Editing Franjo Tuđman (section)

==Tuđman as historian==
Tuđman did not have a formal academic education as historian.{{sfn|Sadkovich|2010|p=149}} He approached history as a [[Marxist]] scholar and Croatian attorney.{{sfn|Sadkovich|2010|p=277}} He always regarded history as a means of forming society.{{sfn|Sadkovich|2010|p=282}} His voluminous, more than 2,000 pages long, ''Hrvatska u monarhističkoj Jugoslaviji'' ({{langx|en|Croatia in Monarchist Yugoslavia}}), has come to be assigned as reading material<ref name="ffpu">{{cite web|year=2007|url=http://www.ffpu.hr/index.php?id=29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040117052252/http://www.ffpu.hr/index.php?id=29|url-status=dead|archive-date=17 January 2004|title=Povijest srednje i jugoistočne Europe (XVIII.st-1914)|language=hr|access-date=26 September 2007}}</ref> concerning this period of Croatian history at some Croatian universities. His shorter treatises on national question, ''Nacionalno pitanje u suvremenoj Europi'' ({{langx|en|The National question in contemporary Europe}}) and ''Usudbene povijestice'' ({{langx|en|History's fates}}) are still well-regarded essays on unresolved national and ethnic disputes, self-determination and creation of nation-states in the European milieu.{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}

===''Horrors of War''===
[[File:Bespuca povijesne zbiljnosti 14082012 2 roberta f.jpg|thumb|left|''Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy'' ({{langx|hr|Bespuća povijesne zbiljnosti}}; literal translation ''Wastelands of historical reality'')]]

In 1989 Tuđman published ''Bespuća povijesne zbiljnosti'' (Literal English translation:''Wastelands of historical reality'')<ref>{{cite book |last1=Black |first1=Jeremy |title=Rethinking World War Two: The Conflict and its Legacy |date=2015 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-47258-324-6 |page=155 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_XQpBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA155}}</ref> which was published in English in 1996 as ''Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy''.<ref name="Milekic2" /> The book questioned the different claimed numbers of victims killed during [[World War II in Yugoslavia]], particularly regarding the [[Jasenovac concentration camp]], something Tuđman had previously done in an earlier work published in 1982.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tomasevich |first1=Jozo |title=War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Occupation and Collaboration |date=2001 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-80477-924-1 |page=736 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fqUSGevFe5MC&pg=PA736}}</ref> The Yugoslav government's estimates put the number of Jasenovac victims between 600,000 and 700,000 while some Serbian historians even suggested up to one million victims; both sets of numbers which were exaggerated.<ref name="Pavlaković et al.">{{cite book |editor1-last=Pavlaković |editor1-first=Vjeran |editor2-last=Pauković |editor2-first=Davor |editor3-last=Raos |editor3-first=Višeslav |title=Confronting the Past: European Experiences |date=2012 |publisher=Political Science Research Centre, Zagreb |isbn=978-9-53702-226-6 |pages=167, 203 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DXSNAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA167}}</ref> Tuđman felt that Jasenovac was being used to impose a collective guilt on Croats and to prove "the genocidal nature" of Croatian nationalism.<ref name="Pavlaković et al." /><ref name="Wistrich">{{cite book |last1=Wistrich |first1=Robert S. |title=Holocaust Denial: The Politics of Perfidy |date=2012 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |isbn=978-3-11028-821-6 |pages=54–55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BfQoxsH9bbwC&pg=PA54}}</ref>

The last serious research of victim numbers before the [[Yugoslav wars]] was conducted by Croatian economist [[Vladimir Žerjavić]] and Serbian researcher [[Bogoljub Kočović]]. Both Žerjavić and Kočović arrived at a figure of 83,000 deaths in Jasenovac, each using different statistical methods.{{sfn|Macdonald|2002|p=162}} 59,589 victims (of all nationalities) were identified by name in a Yugoslav name list that was made in 1964.<ref name="Sadkovich2010">{{cite journal |last1=Sadkovich |first1=James J. |title=Forging Consensus: How Franjo Tuđman Became an Authoritarian Nationalist |journal=Review of Croatian History |year=2010 |volume=VI |issue=1 |pages=7–13 |url=https://hrcak.srce.hr/67472 |ref=none}}</ref> In his book Tuđman had estimated, relying on some earlier investigations, that the total number of victims in the Jasenovac camp (Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Croats, and others) was somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Trbovich |first1=Ana S. |title=A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19533-343-5 |page=191 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ojur7dVoxIcC&pg=PA191}}</ref><ref name="auto">{{cite book |last1=Sindbaek |first1=Tia |title=Usable History?: Representations of Yugoslavia's Difficult Past from 1945 to 2002 |date=2012 |publisher=ISD LLC |isbn=978-8-77124-107-5 |pages=178–179 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BLhYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178}}</ref> He listed the victims as "Gypsies, Jews and Serbs, and even Croatians", reversing the conventional order of deaths to imply that more Gypsies and Jews were killed than Serbs.{{sfn|Macdonald|2002|p=167}} Tuđman emphasized that the camp was organised as a "work camp".<ref name="auto"/> He estimated that a total of 50,000 were killed in all Ustashe camps throughout the NDH.{{sfn|Macdonald|2002|p=167}} While he rightfully challenged the inflated numbers, he wound up downplaying Ustaše crimes by providing figures that were too low.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Calic |first1=Marie-Janine |title=A History of Yugoslavia |date=2019 |publisher=Purdue University Press |isbn=978-1-61249-564-4 |page=225 |edition=e-Pub |url=https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=purduepress_ebooks}}</ref><ref name="Radonić">{{cite book |last1=Radonić |first1=Ljiljana |editor1-last=Luthar |editor1-first=Oto |title=Of Red Dragons and Evil Spirits: Post-Communist Historiography between Democratization and the New Politics of History |date=2017 |publisher=Central European University Press |isbn=978-9-63386-151-6 |pages=39–42 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m9ovDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA39}}</ref>

