicts over land and resources, the allotment of formerly Muslim-controlled resources to refugees from Turkey, anti-Albanian policies by the Metaxas government beginning in 1936 which included suppression of the Albanian language and harassment of Muslim notables, and finally in 1939 the beginning of irredentist pressures emanating from Italy and Italian occupied Albania calling for the annexation of Thesprotia to Albania.
In the late 1930s, especially after Albania became a protectorate of Fascist Italy, relations between the Cham community and the Greek state also deteriorated considerably, as, with the encouragement of the Italian authorities in Albania, irredentist elements of this community became more vocal. The Italian governor of Albania, Francesco Jacomoni, was an especially vocal proponent of Albanian claims in Greece and Kosovo, hoping to use them as a means of rallying Albanian support around the Fascist regime.Fischer 1999: 75-76 In the event, Albanian enthusiasm for the "liberation of Chameria" was muted, but as Italian invasion became imminent in fall 1940, the Greek authorities disarmed the Cham conscripts in the Army, and later rounded up the male population and sent it to internal exile.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, 28 villages in the region were inhabited exclusively by Muslim Chams, and an additional 20 villages had mixed (Greek-Muslim Cham) populations.Meyer 2008: 152
Italian occupation Greco-Italian War and Italian occupation of October–November 1940