President Tito

Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II, he was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. He also served as the president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 14 January 1953 until his death on 4 May 1980.

He was born to a Croat father and Slovene mother in the village of Kumrovec, Austria-Hungary (now in Croatia). Drafted into military service, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army of that time. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians during World War I, he was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. He participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Civil War. Upon his return to the Balkans in 1918, he entered the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Having assumed de facto control over the party by 1937, he was formally elected its general secretary in 1939 and later its president, the title he held until his death. During World War II, after the Nazi invasion of the area, he led the Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Partisans (1941–1945). By the end of the war, the Partisans—with the backing of the invading Soviet Union—took power over Yugoslavia.

After the war, Tito was the chief architect of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), serving as both prime minister (1944–1963), president (since 1974 president for life) (1953–1980), and marshal of Yugoslavia, the highest rank of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). Despite being one of the founders of Cominform, he became the first Cominform member to defy Soviet hegemony in 1948. He was the only leader in Joseph Stalin's time to leave Cominform and begin with his country's own socialist program, which contained elements of market socialism. Economists active in the former Yugoslavia, including Czech-born Jaroslav Vaněk and Yugoslav-born Branko Horvat, promoted a model of market socialism that was dubbed the Illyrian model. Firms were socially owned by their employees and structured on workers' self-management; they competed in open and free markets. Tito managed to keep ethnic tensions under control by delegating as much power as possible to each republic. The 1974 Yugoslav Constitution defined SFR Yugoslavia as a "federal republic of equal nations and nationalities, freely united on the principle of brotherhood and unity in achieving specific and common interest." Each republic was also given the right to self-determination and secession if done through legal channels. Lastly, Tito gave Kosovo and Vojvodina, the two constituent provinces of Serbia, substantially increased autonomy, including de facto veto power in the Serbian parliament. Tito built a very powerful cult of personality around himself, which was maintained by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia even after his death. Twelve years after his death, as communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia dissolved and descended into a series of interethnic wars.

Some historians criticize Tito's presidency as authoritarian, while others see him as a benevolent dictator. He was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Viewed as a unifying symbol, his internal policies maintained the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained further international attention as the chief leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia.Peter Willetts, ''The Non-aligned Movement: The Origins of a Third World Alliance'' (1978) p. xiv With a highly favourable reputation abroad in both Cold War blocs, he received a total of 98 foreign decorations, including the Legion of Honour and the Order of the Bath.

Early life

Pre-World War I

Josip Broz was born on 7 May 1892 in Kumrovec, a village in the northern Croatian region of Hrvatsko Zagorje. At the time it was part of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the seventh or eighth child of Franjo Broz (1860–1936) and Marija née Javeršek (1864–1918). His parents had already had a number of children die in early infancy. Broz was christened and raised as a Roman Catholic. His father, Franjo, was a Croat whose family had lived in the village for three centuries, while his mother Marija, was a Slovene from the village of Podsreda. The villages were apart, and his parents had married on 21 January 1881. Franjo Broz had inherited a estate and a good house, but he was unable to make a success of farming. Josip spent a significant proportion of his pre-school years living with his maternal grandparents at Podsreda, where he became a favourite of his grandfather Martin Javeršek. By the time he returned to Kumrovec to begin school, he spoke Slovene better than Croatian, and had learned to play the piano. Despite his mixed parentage, Broz identified as a Croat like his father and neighbours.

In July 1900, at the age of eight, Broz entered primary school at Kumrovec. He completed four years of school, failing the 2nd grade and graduating in 1905. As a result of his limited schooling, throughout his life Tito was poor at spelling. After leaving school, he initially worked for a maternal uncle, and then on his parents' family farm. In 1907, his father wanted him to emigrate to the United States, but could not raise the money for the voyage.

Instead, aged 15 years, Broz left Kumrovec and travelled about south to Sisak, where his cousin Jurica Broz was doing army service. Jurica helped him get a job in a restaurant, but Broz was soon tired of that work. He approached a Czech locksmith, Nikola Karas, for a three-year apprenticeship, which included training, food, and room and board. As his father could not afford to pay for his work clothing, Broz paid for it himself. Soon after, his younger brother Stjepan also became apprenticed to Karas.

