Tito was born Josip Broz in Kumrovec, Croatia-Slavonia in 1892, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungary Empire. He left school when he was twelve, training as an apprentice locksmith and attending night classes in geography, history and languages. Between 1911-1913 he drifted around Europe working in a series of factory jobs, mainly as a mechanic. He worked for the Benz automobile company in Mannheim and as a test driver for Daimler in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. In late 1913, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungary army and sent to a school for non-commissioned officers and became a sergeant. At the outbreak of World War One, he was arrested for distributing anti-war literature and imprisoned. On his release, he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he distinguished himself and was recommended for decoration. He was seriously wounded and captured by the Russians in March 1915 and was sent to a work camp in the Ural mountains. The camp was liberated by revolting workers in early 1917, Broz made his way to Petrograd where he participated in the July Days demonstrations. He tried to make his way to Finland but was captured once again, he escaped however and in a dramatic number of months he married a Russian woman, joined the Red Army and fought in the Russian civil war. He returned to Croatia in 1920, immediately joining the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, working underground because of government crackdowns. Once again, he was constantly on the move, working as an itinerant worker because once it was revealed that he was CPY he was subsequently dismissed. In 1928 he moved to Zagreb, where he was appointed Secretary of the Metal Workers Union of Croatia, he was also appointed as the Zagreb Branch Secretary of the CPY. Later that year, he was arrested, tried for communist activity and imprisoned in Lepoglava Prison in northern Croatia. It was there that he met Mosa Pijade who was to become his ideological mentor. Upon his release he lived underground, adopting many different aliases, one of which was ‘Tito'.

In 1934, he was co-opted onto the Central Committee and the Politbureau of the decimated Yugoslav Communist Party. In 1935, he returned to the Soviet Union, working for a year in the Balkan section of the Comintern. In 1936 the Comintern sent him back to Yugoslavia to purge the Yugoslavia Communist Party. In 1937, he was elected to General Secretary of the Party, after many of the other candidates were executed. He transformed it into a highly disciplined, effective and well-organised organisation. For the first time, it fully supported the preservation rather than the break-up of Yugoslavia. The Axis Powers invaded the country in 1941, the armed forces of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia quickly fell apart and King Peter II and the government fled the country. Tito organised a pan-Yugoslav revolutionary army, scoring notable victories against Axis forces. In November 1943, Tito formed a provisional government and declared the creation of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito's resistance forces, the Partisans faced supposedly insurmountable odds as they faced both the Axis forces and another resistance force led by Draza Mihailovic who collaborated with the invading armies. However, the Partisans gradually began to get the upper hand, although German retaliations against the civilian population were horrific. In late 1944, with the help of Soviet forces, Tito drove the Axis armies across the borders and out of Yugoslavia. In post-war elections, Tito's pro-republican People's Front, led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia won with an overwhelming majority. Tito established a tough Stalinist regime with wholesale and harsh purges being conducted regularly.

 However, unlike the other fledgling communist countries, Tito took an independent line from Moscow, he had not relied heavily on their support during the war and therefore was confident to run things on his own terms. Tito and Stalin were to clash over many minor matters but a huge rift developed in 1948, when Tito modelled his economic plan without consulting the Soviets, resulting in Yugoslavia being thrown out of the Cominform. Tito realised that the Yugoslav strategy would have to be re-drawn to prevent a slide into capitalism. He used the estrangement to Yugoslavia's advantage by attaining US aid through the Marshall Plan and he assured a leading place for Yugoslavia in the Non-Aligned Movement. After Stalin's death, relations with the USSR improved but they would never return to the way they were before 1948. Tito continued to strengthen the bloc of Non-Aligned countries, building close ties with Arab states and being a very active member of the UN. Towards the late 1960s, unrest began to develop in parts of Yugoslavia, forcing Tito to implement devolutionary legislation which granted more power to the constituent republics. However, nationalist pressure increased resulting in a new constitution being introduced in 1974 granting virtually co-federal status to the republics. Following these changes, Tito increasingly took on the role of elder statesman as his direct involvement in domestic and international affairs diminished. He was married twice and had two sons. His second wife, Jovanka Budisavljevic was a Serbian woman from Croatia many years his junior and a former partisan fighter. Tito died in Ljubljana on 4 May 1980.