The Tito–Stalin Split and Yugoslavia‘s Military Opening toward the West, 1950–1954: In NATO’s Backyard

The twenty-ninth volume, The Tito–Stalin Split and Yugoslavia's Military Opening toward the West, 1950–1954: In NATO's Backyard by Ivan Laković and Dmitar Tasić, discusses Yugoslavia’s military and intelligence cooperation with the United States and other NATO countries after Stalin expelled Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc in 1948. This development came as a shock to many insofar as the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito until 1948 had been one of the staunchest followers of Stalin.  But faced with the threat of a Soviet military invasion, Tito turned to his former archenemies in the West. For the United States, the benefits were significant. The links with Yugoslavia consolidated the southern flank of NATO, denied Soviet troops access to the Adriatic Sea and northern Italy, and dealt a strong political blow to the homogeneity of the Eastern bloc. The United States provided direct support for Yugoslav forces through shipments of military equipment and facilitated the establishment of a defensive, military alliance (the Balkan Pact) linking Yugoslavia with Greece and Turkey, which by then were already full members of NATO. Such trends, aiming toward closer Yugoslav bonding with Western military and political structures, ended in the mid-1950s after Stalin’s death, which dissipated the looming threat of a Soviet military invasion.