Milan Basta

Milan Basta (1 March 1921 – 4 December 2007) was a Yugoslav World War II general, a member of the Partisan Movement and a publicist. He was born in 1921 in Kurjak, a village in Lika – a region in today’s Croatia. He attended grammar school in Zagreb, Croatia where he joined the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) in 1939. In 1941 he became a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. After joining the Yugoslav Partisans, he participated actively in the preparation of the uprising against the German occupier. During the liberation war in Yugoslavia he was appointed political commissar of the “Krbava” battalion, 2nd Lika Detachment and 3rd Lika Proletarian Brigade. He was the head of the political department of the 20th division and 12th Vojvodina Brigade. In 1945 he performed duty of the political commissar of the 51st Vojvodina Division which took part in the battles at the Yugoslav-Austrian border.

At the end of World War II, namely 15 May 1945, general Basta pursued and captured in Bleiburg, Austria the retreating Ustaše army of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Together with his partisan comrade Ivan Kovačić-Efenka, Basta took part in the negotiations in Bleiburg about the surrender of Ustaše in which the representatives of the British army, led by Brigadier Patrick T.D. Scott of the 38th (Irish) Infantry Brigade, participated as the third party.

After the war, Basta graduated at the Higher Military Academy of the Yugoslav People's Army. He published several books about World War II. For his book “Rat je završen 7 dana kasnije” (The war ended 7 days later) in 1976, he was awarded the “The 4th of July” prize. Milan Basta was also awarded several medals. He was a member of the Council of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (SR Hrvatska).

General Milan Basta was a compatriot and a close friend of Jovanka Broz, the wife of Yugoslav leader and president, Josip Broz Tito.