Real Dictators - Tito Part 4: The Marshal Versus Stalin

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

In the war’s aftermath Tito exacts his bloody revenge. Manoeuvring the king out of the picture, Yugoslavia is swiftly consolidated under communist rule. A clash with the US risks further conflict, even a nuclear strike. Though the biggest showdown is to come… with Joseph Stalin… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Neil Barnett, Branko Brkic, Christopher Catherwood, Richard Mills, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Geoffrey Swain, Susan L Woodward. This is Part 4 of 5. Written by Jeff Dawson | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by George Tapp | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann. You can listen to the final episode of the Tito story straight away, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser+. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Right now, for a limited time, everyone's part of the Buick team, even you. Buick's Employee Pricing for You event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on a 2026 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement from an available massaging driver's seat to an expansive panoramic moonroof and a stunning ultra-wide 30-inch diagonal screen. Don't miss Buick's Employee Pricing for you event. Visit buick.com for more details. It's Monday, May the 14th, 1945.

We're in Blybou, a small town in southern Austria, just two miles from the border with Slovenia. It's a picture postcard community at whitewashed buildings, red-tiled roofs and hand-painted window shutters. Beyond it is a land of rolling hills and pine forests. In the spring sunshine, the countryside is strikingly green, stunningly beautiful. A week after the armistice, it's also a land theoretically at peace.

In this corner of Europe, however, it's not the case, not yet. Out there across the Draba Valley, the war rumbles on. Tito's partisans, now the Yugoslav people's army are pushing northward, closing in, tightening the noose on the last vestige of their enemies. The Germans may have gone, Italians too, but there are others on their hit list, the rag-tag remnants of the pro-axis militia groups, as well as those hated friends turned foe, the Chetniks. It's not just combatants on the move. The conflict is causing massive civilian

displacement. It's an exodus on a biblical scale, part of a wholesale movement of people right across Europe. Refugees have been streaming across Austria's frontier days, cramming the roads, spilling into the fields, fields around towns like Blyburg, whether civilian or soldier, they all seek the same thing, the sanctuary and protection of the West. Those fearing the sharp end of Allied justice, like the Croatian fascists, the Eustasha, have cast off their uniforms, blending into the human flotsam. A condition of the armistice was that all The combatants were supposed to stay put, protected by the Geneva Convention. On the ground, the reality is different, and it's giving the occupying forces a headache.

Here in Austria's British zone, providing food and shelter, and on such a scale, is a task for which its troops are ill-equipped. The next day, the 15th, an order comes through, relayed by an army brigadier. All surrendered personnel of established Yugoslav nationality who were serving in German forces should be disarmed and handed over to Yugoslav forces. It's okay. Their country's new leader, Marshal Tito, has assured their safety. In an uncomfortable echo of Nazi policy, the surrendering soldiers are herded to the nearby railway

station and into cattle trucks. Some take the order on trust, others protest. Amid the babble of languages in general confusion, some assume they're travelling into the Austrian interior. It's not the case. For the repatriated of Blybog, the only route is south. The massacres are about to begin. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is part four of the Tito story. this is real dictators. In October 1944, Marshal Tito and his victorious partisans had entered Belgrade.

With the assistance of the Soviet Red Army, they've driven the Germans out of the Yugoslav capital. In May 1945, when the rival independent state of Croatia collapses, it's pretty much, though not completely game over. It has been a hard won victory. By war's end, over one million Yugoslavs will be dead, a tenth of the population. In the grisly league table of European war losses, Yugoslavia comes in third after the USSR and Poland. Many, probably the majority, have perished at the hands of their own countrymen. This was never just a war of liberation. It was also a civil war.

A revolution and is not yet over. Tito, with the backing of the Allies, is the new provisional head of the Yugoslav state. His position has been secured by promises of the inclusivity of his new government, and of a post-war Yugoslavia's independence, free from interference by Moscow, something of which the Western Allies remain paranoid. As the months whereon, Stalin seems intent on bringing anywhere that the revolution, Red Army's boots of Trotten under Soviet control. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, the eastern portion of Germany.

The Soviets had been invited into Yugoslavia by Tito to help take Belgrade. To outside, as it seemed unlikely, they would leave. But, to size of relief, in April 1945, they sling their rifles and go home, just like Tito had promised. Tito is in a unique position for a resistance leader. Professor Christopher Catherwood Phaeroyer. Phaeroyer is that Tito actually helped liberate Yugoslava himself. And that's the absolute key thing, so he was the national hero to all the Yugoslars.

