Ivan Šubašić
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Dr. Ivan Šubašić (May 7, 1892 - March 22, 1955) was Croatian and Yugoslav politician, best known as the last Ban of Croatia.
He was born in Vukova Gorica, near Karlovac. He finished grammar and high school in Zagreb, and enrolled into Faculty of Theology of University of Zagreb. During the First World War he was drafted into Austro-Hungarian Army and took part in the fighting against Serbian forces on River Drina. Later he was sent to Eastern Front where he used opportunity to defect to Russians. From there he joined Yugoslav volunteers fighting within Serbian army in Salonica Front.
After the war Šubašić gained law degree at Zagreb University and after that opened law office in Vrbasko. There he met Vladko Maček and joined Croatian Peasant Party. In 1938 he was elected to Yugoslav National Assembly.
In August 1939 Maček and Yugoslav prime minister Dragiša Cvetković reached the deal about constitutional reconstruction of Yugoslavia and restoration of Croatian statehood in the form of Banate (Banovina) of Croatia - autonomous entity which, together with Croatia proper, included large sections of today's Bosnia-Herzegovina and some sections of today's Vojvodina, which contained a Croatian majority. Šubašić was appointed as the first ban - titular head of this entity, in charge of its government.
Banovina came to an end together with Kingdom of Yugoslavia, following the invasion of Axis powers in April 1941. Šubašić joined Dušan Simović and his Yugoslav government-in-exile, but before leaving, he refused to authorise release large number of Croatian Communist and leftists, arrested and kept in prisons under his supervisions. Those prisons were soon taken over by newly formed Independent State of Croatia and its prisoners later executed by Ustashas.
In emigration, Šubašić first represented Yugoslav royal government in USA. Gradually, the widening gap between the royalist government and Yugoslav major resistance movement embodied in Tito and his Communist-dominated Partisans forced Winston Churchill to mediate. Šubašić, a non-Communist Croat, was appointed as new prime minister in order to reach compromise between Tito - whose forces represented de facto government on liberated territories - and royal government which had preferred Draža Mihailović and his Serb-dominated Chetniks.
After publicly rejecting Mihailović, Šubašić met with Tito on island of Vis and signed Tito-Šubašić agreement, which recognised Partisans as legitimate armed forces of Yugoslavia in exchange for Partisans formally recognising and taking part in new government. Šubašić kept his post until March 7, 1945, when Tito formally became prime minister of Yugoslavia. Šubašić was foreign minister in his cabinet until October, when he resigned, disagreeing with Communist policies of new government.
Šubašić spent the rest of his life in obscurity.
