Vladko Maček (1879-1964) was born in a small Croatian village and received his law degree in 1903 from the University of Zagreb. One of the early members of the Croatian Peasant Party, he was closely associated with its founders, Ante and Stephen Radić. After the dissolution of the Habsburg empire, Croatia became a part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and the Croatian Peasant Party emerged as one of the strongest political factions.Elected to the Belgrade Constituent Assembly in 1920, the author became head of the party when Stephen Radić was assassinated in 1928. But King Alexander established a personal dictatorship the following year, and Maček was imprisoned until after the king himself was murdered in 1934. During the latter half of the decade, the Croatian Peasant Party cooperated with several Serbian parties, and despite rigged elections, the combined opposition almost ousted the government in 1938.The deteriorating international situation finally forced composition of Serb-Croat differences, and Croatia was granted substantial autonomy in the sporazum (agreement) of August 1939. Maček became vice-premier in the Belgrade government, and Yugoslavia's worst internal problem seemed solved. But with the collapse of France in 1940, the threat from Hitler and Mussolini became acute, and Yugoslavia was finally forced to adhere to the Tripartite Pact (Germany-Italy-Japan). When a coup d'état by pro-Allied officers in Belgrade reversed the situation o...