Background

Ethnicity: Josip Broz's father was a Croat; his mother was a Slovene. Despite his "mixed parentage," Broz identified as a Croat like his father and neighbours.

Josip Broz Tito was born on May 7, 1892, in Kumrovec, Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary (present-day Kumrovec, Croatia). He was the son of Franjo Broz and Marija Javersek. Broz also had three brothers and two sisters.

Education

Josip Broz entered primary school in Kumrovec in 1900. He studied there for four years, but he failed the 2nd grade and graduated in 1905. After that Broz initially worked for a maternal uncle and then on his parents' family farm. In 1907, he moved to Sisak to train himself as a machinist's apprentice. He completed his training in 1910.

Career

Josip Broz started his career as a metallurgy worker for various organizations in Kamnik, Cenkov, Munich, Mannheim, and Austria. In 1913, he was inducted into the Austro-Hungarian army. After completing a non-commissioned training, he was assigned to fight on the Russian front in 1914 when World War I broke out. During the war, he was seriously wounded and captured by the Russians in 1915. Broz was treated at a Russian hospital and then detained at a prisoner-of-war camp. However, his tenure at the prison did not last long and he soon attained freedom in 1917 when revolting workers broke into the prison. He joined the Red Army after the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and identified himself with the Bolshevik forces in the Russian civil war. In 1920, he moved to his native place, Croatia. In the years to come, he took up various jobs, finally being appointed secretary of the Metal Workers' Union of Croatia in Zagreb. He also worked as a mill mechanic. Broz steadily rose through the ranks, holding several leadership positions and organizing trade unions.

In 1928, Josip Broz's revolutionary activities again led to his arrest and imprisonment, this time for five years. At Lepoglava prison, he was employed in maintaining the electrical system. After spending two and a half years at Lepoglava prison Broz was accused of attempting to escape and was transferred to Maribor prison where he was held in solitary confinement for several months. Upon his release, he moved to Vienna and became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. He started to write articles on the duties of imprisoned communists and on trade unions for party journals. In 1935 he went to Russia in order to work for the Comintern, a Soviet-sponsored organization to promote communism internationally, and was appointed to the secretariat of the Balkan section, responsible for Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece. By 1937, Broz returned to the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and in August 1937 he became acting General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Later in 1939, Broz formally assumed the role of President of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia.

During the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Josip Broz ordered the Communist Party to initiate guerrilla activity against Axis forces. He also named himself military commander and became known as Marshal Tito. In 1943 he was named President of the National Committee of Liberation and on December 4, 1943, Tito proclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government. In 1944 he became Prime Minister of Yugoslavia and held this post until 1963. When the provisional government of Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was assembled on March 7, 1945 in Belgrade, Broz became Minister of Defense. He held this post until 1953. Broz also served as Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1946. On April 5, 1945, Broz signed an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory." Aided by the Red Army, the partisans won the war for liberation in 1945. In 1948, the Cominform accused Tito of having strayed from the Party line. Tito denied the charges and refused to submit to the Cominform, from which Yugoslavia was then expelled.

On January 14, 1953, Josip Broz became President of Yugoslavia and made Yugoslavia one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement and established strong ties with the Third World countries. On April 7, 1963, the country changed its official name to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and on September 1, 1961, Broz became the first Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement. Broz made several reforms in Yugoslavia, giving people freedom of speech and religious expression. In 1971, he was re-elected as the President of Yugoslavia. In the same year a new constitution was passed which made him the President for life. He, however, reduced his role in the daily functioning of the country but continued to travel abroad. In 1979, he became increasingly ill. He was admitted to the Medical Centre in Ljubljana on several occasions between 1979 and 1980. Josip Broz died on May 4, 1980.

Achievements

• 

  Josip Broz Tito was a Yugoslav politician and statesman who was known as Prime Minister of Yugoslavia and President of Yugoslavia. He was the chief architect of the "second Yugoslavia," a socialist federation that lasted from World War II until 1991. Josip Broz gave his country a "socialist democracy", a form of government more tolerable and more democratic than the socialist regimes of other Communist countries. He also organized the most effective resistance movement in the history of Communism – the National Liberation Army.
  
  Josip Broz Tito received a total of 119 awards and decorations from 60 countries around the world. He was awarded the Order of the People's Hero three times. Broz also received such awards as the Order of the Yugoslav Star, the Order of Freedom, the Order of the Southern Cross, the Order of Leopold, the Legion of Honour, and the Order of the Bath.
  
