Marshal Tito - October 9, 1944
As World War II ended, the U.S. and the Soviet Union soon began jockeying over postwar Europe. Yugoslavia's Marshal Josip Broz Tito, perhaps the most enigmatic of Europe's wartime leaders, proved the most difficult to manipulate. Presaging the Cold War, TIME examined the role this ethnic Croat leader might play in postwar Europe. Tito, an ardent communist but fiercely independent, rejected Moscow's inroads. Tito also accepted Western aid, with the U.S. angling for a foothold in the Balkan region. But Tito maintained a quizzical balance: he promoted artistic and cultural freedoms while cursing the West. TIME's editors were somewhat baffled. He was a "man of decision," but where and with whom was he headed? As it turned out, Tito went his own way, leading the nascent nonaligned movement.