Mile Budak

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Mile Budak (1889 - 1945) was a Croatian politician and writer, best known as one of the chief ideologists of the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement, which ruled the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, from 1941-45 and waged a genocidal campaign against its Serb, Roma and Jewish minorities. He created the Croatian national plan to get rid of Orthodox Serbs by killing one third, expelling one third and assimilating the rest.^[1]

Mile Budak was born in Sveti Rok, in Lika, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was educated in Sarajevo and studied geography and history at University of Zagreb. In 1912 he was arrested by Austro-Hungarian authorities over his alleged role in attempted assassination of Croatian ban (vice-roy) Slavko Cuvaj. In 1914, after the start of World War I, he was drafted in Austro-Hungarian Army where he received the rank of NCO. In 1915 he was captured by the Serbian Army and witnessed the Serb retreat through Albania in 1915-16.

After the end of war Mile Budak returned to Zagreb. In 1920 he received a law degree at University of Zagreb in 1920 and became clerk in the office of Ante Pavelić. He became active in Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) and was elected in Zagreb City Assembly. In 1920s he was the editor of political magazines close to HSP.

In 1932 he survived an assassination attempt from men close to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This convinced him to emigrate to Italy, join Ustaše and become commandant of an Ustaše training camp. In 1938 he returned to Zagreb, where he started Hrvatski narod, a weekly newspaper. In 1940 authorities had that magazine banned, and Budak arrested.

When the Independent State of Croatia was formed, Mile Budak became minister of education, culture and religion. As such he publicly stated that forcible conversion, expulsion and extermination of the ethnic Serb minority was the official national policy. For instance in a widely documented speech at Gospić on 22 July 1941 he declared: "For the rest - Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - we have three million bullets. We shall kill one third of all Serbs. We shall deport another third, and the rest will be forcibly converted to Roman catholicism." {Ustaše: Croatian Separatism and European Politics, 1929-1945, by Srdja Trifkovic, London 1998 (p141); also Magnum Crimen (in Croatian language only), by Viktor Novak, Zagreb 1948 (p605) and elsewhere. Stella Alexander attributes this exposition of Ustaše policy to Budak in Triple Myth (Columbia University Press 1987) and notes that he spoke in similar terms on several other occasions.}

He later became foreign minister and Croatian ambassador to Nazi Germany. When the Independent State of Croatia collapsed in May 1945, Mile Budak was captured by Josip Broz Tito's Partisans, sentenced to death after a one-day trial and executed. The rest of Mile Budak's family perished in the Bleiburg massacre.

Budak was also known for his literary work, especially novels and plays in which he had glorified Croatian peasantry. The best known part of his opus is novel Ognjište (Hearth), in which described the customs and lifestyles of people in his native Lika region.

After the war his books were banned by Yugoslav Communist authorities. Because of that, many Croatian nationalists viewed Mile Budak as great figure of Croatian literature, equal, if not superior to left-wing Miroslav Krleža. Following Croatian independence in early 1990s, the government of Franjo Tuđman started to rehabilitate Budak historically.

Many Croatian cities, including Split, had streets named after him and Croatian Radiotelevision aired a dramatisation of Budak's autobiographical account of the 1915-16 Serb retreat through Albania. The official line was that Budak should be viewed as an important literary figure, independently of his controversial role in World War II. This caused reaction from the left-wing, liberal minority of the Croatian public, most notably Feral Tribune, which launched a year's long campaign to have Budak-named streets renamed.

In 2003, Ivo Sanader's government decided to finally deal with the issue which resulted in renaming all the streets bearing Budak's name save one; the Mile Budak street in Slavonski Brod. In 2004 a plaque commemorating Budak's birth in Sveti Rok was removed by Ivo Sanader's government, in an attempt to show that his government is distancing itself from the controversial policies of the late Tuđman.

Preceded by none	Independent State of Croatia Minister of Religion and Education 1941–1942	Succeeded by Stjepan Ratković
Preceded by Mladen Lorković	Independent State of Croatia Minister of Foreign Affairs 1943	Succeeded by Stijepo Perić