During his apprenticeship, Broz was encouraged to mark May Day in 1909, and he read and sold ''Slobodna Reč'' (''Free Word''), a socialist newspaper. After completing his apprenticeship in September 1910, Broz used his contacts to gain employment in Zagreb. At the age of 18, he joined the Metal Workers' Union and participated in his first labour protest. He also joined the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia.

He returned home in December 1910. In early 1911 he began a series of moves in search of work, first seeking work in Ljubljana, then Trieste, Kumrovec and Zagreb, where he worked repairing bicycles. He joined his first strike action on May Day 1911. After a brief period of work in Ljubljana, between May 1911 and May 1912, he worked in a factory in Kamnik in the Kamnik–Savinja Alps. After it closed, he was offered redeployment to Čenkov in Bohemia. On arriving at his new workplace, he discovered that the employer was trying to bring in cheaper labour to replace the local Czech workers, and he and others joined successful strike action to force the employer to back down.

Driven by curiosity, Broz moved to Plzeň, where he was briefly employed at the Škoda Works. He next travelled to Munich in Bavaria. He also worked at the Benz car factory in Mannheim, and visited the Ruhr industrial region. By October 1912 he had reached Vienna. He stayed with his older brother Martin and his family, and worked at the Griedl Works before getting a job at Wiener Neustadt. There he worked for Austro-Daimler, and was often asked to drive and test the cars. During this time he spent considerable time fencing and dancing, and during his training and early work life, he also learned German and passable Czech.

World War I

In May 1913, Broz was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, for his compulsory two years of service. He successfully requested to serve with the 25th Croatian Home Guard ( hr, Domobran, links=no) Regiment garrisoned in Zagreb. After learning to ski during the winter of 1913 and 1914, Broz was sent to a school for non-commissioned officers (NCO) in Budapest, after which he was promoted to sergeant major. At 22 years of age, he was the youngest of that rank in his regiment. At least one source states that he was the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After winning the regimental fencing competition, Broz came in second in the army fencing championships in Budapest in May 1914.

Soon after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment marched toward the Serbian border. Broz was arrested for sedition and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress in present-day Novi Sad. Broz later gave conflicting accounts of this arrest, telling one biographer that he had threatened to desert to the Russians, but also claiming that the whole matter arose from a clerical error. A third version was that he had been overheard saying that he hoped the Austro-Hungarian Empire would be defeated. After his acquittal and release, his regiment served briefly on the Serbian Front before being deployed to the Eastern Front in Galicia in early 1915 to fight against Russia. Tito in his own account of his military service did not mention that he participated in the failed Austrian invasion of Serbia, instead giving the misleading impression that he fought only in Galicia, as it would have offended Serbian opinion to know that he fought in 1914 for the Habsburgs against them. On one occasion, the scout platoon he commanded went behind the enemy lines and captured 80 Russian soldiers, bringing them back to their own lines alive. In 1980 it was discovered that he had been recommended for an award for gallantry and initiative in reconnaissance and capturing prisoners. Tito's biographer, Richard West, wrote that Tito actually downplayed his military record as the Austrian Army records showed that he was a brave soldier, which contradicted his later claim to have been opposed to the Habsburg monarchy and his self-portrait of himself as an unwilling conscript fighting in a war he was opposed to. Broz was regarded by his fellow soldiers as ''kaisertreu'' ("true to the Emperor").

On 25 March 1915, he was wounded in the back by a Circassian cavalryman's lance, and captured during a Russian attack near Bukovina. Broz in his account of his capture described it melodramatically as: "...but suddenly the right flank yielded and through the gap poured cavalry of the Circassians, from Asiatic Russia. Before we knew it they were thundering through our positions, leaping from their horses and throwing themselves into our trenches with lances lowered. One of them rammed his two-yard, iron-tipped, double-pronged lance into my back just below the left arm. I fainted. Then, as I learned, the Circassians began to butcher the wounded, even slashing them with their knives. Fortunately, Russian infantry reached the positions and put an end to the orgy". Now a prisoner of war (POW), Broz was transported east to a hospital established in an old monastery in the town of Sviyazhsk on the Volga river near Kazan. During his 13 months in hospital he had bouts of pneumonia and typhus, and learned Russian with the help of two schoolgirls who brought him Russian classics by such authors as Tolstoy and Turgenev to read.

