DRUGI SVJETSKI RAT U HRVATSKOJ I JUGOSLAVIJI U DJELIMA DR. FRANJE TUĐMANA
WORLD WAR II IN CROATIA AND YUGOSLAVIA IN FRANJO TUĐMAN’S WORKS

Author(s): Anđelko Mijatović
Subject(s): Military history, Political history, Government/Political systems, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of Communism, Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Hrvatski institut za povijest
Keywords: Franjo Tuđman; research work; People’s Liberation Movement; People’s Liberation Army; People’s Liberation War; Croatia; Yugoslavia; Yugoslav historiography;
Summary/Abstract: Historical researcher Franjo Tuđman addresses the war and political developments in Croatia and the countries of former Yugoslavia during World War II (1941-1945) in several of his published books, studies, encyclopedia articles, and discussions, investigating the beginnings of the anti-occupation fighting and the People’s Liberation Movement (NOP), the formation of the People’s Liberation Army (NOV), the progress of the People’s Liberation War (NOR), and the socialist and communist revolution and the establishment of the socialist and communist authorities, as these ideas and processes were named in communist terminology. In his first historical book, War against War (Rat protiv rata), published in Zagreb in 1957, Tuđman discusses the general anti-occupation struggle against the Axis Powers in World War II (1941-1945) in the territory of former Yugoslavia in the article People’s Liberation War and the Socialist Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945 (Narodnooslobodilački rat i socijalistička revolucija u Jugoslaviji 1941.-1945.), setting it in the context of the conditions and circumstances that resulted from the dominant factors of the «social and political development of the peoples of Yugoslavia» of the time. Tuđman addressed the same issues in his study The Formation of Socialist Yugoslavia (Stvaranje socijalističke Jugoslavije), published in Zagreb in 1960; in his texts about the People’s Liberation War in Croatia; in his entry about Croatia published in The Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia and The Military Encyclopedia, published the same year; in his article The New Yugoslavia (Nova Jugoslavija) in The Military Encyclopedia (1961); and in his book Occupation and Revolution (Okupacija i revolucija), published in 1963, with two papers. The aforementioned Tuđman’s writings are characterized by all the ideological features of the time and are a part of contemporary Yugoslav historiography by their time setting and by their concepts alike. In his works written after 1963, however, he laid a greater emphasis on Croatia’s importance and contribution to the overall progress of the People’s Liberation War and the People’s Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia. Tuđman thus broke free from the ideological burdens in the lecture Discussions about the Causes of Monarchist Yugoslavia’s Breakdown and the Prerequisites for the Development of People’s Liberation Struggle in Croatia, which he delivered in Split on October 9, 1964 and in Karlovac on March 2, 1965, in his presentation On the General Conditions and Characteristics of the Development of the Revolutionary and Democratic Movement in Croatia, which he held in Ljubljana at the end of April 1966, in his paper The National Question in Modern Europe, published in 1981, and in his book Bespuća povijesne zbiljnosti, published in Zagreb in 1989, and translated to English as Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy...

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