Josip Broz Tito

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Josip Broz Tito

Dictator Tito
President of Yugoslavia
In office
14 January 1953 – 4 May 1980
Prime Minister Himself (1953–1963)
Petar Stambolić (1963–1967)
Mika Špiljak (1967–1969)
Mitja Ribičič (1969–1971)
Džemal Bijedić (1971–1977)
Veselin Đuranović (1977–1980)
Preceded by Ivan Ribar
(as President of the Presidency of the People's Assembly)
Succeeded by Lazar Koliševski
(as President of the presidency)
In office
2 November 1944 – 29 June 1963
President Ivan Ribar
Himself (from 1953)
Preceded by Ivan Šubašić
Succeeded by Petar Stambolić
1st Federal Secretary of People's Defence of Yugoslavia
In office
7 March 1945 – 14 January 1953
Preceded by Office established
Succeeded by Ivan Gošnjak
In office
1 September 1961 – 5 October 1964
Preceded by Office established
Succeeded by Gamal Abdel Nasser
In office
5 January 1939 – 4 May 1980
Preceded by Milan Gorkić
Succeeded by Stevan Doronjski
Born 7 May 1892(1892-05-07)
Kumrovec, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary
(present-day Croatia)
Died 4 May 1980 (aged 87)
Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, SFR Yugoslavia
Resting place House of Flowers (mausoleum), Belgrade, Serbia
44°47′12″N 20°27′06″E / 44.78667°N 20.45167°E / 44.78667; 20.45167
Nationality Yugoslav
Political party League of Communists of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse(s) Pelagija Belousova (m. 1920⁠–⁠1939)​
Herta Haas (m. 1940⁠–⁠1943; d. 2010)​
Jovanka Budisavljević (m. 1952)
Domestic partner Davorjanka Paunović
(1943⁠–⁠1946)
Children 4, including Mišo Broz
Military service
Service/branch Austro-Hungarian Army
Red Army
Yugoslav People's Liberation Army (JVBA)
Years of service 1913–1915
1918–1920
1941–1980
Rank Marshal
Commands National Liberation Army
Yugoslav People's Army
(supreme commander)
Battles/wars World War I
Russian Civil War
World War II (Balkans campaign)
Awards 98 international and 21 Yugoslav decorations

Josip Broz (7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito, was a Communist leader in Yugoslavia before WWII, a Communist partisan and war criminal during the war, and postwar Communist dictator of Yugoslavia. He was responsible for numerous atrocities and genocides. Still, he received a total of 98 foreign decorations, including the French Legion of Honour and the British Order of the Bath.

Leftist Wikipedia has been criticized for ideological bias in its articles on Tito and for not mentioning many of Tito's crimes.[1]

Life

SS paratroopers of Battalion 500 with Tito's uniform after Operation "Rösselsprung" in 1944. To the left of the paratrooper is a Brandenburger with a Wehrmacht eagle and a field blouse made of Italian camouflage material. At this point the SS rune.png unit consisted of about 900 to 1,000 officers and enlisted men, of whom 634 were deployed.

Identity

Josip Broz was born on May 21, 1892 in Kumrovec village of Zagorje county, northwestern Croatia, Austria-Hungary, as the seventh child of Marija Javeršek (1864–1918) from the Slovenian village Podsreda. His ethnic Croat father was said to be Franjo Broz (1856–1936), a villager in Kumrovec and a chronic alcoholic. From his at least 16 children[2] over half died young. Josip Broz was a small boy with a narrow rough face and limited intellectual capabilities; he therefore failed to complete elementary school in Kumrovec, and left after the second class, in 1905. From 1907 to 1913 he was apprenticed to a locksmith in Sisak town, central Croatia, Austria-Hungary. He then worked briefly in Slovenia, and then even in Bohemia where in autumn 1913 he commenced his mandatory military service with the Austrian Army. In 1914, he was deployed to the Eastern Front against Imperial Russia.

