By: Keith Miles
There have been many mysteries over the years relating to Josip Broz Tito. The reason that they are not resolved tells us something about dictators and the remaining followers and old acolytes.
Here are some of the stories and rumours, some true some not.
- Tito was really a Russian because he spoke Serbo-Croat with a Russian accent
- Tito was an Austrian military patriot who fought for them in Serbia
- Tito was an NKVD operative
- Tito was an outstanding military commander
- Tito was trustworthy
- Tito was a womaniser, his first wife even under age when they married
- Tito was charming and modest
- Tito was in the Spanish Civil War for the NKVD
- Tito was a world class fencing champion
- Tito learned to play the piano in captivity
- Tito loved luxury, palaces, cars, yacht, zoo, etc
- Tito supported terrorism even helping the notorious killer ‘The Jackel’.
- Tito had a half brother Joshua Ambroz Mayer who it is claimed became the real Tito
- Tito arranged secret financial aid from the USA for the Non Aligned Group of Nations
Of course all these are a mixture of opinion and speculation and sheer invention, but there is some truth in many of them, but some are fanciful. All raise questions.
Of course any dictator wants to promote his ‘great talents’ and suppress any negatives which he can do by having total control of the media.His party did kill many in the aftermath of World War Two, he was an NKVD operative, he loved luxury, and he did fight for the Austrian Empire in Serbia. As for the other matters everyone can judge for themselves. Certainly Djilas lost trust, and the Mayer-as-Tito story seems far fetched, but it could of course be tested by DNA samples even now from Tito’s remains in Belgrade. It does appear that even now we do not know the full story.
However one story that is hardly mentioned in former Yugoslavia Is the role the British communist James Klugmann played to help Tito to gain the Allied support he needed to win the civil war in the years 1943-5. Klugmann was associated with the NKVD in a number of ways. He worked for the Comintern through the communist front organisation for international students, the RME (Rassemblement mondial etudiants) in Paris at the time when Tito was in Paris and as we now know that both were connected with the NKVD it is quite likely that they met. Klugmann has been identified as a recruiter for the NKVD of the notorious group of British Communist spies. Additionally it is known that Klugmann managed to get employed by the British agency the SOE (Special Operations Executive) that supported guerilla groups fighting the Germans in Europe. In his position in Cairo he altered reports to make Tito and his partisans look the most successful group in Yugoslavia and push for the recognition of the Partisans as the sole group for the West to arm. It has been said that privately Klugmann claimed to be the key to the communists success in Yugoslavia. Indeed he followed up his support by being part of the UNRRA team that went after the war to work with Tito to distribute aid.
It is not surprising therefore that when Tito was thrown out of the communist block organisation the Cominform that Klugmann felt particularly cheated and jilted, and betrayed. At the request of Moscow he wrote an attack on Tito called ‘From Trotsky to Tito’. A bitter polemic against Tito which almost denied his own role in bringing Tito to power.
The history of Klugmann illustrates how communists infiltrated society to gain influence as part of their unsavoury revolutionary ends. The hard left still use such methods.
For those interested in following up the life of this man who had great influence on bringing the communists to power in Yugoslavia, and who was part of the communist infiltration network in Europe I suggest reading the well researched book ‘The Shadow man’ by Geoff Andrews.