It's a remarkable achievement. As a general, he's beaten both Hitler and Mussolini. As a diplomat, he's held his own with Stalin and Churchill. Roosevelt too. Neil Barnett. It gave Tito a real legitimacy, and it gave Yvesavir a high degree of autonomy both from the Soviets and from the West.

Because he actually had three credit. I mean, he was a communist and was popular, whereas all the other people were imposed by the Red Army. Tito has been true to his word elsewhere. On March the 7th, 1945, he convenes the first session of Yugoslavia's provisional government. It features politicians from across the spectrum. He himself is the Prime Minister of the latest rebrand of the state, democratic federal Yugoslvia.

While old pal, Edward Kardelch, becomes one of two deputy prime ministers. The other is Milan Grohl, a Serbian literary critic and historian, a recommendation of the regime in exile. The king's voice of reason, Ivan Subasich, gets foreign means. minister. Tito's government has Orthodox members, Catholics, Muslims, atheists. It's made up of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Macedonians, the six core nationalities. Despite the traditional Serbian power base, it should never be forgotten that Tito is a Croat, born to a Slovene mother, and who was brought up a Catholic. And so there's this weird feeling In Russia, well, he's a dictator, but at least he's got a Croat father, he's not a Serb,

and he kept the Russians out. So, you know, we have freedom which other peoples don't have. Under Tito, as we know, ethnic and national identity is incidental. Loyalty is only to the Yugoslav state, and those who have not been will be made to suffer. Tito's chief antagonists have wisely gone to ground. Croat leader and Tepavelich, it will transpire, has availed himself of the underground Nazi escape route, and will turn up in South America. His fascist Ustasha movement had murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, many in its state-run death camps. The Kurds atrocities that shock even the SS, and that is quite something, and of course we discovered later

that Kord Valtime knew all this, because he was deeply involved with the Germans. It's all got Sotty Auckland goes for when he became new and Secretary General. At least, say some, the Eustache are not godless, not like the commies. Many fleeing paramilitaries find safe havens within the Catholic world, in Italy and elsewhere. And as for Tito's other Béthnoir, the leader of the Chetniks, the whereabouts of Drazamae-Hilovich, are currently unknown. In the post-war chaos, nearly half a million. million Yugoslavs remain scattered across Europe. Some are refugees. Others are released from

German POW camps. For Tito, business won't be wound up by a quaint bureaucratic notion like V-E-Day, May the 8th, 1945. His war will continue well into June, by which time his people's army has advanced beyond Yugoslavia's frontiers. It now occupies the Italian borderlands, the Istrian Peninsula and its key Adriatic port, Trieste, as well as a chunk of Austrian Corinthia. Meanwhile, for the Blyberg returnees, whom we encountered in the opening scene, there will be no clemency. Once the wagons of Trondell South, it will be a case of forced route marches to remote locations and a grisly end. Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy. The Blyberg Turnaround Incident is very grim.

What you have is the war continues in Yugoslavia. All these Czechniks, Slovenes, Germans, fascist sympathizers, quote Utasha. All of them, this great army, are going towards the Allies and Austria, but they're still fighting the partisans. And what Tito does is he tries to persuade the column to surrender by Osprey. offering amnesty. But they ignore him, they head towards Austria, thinking that whoever is there will admit them and take care of them. The British, I think, sometimes can be quite naive.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to them, that this polyglot army, which has suddenly arrived on their doorstep, will all be slaughtered if you turn it back to Sander. It will take years for the truth to come out. But from sites across Slovenia and northern Croatia, hundreds of mass graves will be identified. Professor Jeffrey Swain During the Nazi occupation, there were terrible massacres. The Croatian Ustashi killed an awful lot of Serbs, because remembering Croatia, there was always a Serbian minority.

Many of the early partisans during the Second War were Serbs from Croatia. It's only later in this war that the Croatians rally to the parties, and called in equal numbers. So there's always been that tension there. And there were horrible massacres of Bosnian Muslims during the Second War as well. Some horrible things happened in 1945-46, so there's no point pretending. An estimated 15,000 Croat POWs and civilians are executed at Tesna near Maribor. At Kodewski Rogue, south of Lubiana, the remains of 12,000 Slovenes home guardsmen will be dug up, alongside further Croats and Chechnix.