After recuperating, in mid-1916 he was transferred to the Ardatov POW camp in the Samara Governorate, where he used his skills to maintain the nearby village grain mill. At the end of the year, he was again transferred, this time to the Kungur POW camp near Perm where the POWs were used as labour to maintain the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway. Broz was appointed to be in charge of all the POWs in the camp. During this time he became aware that the Red Cross parcels sent to the POWs were being stolen by camp staff. When he complained, he was beaten and put in prison. During the February Revolution, a crowd broke into the prison and returned Broz to the POW camp. A Bolshevik he had met while working on the railway told Broz that his son was working in an engineering works in Petrograd, so, in June 1917, Broz walked out of the unguarded POW camp and hid aboard a goods train bound for that city, where he stayed with his friend's son. The journalist Richard West has suggested that because Broz chose to remain in an unguarded POW camp rather than volunteer to serve with the Yugoslav legions of the Serbian Army, this indicates that he remained loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and undermines his later claim that he and other Croat POWs were excited by the prospect of revolution and looked forward to the overthrow of the empire that ruled them.

Less than a month after Broz arrived in Petrograd, the July Days demonstrations broke out, and Broz joined in, coming under fire from government troops. In the aftermath, he tried to flee to Finland in order to make his way to the United States but was stopped at the border. He was arrested along with other suspected Bolsheviks during the subsequent crackdown by the Russian Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. He was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for three weeks, during which he claimed to be an innocent citizen of Perm. When he finally admitted to being an escaped POW, he was to be returned by train to Kungur, but escaped at Yekaterinburg, then caught another train that reached Omsk in Siberia on 8 November after a journey. At one point, police searched the train looking for an escaped POW, but were deceived by Broz's fluent Russian.

In Omsk, the train was stopped by local Bolsheviks who told Broz that Vladimir Lenin had seized control of Petrograd. They recruited him into an International Red Guard that guarded the Trans-Siberian Railway during the winter of 1917 and 1918. In May 1918, the anti-Bolshevik Czechoslovak Legion wrested control of parts of Siberia from Bolshevik forces, and the Provisional Siberian Government established itself in Omsk, and Broz and his comrades went into hiding. At this time Broz met a 14-year-old local girl, Pelagija "Polka" Belousova, who hid him then helped him escape to a Kazakh village from Omsk. Broz again worked maintaining the local mill until November 1919 when the Red Army recaptured Omsk from White forces loyal to the Provisional All-Russian Government of Alexander Kolchak. He moved back to Omsk and married Belousova in January 1920. At the time of their marriage, Broz was 27 years old and Belousova was 15. Broz later wrote that during his time in Russia he heard much talk of Lenin, a little of Trotsky and "...as for Stalin, during the time I stayed in Russia, I never once heard his name". In the autumn of 1920, he and his pregnant wife returned to his homeland, first by train to Narva, by ship to Stettin, then by train to Vienna, where they arrived on 20 September. In early October Broz returned home to Kumrovec in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to find that his mother had died and his father had moved to Jastrebarsko near Zagreb. Sources differ over whether Broz joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union while in Russia, but he stated that the first time he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) was in Zagreb after he returned to his homeland.

Interwar communist activity

Communist agitator

Upon his return home, Broz was unable to gain employment as a metalworker in Kumrovec, so he and his wife moved briefly to Zagreb, where he worked as a waiter, and took part in a waiter's strike. He also joined the CPY. The CPY's influence on the political life of Yugoslavia was growing rapidly. In the 1920 elections, it won 59 seats and became the third strongest party. After the assassination of Milorad Drašković, the Yugoslav Minister of the Interior, by a young communist named Alija Alijagić on 2 August 1921, the CPY was declared illegal under the Yugoslav State Security Act of 1921.

