Franjo Tudjman
Franjo Tudjman made Croatia independent, won its war, and spent the victory on a project in Bosnia that nearly cost him everything. He had been a partisan under Tito and the youngest general in the Yugoslav army, then a historian who was expelled from the party and imprisoned twice for nationalist writing - including for disputing the official death toll at the Jasenovac camp, an argument that followed him for the rest of his life. He won Croatia's first free election in 1990 and declared independence in 1991. The Serb minority in the Krajina, backed by the Yugoslav army, seized a third of the country; Vukovar was besieged for three months and destroyed, and Dubrovnik was shelled. A ceasefire in 1992 froze the front while Croatia built an army under an arms embargo. What he did next is the contested part. Having supported Bosnian independence, he then pursued a partition of Bosnia with Milosevic, and Croat forces fought their former Bosniak allies from 1993, destroying the bridge at Mostar. American pressure ended that in 1994 and produced a federation, and in August 1995 Operation Storm retook the Krajina in four days and drove out most of its Serb population. He signed the Dayton accords that November as one of three presidents. At home his rule was authoritarian, the press was controlled and the privatisations enriched a circle around him. He died in 1999, and the Hague tribunal later found that he had been part of a joint criminal enterprise in Bosnia - a finding no court could put to him.
- Lived: 1922 CE – 1999 CE
- Nationality: Croatian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
