Introduction 5
ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany, during his first meeting with
Tito on the shores of Slovenia’s Lake Bled in 1951, stressed in a dispatch back
home that Tito was not physically similar to Hermann Göring at all, contrary
to what Tito’s detractors would have people believe. “He is mid-sized, not fat,
but corpulent and very tough, nearly monolithic. His face is severe, not sallow
at all, energetic without being brutal. Most impressive are his light blue eyes.
They are very luminous, in contrast to his skin, which has been deeply tanned
by the Brioni sun.”^7
Ten years later, during a journey to Africa, Tito’s eyes troubled the Serbian
writer Dobrica Ćosić, who accompanied him as a chronicler of his tour. “Rich
expression of face,” Ćosić wrote, “very sentimental, thoughtful, introverted.
Sometimes menacing, serious, dangerous, sometimes joyful and benevolent,
sometimes somnolent, as if thinking nostalgically of times past. But suddenly,
in his green-blue eyes, there is menace, obstinacy, self-confidence. He does not
show the fatigue that should accompany his age. I have never seen eyes like his.”^8
A member of a French delegation visiting Tito late in his career noted that
Marshal Tito appeared quite old: “He was still in good physical shape, with a
lively sense of humor. He ate and drank like Gargantua, and was always ready
to smile. But as he is elderly, he was prone to forget things or to repeat them
and to be somewhat oblivious.... He has elusive eyes, like all the Communists
of the old generation. At the beginning, he looked down, in any case never at
his interlocutor. But sometimes there came a direct look, and I would not like
to be the enemy of a man with such eyes.”^9 The first to observe just how dan-
gerous Tito’s eyes could seem was Louis Adamic, an American writer of Slo-
vene origin who returned to his homeland in 1949 and described his numerous
conversations with Tito in his book The Eagle and the Roots. Altogether they
spoke for thirty hours, developing a friendly relationship that allowed Adamic
to say many things that no one in Tito’s entourage would have dared to men-
tion. For example, he did not hide his critical attitude toward the marshal’s
“Bonapartism” and his penchant for uniforms. After a political meeting that
ended in a thunderous applause, Adamic could not suppress his reservations.
When Tito was leaving, he noticed that he was being observed. “Suddenly, with
a flash in his eyes that wasn’t all humor, he said: ‘You know, gospodine Adamicu
[Mister Adamic], I happen to be Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.’
So this is his retort to my criticism of his marshal’s uniform.”^10
And finally there is the impression of Henry Kissinger, secretary of state to
President Nixon: “Tito was a man whose eyes did not always smile with his
face.”^11 Did Kissinger know that the same had been said of Stalin?^12 Stalin
instinctively felt how similar they were, and offered him a word of advice:
“Why do you have eyes like a lynx? That is not good. You have to smile with
your eyes. And then you drive a knife into their back.”^13