Jelić was raised among seven siblings on his parents' estate in the Dalmatian interior. Already as a pupil he contributed to the 1922/23 election campaign of the Croatian bloc, opposing the legal state. During his studies of medicine in Zagreb he supported the nationalist Croatian Party of Right. In early 1926 his father died in police custody. In summer 1927 he became president of the HSP student organization and thus a junior partner of Ante Pavelić who was a Zagreb deputy for the HSP. In autumn 1928 Jelić took a lead in the foundation of the militant youth organization Hrvatski Domobran with the aim of establishing a Independent Croatia. He became chief editor of the affiliated paper. Meanwhile, the political climate in the South Slav state roughened due to the assassination of Stjepan Radić, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party. King Alexander suspended the constitution and dissolved the parliament.
In exile (first decade)
Jelić, alongside Pavelić, left Yugoslavia in early 1929 for Austria where he finished his doctorate in Graz. He continued his efforts for Croatian national independence, resulting in political pressure from Belgrade passed on by the Austrian government. In the early 1930s Pavelić sent him to South America for agitation among the Croatian émigrés. In this time Jelić edited the Croatian nationalist exile paper Nezavisna Hrvatska Država which was also distributed in the US through a middleman. Jelić's mission in the Americas was to establish branches of the Hrvatski Domobran. He frequently consulted Pavelić in Italy and became his right-hand man overseas. The Hrvatski Domobran developed into an organizational backbone of Pavelić's Ustašaunderground militia in Europe. Throughout the 1930s Jelić sojourned in South America, Austria again, Berlin, USA, Italy, Germany, USA and Gibraltar. On his way back from the US in autumn 1939, Jelić was intercepted by the British Navy at Gibraltar and taken into custody. This was a service of the British government to demonstrate its goodwill for Royal Yugoslavia.
In exile (second decade)
In June 1940 he was taken to a camp on the Isle of Man where he rested until late 1945. Thus, he was prevented from taking a high position among the leadership of the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia. After being released he continued his nationalist networking in London and established contacts to like-minded Croats as well as personalities of anti-Communist leanings. The Security Service came to the conclusion that he served as "a focal point" for worldwide Croatian exile activities. He tried to intervene at the British government in favour of Croatian political refugees, most of them Ustaše and their kin, who were threatened by Tito's Yugoslavia. Finally in May 1949 Jelić was allowed to enter West Berlin.
In Germany (1949–1972)
Together with prominent Croatian exiles, mostly belonging to the former NDH-elite, Jelić founded the Munich-based Croatian National Committee, trying to draw the attention of Western politicians to the Croatian Cause. In search for political support the HNO came to an agreement with representatives of the former German minority in Croatia. By the late 1950s the HNO underwent an ongoing crisis. Nevertheless, Jelić, as an exile of the first generation and the publisher of Hrvatska Država, continued to be an outstanding spokesman among the Croatian independence activists abroad. He obtained German citizenship and participated in right-wing party politics. At the beginning of the 1970s he attracted wider attention by claiming Soviet support for his plans of an independent Croatian state. In the early 1970s he survived two assassination attempts in West Berlin organized by the Yugoslav secret service known as UDBA and after died from a poisoning organized from Yugoslav secret service.
