Pukovnik Ivan Babić - život i djelo
Colonel Ivan Babić - Life and Work

Summary/Abstract: In the following article, I will summarize and reconstruct the life and work of Ivan Babić based on sources, literature, and memories of his cousin Srećko Solar from Sveti Ivan Žabno. He was born in 1904 in Sveti Ivan Žabno and died in 1982 in Torremolinos, Spain. He is best known to the public for escaping from the Independent State of Croatia to the Allies in early 1944 to Italy by plane. The overall activity in the homeland was marked by military service in the Royal Yugoslav Army and the Croatian Home Guard, and abroad by political activity in emigration. In 1941, as an adjutant to military commander Slavko Kvaternik, he was one of the most important officers in the organization of the Croatian Home Guard. On behalf of the Home Guard and the Croatian Peasant Party, he led unsuccessful negotiations with representatives of the partisan movement from June 1943 to the beginning of December 1943. Fearing that the Croatian people would see the end of the war alongside the defeated Germans, he tried to establish cooperation with the Allies in agreement with the Croatian Peasant Party in early 1944. It was too late because they had already opted for the partisans led by Josip Broz Tito.

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