Ivan Šubašić

Ivan Šubašić
13th Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia
In office 1 June 1944 – 17 October 1945
Monarch	Peter II
President	Josip Broz Tito
Prime Minister	Josip Broz Tito
Preceded by	Božidar Purić
Succeeded by	Josip Broz Tito
18th Prime Minister of Yugoslavia
In office 1 June 1944 – 7 March 1945
Monarch	Peter II
Preceded by	Božidar Purić
Succeeded by	Josip Broz Tito
Ban of Croatia
In office 24 August 1939 – 13 June 1943
Deputy	Ivo Krbek
Preceded by	post established
Succeeded by	Vladimir Nazor (as Chairman of the ZAVNOH)
Personal details
Born	(1892-05-07)7 May 1892 Vukova Gorica, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died	22 March 1955(1955-03-22) (aged 62) Zagreb, FPR Yugoslavia
Nationality	Croat
Political party	Croatian Peasant Party (HSS)
Awards	Order of the White Eagle

Ivan Šubašić (7 May 1892 – 22 March 1955) was a Croatian and Yugoslav politician, best known as the last Ban of Croatia.

Early life

He was born in Vukova Gorica, then in Austria-Hungary. He finished grammar and high school in Zagreb, and enrolled onto the Faculty of Theology at the University of Zagreb. During the First World War, he was drafted into Austro-Hungarian Army where he took part in the fighting against Serbian forces on River Drina. Later he was sent to the Eastern Front where he used the opportunity to defect to the Russians. From there he joined the Yugoslav volunteers fighting within the Serbian army on the Salonica Front.

After the war, Šubašić gained his law degree at Zagreb University, and after that, he opened a law office in Vrbovsko. There he met Vladko Maček and joined the Croatian Peasant Party. In 1938, he was elected to the Yugoslav National Assembly.

Political career

With King Peter II in Italy after meeting Tito.

Ban of Croatia

In August 1939, Maček and Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković reached the deal about the constitutional reconstruction of Yugoslavia and restoration of Croatian statehood in the form of Banovina of Croatia—an autonomous entity which, together with Croatia proper, included large sections of today's Bosnia-Herzegovina and some sections of today's Vojvodina, which contained a Croatian majority. Šubašić was appointed as the first ban, or titular head of this entity, in charge of its government.

The Banovina came to an end together with Kingdom of Yugoslavia, following the invasion of Axis powers in April 1941. Šubašić joined Dušan Simović and his Yugoslav government-in-exile but, before leaving, he refused to authorise the release of a large number of Croatian Communists and leftists arrested and kept in prisons under his supervision. Those prisons were soon taken over by the newly formed Independent State of Croatia and its prisoners were later executed by the Ustaše.

Government-in-exile

In emigration, Šubašić first represented the Yugoslav royal government in the United States. Gradually, the widening gap between the royalist government and Yugoslav major resistance movement embodied in Tito and his Communist-dominated Partisans forced Winston Churchill to mediate. Šubašić, a non-Communist Croat, was appointed as the new prime minister in order to reach a compromise between Tito—whose forces represented the de facto government on liberated territories—and the monarchy, which preferred Draža Mihailović and his Serb-dominated Chetniks.

After publicly rejecting Mihailović, Šubašić met with Tito on the island of Vis and signed the Tito–Šubašić agreement, which recognised the Partisans as the legitimate armed forces of Yugoslavia in exchange for Partisans formally recognising and taking part in the new government. Šubašić kept his post until 7 March 1945, when Tito formally became the prime minister of Yugoslavia. Šubašić was foreign minister in his cabinet until October, when he resigned, disagreeing with Communist policies of new government.

Later life and death

Šubašić spent the remainder of his life away from the spotlight, dying 1955 in Zagreb. About 10,000 people attended his funeral. He is buried in Mirogoj Cemetery.