Due to his overt communist links, Broz was fired from his employment. He and his wife then moved to the village of Veliko Trojstvo where he worked as a mill mechanic. After the arrest of the CPY leadership in January 1922, Stevo Sabić took over control of its operations. Sabić contacted Broz who agreed to work illegally for the party, distributing leaflets and agitating among factory workers. In the contest of ideas between those that wanted to pursue moderate policies and those that advocated violent revolution, Broz sided with the latter. In 1924, Broz was elected to the CPY district committee, but after he gave a speech at a comrade's Catholic funeral he was arrested when the priest complained. Paraded through the streets in chains, he was held for eight days and was eventually charged with creating a public disturbance. With the help of a Serbian Orthodox prosecutor who hated Catholics, Broz and his co-accused were acquitted. His brush with the law had marked him as a communist agitator, and his home was searched on an almost weekly basis. Since their arrival in Yugoslavia, Pelagija had lost three babies soon after their births, and one daughter, Zlatina, at the age of two. Broz felt the loss of Zlatina deeply. In 1924, Pelagija gave birth to a boy, Žarko, who survived. In mid-1925, Broz's employer died and the new mill owner gave him an ultimatum, give up his communist activities or lose his job. So, at the age of 33, Broz became a professional revolutionary.

Professional revolutionary

The CPY concentrated its revolutionary efforts on factory workers in the more industrialised areas of Croatia and Slovenia, encouraging strikes and similar action. In 1925, the now unemployed Broz moved to Kraljevica on the Adriatic coast, where he started working at a shipyard to further the aims of the CPY. During his time in Kraljevica, Tito acquired a love of the warm, sunny Adriatic coastline that was to last for the rest of his life, and throughout his later time as leader, he spent as much time as possible living on his yacht while cruising the Adriatic.

While at Kraljevica he worked on Yugoslav torpedo boats and a pleasure yacht for the People's Radical Party politician, Milan Stojadinović. Broz built up the trade union organisation in the shipyards and was elected as a union representative. A year later he led a shipyard strike, and soon after was fired. In October 1926 he obtained work in a railway works in Smederevska Palanka near Belgrade. In March 1927, he wrote an article complaining about the exploitation of workers in the factory, and after speaking up for a worker he was promptly sacked. Identified by the CPY as worthy of promotion, he was appointed secretary of the Zagreb branch of the Metal Workers' Union, and soon after the whole Croatian branch of the union. In July 1927 Broz was arrested, along with six other workers, and imprisoned at nearby Ogulin. After being held without trial for some time, Broz went on a hunger strike until a date was set. The trial was held in secret and he was found guilty of being a member of the CPY. Sentenced to four months' imprisonment, he was released from prison pending an appeal. On the orders of the CPY, Broz did not report to the court for the hearing of the appeal, instead going into hiding in Zagreb. Wearing dark spectacles and carrying forged papers, Broz posed as a middle-class technician in the engineering industry, working undercover to contact other CPY members and coordinate their infiltration of trade unions.

In February 1928, Broz was one of 32 delegates to the conference of the Croatian branch of the CPY. During the conference, Broz condemned factions within the party. These included those that advocated a Greater Serbia agenda within Yugoslavia, like the long-term CPY leader, the Serb Sima Marković. Broz proposed that the executive committee of the Communist International purge the branch of factionalism, and was supported by a delegate sent from Moscow. After it was proposed that the entire central committee of the Croatian branch be dismissed, a new central committee was elected with Broz as its secretary. Marković was subsequently expelled from the CPY at the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, and the CPY adopted a policy of working for the break-up of Yugoslavia. Broz arranged to disrupt a meeting of the Social-Democratic Party on May Day that year, and in a melee outside the venue, Broz was arrested by the police. They failed to identify him, charging him under his false name for a breach of the peace. He was imprisoned for 14 days and then released, returning to his previous activities. The police eventually tracked him down with the help of a police informer. He was ill-treated and held for three months before being tried in court in November 1928 for his illegal communist activities, which included allegations that the bombs that had been found at his address had been planted by the police. He was convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment.

Prison

After his sentencing, his wife and son returned to Kumrovec, where they were looked after by sympathetic locals, but then one day they suddenly left without explanation and returned to the Soviet Union. She fell in love with another man and Žarko grew up in institutions. After arriving at Lepoglava prison, Broz was employed in maintaining the electrical system, and chose as his assistant a middle-class Belgrade Jew, Moša Pijade, who had been given a 20-year sentence for his communist activities. Their work allowed Broz and Pijade to move around the prison, contacting and organising other communist prisoners. During their time together in Lepoglava, Pijade became Broz's ideological mentor. After two and a half years at Lepoglava, Broz was accused of attempting to escape and was transferred to Maribor prison where he was held in solitary confinement for several months. After completing the full term of his sentence, he was released, only to be arrested outside the prison gates and taken to Ogulin to serve the four-month sentence he had avoided in 1927. He was finally released from prison on 16 March 1934, but even then he was subject to orders that required him to live in Kumrovec and report to the police daily. During his imprisonment, the political situation in Europe had changed significantly, with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the emergence of right-wing parties in France and neighbouring Austria. He returned to a warm welcome in Kumrovec but did not stay for long. In early May, he received word from the CPY to return to his revolutionary activities, and left his home town for Zagreb, where he rejoined the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia.