Yet more skeletons, military and civilian, will be uncovered at Hudashama in an abandoned coal mine. At Machauch and other locations, there will be countless more bodies unearthed. The exact total can only be guessed at. Reputable estimates range up to 100,000. The killings are conducted in secret, but are almost certainly overseen by Osna, the acronym for the Department of the Protection of the People, or as anyone else would call them, the Yugoslav state secret police. Tito has modeled it on the Soviet NKVD.

It's run by the iron hand of his old partisan, comrade Alexander Rankovich. In Russia in the 1930s, Tito had witnessed Stalin's purges first hand. He learned and he learned well. Branko Berkic. Look, look, I have only one word, let's see Britain, Dresden and Americans, the firebombing of Tokyo. You know, those were also murders. Let's be honest, I think that with every war, There's a dose of absolute, reprehensible behavior. It is a dark, a dark moment. There's no doubt.

Thirdly enough is that it's just one of countless dark moments in the Balkans. There is something about its face that, you know, begets violence and it never stops, unfortunately. As for Tito's complicity in this, I think we can debate that. A lot of it was done by local. called Slovene partisans. And when you consider the costs of the German occupation and the price exacted by the Eutosh and so forth, and so much bitterness, they've lost a million people,

that their feelings towards these prisoners are certainly murderers. I'm just not sure how much control he had of the situation. I don't think he wanted it to happen. He certainly stopped it, and the British certainly stopped returning prisoners. But it casts a shadow over the beginning of his regime It was not forgotten

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will stand in his way. That's how it's done. The Hawk, only on Netflix, July 16th. With a free hand, the Marshal Prime Minister of Yugoslavia can now concentrate power, concentrated in himself. Over the coming months, his opponents will be sidelined, removed, disgraced or hounded out of office,

denounced in the state-run media. And as for the king, talks with the war. wartime government in exile had paved the way for the return of Peter II, affording him some role within a new constitutional framework. Tito has been clever. That innocuous name, Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, suggests he's playing ball. But the king will never return.

On November the 11th, 1945, national elections are held amid a monarchist boycott, Alleging intimidation from Osner and non-secrecy of the voting, Tito's opponents claim they rigged. Whatever the case, the poll yields a landslide victory for the Communist Party. Or rather, as they stand on the ballot, the People's Front, an extension of the victorious People's Army. With women fully enfranchised, the party wins 90% of the popular vote. of the popular vote and every parliamentary seat, effectively ushering in one-party rule. On the 29th, Tito introduces the official new iteration of the country, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. The monarchy is duly abolished. Tito moves into the White Palace,

once inhabited by Prince Paul. You understand what kind of He must have been. The country is essentially starving. He's trying to rebuild the country after a country's the war which killed more than a million people. The country is badly wounded. Needs to be put together back. And just I'd be reminded, democracy in those days

was not exactly enormous. So Tito was doing the best he could in those days. Just how to survive, how to keep the country together, and how to literally not become Soviet Union's 16th state. Later, in 1953, with a constitutional tweak, Tito will make himself president, as well as retaining the post of Prime Minister. Given that Yugoslavia has now conducted the world's second communist revolution, it's all looking very familiar and all very Stalinist.

Even more so given that Yugoslavia is fully signed up to the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, or Cominformed. This successor body to come in turn ensures that all Marxist states bend to the will of the Kremlin. Dr Richard Mills And that new communist Yugoslavia is one of the most loyal allies of the Soviet Union. It's a country which looks to Moscow for advice for guidance. The first constitution is very closely based on the first Soviet constitution. and everything looks as though Yugoslavia is going to become a core member of the newly emerging

eastern bloc. Tito Yugoslavia will be a Soviet-style federated state. As he puts it, I am the leader of one country which has two alphabets, three languages, four religions, five nationalities, six republics, surrounded by seven neighbors. neighbors. Amid this, there is one group that remains politically homeless, Yugoslavia's substantial Albanian population. They reside primarily in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, the place where that landmark

battle was fought back in 1389. The nervous Kosovo Albanians would prefer union with the separate Albanian state next door than be bolted onto the Serbs. Tito does entertain the notion of annexing Albania, which had until its own communist takeover been run as a colonial plaything by Mussolini. There is talk too of folding Bulgaria into a greater Balkan socialist federation. Should the various Balkan states form a federation of communist powers. Bulgaria was communist, Albania was communist, Yugoslavia was communist.

