10. Josip Broz Tito survived numerous wounds, illnesses, and assassination attempts over his lifetime
The man who rose to rule Yugoslavia first encountered death in his face during World War One, when he was wounded in the back by a Russian cavalrymen’s lance and taken as a prisoner of war. While recuperating from his wound he was stricken with typhus, then pneumonia, and then after recovering suffered from the beatings administered by Russian guards. During the Second World War Tito fought with partisans against the Germans and those of the Balkans politically opposed to his own party. By the end of the Second World War Tito was the de facto leader of Yugoslavia, acknowledged by the Allies as the Prime Minister of the country and endorsed by its king, Peter II. Near the end of the war Tito ordered Russian and other Allied forces out of Yugoslavia.
After the war Stalin and Tito openly broke with each other, and Stalin banished Yugoslavia from the organization of states forming which eventually became the Eastern bloc. Unable to endure Tito’s defiance, Stalin ordered his secret police to find the means of eliminating the Yugoslavian leader. Stalin sent several teams of assassins to kill Tito, all of which were detected and thwarted by Yugoslav security. The sheer number of attempts led Tito to openly admonishing Stalin in a letter, in which he wrote, “Stop sending people to kill me”. Tito went on to warn the Soviet leader that further attempts would lead to a reprisal, and warned that a second attempt on the part of the Yugoslavs would not be necessary. Tito died in 1980.