History UsefulNotes / JosipBrozTito

One of the more amusing anecdotes of his regime comes from a letter, ostensibly written by Tito himself, found in a desk belonging Josef Stalin following the latter's death, regarding the former's, ah, annoyance at Stalin's multiple attempts to assassinate him:
-->Stop sending people to kill me. [[AssassinOutclassin We've already captured five of them]], one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and [[BadassBoast I certainly won't have to send another]].

In March 1945, Tito became premier of Yugoslavia. By now the remaining Axis forces were in full retreat. Facists holding the rules over the puppet government in Zagreb, the capital of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_State_of_Croatia Independent State of Croatia]] lost and either fled or were captured (and usually killed after a show trial). Some Axis forces continued to resist for a week even after Germany surrendered, but they were quickly overcome. Over the next few years Tito created a federation of socialist republics (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia), plus two autonomous provinces within the frame of Serbia -- Vojvodina and Kosovo.

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Josip Broz (Tito) (7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980) was born in Croatia in 1892. He was born to [[FarmBoy the relatively poor family]] of a UsefulNotes/{{Croatia}}n peasant and his UsefulNotes/{{Slovenia}}n wife. He worked as a mechanic before being conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914, and proved to be a very capable soldier, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant and also earning a silver medal for valor. While fighting In the UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, he was captured by the Russian Army. Broz converted to Communism and took part in the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]] in 1917. He spent most of the Russian Civil War in hiding in Siberia, where he worked as a mechanic at a Kirghiz mill and occasionally acted as a spy for the local Bolsheviks. After the Red Army drove out the local White Army forces, Tito joined the communist party and married a local girl, Pelagia Belousova, whose family were committed Bolsheviks.

->''"A locksmith in his youth. An Austro-Hungarian corporal. A case hardened revolutionary. Commissioner of the Comintern. A terrorist. Red menace. A robber. An illegal with ten different passports and names. A passionate hunter. Bon vivant. He had five wives and a party of his believers. An indomitable partisan. Undefeated by Hitler and Stalin. An adaptive statesman. A born Machiavellist. The lord of second Yugoslavia. No one before and after him has on this place more material for legends. He ruled the territory of the Balkans longer than Emperor Dušan, Duke Miloš and King Aleksander who probably would have used him as a pattern. A jovial dictator. The patron of the poor. The magnet of jet set. He sold his world vision like a new Christ of the Balkan peoples. A conjurer or the protagonist of an era, it was never clear to distinguish. One thing was for sure: Nothing in his proximity was of a small scale. Fortune and misfortune, deceit and truth, charm and actuality."''
-->-- '''The intro of the Serbian [[PropagandaMachine documentary series]] ''Crveno i Crno ("Red and Black")'''''