Ever since the 19th century socialists had first suggested a Balkan federation, this had been going around in left-wing thought. The British made it very clear that they didn't think the All-Confederation was a good idea, and so Rentito raised the idea

back in 1945-46, Stalin said, No, no, no, too complicated. Stalin, it seems, is unwilling to rock the boat, for the moment. So, Kosovo instead becomes an autonomous region of Serbia, as does the Old Habsburg province of Vojvodina, north of the Danube, with its substantial Hungarian minority. There is one outstanding item of business. In the mountains of Western Serbia, near the village of Trudevo,

A band of Chechnicks has been hiding out. They are growing concerned for the man they've been sheltering, their fugitive leader, Drazah Mihailovich. The years of roughing it have taken a huge toll on his health. Mihailovic has since contracted typhus in need of urgent medical care. On March to 13, 1946, an Allied plane flies over. It drops leaflets, appealing to these Chechnick bitter. enders to give themselves up. No harm will come to them. Taking the invitation on trust,

a detachment of Mihailovich's men emerge from the forest. They are met by three unspecified allied intelligence officers. Learning that Mihailovic is in their care, the officers urged that he's transported to a nearby airstrip. From there he can be spirited away to a hospital in Italy. But please, they must hurry. It is in fact a trap. These are Tito's men. The Chetniks are ambushed, and the now unconscious Mihailovic is kidnapped, to be flown not to Italy, but to Sarajevo, then onto Belgrade. On June the 10th in the capital, at the Infantry Training School, a makeshift courtroom has been set up. Mihailovitch is one of several shaked defendants who come shuffling in, paraded as alleged enemies of the people.

They're being tried, they're informed by the military council of the Supreme Court of the Federal People's Republic. Mihailovic is presented with 47 counts of high treason and war crimes. In his cheap suit and no tie, desperately ill, he cuts a forlorn figure. He squins through broken wire-rimmed spectacles, barely stood. strong enough to stand. If observers whisper privately that this is a show trial straight out of the Soviet playbook, Tito does not concur. It is of a peace, is it not, with the Allied judgments at Nuremberg. Mihailovich's defense is more like a plea for mercy than a legal rebuttal. He already knows which way the verdict is going to go. In muted, despondent tones, he points to his

stellar record in the Serbian army, and his appointment as minister for war by the exiled royal government. Outside of Yugoslavia, there are voices speaking up for him. Among other things, his Chetniks had saved the lives of dozens of downed Allied airmen, smuggling them out of the country, but any point in mitigation is met with orchestrated echoes. Mahalovich just sits there, Head in hands, resigned to his predetermined fate. On the 15th of June, the panel of judges reaches its verdict. Mihailovich and ten others are sentenced to death. Two days later, the condemned are led into the grounds of the old royal palace

to take their place before a people's firing squad. Mihailovic's body is covered with quicklime and dumped in an unmarked grave. The watching Western world is unimpressed, sickened even by Tito's antics. He's undisputed leader and he's ruthless. The charge of collaboration was used to make sure that almost any body that Tito felt was an enemy was dealt with. Remember, even Marshal Penta was put on trial and Vichie collaborators were executed. So we can't say that out of the norm, even for Western Europe, there were good grounds for executing Mahailovie, even though the standards of liberal democracy were probably not adhered to.

It's August 19, 1946, late morning. The skies over Slovenia are dense with cloud, the ceiling thick and grey. With its wipers beating frantically, an American military tram. Transport aircraft, the C-47 of Dakota, struggles along at 15,000 feet. These are testing conditions for the pilot and for the navigator. At around 1,100 hours, responding to a scramble signal, two fighters of the J.R.V, the Yugoslav Air Force, climbed to meet it. They shadowed the Dakota from a distance of three miles. The American plane is on a scheduled flight, running cargo and personnel from Vienna to Udina in northeast Italy.

But in the appalling weather, it's drifted into Yugoslav airspace, where the actual frontier lies is yet to be determined. This region, the borderlands between Yugoslavia and Italy, is currently split into two sectors, one Anglo-American, the other Yugoslav. The Allies will not budge, they say, until a fixed border is established under international law, and with the strategic port of Trieste safely in Western hands. Deputy Prime Minister Edward Cardelch howls at what he calls the West's bad attitude. From now on, any overflights of Yugoslavian territory, ones not strictly approved by Tito's government, are to be considered encroachments, violations. of sovereignty. There have, since February, been 233 such incidents, he adds, more than a suggestion

that the Allied military government is not taking Yugoslavia seriously. On August 9th, with tensions running high, astray C-47 has shots fired at it by J.R.V. Fighters. It's forced to make an emergency landing at Lubyana, its crew and passengers interned. Amid the summoning, of ambassadors and heated exchanges, there's a danger things could get out of hand. But, ten days later, on August the 19th, Tito doubles down. On instructions from the ground, the two fighters climb to the east and dive. They rake the American plane that bursts of machine gunfire. Slow and unarmed, the Dakota has no chance. Engines are a flame, it spins out of control. It enters its death spiral, plummeting towards the earth.