In ''Horrors of War'', Tuđman asserted that 900,000 Jews perished in the [[Holocaust]] instead of six million.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bartrop |first1=Paul R. |last2=Jacobs |first2=Steven Leonard |title=Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection [4 volumes]: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection |date=2014 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-61069-364-6 |page=375 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JB4UBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA375}}</ref> Aside from the war statistics issue, Tuđman's book contained views on the Jewish role in history that many readers found simplistic and profoundly biased. Some have described it as anti-semitic.<ref name="Pavlaković et al." /><ref name="Radonić" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Sells |first1=Michael A. |title=The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia |date=1998 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-52021-662-4 |page=94 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0bcwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA94}}</ref> Tuđman based his views on the Jewish condition on the memoirs of a Croatian former [[Communist]] [[Ante Ciliga]], who described his experiences at Jasenovac during a year and a half of his incarceration. These are recorded in his book, ''Sam kroz Europu u ratu (1939–1945)'',<!-- translation to English needed --> paint an unfavorable picture of his Jewish inmates' behavior, emphasizing their alleged clannishness and [[ethnocentrism]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Goldstein |first1=Ivo |last2=Goldstein |first2=Slavko |title=Revisionism in Croatia: The case of Franjo Tudman |journal=East European Jewish Affairs |date=2002 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=60–62 |doi=10.1080/13501670208577963 |s2cid=161791320 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501670208577963?journalCode=feej20}}</ref> Ciliga claimed Jews had held a privileged position in Jasenovac and actually, as Tuđman concludes, "held in their hands the inmates management of the camp up to 1944 [because] in its origins [[Ante Pavelić|Pavelić]]'s party was philo-Semitic".{{sfn|Tuđman|1989|pp=316, 320}} Tuđman added that most prisoners at Jasenovac perished at the hands of Jews, who controlled the liquidation process, and not the Ustaše.<ref name="Wistrich" /> Ciliga theorized that the behavior of the Jews had been determined by the more-than-2000-year-old tradition of extreme ethnic egoism and unscrupulousness that he claims is expressed in the [[Old Testament]].{{sfn|Tuđman|1989|pp=316, 320}}

Tuđman summarized, among other things, that "The Jews provoke envy and hatred but actually they are 'the unhappiest nation in the world', always victims of 'their own and others' ambitions', and whoever tries to show that they are themselves their own source of tragedy is ranked among the anti-Semites and the object of hatred by the Jews".{{sfn|Tuđman|1989|p=320}} In another part of the book, he expressed the belief that these traits weren't unique to the Jews; while criticizing what he alleges to be aggression and atrocities in the Middle East on the part of [[Israel]], he claimed that they arose "from historical unreasonableness and narrowness in which Jewry certainly is no exception".{{sfn|Tuđman|1989|p=160}}

In 1994, Tuđman apologized for the remarks made about Jews, stating that in the years since the publication of the book his views on world Jewry had changed.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Goshko |first1=John M. |title=Croatia Leader Apologizes for Holocaust Book |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/02/16/croatia-leader-apologizes-for-holocaust-book/b43c4b8a-9321-4e9c-b96b-4a7474ceb0f9/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=16 February 1994}}</ref> The problematic passages were subsequently edited out in the English version published in 1996, but kept in the Croatian, French and German versions.<ref name="Milekic2" />

On 22 April 1998, Tuđman received the credentials of the first Israeli ambassador to Croatia, Natan Meron. In his speech Tuđman said, among other things: {{blockquote|During the Second World War, within the [[Quisling regime]] in Croatia, Holocaust crimes were also committed against members of the Jewish people. The Croatian public then, during WWII, and today, including the Croatian government and me personally, have condemned the crimes that the [[Ustaše]] committed not only against Jews but also against democratic Croats and even against members of other nations in the Independent State of Croatia.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/croatia/croatia.htm|title=Croatia|access-date=23 December 2008|author=<nowiki>Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee</nowiki>|date=October 1998|publisher=Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081228202531/http://www.axt.org.uk/antisem/archive/archive2/croatia/croatia.htm|archive-date=28 December 2008}}</ref>}}