Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999), once communist Yugoslavia's police general and political commissar, who subsequently turned military historian, politician, and finally president of the secessionist Republic of Croatia, was not an ordinary survivor. A favorite of the Communist dictator Tito, Tudjman reached the rank of major general at the age of 36. Croatia's parliament elected him the nation's first president in 1990, and he led his people to independence the following year. In 1992 and 1997, he was re-elected president.

Franjo Tudjman was born on May 14, 1922, in Veliko-Trgoviste, in the hills north of Zagreb. Little is known about Tudjman's early life other than that his father was a politically active landlord. In April 1941, the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. With their support, Ante Pavelic's nationalist movement, the Ustashe, set up the Independent State of Croatia. Young Franjo, about to graduate from gymnasium in Zagreb, was already known as a Communist sympathizer. When threatened with arrest by...