NEZAVISNA DRŽAVA HRVATSKA I ŽRTVE DRUGOGA SVJETSKOG RATA U POVIJESNIM ISTRAŽIVANJIMA FRANJE TUĐMANA
THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA AND WORLD WAR II VICTIMS IN FRANJO TUĐMAN’S HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Author(s): Mario Jareb
Subject(s): Military history, Political history, Government/Political systems, Studies in violence and power, Victimology, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Independent State of Croatia; casualties; World War II;
Summary/Abstract: The Croatian public has formed its opinion regarding Franjo Tuđman as a historian almost exclusively from sentences in a speech that he delivered in Zagreb in late February 1990 which seems to suggest that he believed that most Croats in 1941 supported the Independent State of Croatia. Although he dedicated more than three decades of his life to historical research on topics related to contemporary Croatian history, debates in the Croatian media and among Croatian historians are still often focused on those sentences, which have repeatedly been quoted without any reference to Tuđman’s other work or to why he included them in his speech. However, an analysis of the content of those sentences suggests that Tuđman was attempting to approach the foundation of the Independent State of Croatia as a historian rather than as a politician, but that he simplified the complexity of that historical event in his speech. Although some critics have alleged that Tuđman holds revisionist pro-NDH views, an analysis of his numerous works and public statements shows that he never adopted such views. He remained a vociferous critic of the NDH and the Ustašas [the Croatian is now regularly used in scholarly publications in English] from his earliest historical publications to the end of his life. He condemned Ustaša crimes openly and without any hesitation. However, as a historian who during the 1960s had dared to challenge some Party dogmas about World War II in Yugoslavia and in Croatia, he became the object of serious attacks by some powerful circles within the Yugoslav People’s Army, the League of Communists of Croatia/Yugoslavia, and Yugoslav and Croatian historians. Many of those who attacked Tuđman labeled him a nationalist and did everything they could to prevent him from publishing results of his research. His analysis of historiographic and political stereotypes that treated all Croats as Ustašas was closely related to his research on the NDH and the Ustaša movement. His efforts to contribute to an accurate estimate of population losses in Yugoslavia during World War II consumed much of his time and energy during the period from the mid 1960s to the end of the 1980s. He attempted to deconstruct myths related to these population losses and to promote research based on relevant sources and data. There is no doubt that the Jasenovac myth was one of the main foci of his research. Since the myths surrounding Yugoslavia’s war dead were supported by the Communist regime, Tuđman faced not only criticism of his research but became a dissident and the object of the regime’s repression.

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