Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v57i2.35000
The Fate of a Croatian Family in the Turmoil of the Great War: The Spouses Mile and Ivka Budak from the Pre-War Period to the Collapse of Serbia (1912–1915)
Edi Miloš
orcid.org/0009-0003-6519-5670
; Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Split, Split, Croatia
*
Toni Dukić
; Split, Croatia
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
A high-ranking official in the Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945), executed during Tito’s purges in Yugoslavia, Mile Budak (1889–1945) remains a figure who provokes controversy, polemics, and passionate debate over his role in the Second World War. Yet his life, marked by hardship and turbulence, cannot be reduced solely to the years he spent serving the dictatorship of Ante Pavelić. He was also an important writer and a prominent figure in the Croatian national movement in Austria-Hungary and later in Yugoslavia. At various moments, he appears as a witness, a victim, and a participant in the dramas that unfolded at the crossroads of the Danubian and Balkan regions during the first decades of the twentieth century. His literary work, political engagement, and missteps all bear the imprint of the vicissitudes he experienced.
This article examines his trajectory between the eve and the early months of the Great War, from 1912 to 1915, when his fate became inextricably bound to the Habsburg Army — for better and, above all, for worse. Mobilized in 1914 and sent to the Serbian front, he was wounded and taken prisoner, before being swept away in the disastrous retreat of enemy forces during the Central Powers’ offensive in the autumn of 1915. The analysis draws in part on his family correspondence from these turbulent and tumultuous years, preserved at the Croatian Pontifical College of St. Jerome in Rome.
Keywords
Mile Budak; First World War; Croatian prisoners of war; Austro-Hungarian Army; Balkan theatre 1914.
Hrčak ID:
341148
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2025.
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