The Croatian branch of the CPY was in disarray, a situation exacerbated by the escape of the executive committee of the CPY to Vienna in Austria, from which they were directing activities. Over the next six months, Broz travelled several times between Zagreb, Ljubljana and Vienna, using false passports. In July 1934, he was blackmailed by a smuggler, but pressed on across the border, and was detained by the local '' Heimwehr'', a paramilitary Home Guard. He used the Austrian accent he had developed during his war service to convince them that he was a wayward Austrian mountaineer, and they allowed him to proceed to Vienna. Once there, he contacted the General Secretary of the CPY, Milan Gorkić, who sent him to Ljubljana to arrange a secret conference of the CPY in Slovenia. The conference was held at the summer palace of the Roman Catholic bishop of Ljubljana, whose brother was a communist sympathiser. It was at this conference that Broz first met Edvard Kardelj, a young Slovene communist who had recently been released from prison. Broz and Kardelj subsequently became good friends, with Tito later regarding him as his most reliable deputy. As he was wanted by the police for failing to report to them in Kumrovec, Broz adopted various pseudonyms, including "Rudi" and "Tito". He used the latter as a pen name when he wrote articles for party journals in 1934, and it stuck. He gave no reason for choosing the name "Tito" except that it was a common nickname for men from the district where he grew up. Within the Comintern network, his nickname was "Walter".

Flight from Yugoslavia

During this time Tito wrote articles on the duties of imprisoned communists and on trade unions. He was in Ljubljana when King Alexander was assassinated by Vlado Chernozemski and the Croatian nationalist ''Ustaše'' organisation in Marseilles on 9 October 1934. In the crackdown on dissidents that followed his death, it was decided that Tito should leave Yugoslavia. He travelled to Vienna on a forged Czech passport where he joined Gorkić and the rest of the Politburo of the CPY. It was decided that the Austrian government was too hostile to communism, so the Politburo travelled to Brno in Czechoslovakia, and Tito accompanied them. On Christmas Day 1934, a secret meeting of the Central Committee of the CPY was held in Ljubljana, and Tito was elected as a member of the Politburo for the first time. The Politburo decided to send him to Moscow to report on the situation in Yugoslavia, and in early February 1935, he arrived there as a full-time official of the Comintern. He lodged at the main Comintern residence, the Hotel Lux on Tverskaya Street, and was quickly in contact with Vladimir Ćopić, one of the leading Yugoslavs with the Comintern. He was soon introduced to the main personalities in the organisation. Tito was appointed to the secretariat of the Balkan section, responsible for Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece. Kardelj was also in Moscow, as was the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov. Tito lectured on trade unions to foreign communists, and attended a course on military tactics run by the Red Army, and occasionally attended the Bolshoi Theatre. He attended as one of 510 delegates to the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in July and August 1935, where he briefly saw Joseph Stalin for the first time. After the congress, he toured the Soviet Union, then returned to Moscow to continue his work. He contacted Polka and Žarko, but soon fell in love with an Austrian woman who worked at the Hotel Lux, Johanna Koenig, known within communist ranks as Lucia Bauer. When she became aware of this liaison, Polka divorced Tito in April 1936. Tito married Bauer on 13 October of that year.

After the World Congress, Tito worked to promote the new Comintern line on Yugoslavia, which was that it would no longer work to break up the country, and would instead defend the integrity of Yugoslavia against Nazism and Fascism. From a distance, Tito also worked to organise strikes at the shipyards at Kraljevica and the coal mines at Trbovlje near Ljubljana. He tried to convince the Comintern that it would be better if the party leadership was located inside Yugoslavia. A compromise was arrived at, where Tito and others would work inside the country and Gorkić and the Politburo would continue to work from abroad. Gorkić and the Politburo relocated to Paris, while Tito began to travel between Moscow, Paris and Zagreb in 1936 and 1937, using false passports. In 1936, his father died.

