Following the Italian invasion of Albania, the Albanian Kingdom became a protectorate of the Kingdom of Italy. The Italians used the Albanian minority in Greece as a pretext for declaring war on Greece. Although fascist Italy was defeated in the Greco-Italian War, a rapid German "blitzkrieg" campaign followed in April 1941, and by the middle of May, Greece was under joint occupation by three Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Bulgaria. Following the creation of the Albanian National Liberation Front, the Albanian resistance activities in the area of Gjirokastër increased. The Greek minority in Albania supported the anti-Axis resistance, and a separate battalion of ethnic Greek partisans (the Thanas Ziko Battalion) was established in November 1943.