All five crew are killed. In Washington, there is outrage. President Harry S. Truman and his war secretary Robert Patterson convene an emergency meeting at the White House. According to U.S. intelligence, their pilot, responding to Yugoslav signals, had cooperated fully. He had already begun an emergency descent when his plane was fired upon without warning. It is a violation of Article 51 of the new United Nations Charter. Yugoslavia has disregarded the rules of engagement. It is an act of war. Just as flabbergasting is the Yugoslav excuse.

That its pilots had often. at the C-47 a friendly wave, at which it had spontaneously burst into flames. America, legitimately, is entitled to retaliate. As the sole atomic power, there are hawkish mumblings about dropping the bomb. Stalin is trying to keep everything calm in order that he can buy some time until he has a nuclear weapon. Tito, meanwhile, is really on the front foot and being aggressive. and this incident was the high point of it, shooting down in these American planes.

And it really wound Stalin up. He felt that Tito was threatening his entire strategic position and that Tito's actions could be read as his actions as a proxy. But no one seriously wants conflict. It's an unnecessary sideshow. Tito escapes with a slap on the wrist, though Yugoslav American relations will remain at a low point for some while. Time magazine, summing it up, features Tito on the cover with a headline.

Fanaticism knows no frontier. Very interesting that the Americans don't pursue this, that they don't create a great stink, that they kind of bury the dead without shouting. It just shows what subtleties lie behind the scenes of this point in the, should we say, I think the word seduction is wrong, but the begalment, the enchantment, of Tito by the West. They realize that they must retrieve this man whatever it costs.

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Moment. Old Navy's drapeed denim wide leg. There is a lingering question for some Yugoslavs. This new leader of theirs is all well and good, but who the hell is he? In the newsreels and on the radio, it's the first time most people have had the chance to see Tito. As a political actor, he spent most of his life underground. As a partisan fighter, there was a mystery as to his identity. he had assumed a superhero status. And now.

His revelation as an ordinary-looking 50-something man is not necessarily a surprise, but it does raise some questions. As discussed in the previous episode, there's that peculiar accent of his. But it's not just that. During the war, when negotiating with some German officers, The man now presenting himself as Tito is not the Tito with whom they had engaged, or so the Germans claim. Within British military intelligence, there had even been suspicion that Tito the partisan might actually be a woman.

Mihailovich himself was never entirely convinced that Tito wasn't a Russian or a Pole, one of the reasons behind his fears of a foreign-led revolution. Even if one takes on face value that Tito is the Yossip Rose, he claims to be, there is another inconvenient detail. In 1955, according to a declassified FBI file, a man named Marianne Markle, a Yugoslav expatriate, will walk into a police station in Los Angeles. This man who claims to be the president of Yugoslavia is an imposter, he protests. And he knows it from public.

personal experience. He had first met Tito as a youth. He'd even served time in jail with him. Two years back, he'd met him again. He was shorter than he remembered. Plus, the formerly uncultured Tito had really made something of himself, even becoming a proficient pianist, which is an interesting development, given that the Yosipros he knew, when toiling as a humble locksmith, had lost the middle and index fingers of his left hand in a workplace accident. Somehow, mysteriously, the digits have grown back. The suggestion by Markle is that Tito is a Russian plant, someone who had been assigned Brazz's identity during his Moscow days.

I tend to think he was Tito, that he really was used at Broz. People know the village who was brought up in. They knew people knew his brother. You know, his father. And there's all sorts of conspiracy theories. They're all fascinating, but they all contradict each other. I just tend to think enough people knew Tito to say that he was Yerner was. I think it was very difficult for him to have been somebody else.

I could see that using the identities of prisoners of war who may be deceased to send back agents into target countries as something that the NKVD would have considered or maybe did. The fact that so little is known really about his early life, There are people from former Yugoslavia who will tell you that they don't believe he was a native speaker. But plenty who say that's nonsense. I think it's extremely unlikely that he wasn't the boy who was born in Krumovets in the late 19th century. These fake Tito conspiracies will run and run. And there will be enough for the U.S. National Security Agency to look into them.

