Maks Baće Milić

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maks Baće, also known as Makso Baće and Maks Baće Milić (b. October 12, 1914), is a Croatian and Yugoslav soldier.

A native of Pakoštane (near Zadar), he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1934. From 1937 he took part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side.

Experience gained in Spain proved valuable after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. His native Dalmatia was carved up between Italy and the Independent State of Croatia, with the latter having strong Italian occupation force, supported by the Chetniks in Serb-populated areas. Such an intolerable situation led many Dalmatians to join the ranks of Tito's Partisans, but the first detachments formed in Summer 1941 and manned by youths from coastal towns were poorly led and destroyed by the Axis forces when they tried to operate in the Dalmatian hinterland. Maks Baće believed that the Partisan force should rely on the support of rural people in the hinterland and his strategy began to bear fruit in early 1942 when the new partisan detachments proved to be more resilient and more effective in their struggle against the Italian, Ustasha and Chetnik forces. Maks Baće was appointed by the comamnder-in-chief of Partisan Detachments in Dalmatia. In 1944 he was one of the founders of OZNA. For his war service, Maks Baće received the title of People's Hero of Yugoslavia.

After the war Maks Baće gradually began to be disillusioned with Communism and Tito's Yugoslavia, and after Croatian Spring he received the status of a dissident. His absence from public life continued even after the arrival from democracy in 1990s.

When the Croatian media interviewed him for his 90th birthday, he revealed that he was working on a book of memoirs. One of the more interesting details of the interview was his comment on current events - he claimed that George W. Bush represented the first "evil genius of 21st Century", comparable to Hitler and Stalin.