„Želimo spasiti Hrvatsku od daljnje katastrofe”: ciljevi misije potpukovnika Ivana Babića
„We Want to Save Croatia from Further Disaster” Objectives of Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Babić’s Mission

Summary/Abstract: This study investigates Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Babić’s 1944 mission, drawing on newly declassified British War Office files, communist intelligence reports, the illegal press of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), memoirs, and Babić’s correspondence. As a courier for the HSS and the Croatian Home Guard, Babić sought, together with the HSS political leadership, to shift the alignment of the regular army of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), along with some Ustasha defectors, to the Allied side against the Axis powers. A focus of the mission was to delegitimize the Chetniks as a viable partner for the Allies due to their collaboration with the Axis, while positioning the Home Guard as an anti-German, pro-Allied force. Babić argued that the Home Guard, as an organized military structure, could serve as a counterweight to both Chetniks and the communist-led Partisans, ensuring Croatian interests post-war. The author reconstructs the previously unknown participation of the Home Guard involved in the mission, shedding light on the pro-Allied milieu within the Home Guard’s officer corps, many of whom later participated in the Vokić-Lorković coup. The mission’s failure is attributed to the Allies’ strategic shift after the Tehran Conference, which ruled out a Balkan invasion, as well as HSS indecisiveness and the pro-Partisan bias of British officials.

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