Born in Ivanić-Grad on February 19, 1895; died in London, England, on January 9, 1988.
He completed the gymnasium (academic high school) in Zagreb and earned his doctorate in law in Vienna and Budapest.
Juraj Krnjević in 1939
He came back to Croatia in 1919, joined the HPSS right away and soon became one of Stjepan Radić’s closest collaborators. In 1925 he was jailed together with Radić and other members of his inner circle. By 1930 he was living in exile in Geneva and travelling frequently to Paris and London. That same year, in Salzburg, he attended a meeting with Vladko Maček, Ante Pavelić and August Košutić, called to coordinate their activities abroad, above all in Italy, France and England.
Acting for Vladko Maček, he maintained contact with the Western democracies, and he often found himself in conflict with the Ustaša émigrés, who had turned toward the regimes of Italy and Germany. As a true patriot, he fought to keep the influence of both of these extremes as small as possible.
Maček records in his memoirs that Krnjević warned him that war could not be avoided, and that this warning was what led him to come to an agreement with Cvetković.
When Germany invaded Poland, Krnjević returned to Croatia and became general secretary of HSS. When Germany invaded Yugoslavia, Maček left the government, and on April 8, 1941, Krnjević replaced him as deputy prime minister. The entire Yugoslav government then went into exile, and Krnjević went with it as the representative of HSS. Maček stayed in Croatia and urged the people to obey the new NDH regime.
In London, Dr. Krnjević was in constant conflict with the Serbian members of the government, and he worked tirelessly to secure a promise from the West, at the very least, that after the war the Croats would have a state within the borders of the Banovina of Croatia. He negotiated in the belief that the democratic powers would land on the coast between Dubrovnik and Makarska, and sent instructions on how HSS should act to persuade the Western powers that Croatia was on their side. Meanwhile, the bigger picture was changing. In 1943 Krnjević was still trying to convince the Allies that HSS remained the legitimate representative of the Croatian people. The Allies, however, had concluded that HSS was not a dependable force, while the Partisan movement was growing stronger. At the same time, as the British envoy to Yugoslavia, Fitzroy Maclean, put it, neither HSS nor the Chetniks were reliable or strong, and at the Tehran Conference on December 1, 1943, the decision was made to support Tito’s Partisans.
Under pressure from the British, King Peter reorganized his government. The patriotic Krnjević and Juraj Šutej lost their influence and were replaced by Šubašić, a believer in compromise, who was given the job of reaching an agreement with Tito. Šutej accepted Šubašić’s mission, but Krnjević refused to cooperate in any way and accused Šutej of not having the backing of HSS. After the war, with the full support of Dr. Vladko Maček, Krnjević carried on organizing HSS branches around the world.
When Maček died, Krnjević became president of HSS and gave himself wholeheartedly to the cause of an independent Croatia.
I count it a great honour to have known the late Dr. Krnjević, and in many discussions I saw for myself how devoted he was to the Croatian people and to the idea of an independent, democratic Croatian state. I thank him for a lifetime of selfless struggle for his ideals and for ours. May his memory be honoured forever!
Josip (Bepo) Cecić