But given the general state of chaos in Yugoslavia at the time, such things do not merit too much attention. attention. All people want is peace, bread and order. There should be no underestimating the scale of the task. It's not just the one million Yugoslav dead. Out of a population of 15 million, three and a half million people are also homeless, around a quarter of the total. Pretty much the entire Yugoslav economic infrastructure has been destroyed to the tune of $50 billion. Unemployment is off the scale. On April 28, 1947, in a rally broadcast of the nation, Tito outlines his vision for the new Yugoslavia. The same thing that any self-respecting socialist

would do, he announces a five-year plan. It's a question of our country's survival, he tells his people. We don't want to be a backward country, since such country. are easy prey. With advanced technology and the socialist system, we will be powerful enough to resist any attack. To Stalin, Tito is becoming a loose cannon. It's not just the incident with the Americans. It's unconscionable that he should be devising his own economic policy. There is also one might venture a little bit of jealousy. I suspect that Stalin was afraid of Tito for another reason. which is that he could come to be seen as the paramount and more legitimate communist leader that he actually felt that he was a threat to his leadership,

that Tito had the consent of the Yugoslav people. While there was repression, Tito didn't rule through fear. And I guess Stalin understood that, and it made him feel inadequate. Stalin coins a new word. From now on, any Eastern bloc leader who might have ideas above his station is denounced as a Titoist. Another sticking point for Stalin is Greece, where a civil war is raging. Stalin had agreed to step back from meddling there,

according to what had been set out by the war's victorious powers. Churchill had been hoping with the percentages agreement about spheres of influence after the war. Greece would be Western, most of Eastern Europe, would be Soviet. But Yugoslavia would be 50-50. The Serbian bit would be pro-Western, the Kralat bit. Maybe not, but it would be 50-50. Stalin didn't want Tieta to mess things up by helping the communists in Greece,

because he agreed that Greece could be part of the Western. So in return for Britain basically surrendering the whole of Eastern Europe to Stalin. Tito was not going to be ordered by Stalin what to do. And also, Tito had his own politics. He was supporting the Greek partisans, which were causing quite a bit of chaos in Greece. And that was causing Stalin a lot of grief, because Churchill was complaining to Stalin saying that he is to put Tito under control, and Tito, of course, would that be controlled. British and American soldiers are already on the ground in Greece, acting as peacekeepers,

trying to uphold the rule of the legitimate government against a communist insurgency. One now backed wholeheartedly by Tito. The crucial fact here, which I think is the key to all of Central Europe actually after the Second World War, is this very odd situation where from 45, the Allies have the bomb and Stalin does not. And of course in Stalin's mind, then he's completely at the mercy of the Allies. And to his surprise, they don't push him about at all, they don't push him out of Central and Eastern Europe. They just want to make friends with him. I mean, we sold the Poles, our allies and the Czechs, to Stalin for nothing.

I mean, I think it's just a terrible story. An exasperated Stalin is wound up again by a resurrection of Tito's old pet project. He quickly signed an economic agreement with Romania. He went on a visit to Hungary. He did an economic deal with Bulgaria. and he started talking again about a Balkan Federation and also made it clear that in his vision, the Balkan Federation would include Greece.

To focus Tito's mind, Stalin concentrates troops along Yugoslavia's border. But you see, Tito is just a big man. He's not going to be anybody's lap dog. That is his core persona. He's not going to be a Likspital. What he's doing is defying Stalin's orders. Tito is not toying the party line,

and we know what happens to people who don't tow the party line. Nikroski forgot the party line and ended up with an ice pick in his head in Mexico. And the final straw that broke the kennels back was when Tito placed troops in Albania without clearing it first with Moscow. and at that point, the Stalin thought, this man is getting out of control, something's got to be done. The assassination plots against Tito begin in earnest. There will be 22 in total,

an active five of which Tito's security people foil, including one assassin caught with a bomb, another with a sniper rifle. If it wants to kill Tito, Hitler does the Italians, and latterly Stalin does as we shall see but killing Tito. Yes, the man is indestructible. Tito responds by tightening his security and dealing with his opponents. On the barren Adriatic Isle of Goli Otok, or Naked Island,

a labor camp is set up by Rankovic, now Minister of the Interior. It hosts around 12,000 dissidents between 1949 and 1952. The people that they sent to the Naked Island camp were the people who would not accept Tito's response to Stuyi. So, look, Tito, you're not stupid. He knows that these people are all potential flotters. So they didn't send them because he was a bloodthirsty tyrant. He sent them there to protect himself and protect the regime, you know. So it's really important to understand because at that moment,