  In the Croatian coastal city of Opatija, the main street (also its longest street) still bears the name of Josip Broz Tito. The largest Broz monument in the world, about 10 meters high, is located at Tito Square in Velenje, Slovenia. One of the main bridges in Slovenia's second-largest city of Maribor is Tito Bridge. Besides, the main-belt asteroid 1550 Tito, discovered by Serbian astronomer Milorad B. Protić at Belgrade Observatory in 1937, was named in his honor. In 1992, Tito and Me, a 1992 Yugoslav comedy film by Serbian director Goran Marković, was released.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Tito: Selected Speeches and Articles, 1941-1961

    (English edition)

    1963
  • The Selected Works of Josip Broz Tito 2013

Religion

In his youth, Josip Broz attended Catholic Sunday school and was later an altar boy. After an incident where he was slapped and shouted at by a priest when he had difficulty assisting the priest to remove his vestments, Tito would not enter a church again. As an adult, he identified as an atheist.

Politics

In 1910 Josip Broz Tito joined the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia in Zagreb, but after World War I Broz joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. When he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, he purged the ranks of members of dubious loyalty and gave the party a clear-cut and realistic policy with regard to nationality. For the first time, the party was firmly in support of the preservation rather than the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. As a loyal Stalinist, passionate revolutionary, and strong personality, Broz was able to develop the Yugoslav Communist Party into a powerful political and military organization during World War II. While engaging the Axis occupation forces, he simultaneously embarked upon a Communist revolution. His forces proceeded to destroy the class structure, undermine the old social and economic order, and lay the foundations for a postwar Communist state system.

After World War II Broz led his country through an extreme and ruthless form of dictatorship in order to mold Yugoslavia into a socialist state modeled after the Soviet Union. However, by 1953 Broz had changed Yugoslavia's relationship with the Soviet Union. He refused to approve Stalin's plans for integrating Yugoslavia into the East European Communist bloc and thereby reducing the country to a Soviet satellite. For this reason, Broz was expelled from the Cominform.

As President of Yugoslavia, he permitted Yugoslav workers to go to Western Europe. Broz implemented reforms that encouraged private enterprise and greatly relaxed restrictions on religious expression. He also embarked on his own socialist policies, which involved considerable economic decentralization and the relaxing of central control over many areas of national life. These policies also involved the liberalization of Communist laws and courts.

After the death of Stalin, Josip Broz attempted to build a bloc of "nonaligned" countries. He traveled to India, Indonesia, Ethiopia, the United Arab Republic, Ghana, and Morocco and sponsored a conference of nonaligned countries in Belgrade in 1961. Under his leadership, Yugoslavia maintained friendly ties with the Arab states and vehemently denounced Israeli aggression in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. His relations with East European states were more variable than those with nonaligned countries. He protested the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and maintained friendly relations with Romania after Nicolae Ceausescu became its leader in 1965. His public speeches often reiterated that policy of neutrality and co-operation with all countries would be natural as long as these countries did not use their influence to pressure Yugoslavia to take sides. Under Tito's leadership, Yugoslavia was a staunch supporter and a very active member of the United Nations.

Views

Quotations: "Let that man be a Bosnian, Herzegovinian. Outside they don't call you by another name, except simply a Bosnian. Whether that be a Muslim (Bosniak), Serb or Croat. Everyone can be what they feel that they are, and no one has a right to force a nationality upon them."

"We have spilt an ocean of blood for the brotherhood and unity of our peoples and we shall not allow anyone to touch or destroy it from within."

"None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together; but we have to create our own history - history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future."

"No one questioned "who is a Serb, who is a Croat, who is a Muslim (Bosniak)" we were all one people, that's how it was back then, and I still think it is that way today."

"During the war, a battle was fought here, not only for the creation of a new Yugoslavia, but also a battle for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign republic. To some generals and leaders their position on this was not quite clear. I never once doubted my stance on Bosnia. I always said that Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot belong to this or that, only to the people that lived there since the beginning of time."

"A decade ago young people en masse began declaring themselves as Yugoslavs. It was a form of rising Yugoslav nationalism, which was a reaction to brotherhood and unity and a feeling of belonging to a single socialist self-managing society. This pleased me greatly."

Personality

Josip Broz spoke four languages in addition to his native Serbo-Croatian: Czech, German, Russian, and English. He maintained a lavish lifestyle. Broz had an official residence in Belgrad, the White Palace (also known as Beli Dvor), and maintained a separate private home. Another residence was maintained at Lake Bled. By 1974 the Yugoslav President had at his disposal 32 official residences.

Though Josip Broz was most likely born on May 7, he celebrated his birthday on May 25, after he became President of Yugoslavia, to mark the occasion of an unsuccessful attempt on his life by the Nazis in 1944.

