Tito: The Man Who United Yugoslavia

Tito, aka Josip Broz, was the communist dictator that unified many Balkan republics into one Yugoslavia after the second world war. He came to power as a leader during that great world conflict against Hitler and realized that with his split with Stalin; he needed more than Croatia to stand up to the formidable Soviet Empire. Thus, he incorporated Macedonia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, renaming this motley group, Yugoslavia.

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Tito was secretary-general (later president) of the Communist Party (League of Communists) of Yugoslavia (1939–80), the supreme commander of the Yugoslav Partisans (1941–45) and Yugoslav People’s Army (1945–80), marshal (1943–80), premier (1945–53), and president (1953–80) of Yugoslavia. 

A shrewd man, he was quick to see that religion divided the countries under his rule: Croatia and Slovenia in the north and west are Roman Catholic, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia to the east and south-east are Eastern Orthodox  while Bosnia-Herzegovina are a mix of Eastern Orthodox and Muslim thanks to the many years of Ottoman rule. This meant the various groups could not get along and he decided instead of trying to meld them. He would use Communist as a religion that would unify force and ignore their age old differences.

Tito was born in northern Croatia on 7 May 1892 (Old Style) or 19th May (N.S.) which is what is commonly used, so it was applied for this chart. His parents though they were culturally different; his father was Croatian and his mother from neighboring Slovenia, were both from the Zagorje, or the ‘land beyond the Mountains,” separated only by an arbitrary border. Both, though, were devout Roman Catholics and Josip was christened and baptised so.

By his adolescence, though, the young Josip was a Communist, not because of mutual philosophical inclinations, but because he saw they were the rising tide that would float his aspirations which with his Lilith in the fourth house he saw as usurping his father’s place in the home and thus the new leader of the family. But his aspirations, as Jupiter in the ninth in Aries, show this meant becoming a professional “agitator’ in Croatia and encouraging the people to overthrow their traditions and aspire, like himself, to a new world.

Learning about Tito

I picked up by Fitzhugh Maclean, at my local library, part of their massive deaccession. It was one of the many books they could not sell and so was in the “waste pile”. The price intrigued me, and since I know nothing about Tito, other than his name and Yugoslavia, I figured I would read it. Of course, then I did the chart.

When he was born, Pluto, then unknown, was partile to Neptune. They are found in his eleventh house, suggesting his dreams of a larger land to own, which ended up being seven countries and not just the next farm. This is supported by his ascendant of 23 Cancer 17 making his Moon at 24 Aquarius not in any traditional Ptolemaic aspect. According to Marc Edmund Jones, this gives the native the ability to see the potential in the situation at hand and use it for their benefit and gives particular emphasis to the trine at Jupiter 14 Aries 37 in its own ninth house. This symbol for Jupiter is one of ‘divorcement” so while Jupiter in the ninth supports law, legislature and religion here it tells us that Tito wanted to divorce himself and all around him from any of those legalistic and restraining ties. Indeed, this more than anything else in his life was his greatest motivation, and indeed all other aspects in his chart to Jupiter support it.

Venus in the twelfth suggests his many wives and paramours, which despite his desire to keep his personal life private, still we know he had four wives with only the first and fourth lasting more than a couple of years with the last and longest union being Jovanka, a lieutenant colonel in the Yugoslavian army; they had no children.

It was with his third wife, the Slovenian Herta, and also one of his shortest unions (3 years) with whom he had two children, making Tito’s total five.. Their son, Aleksander Broz aka Miso, is a retired Croatian diplomat.

His second wife, Elsa Johnna Koenig, was a Geman Communist. She used the nom de guerre of Lucija Bauer and had been married previously to a German communist Ernst Wollweber, whom Hitler sentenced to fifteen years in prison while his fresh widow was sent to Moscow. There she married Tito, who was using the alias Frederich Walter, in October 1936. Walter aka Tito returned circumspectly to work undercover in Yugoslavia, but the two corresponded profusely. After the Soviet Union broke up, these letters became known, as did the records showing Elsa aka Lucija Bauer was shot as a spy for Gestapo on December 29, 1937.

In the meantime, Josip’s first wife Pelagia Belousova had been arrested as an “imperialist” spy on September 27, 1938. She had Tito had had three children, and despite this setback, Pelagia would live in Moscow for the rest of her life, dying in 1968.

It is quincunx the fifth house, which is empty because most of his children died young. Still, four made it their majority, with Miso being the only notable one of the group, and he is a foreign diplomat — hence that house is in Sagittarius.

No conjunctions = no alliances

What is remarkable about his chart is the lack of conjunctions. This shows that his own forcefulness handled his rise to power. Tito had few associates and fewer friends, but when the Sun-Pluto-Neptune conjunction occurred after the discovery of Pluto in 1930, that changed. It was then, while he was in prison he met his closest compatriot, Ivan Ribar, another Pan-Slavist who also did not want foreign rule in his native country of Croatia — an understandable trait after Ottoman rule.

Tito has no conjunctions. His only one shows up in 1930 when Pluto is discovered and coincides with his formal adoption of his nickname “Tito” as his nom de guerre. This lack is often, according to Marc E. Jones, the hallmark of a secular humanist: — not that they have a humanitarian outlook , but that they deal with people in broad impersonal strokes. They are also tend not to be religious and often shun such designations, preferring to put power into their own hands then giving it to a deity.

When he died on May 4th 1980, the Yugoslav republics slowly broke up and fell back to their original state of squabbles and war. If he did nothing else, he kept the peace amongst the differing countries and Stalin out of them.

Updates: This post was updated on January 20, 2026 with the missing chart.