Mile Budak

Mile Budak (Sveti Rok near Gračac, 30 August 1889 – Zagreb, 7 June 1945) was a Croatian writer, lawyer, politician and one of the main ideologists of the Ustasha movement.

Born into a poor Lika peasant family, he graduated from high school in Senj and Gospić, and studied law in Zagreb. He participated in World War I and was a prisoner of war. In the interwar period, he worked as a lawyer and writer. In 1932, he was severely beaten by Yugoslav police agents, after which he emigrated to Italy and joined Ante Pavelić's Ustasha movement.

In the NDH (1941–1945), he held high positions: Minister of Religious Affairs and Education, Ambassador in Berlin, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Commander-in-Chief. He is one of the key ideologists of the regime and an advocate of radical Croatian national politics. After the collapse of the NDH, he was captured, sentenced to death by a military court in Zagreb, and executed by hanging.

Before the war, Budak was a prolific prose writer oriented towards rural realism with a strong emphasis on Lika peasant life, customs, and national identity. He began publishing in the 1930s. His most significant works:

• "Opanci dida Vidurine" (1933, Lika short stories)
• "Na ponorima" (1932)
• "Ognjište" (I–IV, 1938) – his most extensive and best-known work, an epic novel about the Lika peasantry
• Rasvjetana trešnja (1939)
• "Direktor Križanić", "Privor", "Pod gorom", "Na Veliki petak" and numerous short stories and plays.

He wrote realistic prose with romantic and national ideals, glorifying the Croatian peasantry. His works were banned in socialist Yugoslavia after 1945, and were republished in the diaspora after the 1990s. He was translated into several languages.

Budak's fate symbolizes deep divisions in 20th-century Croatian history: for some, a significant writer and national figure, for others, a controversial political figure responsible for Ustasha ideology and politics.