Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz (May 7, 1892 - May 4, 1980), often known by his nickname Tito, was the ruler of Yugoslavia from the end of World War II, and President of the country from 1953, both until his death in 1980.
Tito was born in Kumrovec, northwestern Croatia, in an area called Zagorje, which was then part of Austria-Hungary. He was the seventh child in the family of Franjo and Marija Broz. His father Franjo was a Croat, while his mother Marija was Slovenian. After spending part of his childhood years with his mother's father in Podsreda, he entered the primary school in Kumrovec and left it in 1905.
In 1907, moving out of the rural environment, he started working as a locksmith's apprentice in Sisak. There he became aware of the labor movement and celebrated May 1 - Labor Day for the first time. In 1910 he joined the union of metallurgy workers and at the same time the Social-Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia. Between 1911 and 1913, Tito worked for shorter periods in various places of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
From autumn 1913, Tito served in the military; in May 1914 he won a silver medal for the second place at a fencing competition of the Austro-Hungarian Army in Budapest. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to Ruma. He was arrested for anti-war propaganda and imprisoned in the Petrovaradin fortress. In 1915, he was sent to Galicia against Russia. In Bukovina he was seriously injured by a howitzer shell. In April, the whole battalion fell into Russian captivity.
After spending several months at the hospital, Tito was sent to a work camp in the Ural mountains in autumn of 1916. In April, 1917, he was arrested for organizing demonstrations of prisoners of war but later he escaped and joined the demonstrations in Saint Petersburg on July 16-17, 1917. He fled to Finland to avoid the police, but was arrested and locked in the Petropavlovsk fortress for three weeks. After being imprisoned in a camp in Kungur, he escaped from the train. In November, he enlisted in the Red Army in Omsk, Siberia. In the spring of 1918, he applied for membership in the Communist Party of Russia.
His first wife was Hertha Haas, who in May of 1941 bore his first son Mišo Broz.
On December 4, 1943 during the German occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II, then resistance leader Marshal Tito proclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile. During the Second World War, his activities were often supported directly by forces of the western Allies. The Balkan Air Force was formed in June 1944 to control operations that were mainly aimed at helping his forces. However, due to his close ties to Stalin, he often quarreled with the British and American staff officers attached to his headquarters. All western forces were ordered off Yugoslav soil after the end of hostilities in Europe and on April 5, 1945 Tito signed an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory.".
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Tito with Fidel Castro
Tito died in a clinic centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia on May 4, 1980, and his funeral drew many world celebrities, mainly politicians. At that time, speculation arose about whether his successors could continue to hold Yugoslavia together: Tito's greatest strength in the eyes of the west had been in suppressing nationalist insurrections and maintaining unity throughout the country. Without Tito's call for unity, the people of Yugoslavia could not hold together. Ethnic divisions and conflict grew, and eventually erupted into a series of Yugoslav wars.
Tito is buried in his mausoleum in Belgrade, called Kuća cveća (The House of Flowers) and numerous people visit the place, although it no longer holds a guard of honour.
The name "Tito" is an acronym that was later often derided as having come from the dictatorial sentence: "you do this (and that)" (Ti (you) + to (this)). During his life and especially in the first year after his death, several places were named after Tito.
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Legacy
''Tito with Her Majesty Elizabeth II