Josip Broz Tito was the only communist leader who defied Stalin and survived. He reportedly sent Stalin a letter that read: “Stop sending people to kill me. If you don’t stop, I will send one to Moscow, and I won’t need to send a second.” Whether the letter is genuine or legend, it captures the man — a partisan who fought the Nazis, built a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, and walked a tightrope between East and West for thirty-five years.

This episode traces Tito from his Croatian peasant origins through the partisan war against Nazi occupation, the break with Stalin, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the fragile unity that collapsed into war within a decade of his death.

• Tito’s peasant origins, his World War I service, and his rise through the Yugoslav Communist Party
• The partisan resistance against Nazi occupation and the civil war within the war
• The 1948 break with Stalin and the letter that became the Cold War’s most famous bluff
• The Non-Aligned Movement, the multi-ethnic balancing act, and the wars that followed his death