Speculation

Some sources claim that at Easter 1914 Josip Broz fell in the Caucasus, being killed by an attack of Circassian troops. This seems unlikely as Austrian troops did not reach the Caucasus. Further claims are that the personal biography of the real Josip Broz, and all subsequent events under his name, are falsifications. It is also alleged that the Bolsheviks decided, for far-sighted political purposes, to transfer his dead identity to his half-brother, an underground communist, Josua Ambroz Mayer, who was born in Austrian capital Vienna on 7 May 1891. His true natural father was Samuel Mayer, a rich Polish Jew and owner of a Viennese factory making medical prosthetics. Marija Javeršek was then his Slovenian servant. Contrary to his half-brother (Josip Broz), Josua Ambroz was healthy, robust, well educated, and much more intelligent. Due to his paternal family, Mayer grew up in Imperial Vienna and received there the best basic education in Wiener-Deutsch; he also attended musical school and became an excellent piano player and a good interpreter of Verdi and Chopin. When the time came for his military education he was sent to the Austrian Cadet School in Fünfkirchen (Pécs, Hungary).[3] It is further claimed by Radović that as a Viennese [half] Jew, "Tito" never learned good Croatian: In his numerous speeches across Yugoslavia, he mostly spoke in his original inter-Slavic mixture of Polish, Slovene and Russian with few added Serbian words, i.e. a hybrid language similar to modern artificial Slovio. When after World War II he arrived in 'native' Kumrovec, many of his neighbours and peer group 'friends' did not recognize him.

Austrian army

In May 1913, Broz was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Common Army (Gemeinsame Armee) for his compulsory two years of service. He successfully requested to serve with the 25th Croatian Home Guard Regiment (German: k.u. Honvéd-Infanterieregiment Nr. 25) garrisoned in Agram (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 a Sergeant-Major. At the age of 22 years he was the youngest of that rank in his regiment. 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 of the Imperial and Royal Army (k. u. k. Armee) marched toward the Serbian border. Broz was arrested for sedition and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress in present-day Novi Sad. 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 Imperial Russia (Kaiserlich-Russische Armee).

On one occasion, the scout platoon he commanded went behind 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 of Austria").

On 25 March 1915, he was wounded in the back by a Circassian cavalryman's lance and captured during a Russian attack near Bukovina. 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.

Tito's Communist Career

After a year imprisoned, then working on Urals in 1917, he, like all those weak of character, adhered to Russian Bolshevism, earning extra food rations. Then in Siberia (Omsk), he entered the Red Army and joined the Communist Party in 1918. There he also married Pelagija Belousova, and with her, in 1920, returned to the new Yugoslavia where he immediately entered in Yugoslav Communist Party becoming a Member of Parliament for them. However, in 1921 this party was banned by King Alexander. As an illegal underground communist, he worked as a machinist in Bjelovar, Kraljevica, etc.

In 1934, he entered the Central Committee of Yugoslav Communists, and the following year returned to the Soviet Union, becoming active in the Comintern. Stalin sent him as a secret agent Comrade Walter back to Yugoslavia in 1937 to control and reform the communist movement. Between May and August 1937, he travelled several times between Paris and Zagreb, organising the movement of volunteers and creating a separate Communist Party of Croatia.

After some intrigues, the General Secretary of the Yugoslav communists, Milan Gorkić (born Josef Čižinsk in 1904 in Sarajevo), was summoned to the Soviet Union. Gorkić was arrested in Moscow by the NKVD on 14 August 1937. The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death for Trotskyism, terrorist activities and espionage. He was shot on 1 November 1937. Stalin had already installed Tito as acting General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and on 23 October 1937 he became he official General Secretary.

On 5 January 1939, he was appointed President of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. On 4 July 1941, Tito called for armed Yugoslav resistance against National Socialist Germany. From 1941 to 1945, he was the Chief Commander (Marshall) of the communist National Liberation Army in Yugoslavia. In 1948 followed his split with Stalin and his control meaning that Yugoslavia was no longer in the Soviet sphere of influence. In 1961, he became co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, alongside Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Sukarno of Indonesia.

