TITO’S real name is Joseph Broz. What do we know about him? Not much, yet understandably so. All of his adult life, he fought for freedom; and in the Balkans a man who fought for freedom did not seek publicity.
He was born in Yugoslavia of peasant parents. The date of his birth was 1889, 1890 perhaps. Even of that we are not sure. He grew up on a small farm in Croatia, learned to read from the village priest, left the farm in his teens and went to one of the Croatian towns, where he found work as a metalsmith. Then, Croatia was under Austrian rule, and when the first World War broke out, Joseph Broz was drafted into the Austrian Army.
Broz was a Yugoslav; as a Yugoslav, he hated the Hapsburg Empire and admired the Russians against whom he was forced to fight. And at the first opportunity, he deserted to the Russian Army.
In Russia, a Yugoslav battalion was formed to fight the Germans; Broz joined it, and when the Russian Revolution came, he and most of his battalion cast their lot with the revolutionists. To him, the revolution meant freedom; freedom was almost the first word he had learned to read from the parish priest. A Yugoslav knew the value of such a word. And during the Russian Revolution, Joseph Broz became a Communist.
Broz stayed in Russia during the civil war. He fought in the Communist ranks, learned their methods of partisan warfare; and then, in the mid nineteen-twenties, he returned to Yugoslavia.
He went to work in the Zagreb railroad shops and organized the metal workers there. The Yugoslav government, terroristic at that time, imprisoned him. When Broz was released, the Communist Party had been forced underground by the Yugoslav dictatorship. For a while, Broz worked through the underground—then he left the country.
For a while now, there is a gap. Some years later, Joseph Broz, already known as Tito, turned up in Spain, as an anti-fascist, a member of the International Brigade. I spoke to a man who met him then, in Republican Headquarters at Madrid. This man remarked upon Tito’s physical similarity to Abraham Lincoln, the same large jaw, the big, bony build, the lined face, the deep-set eyes, the large nose. In Spain, Tito organized Yugoslav antifascists. He helped them across the border from France and collaborated with French anti-fascists.
When the Franco Dictatorship, with the aid of Hitler and Mussolini, finally defeated the Spanish Republican Army, Tito was one of those who escaped across the border into France.
Somehow, he escaped the concentration camps and got to Paris. I spoke to people who knew him there, and they described a man more worn than the one in Madrid, leaner, more tired—but as purposeful and hopeful as ever. By now, he knew that his role in life would be a fighting anti-fascist. He saw Hitler’s power increasing, and he realized that sooner or later it would be the turn of his native land, Yugoslavia. He decided to go home and organize for the fight against fascism that would come to Yugoslavia, sooner or later.
An agent of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee contacted Tito, and the Committee provided funds and means for Tito’s return to Yugoslavia. How and where he worked in Yugoslavia in recent years is not clearly known—for obvious reasons. The Communist Party there was underground, and the corrupt, pro-axis Yugoslav government joined the Nazi-inspired Communist witch-hunt. But when that government was overthrown by the officers’ coup and Yugoslavia threw in her lot with Britain, Tito knew that soon his organization would be vitally necessary.
At that time, Tito was in Slovenia, the northernmost section of Yugoslavia. There he consolidated his forces, drew tighter the strings of the local Communist Party, and, most of all, sought to make common purpose with every democratic and progressive organization.
Three days after the Yugoslav army had surrendered to the Axis, April Twentieth, 1941, Tito held a meeting with certain Slovenian leaders, Catholic Priests, Trade-Unionists, Peasant Leaders and Communists. They formed the Slovenian Liberation Front, and issued their first proclamation of defiance to Germany:
“Death to Fascism, liberty to the people!”
Tito was a Communist; he made no secret of that. But the United Front he organized was not Communist; it included anyone and everyone who hated fascism and was willing to fight the invader. Its purpose was to render all aid to the allies—and to drive the Germans and Italians from Yugoslavia.
The Liberation Front, or LF, as it came to be known, decided that Tito should go to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, contact the Communist organization there, and start a movement that would embrace every democratic force in Yugoslavia—a movement that would unite the whole land against the Nazis. In civilian clothes, a revolver in one pocket, Tito left Slovenia for Belgrade.
There are a hundred stories told of how Tito began the Belgrade center of the Liberation Front. It is said that he sat in a cafe in Belgrade, his hand on the revolver in his pocket, while German armored cars cruised the streets, looking for him.
Actually, Tito did not start the Liberation Front in Belgrade. When he arrived at Belgrade, a United Front underground organization, formed originally by the Communist Party, but already including progressive Yugoslavs of every political shade, was functioning. Tito knew many key people in the Belgrade section of the Communist Party. He contacted them, and a meeting was arranged. At this meeting was the former Yugoslav Parliamentary President, Ribar, and other national non-Communist leaders. At this meeting, which lasted for hours, Tito constantly reiterated his purpose and the purpose of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia:
“To drive out the invader and liberate the land!”
Then and there, the Liberation Front for all of Yugoslavia was formed. Communists and non-Communists shook hands and pledged their lives to their country’s freedom. The slogan, spoken first in Slovenia, was confirmed as a battle cry:
“Death to Fascism, liberty to the people!”
A few days later, just two weeks after the Germans had announced the complete conquest of Yugoslavia, the first defiant Liberation Front poster appeared in Belgrade:
DEATH TO ALL FASCISTS!
LIBERTY TO THE PEOPLE!