When one thinks about the Second World War, one tends to think about Hitler and Japan, but at this time something unpleasant to many was beginning to lurk a little south of Germany in Yugoslavia. Josip Broz Tito was that something unpleasant in Yugoslavia and he was worse than people said he was. His goal thought by many was to follow in the footsteps of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR. He then broke is his communications with Stalin and that is when Tito truly began being the unpleasant man thought of by all. Tito and his communist party were becoming more like evil figures in the European society. TitoÃÂs communist party ruined the traditional way of life for the Croatians during and after the Second World War. He did this by turning friends against neighbours, by building the camp Goli Otok and by simply closing the Yugoslavian borders.
Calling Card of Josip Broz Tito (1967)
Josip Broz Tito greeting Eleanor Roosevelt during ...
U.S.-Yugoslavia summit, 1978Tito now created a communist dictatorship government where basic rights were not available to the Croatians.
Tito convinced many to believe in his communist government and in him as a leader. Although many Croatians remained patriotic to their heritage, many Serbians followed in the same. Those Serbians believed in Tito and joined the communist party. There Tito used propaganda to create the secret police or UDBA. The UDBA consisted of ordinary people who if they over heard you talking negatively about the government you were reported and sent to jail. This was used against Croatians because of their ethnic hatred towards the Serbians. Many Croatians were sent to jail because they were labelled as ÃÂanti-state elementsÃÂ, or were forced to join the communist party. If a Croatian did not join the party, their friends would turn their backs on them, forget about them, and become a true communist. ÃÂMy friend...
Congratulations Tito, you are worse than Hitler.
I find this essay very disappointing. Hitler slaughtered six million people, putting many of them into death camps where they were systematically worked to death or simply herded into gas chambers. While no one will grant Tito any credentials for liberal enlightenment, by comparison to Hitler, his concentration camps were relatively mild.
The quality of the writing is relatively good. I wish there were more research and much more objectivity to turn this into a valid and valuable product.
Further, Hitler plunged Europe into one of the most destructive wars in the history of the world. How many wars did Tito start? As I recall, Europe after World War Two was relatively peaceful. Indeed, the deterioration of the peace in Europe was greatly exacerbated when Tito died, leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the resulting wars of ethnic cleansing. While Tito was brutal -- and I certainly conceded that he was -- he kept in check the ethnic tensions that had broken into widespread bloodshed for centuries before, and have wreaked havoc on the area since. Further, the bibliography shows that the quality of the research underlying the essay is questionable.
(One of the unfortunate features of the Cold War is that Tito was lumped together with Stalin and the Soviets at times when he was trying to establish a separate path. Had the West been more flexible, it might have brought down the Soviet block more quickly.)
Sadly, this essay is so determined to paint Tito as bad, bad, bad that it fails to maintain needed historical perspective.
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