Uncovering Tito’s Hidden Crimes 

For decades, crimes committed under Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia remained largely off-limits to serious investigation. During the Cold War, geopolitical considerations—most notably the U.S. policy of “keeping Tito afloat”—muted public discussion of mass repression in postwar Yugoslavia.

Only after the collapse of communism did state commissions in Serbia and Slovenia begin uncovering the scale of the violence. Their findings revealed hundreds of mass graves containing tens of thousands of victims: approximately 600 secret burial sites in Slovenia and more than 210 in Serbia. 

Historians estimate that at least 150,000 civilians and prisoners of war were killed without trial during revolutionary purges and reprisals in 1944–1945. In Serbia alone, the State Commission for Secret Graves has identified by name nearly 60,000 victims, based on surviving secret police records. Due to missing documentation—especially for Belgrade and several major cities—the total number of victims in Serbia is believed to be closer to 80,000. 

These killings were carried out primarily by OZNA, the communist secret police, during the so-called “wild purges” between October 1944 and March 1945. While some war criminals were targeted, the campaign was explicitly designed to eliminate political and ideological opponents: anti-communists, democrats, and supporters of the prewar parliamentary monarchy. With the backing of the Red Army and the Soviet Union, the victorious communist movement used extrajudicial violence to settle accounts from the civil war. 

After Nazi occupation, Yugoslavia’s king and government-in-exile operated from London, while two resistance movements emerged at home: the royalist Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and the communist-led Partisans. The United States recognized the Yugoslav government-in-exile and King Peter II as Allied, anti-fascist partners. An American military mission served with the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland throughout the war, and its leader, General Draža Mihailović, was later honored by U.S. presidents Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan for his contribution to the Allied cause. 

That force also carried out Operation Halyard, one of the most successful rescue missions of World War II, saving roughly 500 American airmen shot down over Yugoslavia in the summer of 1944. In many respects, Yugoslavia’s wartime situation—two rival anti-fascist movements—resembled developments in Poland. 

The majority of those executed after the war were individuals defeated in the civil conflict: supporters of the royalist resistance, Western democracies, and political pluralism. Along with “class enemies” and critics of Bolshevik communism, they were collectively branded as traitors, collaborators, and war criminals. Using what Hungarian communist leader Mátyás Rákosi famously called “salami tactics,” the regime eliminated tens of thousands of opponents alongside a much smaller number of genuine offenders. 

Extensive documentary evidence remains. Orders, telegrams, and meticulously kept “books of the executed” list those shot as “enemies of the people” in nearly every town and village in Serbia. These records were maintained by local party structures and secret police units—often indistinguishable from one another. 

The method was brutally systematic. After communist forces entered a town, arrests followed denunciations and pre-compiled lists. Detainees were shortly interrogated—often under torture—in improvised detention centers, including private homes. At night, OZNA officers would select prisoners for execution, strip them to their underwear or completely naked, transport them to nearby sites, and kill them without trial. In some towns, up to 100 people were executed in a single night, a pattern that continued for months into early 1945. 

Families were barred from burial sites and forbidden from burying their relatives. This deliberate erasure of the dead—combined with the denial of mourning—was unprecedented in Serbian history. 

Repression did not end with execution. The communist authorities confiscated all property from those killed or later sentenced by military and civilian courts. Families were expelled from homes and apartments, often losing even personal belongings. Through such measures, the regime transformed ownership relations. By 1945, roughly 80 percent of Serbia’s industrial capital had been transferred from private hands to the state through confiscation, frequently imposed without due process. 

Notably, there was little fear of future accountability in communist Yugoslavia. Lists of the executed were openly maintained, reflecting the belief that communist rule was permanent. Internal documents reveal a chilling logic. As one dispatch stated: “Executions are a test—anyone unable to kill an ideological enemy can hardly be considered a true communist.” 

Faced with terror during the first decade of Tito’s rule, hundreds of thousands fled Yugoslavia for the free world—the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Australia—in search of liberty and, in the words of the American Declaration, “the pursuit of happiness.” This examination of repression under Tito’s regime, alongside the work of institutes of memory and research like the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, represents an effort to honor those who believed in freedom and paid the price of secret police terror or political executions. The truth about communist crimes may have been delayed—but it has not disappeared.

Dr. Srdjan Cvetkovic is a senior advisor at the University of Belgrade’s Institute for Contemporary History. The views and opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Photo: This image of Josip Broz Tito and Ho Chi Minh is a courtesy of Tanja Kragujević, daughter of photographer Stevan Kragujević via CC BY-SA 3.0.