you had 200,000 Hungarian and Soviet troops camping on a northern border. There was a repression which was nothing. which was nothing compared to what you saw in the Stalin and the Soviet Union, but it was repression. A sort of miniature gulag on the island of Goliathog. And they had this euphemism in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for people who were on the wrong end of things. So if you were going to be sent to Goliathok,

you were going to be removed from the social community. And if you're going to be killed, you're going to be removed from the physical community. He actually has his own little despotic. sandpit. He has a political prison and in the early days it's pretty vicious. The Yugoslav government admitted in the mid-60s that about 600 people had died there. A lot of these were communist furies with the way that Tito deviated from the party line but then yes you do have the ethnicists. So it could only be held together by a strong man prepared to be ruthless.

It's very difficult to think how a liberal Tito could have actually held the whole thing together. With the failure of his hitmen, meanwhile, Stalin resorts to bureaucracy. In June 1948, a motion is put before common form, charging Tito with the heretical crime of, quote, abandoning Marxist theory. It's a move Stalin believes that will bring Yugoslavia to its senses. And it becomes clear to the Yugoslav leadership that it is now faced with an existential crisis. The Soviet Union is calling for the party as a whole in Yugoslavia to remove its leadership and to move back towards the Soviet position. By unanimous vote, Cominform agrees to expel Yugoslavia.

It's ejected from the communist bloc. There is an added detail. The pronouncement comes on June the 21st. 28th, a date that has significant and recurring relevance in Balkan history. And there are all kinds of order incursions, there are incidents and various threats. And the Yugoslav Central Korean Committee are by no means confident that they won't face a major intervention from the Soviet Union at this state. But they start to think on their feet, what's come to be known as the Tito-Stalin split,

is an opportunity for Yugoslavia. It's forced to look for alternatives, for different ways to do things. And actually, that common form is expulsion in 1948 lays the groundwork for Yugoslavia to move off in all kinds of exciting new directions. Professor Susan L. Woodward. So Yugoslavia is excluded from all relations with the rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. most importantly, trade, but also the emerging military alliance in reaction to the creation of NATO, namely the Warsaw Path.

So they're excluded. And what's really important to know about that is when they choose to reinforce their own path, if you will. The first nine months, the Americans come to their aid, not out of any support for Tito itself, but seeing this as a way of reinforcing independence against the Serbian Union. A lot of people would say what happened in 1940? Well, I think the interpretation I go is that Tito wanted to run his own show. They were always worse, I told him to differences anyway.

But the real thing was that he was his own boss, and he wasn't going to be told what to do by Stalin. Amid the newfound freedoms, Tito even finds time to get married for a fourth time, to a lady called Yovanka Budisavievich. She was a servant on his staff, hailing from a lowly Serb family, and who always always was a servant. and who also happens to be 32 years as junior. Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year too. A round of Jameson, ginger and lime arrives at the table.

Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball. Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. How did Jameson to your match day lineup? Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly.

An enraged Stalin, failing to get a reaction from Tito, steps up the assassination attempts, decreeing that he only has to wag his little finger to rid himself of this seemingly turbulent priest. An NKVD agent, codenamed Max, is to infiltrate a reception in Belgrade, posing as a Costa Rican diplomat. He is to present Tito with a gift. an ornate jewelry box which contains a lethal bacteria. Not dissimilar, it should be noted, to that which was used by Russian agents in Salisbury, England, in 2018. But Tito, as ever, is too well practiced in his personal security

to fall for this clumsy ruse. On March 1st, 1953, Tito goes to Britain to visit the re-elected Winston Churchill. He opts to travel by Yugoslav naval warship. ship. It's while at sea that he received some stunning news. At his dasher near Moscow, Stalin has collapsed, purportedly from a massive heart attack or stroke, though no one really knows for sure. Such is the climate of fear, there is a reluctance to touch, let alone examine the body. Not until four days later will Stalin be officially pronounced dead. A near comedic round of his deputies plotting against each other begins.

But a small detail is often overlooked, that Stalin's end may have come about by way of sipping from a mysterious glass of fruit juice that had appeared by his side, its origin unknown. His death too is consistent with coming from a similar strain of toxic matter that Agent Max had been trying to foist upon the Yugoslav leader. On Stalin's desk, a note is found. It's from Tito. Stop sending people to kill me.

We've already captured five of them. If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second. He sends assassins to kill me and they failed. When I send an assassin to kill you, he'll succeed. Quite impressive. It's a common rumor that Tito actually. had Stalin knocked off.

