Tito Part 2: The Man of Disguises

June 23, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Tito Part 2: The Man of Disguises

On October 9, 1934, just before 4 PM in Marseille, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia stepped onto French soil wearing a cocked hat with an ostrich feather, a ceremonial sword, and a chest full of real war medals. He was there on serious diplomatic business. Within minutes, a scruffy young man jumped onto the running board of his open-top limousine and shot him dead. The assassin was Vlado Chernozemski, a member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. In a media first, the entire killing was filmed by newsreel cameras. The French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou, also died—not from the assassin's bullets, but from a stray gendarme's round. The episode opens with this assassination to make a point: astonishingly, not a single lesson had been learned from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo twenty years earlier. And this killing, the episode argues, would prove just as devastating for the Yugoslav people, plunging the Balkans into what the narrator calls "a ninth circle of hell."

The Artificial Kingdom

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What you'll learn

1 (00:19) **The Assassination of King Alexander I** - The episode opens with the dramatic 1934 murder of Yugoslavia's king in Marseille, a media-first filmed killing that triggers the Balkan crisis.
2 (05:17) **Post-WW1 Homecoming** - Josip Broz returns to Croatia in 1920 after fighting in WW1, witnessing the Russian Revolution, and fighting for the Bolsheviks, only to find a completely new country.
3 (09:57) **The Flawed Foundation of Yugoslavia** - Experts explain that the SCS was a shaky artificial creation with a built-in design flaw: Croats and Slovenes had been on the opposite side of the war from the Serbs.
4 (14:14) **Broz the Itinerant Radical** - Unable to find stable work, Broz becomes a professional agitator, organizing strikes in factories and shipyards, and is quickly pegged as a troublemaker by authorities.
5 (17:11) **The Rise of Extremism and the Banned Party** - Across Europe, hyperinflation and unemployment fuel Bolshevism and fascism; in the SCS, the Communist Party wins 58 seats in 1920 but is banned outright in 1921 after assassinating a minister.
6 (18:54) **Family Tragedy and Professional Agitator** - Broz's family suffers multiple miscarriages and the death of a two-year-old daughter, while he struggles to provide for them, eventually deciding to become a full-time revolutionary paid by Moscow.
7 (20:51) **The Man of Disguises** - Broz becomes a master of disguise and a rising star in the underground party, using his ability to pass as German, Austrian, or Russian to evade capture.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Christopher Catherwood

Show Notes

An assassination in Marseilles plunges the Balkans into turmoil. The Europe-wide battles of Black versus Red make their way onto the streets of Yugoslavia. Pegged as a trouble-maker and pursued by the authorities, the shape-shifting Josip Broz flees to Russia. There he will be re-tooled as a Soviet agent. Dispatched by Moscow, he’ll return with a new mission and a new name…

A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann.

Featuring Neil Barnett, Christopher Catherwood, Richard Mills, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Geoffrey Swain, Susan L Woodward.

This is Part 2 of 5.

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