Tito returned to Moscow in August 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. At the time, the Great Purge was underway, and foreign communists like Tito and his Yugoslav compatriots were particularly vulnerable. Despite a laudatory report written by Tito about the veteran Yugoslav communist Filip Filipović, Filipović was arrested and shot by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. However, before the Purge really began to erode the ranks of the Yugoslav communists in Moscow, Tito was sent back to Yugoslavia with a new mission, to recruit volunteers for the International Brigades being raised to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Travelling via Vienna, he reached the coastal port city of Split in December 1936. According to the Croatian historian Ivo Banac, the reason Tito was sent back to Yugoslavia by the Comintern was in order to purge the CPY. An initial attempt to send 500 volunteers to Spain by ship failed utterly, with nearly all the communist volunteers being arrested and imprisoned. Tito then travelled to Paris, where he arranged the travel of volunteers to France under the cover of attending the Paris Exhibition. Once in France, the volunteers simply crossed the Pyrenees to Spain. In all, he sent 1,192 men to fight in the war, but only 330 came from Yugoslavia, the rest being expatriates in France, Belgium, the U.S. and Canada. Less than half were communists, and the rest were social-democrats and anti-fascists of various hues. Of the total, 671 were killed in the fighting and another 300 were wounded. Tito himself never went to Spain, despite later claims that he had. Between May and August 1937, Tito travelled several times between Paris and Zagreb organising the movement of volunteers and creating a separate Communist Party of Croatia. The new party was inaugurated at a conference at Samobor on the outskirts of Zagreb on 1–2 August 1937.

General Secretary of the CPY

In June 1937, Gorkić was summoned to Moscow, where he was arrested, and after months of NKVD interrogation, he was shot. According to Banac, Gorkić was killed on Stalin's orders. West concludes that despite being in competition with men like Gorkić for the leadership of the CPY, it was not in Tito's character to have innocent people sent to their deaths. Tito then received a message from the Politburo of the CPY to join them in Paris. In August 1937 he became acting General Secretary of the CPY. He later explained that he survived the Purge by staying out of Spain where the NKVD was active, and also by avoiding visiting the Soviet Union as much as possible. When first appointed as general secretary, he avoided travelling to Moscow by insisting that he needed to deal with some indiscipline in the CPY in Paris. He also promoted the idea that the upper echelons of the CPY should be sharing the dangers of underground resistance within the country. He developed a new, younger leadership team that was loyal to him, including the Slovene Kardelj, the Serb, Aleksandar Ranković, and the Montenegrin, Milovan Đilas. In December 1937, Tito arranged for a demonstration to greet the French foreign minister when he visited Belgrade, expressing solidarity with the French against Nazi Germany. The protest march numbered 30,000 and turned into a protest against the neutrality policy of the Stojadinović government. It was eventually broken up by the police. In March 1938 Tito returned to Yugoslavia from Paris. Hearing a rumour that his opponents within the CPY had tipped off the police, he travelled to Belgrade rather than Zagreb and used a different passport. While in Belgrade he stayed with a young intellectual, Vladimir Dedijer, who was a friend of Đilas. Arriving in Yugoslavia a few days ahead of the ''Anschluss'' between Nazi Germany and Austria, he made an appeal condemning it, in which the CPY was joined by the Social Democrats and trade unions. In June, Tito wrote to the Comintern suggesting that he should visit Moscow. He waited in Paris for two months for his Soviet visa before travelling to Moscow via Copenhagen. He arrived in Moscow on 24 August.