Quotes from others about the person

• Chris Parkas: "Since 1944, when Tito created the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as a new republic in the Yugoslav Federation, a revisionist history of Macedonian studies has been developed promoting the concept of a non-Greek Macedonian nation that encompasses all aspects of Macedonian civilization."
  
  Eugene N. Borza: "It is difficult to know whether an independent Macedonian state would have come into existence had Tito not recognised and supported the development of Macedonian ethnicity as part of his ethnically organised Yugoslavia. He did this as a counter to Bulgaria, which for centuries had a historical claim on the area as far west as Lake Ohrid and the present border of Albania."
  
  Enver Hoxha: "The views of Tito and his associates showed from the very beginning that they were far from being "hard-line Marxists," as the bourgeoisie calls the consistent Marxists, but "reasonable Marxists," who would collaborate closely with all the old and new bourgeois and reactionary politicians of Yugoslavia."
  
  Robert Mugabe: "It was from Tito that I drew inspiration while searching for the best road to take and when making crucial decisions during our liberation struggle."
  
  Jasper Ridley: "Tito had not enjoyed living in Moscow, with the constant prospect that he might be the next Yugoslav Communist to be arrested; but one aspect of life in the Soviet Union appealed to him. He had found that in the higher ranks of the party it was possible to combine loyal service to the Communist cause with good living. The leading party officials indulged in heavy eating and drinking and loud parties, though Djilas may well be right in thinking that they drank as much as they did in order to forget their fears of the NKVD. He was said that in Stalin's circle of friends they all enjoyed wine and song, but not women. Tito wanted women as well as wine and song."

Interests

• Hunting

Connections

Josip Broz Tito married Pelagija Broz in 1920. They had five children but only their son Žarko Leon survived. When Broz was jailed in 1928, Pelagija returned to Russia, and in 1939 they divorced. In 1937, Broz met Herta Haas. They married in 1940. The marriage produced a son, Mišo Broz. All throughout his relationship with Haas, Broz had a parallel relationship with Davorjanka Paunović. In 1943, Broz and Haas divorced after Haas reportedly walked in on him and Davorjanka. Davorjanka Paunović died of tuberculosis in 1946, and Tito insisted that she be buried in the backyard of the White Palace, his Belgrade residence.

Broz married his next wife, Jovanka Broz, in 1953. However, their relationship was not a happy one. Certain unofficial reports suggest Tito and Jovanka even formally divorced in the late 1970s, shortly before his death. The couple did not have any children.

Father:

Franjo Broz

Mother:

Marija Javoršek

(March 25, 1864 – January 14, 1918)

Brother:

Stjepan Broz

Brother:

Vjekoslav Broz

Brother:

Dragutin Broz

ex-wife:

Pelagija Broz

(1904 – 1968)

Son:

Žarko Broz

(February 2, 1924 – June 26, 1995)

ex-wife:

Herta Haas

(March 29, 1914 – March 5, 2010)

Son:

Mišo Broz

Mišo Broz (May 24, 1941) is a Croatian retired diplomat.

late wife:

Davorjanka Paunović

(January 19, 1921 – May 1, 1946)

Wife:

Jovanka Broz

(December 7, 1924 – October 20, 2013)

Sister:

Tereza Broz

Sister:

Matilda Broz

Friend:

Edvard Kardelj

Edvard Kardelj (January 27, 1910 – February 10, 1979) was a Yugoslav politician and economist.

References

• Marshal Josip Broz Tito: The Life and Legacy of Yugoslavia's First President
  2016
• Tito: And the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia A revealing biography of Tito, the Yugoslav leader who was a partisan against the Germans and the first Communist head to break with the Soviet Union, considers his role in the breakup of Yugoslavia twelve years after his death.
  1994
• The Heretic: The Life and Times of Josip Broz Tito A book by Fitzroy Maclean.
  1957
• Josip Broz Tito: A Pictorial Biography If ever there was a child of the twentieth century, it was Josip Broz, born eight years before it began, the son of a poor Croat peasant, suddenly to become famous some fifty years later as Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. Our century's blood stained landmarks, two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the emergence of Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini, the great Soviet purges of the thirties, the assassinations at Sarajevo and Marseilles, all played their part in his development and had their impact on his career. And he, in his turn, made his impact on the century.
  1980
• Tito: Yugoslavia's Great Dictator: A Reassessment This biography offers a straightforward, balanced approach to the man who reigned over Yugoslavia for 35 years. Pavlowitch strips away the myths about Tito and his life and places him within a broad historical perspective as a key 20th-century European leader. He begins with the economic, social and national factors that helped to create Josip Broz Tito, then considers his role after the chaos of World War II, when he unified Yugoslavia by offering something to each of its constituent ehtnic communities.
  1992