Mile Budak | |
|---|---|
 Mile Budak | |
| 3rd Foreign Minister of the Independent State of Croatia | |
| In office 23 April 1943 – 5 November 1943 | |
| Leader | Ante Pavelić |
| Preceded by | Mladen Lorković |
| Succeeded by | Stijepo Perić |
| Ambassador toNazi Germany | |
| In office 2 November 1941 – 23 April 1943 | |
| 1st Minister of Education of the Independent State of Croatia | |
| In office 16 April 1941 – 2 November 1941 | |
| Leader | Ante Pavelić |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Stjepan Ratković |
| President of the Croatian State Leadership | |
| In office 12 April 1941 – 16 April 1941 | |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Office abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1889-08-30)30 August 1889 |
| Died | 7 June 1945(1945-06-07) (aged 55) |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Party | Ustaše |
| Occupation |
|
| Profession | Lawyer |
Mile Budak (30 August 1889 – 7 June 1945) was aCroatian politician and writer best known as one of the chief ideologists of the Croatian fascistUstasha movement, which ruled theIndependent State of Croatia (NDH) duringWorld War II in Yugoslavia from 1941 to 1945 and waged agenocidal campaign of extermination against its Roma andJewish population, and ofextermination, expulsion and religious conversion against its Serb population. He was sentenced to death in 1945 by the post-warcommunist authorities inYugoslavia overwar crimes andcrimes against humanity.
Mile Budak was born inSveti Rok, inLika, which was then a part of theAustro-Hungarian Empire.[1] He attended school inSarajevo and studied law at theUniversity of Zagreb.[2]
In 1912, he was arrested by Austro-Hungarian authorities over his alleged role in the attempted assassination ofSlavko Cuvaj, theban of Croatia.
Budak andVladko Maček served as lawyers representingMarko Hranilović and Matija Soldin at trial amid the6 January Dictatorship. On 7 June 1932, he survived an assassination attempt by operatives close to theKingdom of Yugoslavia. Afterwards, he migrated toItaly to join theUstashas and become the commander of an Ustasha training camp.[1]
Budak was known for his literary work, especially novels and plays in which he had glorified Croatian peasantry. His works included the 1938Ognjište (The Hearth),[3] the 1933Opanci dida Vidurine (Grandpa Vidurina'sOpanci),[4] and the 1939Rascvjetana trešnja (The Blossoming Cherry Tree). About Budak's writing, his contemporary Ernst Erich Noth wrote: "Here we find the stubborn, spiritual-realistic conception of man and his relation to the soil on which he lives and which Mile Budak symbolizes as 'the hearth'".[5]
In 1938, he returned toZagreb where he began publishing the weekly newspaperHrvatski narod. The newspaper was vocal in its criticism of theCroatian Peasant Party (HSS) and opposed theCvetković–Maček Agreement, by which the autonomousBanovina of Croatia was created. In 1940, the authorities of the Banovina of Croatia banned the newspaper and had Budak arrested, along with 50 other Ustaše members.[6] They were first interned in theLepoglava prison, and were later transferred to Kruščica nearTravnik.[7] On 31 March 1941, in a joint letter toAdolf Hitler,Ante Pavelić and Budak asked him "to helpCroatian peopleestablish an independent Croatian state that would encompass the oldCroatian regions, among themBosnia andHerzegovina".[8]
Upon the proclamation of theIndependent State of Croatia (NDH) on 10 April 1941, Budak became the state's chief propagandist[9] and Minister of Education and Faith.[10] As such, he publicly stated that forcible expulsion andreligious conversion of theethnic Serb minority was the official national policy. Budak signed the Ustashe regime's racial laws against Serbs,Jews, andRoma.[11] Croatian novelistMiroslav Krleža described Budak as "a minister of culture with a machine gun".[1]
Budak pursued in his positions virulentanti-Serb agitation. Thus, he remarked on 6 June 1941 inKriževci:
"TheSerbs came to our territories, because they were persecuted by theTurkish gangs, they came as plunderers and the filth from theBalkans. We can not allow our national state to be ruled by two nations. There isonly one God, and there is only one nation, that is ruling: and this is the Croat nation. These ones, who arrived here 200, 300 years ago, might go back to whence they came. [...] One has to know, that we are a state that has two religions: theCatholic, and theMohammedan."[12]
According to an alleged statement, reportedly said by Budak, the Ustaše plan was to "kill one part of the Serbs, evacuate another and lead over one part to Catholicism and thus transform them into Croats." The origins of this statement are unclear. According toVeljko Bulajić, the statement originates from a speech inGospić on 22 July 1941. Other authors claim that it came in a radio broadcast, while some attribute it toDido Kvaternik. In a report to theYugoslav government-in-exile, the statement was attributed toAndrija Artuković. There are various versions of the quote that differ in wording. The historian Tomislav Dulić said that he "tried to find a primary source that could confirm the existence and exact wording of this statement", but was "not been able to ascertain whether such a statement actually exists".[13]
He later became a Croatian envoy toNazi Germany (November 1941 – April 1943) and theForeign Minister (May 1943 – November 1943).[14][15] Following theIndependent State of Croatia evacuation toAustria, Budak was captured byBritish military authorities and handed over toJosip Broz Tito'sPartisans on 18 May 1945. He was court-martialled (before the military court of the 2nd Yugoslav army) in Zagreb on 6 June 1945 and was sentenced to death by hanging the same day. His execution the following day took place exactly 13 years after the assassination attempt on his life.[16] Duringthe trial, Budak was described to behave "cowardly, constantly weeping, and claiming he was not guilty of anything".[17]
After the war, his books were banned byYugoslav Communist authorities. Thus, manyCroatian nationalists viewed Budak as a great figure ofCroatian literature, equal, if not superior to theleftistMiroslav Krleža.[2] FollowingCroatian independence in the early 1990s, theCroatian Democratic Union aimed to reinterpret the Ustasha as a Croatian patriotic force. In early 1993, the collected works of Mile Budak were republished, and Croatian writer Giancarlo Kravar at the time wrote: "... Ustashism, in its history, was undoubtly also a positive political movement for the state-building affirmation of Croatianism, the expression of the centuries-long aspiration of the Croatian people".[18]
Elsewhere and more recently, Budak was described as "a mediocre Croatian author",[19] "a mediocre writer at best",[20] "a writer of middling originality and imagination"[21] or a writer which literary work is "average and without lasting value".[22]
Following Croatian independence, theFranjo Tuđman government renamed streets after Budak.[23] As of August 2004, there were seventeen cities in Croatia which had streets named after Budak.[24] In 2013, theMinistry of Public Administration announced plans to rename all those streets as they were unconstitutional.[25] TheAleksa Šantić Street inMostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina was named after Budak between 1995 and 2022.[26] TheArchdiocese of Zagreb declared at one point[when?] that it had no objection to the erection of a monument dedicated to the dead Ustaša leader.[27]