On arrival in Moscow, he found that all Yugoslav communists were under suspicion. Nearly all the most prominent leaders of the CPY were arrested by the NKVD and executed, including over twenty members of the Central Committee. Both his ex-wife Polka and his wife Koenig/Bauer were arrested as "imperialist spies", although they were both eventually released, Polka after 27 months in prison. Tito, therefore, needed to make arrangements for the care of Žarko, who was fourteen. He placed him in a boarding school outside Kharkov, then at a school at Penza, but he ran away twice and was eventually taken in by a friend's mother. In 1941, Žarko joined the Red Army to fight the invading Germans. Some of Tito's critics argue that his survival indicates he must have denounced his comrades as Trotskyists. He was asked for information on a number of his fellow Yugoslav communists, but according to his own statements and published documents, he never denounced anyone, usually saying he did not know them. In one case he was asked about the Croatian communist leader Horvatin, but wrote ambiguously, saying that he did not know whether he was a Trotskyist. Nevertheless, Horvatin was not heard of again. While in Moscow, he was given the task of assisting Ćopić to translate the ''History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)'' into Serbo-Croatian, but they had only got to the second chapter when Ćopić too was arrested and executed. He worked on with a fellow surviving Yugoslav communist, but a Yugoslav communist of German ethnicity reported an inaccurate translation of a passage and claimed it showed Tito was a Trotskyist. Other influential communists vouched for him, and he was exonerated. He was denounced by a second Yugoslav communist, but the action backfired and his accuser was arrested. Several factors were at play in his survival; working-class origins, lack of interest in intellectual arguments about socialism, attractive personality and capacity for making influential friends.

While Tito was avoiding arrest in Moscow, Germany was placing pressure on Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland. In response to this threat, Tito organised a call for Yugoslav volunteers to fight for Czechoslovakia, and thousands of volunteers came to the Czechoslovak embassy in Belgrade to offer their services. Despite the eventual Munich Agreement and Czechoslovak acceptance of the annexation and the fact that the volunteers were turned away, Tito claimed credit for the Yugoslav response, which worked in his favour. By this stage, Tito was well aware of the realities in the Soviet Union, later stating that he "witnessed a great many injustices", but was too heavily invested in communism and too loyal to the Soviet Union to step back at this point. Tito's appointment as General Secretary of the CPY was formally ratified by the Comintern on 5 January 1939.

He was appointed to the Committee and started to appoint allies to him, among them Edvard Kardelj, Milovan Đilas, Aleksandar Ranković and Boris Kidrič.

World War II

Resistance in Yugoslavia

On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. On 10 April 1941, Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia, and Tito responded by forming a Military Committee within the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party. Attacked from all sides, the armed forces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia quickly crumbled. On 17 April 1941, after King Peter II and other members of the government fled the country, the remaining representatives of the government and military met with German officials in Belgrade. They quickly agreed to end military resistance. Prominent communist leaders, including Tito, held the May consultations to discuss the course of action to take in the face of the invasion. On 1 May 1941, Tito issued a pamphlet calling on the people to unite in a battle against the occupation. On 27 June 1941, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) appointed Tito Commander in Chief of all national liberation military forces. On 1 July 1941, the Comintern sent precise instructions calling for immediate action.

Tito stayed in Belgrade until 16 September 1941 when he, together with all members of the CPY, left Belgrade to travel to rebel-controlled territory. To leave Belgrade Tito used documents given to him by Dragoljub Milutinović, who was a ''voivode'' with the collaborationist Pećanac Chetniks. Since Pećanac was already fully co-operating with Germans by that time, this fact caused some to speculate that Tito left Belgrade with the blessing of the Germans because his task was to divide rebel forces, similar to Lenin's arrival in Russia. Broz travelled by train through Stalać and Čačak and arrived to the village of Robije on 18 September 1941.

Despite conflicts with the rival monarchic Chetnik movement, Tito's Partisans succeeded in liberating territory, notably the " Republic of Užice". During this period, Tito held talks with Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović on 19 September and 27 October 1941. It is said that Tito ordered his forces to assist escaping Jews, and that more than 2,000 Jews fought directly for Tito.

On 21 December 1941, the Partisans created the First Proletarian Brigade (commanded by Koča Popović) and on 1 March 1942, Tito created the Second Proletarian Brigade. In liberated territories, the Partisans organised People's Committees to act as a civilian government. The Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) convened in Bihać on 26–27 November 1942 and in Jajce on 29 November 1943.Richard C. Hall, ''War in the Balkans: An Encyclopedic History from the Fall of the Ottoman Empire to the Breakup of Yugoslavia'' (ABC-CLIO, 2014) pp. 36, 350 In the two sessions, the resistance representatives established the basis for the post-war organisation of the country, deciding on a federation of the Yugoslav nations. In Jajce, a 67-member "presidency" was elected and established a nine-member National Committee of Liberation (five communist members) as a de facto provisional government. Tito was named President of the National Committee of Liberation.