Death and Consequences

Tito died in Clinic centre of Ljubljana on 4 May 1980 from a gangrene-induced infection in his left leg. In his last days of agony, Tito spoke mostly in Wiener-Deutsch (Vienna German) of his youth, and not in his usual Inter-Slavic as former president. Tito was buried in his mausoleum in Belgrade named The House of Flowers. His young life and his post-war massacres on civilians became an untouchable taboo eliminated from his praising biographies.

Josip Broz Tito's crimes

Josip Broz Tito committed countless crimes: crimes of war and crimes against humanity such as mass murder, democide, genocide and ethnic cleansing. In fact the Nuremberg Show Trial charges against German National Socialists were identical to the charges which might have applied to Tito. As a good communist he naturally destroyed the economy of Yugoslavia. During the 1970s the economy began to weaken under the weight of foreign debt, high inflation, and inefficient industry. Also, he was under increasing pressure from nationalist forces within Yugoslavia, especially Croatian secessionists who threatened to break up the Yugoslav Federation. Following their repression, Tito tightened control of social and intellectual life.[4]

Genocide

Accusations of culpability are related with crimes perpetrated during World War II and during repression by Broz Tito's communist Yugoslav Republic command among the public trials that took place in Slovenia between 1945 and 1950, the most important were the Nagode trial against democratic intellectuals and left liberal activists in 1946 and the titoist Dachau trials in 1947–1949, when 12 former inmates of Nazi concentration camps were accused of collaboration with the Nazis and were massacred. Mass graves are evidences of massacres;[5][6]other crime was committed in Kočevski Rog butchery:[7][8]accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing by historians.[9][10][11]Accusations of culpability in the Bleiburg massacre, foibe slaterhouse, the repression of Croatia Catholic's Church, and the crackdown on the Croatian Spring or MASPOK.[12] Accusation of Vojvodina massacre consists in retaliation against Germans and Hungarians citizen and supposed Chetnik Serbs but some historians consider these incidents also ethnic cleansing against Germans and Hungarians because during World War II, the German minority in occupied Yugoslavia enjoyed a status of superiority over the Yugoslav population.[13] The AVNOJ Presidium issued a decree that ordered the government confiscation of all property of Nazi Germany and its citizens in Yugoslavia, persons of German nationality (regardless of citizenship), and collaborators. The decision acquired the force of law on February 6, 1945.[14]Other accusation of crimes committed against children.[15][16]

Historian Tomislav Sunic denounces Broz's crimes:

Tito carried out "ethnic cleansing" and mass killings on a far greater scale, against Croats, Germans and Serbs, and with the sanction of the British and American governments.[17]

Again Sunic, in other books, recounts the life of suffering of many Croat, Serb, and Albanian dissidents in the former Yugoslavia. The break-up of Yugoslavia cannot be understood without a cursory excursion into its violent past. Run for forty-five years by communist strongman, Tito, Yugoslavia projected a false picture of a perfect multiethnic melting pot. In fact, the Yugoslav multicultural conviviality could only be upheld by Tito's iron rule which was tacitly tolerated by the democratic West.[18] Broz Tito's repression involved many dictator's old friends such as Milovan Dilas and Vladimir Dedijer who both were imprisoned but later wrote several books with gross accusations against him;[19] criticismn heaped on Broz Tito's lustful lifestyle: by 1974, he had 32 official residences, a communist who lived like a king.[20] Broz Tito constructed huge personality cult around him.[21]

Ethnic cleansing

He ordered triple ethnic cleansing: against Germans[22], Hungarians[23] and Italians[24]. Broz was an ultra panslav nationalist so he was hostile versus all not ethnic Slav citizens such as Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Albanians, Romanians, Greeks, Vlachs, etc.

Cult of personality

(Tito) attached himself to the monarchic tradition and to traditional concepts of power
—Milovan Đilas

As soon as Tito came to power, he moved into the royal palaces and villas and established a royal lifestyle for himself.[25]. Tito had a predilection for jewerly and pomp: he wore a diamond ring on his little finger and liked to parade in a white uniform edged with gold[26] His belt buckle was made out of pure gold, and was so heavy that it keep slipping down. He wrote with a heavy gold pen. He changed his clothes four times a day, according to occasion and the impressions he wished to create.

