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Josip Broz Tito (''Јосип Броз Тито'') ( May 7 , (originally May 25th on the official birth certificate) 1892 – May 4 , 1980 ) was the leader of Yugoslavia between the end of World War II and his death in 1980 . EARLY YEARS Tito was born Josip Broz in Kumrovec , Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Croatia ), in an area called Zagorje . He was the seventh child in the family of Franjo and Marija Broz. His father Franjo Broz was a Croat , while his mother Marija (born Javeršek) was Slovenian . After spending part of his childhood years with his maternal grandfather in Podsreda , he entered the primary school in Kumrovec , and failed the first grade. He left school in 1905 . In 1907 , moving out of the rural environment, Broz started working as a machinist'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 , Broz worked for shorter periods in Kamnik , Slovenia ; Cenkovo , Bohemia ; Munich and Mannheim , Germany , where he worked for Benz automobile factory; then went to Vienna , Austria , where he worked at Daimler as a test driver. From autumn 1913 , Broz was conscripted and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army ; in May 1914 he won a silver medal 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 the Eastern Front in Galicia to fight against Russia . While in Bukovina he was seriously injured by a Howitzer shell. By April, the whole battalion fell into Russian captivity. After spending several months at the hospital, Broz 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 a train. In November, he enlisted in the Red Army in Omsk , Siberia . In the spring of 1918 , he applied for membership in the Russian Communist Party . In 1936 the Comintern sent comrade ''Walter'' (i.e. Tito) back to Yugoslavia from Moscow to purge the Communist Party there. In 1937 he became secretary general of the Yugoslav Communist Party. During this period he faithfully followed Comintern policy, criticizing Serbian domination of other Yugoslav nationalities and agitating for the breakup of the Yugoslav state. Origin of the name "Tito" In 1920 , he became a member of the soon to be banned Communist Party Of Yugoslavia . Their influence on the political life of the Kingdom Of Yugoslavia was minor at the time. In 1934 , he became a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party, then located in Vienna, Austria, and adopted the code name "Tito". A popular explanation of the sobriquet claims that it is a conjunction of two Serbian and Croatian words, ti (meaning "you") and to (meaning "that"). As the story goes, during the frantic times of his command, he would issue commands with those two words, by pointing to the person, and then task. In reality, Tito is an old, though uncommon, Croatian name, corresponding to Titus . Tito's biographer, Vladimir Dedijer claimed that it came from the Croatian Romantic writer, Tituš Brezovački . WORLD WAR II ]] On April 6, 1941, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces attacked Yugoslavia. The Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade and other major Yugoslav cities. On April 17, representatives of Yugoslavia's various regions signed an armistice with Germany at Belgrade, ending eleven days of resistance against the invading German Wehrmacht. The Independent State of Croatia was established as a Nazi puppet-state, ruled by the Ustaše , a militant wing of the Croatian Party Of Rights which detached from it in 1929, went into exile into Italy, and were therefore limited in their activities until 1941. German troops occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as part of Serbia and Slovenia, while other parts of the country were occupied by Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy. In April 1941 , the Yugoslav Communists were among the first to organize a resistance movement. On April 10th, the Politburo of the Communist Party Of Yugoslavia met in Zagreb and decided to start the resistance, naming Tito the chief of the military committee. The first resistance action in occupied Yugoslavia occurred on April 29 in Maribor , where local communist youths set several German vehicles on fire. Several other actions followed, including that on June 22 , when a group of 49 local men formed a Military Formation and attacked a German supply train near Sisak . On July 4 , Tito issued a public call for armed resistance against the Nazi/Fascist occupation. Starting on July 7 in Bela Crkva , Yugoslav Partisans staged a wide-spread Guerrilla campaign and started liberating chunks of territory. The activities provoked Germans into "retaliation" against civilians that resulted in mass murders (for each killed German soldier 100 civilians were to be killed and for each wounded 50). In the liberated territories, the Partisans organized people's committees to act as civilian government. Tito was the most prominent leader of the Anti-Fascist Council Of National Liberation Of Yugoslavia - AVNOJ , which convened in Bihać on November 26 , 1942 and in Jajce on November 29 , 1943 . On these two sessions, they established the basis for post-war organisation of the country, making it a federation, and naming Tito the Marshal Of Yugoslavia . On December 4 , 1943 , while most of the country was still occupied by the Axis, Tito proclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government. As the leader of the communist resistance, Tito was a target for the Fall Weiss offensive; in the subsequent Schwarz offensive, in which he was wounded on June 9 , having his life saved only because his loyal dog sacrificed himself; and on May 25 , 1944 , when he barely managed to evade the Germans after their Operation Rösselsprung Airdrop outside his Drvar headquarters. |
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