Josip Broz Tito was Marshal and President of Yugoslavia after World War Two and during
that war was leader of the Partisan Yugoslav forces, but much of his worldview was influenced
by his service during the First World War and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War bio special of “Who did what in World War
One?” and my star today is Josip Broz Tito.
lTito was born in May 1892 in the village of Kumrovec, in what is now northwestern Croatia,
but was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the 7th of 15 children, though several
of them died in infancy, and his family was a typically rural one; Dad was a carpenter:
Mom was a housewife. Josep finished four years of school, worked as a hired hand on several
estates, became a waiter, then a machinist, and by 1910 was a locksmith. That same year
he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia and the following
year took part in a workers’ strike for the first time. In 1912 he went to the Imperial
capital Vienna where his brother Martin lived and Josep got work in a Daimler automobile factory.
And then he began his military career.
Yep, in September 1913, Josep Tito began regular military service, first serving in Vienna,
but then transferring to the 25th Home Guard Regiment in Zagreb. By the end of the year
he was already in junior officer training school and became the youngest platoon leader
in the regiment, and a piece of trivia here: he also became an excellent fencer.
Tito did not think much of the quality of the Imperial Army, and in later years would
write, “first of all, it was the oppressor’s army, which enslaved not only my people, but
was being used to enslave other peoples. Second, it wasn’t much of an army. It relied on
drill, old formulas, and rulebooks; soldier was not allowed to show any kind of initiative...
We were forced to learn the entire family tree of the house of Habsburg.”
When the war began in July 1914, Tito’s unit was quickly sent to the Serbian front.
Now, Tito’s regiment was part of the 42nd “Devil’s Division” which was over 90%
Serbs and Croats, and Tito was an orderly at headquarters. One night in a small village
in the company of some older conscripts, he openly protested the war, declared himself
a socialist, and said that if the regiment were transferred to Galicia, he would surrender
to the Russians. He was arrested and imprisoned in Petrovaradin Fortress.
He shared a cell with a German who shared his food with Tito since Tito wasn’t given
any. After four days he was brought before the commander and was eventually freed after
the false testimony of the woman in whose house he was arrested.
Tito would rarely speak of his participation in the war against Serbia, but he fought on
that front until December 1914 and would see all the major actions of the Serbian campaign,
Cer, Batar, Guchevo. Interestingly enough, Tito’s future World War Two nemesis, Drazha
Mikhailovich, was a member of a Serbian division that fought on the opposite side in these
battles. Now, there are controversies about Tito’s role in these battles because of
atrocities committed by Austro-Hungarian soldiers against Serbian civilians and his division
certainly did commit some of these crimes, but Archibald Reiss, who was commissioned
by the Serbian government to investigate the war crimes, says that they were not committed
by the 25th regiment, Tito’s.
As 1915 began, his division was sent to the Carpathian front to fight the Russians.
The Austro-Hungarian Carpathian winter offensives in early 1915 were complete disasters, resulting
in enormous casualties, and not just from the actual fighting. The men were so ill equipped
that in just one night Tito’s division lost 1800 men to frostbite. Here, Tito distinguished
himself in battle and was recommended for a medal, but he would be captured before he
could receive it. He had this to say about the war in the Carpathians, “That was when
I really started to hate the war. Man had nothing to fight for, and besides, soldiers
in the front suffered terror and were exposed to every kind of peril.”
As the spring arrived, he fought in Galicia and then Bukovina.
During a Russian artillery barrage there, Tito was wounded for the first time, suffering
a severe concussion. He was soon back in the lines, but the Russians made a breakthrough
and Circassian cavalry surrounded and overwhelmed Tito’s trenches. He was lanced through the
back close to the heart, and captured.
He awoke in a Russian hospital where his wound became the least of his problems. He contracted
pneumonia and later typhus, but managed to survive the rest of the war as a prisoner
of the Russians.
Actually, he remained in Russia for quite a while after Russia pulled out of the war.
He was sent to Kungur in the Urals where he again worked as a machinist and was the commander
of the local prisoners. After the February revolution he joined the Bolsheviks. Eventually,
he tried to run to Poland but was caught and locked up. Sent again to Kungur, he escaped
to Siberia, joined the Red Guards and took a wife. And what came later? Geez, he was
a communist secret agent, leader of the Yugoslav communists, took part in the Spanish Civil
War, was an organizer of partisan resistance in the Balkans, fought in World War Two and
was again wounded, became President and Marshal of Yugoslavia, defied Stalin, and... well,
and... all of that is beyond the scope of this channel.
What is within our scope is to see how this war shaped one of the 20th century’s most
controversial, but definitely interesting, figures. Particularly the condition and inner
workings of the Austro-Hungarian army, which strengthened Tito’s political beliefs while
his military service hammered out his determination and reputation. But that’s just hindsight
for us. On that day on the Galician Front all he had to think about was survival: “We
didn't even see them coming, they simply overwhelmed our trenches. One Circassian with his 2-meter
long lance ran into me, but since I had a rifle with a bayonet and was a skilfull fencer,
I repelled his advance. But while I was repelling attacks of that Circassian, suddenly I felt
a hard blow into my back. I turned around and saw a grinning face of another Circassian
and his big black eyes with dense eyebrows. It was on the 4th of April 1915.”
As always I encourage you to look it up yourself to dig deeper.
Thanks a lot to GORAN ŽIVKOVIĆ for helping us out with the research for this episode.
If you want to know more about the reason for the desperate state of the Austro-Hungarian
Army and the catastrophic defeats against Serbia and Russia in 1914 and 1915, click
here for our bio episode about Conrad von Hötzendorf.
Let us know if you want to help with the research for a future special episodes.
Don’t forget to subscribe and see you next time.