He used a sun lamp regularly to maintain a tan, and had a liking for medals, both for receiving them and decorating others with them[27].

Throughout his reign, Tito amassed or had built for himself a large collection of palaces, villas and lodges scattered throughout Yugoslavia.The hunting parties were one of Tito's favorite pastimes, and often included his inner circle of party and government officials as well as foreign guests.

There were many ritualized practices venerating Tito, wich were specific to him and profiled him in a way that made him popular. For instance, each Yugoslav republic had its Partisan or Tito pilgrimage center were schools and workers' unions organized trips.

See also

Main Sources

  • S. K. Pavlowitch: Tito, Yugoslavia's Great Dictator. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1992 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8142-0600-X; paperback, ISBN 0-8142-0601-8).
  • B. S. Vukcevich: Tito, architect of Yugoslav disintegration. Orlando, FL: Rivercross Publishing, 1995 (ISBN 0-944957-46-3).
  • Milovan Djilas: Tito, the Story from inside. London: Phoenix Press, 2001 (new ed., ISBN 1-84212-047-6).
  • Miroslav Todorovic: Hohštapler (Tito bonvivant). 2nd edition, 368 p. Dunja doo. Bjelovar 2005.
  • Periodical: Politički zatvorenik (Political prisoners), Croatian association of political prisoners, Zagreb 1990-2007.
  • Mihovil Lovric: Historical notes from early Soviet Russia, 1915-1923 (mscr), Krk.
  • Testimony of late N. Ivšic, co-worker of true Josip Broz in Sissek (before WW1).

See also

External links

Encyclopedias

Other

References

  1. ↑ Josip Broz Tito, Communists Extremists and Wikipedia
  2. ↑ Franjo Broz (1856–1936)
  3. ↑ Radović, Darinka: Astonishing Biography of Joshua Mayer Aka Marshal Tito (Archive).
  4. ↑ Tito's Dictatorship
  5. ↑ Article. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  6. ↑ linked dossier. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  7. ↑ Book and article about Kocevje extermination. Archived from the original on 2012-09-14.
  8. ↑ in Black Book of Communism, read in chapter Comintern on action
  9. ↑ Scenes from the Balkan Wars of Christopher Merrill
  10. ↑ The bloodiest Yugoslav spring, 1945 Tito's Katyns and Gulags of Bor. M. Karapandžić
  11. ↑ South Slav journal
  12. ↑ Rough guide to Croatia of Jonathan Bousfield
  13. ↑ Michael Portmann, Communist Retaliation and Persecution on Yugoslav Territory During and After WWII (1943–50). Archived from the original on 2012-07-27.
  14. ↑ Tomasevich 1969, p. 115, 337.
  15. ↑ book's chapter8. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  16. ↑ whole book. Archived from the original on 2012-09-10.
  17. ↑ Sunic. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  18. ↑ Tomislav Sunic Titoism and dissidence. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  19. ↑ N. Y. Times article. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21.
  20. ↑ N. Y. Times articles
  21. ↑ Tito enthusiastically acquiesced to the personality cult constructed around him. May 25 was declared his official birthday and celebrated nationwide as <<Dan mladosti>>-the Day of Youth-enhancing Tito's aura as the kindly father of a grateful people
  22. ↑ Genocide of Germans in Yugoslavia. Archived from the original on 2012-09-10.
  23. ↑ Tito's atrocities in Hungarian Vojvodina 1944-1945
  24. ↑ Arrigo Petacco, The exodus. The story of the Italian population of Istria, Dalmatia, and Venezia Giulia, Mondadori, Milan, 1999. English translation.
  25. ↑ Tone Bringa, The death of Tito and the end of Yugoslavia, in Death of the father: an anthropology of the end in political authority, Berghahn Books, 2004, p. 152[1]
  26. ↑ Tone Bringa, Cit., p. 152
  27. ↑ Milovan Đilas, Tito: the Story for Inside, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981, pp. 110-111.
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