Josip Broz doesn't survive World War I

"On 25 March 1915, he was seriously wounded and captured during a Russian attack near Bukovina. Now a prisoner of war (POW), Broz was transported east to a hospital established in an old monastery in the town of Sviyazhsk on the Volga river near Kazan. During his 13 months in hospital he had bouts of pneumonia and typhus, and learned Russian with the help of two schoolgirls who brought him Russian classics by such authors as Tolstoy and Turgenev to read..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito

Suppose he died of his wounds (or later died of typhus or pneumonia as a POW)? Who would lead the Communist Party of Yugoslavia after the other leading Communists are shot by Stalin in the purges of the late 1930's? (In other words, who are the major Yugoslav Communists of the 1930's who were *neither* killed, nor proteges of Tito who would be unlikely to rise to prominence if he had not been around?) The most likely name that comes to mind is that of Andrija Hebrang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Hebrang_(father) who had the same experience as Gomulka in Poland and Rakosi in Hungary--spared from the purges because he was doing time at home. And he was already a high-ranking Party offical in the late 1920s, when he met Tito.

Would the CPY under Hebrang's leadership still come out on top at the end of World War II, and if so, would Yugoslavia still break with Stalin as in OTL? In OTL Hebrang was suspected of being Stalin's candidate to replace Tito, and was expelled from the Party and sentenced to prison, where he either committed suicide or was assassinated...
 
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Given the various seperatist inclinations of the major leaders in Yugoslavia other than Tito, I wonder if in TTL Yugoslavia becomes a relic of the inter-war period with the various resistance movements adopting plans for a much looser Federation and remaining quite nationalist. This of course would play right into the German occupation's hands particularly with Hermann Neubacher in charge from 1943-45. You could end up with multiple countries emerging in 1945 in TTL.
 

raharris1973

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I think you are going to find the Allies and Yugoslav monarchy being disinclined to split Yugoslavia or to recognize distinct ethnic regimes as states. Even just for appearances sake, they would want toshow the world they were putting things "back to normal".
 

raharris1973

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Would the CPY under Hebrang's leadership still come out on top at the end of World War II, and if so, would Yugoslavia still break with Stalin as in OTL? In OTL Hebrang was suspected of being Stalin's candidate to replace Stalin, and was expelled from the Party and sentenced to prison, where he either committed suicide or was assassinated...


I would says Hebrang is a reasonable sounding pick, and no split is likely whether he leads the party in power or in the opposition. However, one factor not discussed that is relevant to whether the Communists come on out on top, who their leader is and even indirectly if they can split with the Soviets and make it stick is whether they lead a large wartime partisan movement and have significant "self-liberated" areas, or if the CPY just gets installed in the train of the Soviet Army.
 
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