I wouldn't put it past him, but how will we ever know? In other words, the Holt-Dain's Bond thing, although we joke and jest about these things, it is very, very real. There's an awful lot of cloak and dagger stuff. It's not just on the movies. It's quite possible that could have happened. It's quite possible he could have actually poisoned Stalin. As we know, Stalin's corpse lay there from some time,

because no one dared touch it, not his doctors, not nobody. as if he were some kind of vampire who'd resurrect, he was that terrifying. I think it is a credible rumor. Relations between East and West have been deteriorating too, enhanced by the fact that in 1949, the Soviet Union conducts its first nuclear bomb test. The gloves are off. The Cold War escalates.

There's the Berlin airlift, the Korean War. I mean, this is a terrifying world. It's the immediate post-world order. The Soviets are getting the bomb, the iron curtain. There's a new communist empire covering most of East Europe and East Germany. It's become terrifying. It's a kind of dark night. A war fought for democracy and liberation has turned in on itself in a sense.

And Tito is the shining relict, the shining relict. the shining example that that isn't necessarily so. To Yugoslavia, the Western Aid floods in. A $550 million loan from the United States. Another $420 million from the UN. In 1951 will come an IMF loan of $35 million. These are massive sums. The Americans start giving them support.

It's not formally part of the Marshall. plant, but in effect it is. About a third of Yugoslavia's national budget is invested in heavy industry. Iron, steel, coal, manufacturing, the shipyards, not just rebooting the economy, but providing over 2 million new jobs. In light of the external threats, and in particular the Soviet one, a substantial part of Yugoslavia's financial dividend is allocated to arms manufacture. Aiming for self-sufficiency with regard to defense, massive armaments' works are opened in Bosnia and Serbia,

well away from the eastern borders. Yugoslavia will no longer be beholden to foreign supply. And this highly sophisticated national army, having that capacity meant that it could offer to NATO a bulwark against the movement if the scenario of the Soviet Union invading Western Europe went not through the north but through the south. So Yugoslavia's independent defense, that was an important part of Yugoslav neutrality.

Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, is wise to Tito's western flirtations. In late May, 1955, the new Soviet premier flies the Belgrade with a proverbial bunch of flowers. Come on back into the fold. As the cameras roll at the airport, the public see two men laughing, slapping each other's backs and horsing around. Together they sign on June 2nd the Belgrade Declaration, a sort of diplomatic pre-nop. He got on call on with Khrushchev, and Khrushchev was different, but they were still loyal comments when Khrushchev was hoping from better recognition than he had. But then D.J. sort of played both sides against the middle because he was very nice to us, and he was also very nice.

to Khrushchev. But if Khrushchev hopes to return to Moscow with Tito's ring on his finger, he's misinterpreted the extent of their bromance. When the Hungarian revolution of October 1956 is brutally suppressed by Soviet troops, it vindicates Tito's independent stance. The Hungarian leader, Imre Nagy, had even been provided sanctuary in Budapest-Yugoslav embassy, till lured out by the Soviets on the false-brosephs. pretenses. No way is Tito going to sign up to the Warsaw Pact. Not now. Neither will he join NATO,

nor for that matter, any superpower grouping. Besides, a brand new power block is emerging, one that has taken his interest and one that is about to change everything. It's July the 19th, 1996 were in the bruni islands a string of small idyllic pearls just off the coast of the isterian peninsula it's a gorgeous day the sky as an azure blue the sea calm as a mill pond on the jetty of the main island's old venetian harbor stands marshal tito he's dressed in a white suit striped tie in panama hat he sports a pair of aviator sunglasses He watches out to see as two motor launches cut through the waves, busing over his guests for the weekend. They are distinguished individuals, VIPs, and they've come from afar.

The first has traveled all the way from Cairo, President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The other has come from even further afield, New Delhi. He is Prime Minister Jawa Halal Nairu of India. What Tito has in mind is a brand new grouping of nations. A rejection of both East and West. A third way. Tito is no mere Balkan leader, not even a European one anymore. His vision extends way beyond that.

Yossip Broz, Marshal Tito, is about to position himself as a world statesman. In the next episode, in the final part of the Tito story, Through his non-aligned movement, Tito becomes an international celebrity, fated by the jet set. His hybrid Coca-Cola socialism sees Yugoslavia booming. But the good times have been built on shaky foundations. And as Tito ales and ethnic tensions simmer again, it seems his Balkan miracle will prove short-lived. That's next time. You can listen to the final part of the Tito story right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noysa Plus.

Click the link in the episode description.