With the growing possibility of an Allied invasion in the Balkans, the Axis began to divert more resources to the destruction of the Partisans main force and its high command. Tomasevich 2001, p. 104. This meant, among other things, a concerted German effort to capture Josip Broz Tito personally. On 25 May 1944, he managed to evade the Germans after the Raid on Drvar (''Operation Rösselsprung''), an airborne assault outside his Drvar headquarters in Bosnia.

After the Partisans managed to endure and avoid these intense Axis attacks between January and June 1943, and the extent of Chetnik collaboration became evident, Allied leaders switched their support from Draža Mihailović to Tito. King Peter II, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in officially recognising Tito and the Partisans at the Tehran Conference. This resulted in Allied aid being parachuted behind Axis lines to assist the Partisans. On 17 June 1944 on the Dalmatian island of Vis, the Treaty of Vis (''Viški sporazum'') was signed in an attempt to merge Tito's government (the AVNOJ) with the government in exile of King Peter II. The Balkan Air Force was formed in June 1944 to control operations that were mainly aimed at aiding his forces.

On 12 August 1944, Winston Churchill met Tito in Naples for a deal. On 12 September 1944, King Peter II called on all Yugoslavs to come together under Tito's leadership and stated that those who did not were "traitors", by which time Tito was recognised by all Allied authorities (including the government-in-exile) as the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, in addition to the commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav forces. On 28 September 1944, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) reported that Tito signed an agreement with the Soviet Union allowing "temporary entry" of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory, which allowed the Red Army to assist in operations in the northeastern areas of Yugoslavia. With their strategic right flank secured by the Allied advance, the Partisans prepared and executed a massive general offensive that succeeded in breaking through German lines and forcing a retreat beyond Yugoslav borders. After the Partisan victory and the end of hostilities in Europe, all external forces were ordered off Yugoslav territory.

In the autumn of 1944, the communist leadership adopted a political decision on the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia. On 21 November, a special decree was issued on the confiscation and nationalization of ethnic German property. To implement the decision, 70 camps were established in Yugoslav territory. In the final days of World War II in Yugoslavia, units of the Partisans were responsible for atrocities after the repatriations of Bleiburg, and accusations of culpability were later raised at the Yugoslav leadership under Tito. At the time, according to some scholars, Josip Broz Tito repeatedly issued calls for surrender to the retreating column, offering amnesty and attempting to avoid a disorderly surrender. On 14 May he dispatched a telegram to the supreme headquarters of the Slovene Partisan Army prohibiting the execution of prisoners of war and commanding the transfer of the possible suspects to a military court.

Aftermath

On 7 March 1945, the provisional government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (''Demokratska Federativna Jugoslavija'', DFY) was assembled in Belgrade by Josip Broz Tito, while the provisional name allowed for either a republic or monarchy. This government was headed by Tito as provisional Yugoslav Prime Minister and included representatives from the royalist government-in-exile, among others Ivan Šubašić. In accordance with the agreement between resistance leaders and the government-in-exile, post-war elections were held to determine the form of government. In November 1945, Tito's pro-republican People's Front, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, won the elections with an overwhelming majority, the vote having been boycotted by monarchists. During the period, Tito evidently enjoyed massive popular support due to being generally viewed by the populace as the liberator of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav administration in the immediate post-war period managed to unite a country that had been severely affected by ultra-nationalist upheavals and war devastation, while successfully suppressing the nationalist sentiments of the various nations in favour of tolerance, and the common Yugoslav goal. After the overwhelming electoral victory, Tito was confirmed as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DFY. The country was soon renamed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY) (later finally renamed into Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFRY). On 29 November 1945, King Peter II was formally deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly. The Assembly drafted a new republican constitution soon afterwards.

Yugoslavia organised the Yugoslav People's Army (''Jugoslavenska narodna armija'', or JNA) from the Partisan movement and became the fourth strongest army in Europe at the time. The State Security Administration (''Uprava državne bezbednosti''/''sigurnosti''/''varnosti'', UDBA) was also formed as the new secret police, along with a security agency, the Department of People's Security (''Organ Zaštite Naroda (Armije)'', OZNA). Yugoslav intelligence was charged with imprisoning and bringing to trial large numbers of Nazi collaborators; controversially, this included Catholic clergymen due to the widespread involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime

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