The 42nd Infantry Division Murska was an infantry formation of the Royal Yugoslav Army that formed part of the 4th Army during the German-led Axis invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941. It did not have a corresponding divisional district in peacetime, and was raised at the time of mobilisation. Like all Yugoslav infantry divisions of the time, it was a very large and unwieldy formation which was almost entirely reliant on animal transport for mobility, and also lacked modern arms and sufficient ammunition. Commanded by Divizijski đeneral Borisav Ristić, it was largely manned by Croat troops, many of whom saw the Germans as potential liberators from Serbian oppression.
Along with the rest of the Yugoslav Army, the 42nd Infantry Division Murska began mobilising on 3 April 1941, and was still engaged in that process three days later when the Germans began an air campaign and a series of preliminary operations against the Yugoslav frontiers. These attacks prompted desertions from the division which increased over the following days. The division briefly established a defensive line behind the Drava river, then fell back towards the Bednja river to conform with the withdrawals of flanking formations. On 10 April, the 14th Panzer Division broke out of a bridgehead on the right flank of the division and by early evening it had reached Zagreb. The following day, German formations attacking from the north had outflanked the division on its left. Encircled, it promptly surrendered. Almost all of the Croat members of the 4th Army taken as prisoners of war were soon released by the Axis powers.
Background
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created with the merger of kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro with the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, the predominantly South Slav-inhabited area of dissolving Austria-Hungary, on 1 December 1918 in the immediate aftermath of World War I. The Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was established to defend the new state. It was formed around the nucleus of the victorious Royal Serbian Army, as well as armed formations raised in regions formerly controlled by Austria-Hungary. Many former Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers became members of the new army. From the beginning, much like other aspects of public life in the new kingdom, the army was dominated by ethnic Serbs, who saw it as a means by which to secure Serb political hegemony.
The army's development was hampered by the kingdom's poor economy, and this continued during the 1920s. In 1929, King Alexander changed the name of the country to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, at which time the army was renamed the Royal Yugoslav Army (, VKJ). The army budget remained tight, and as tensions rose across Europe during the 1930s, it became difficult to secure weapons and munitions from other countries. Consequently, at the time World War II broke out in September 1939, the VKJ had several serious weaknesses, which included reliance on draught animals for transport, and the large size of its formations. Infantry divisions had a wartime strength of 26,000–27,000 men, as compared to contemporary British infantry divisions of half that strength. These characteristics resulted in slow, unwieldy formations, and the inadequate supply of arms and munitions meant that even the very large Yugoslav formations had low firepower. Generals better suited to the trench warfare of World War I were combined with an army that was neither equipped nor trained to resist the fast-moving combined arms approach used by the Germans in their invasions of Poland and France.
The weaknesses of the VKJ in strategy, structure, equipment, mobility and supply were exacerbated by serious ethnic disunity within Yugoslavia, resulting from two decades of Serb hegemony and the attendant lack of political legitimacy achieved by the central government. Attempts to address the disunity came too late to ensure that the VKJ was a cohesive force. Fifth column activity was also a serious concern, not only from the Croatian nationalist Ustaše but also from the country's Slovene and ethnic German minorities.
Structure
Peacetime organisation
According to regulations issued by the VKJ in 1935, the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division Murska (42nd ID) would be created at the time of mobilisation. Unlike most other Yugoslav divisions, the 42nd ID did not have a corresponding divisional district in peacetime, and would be allocated units from other divisional districts and the VKJ reserve when it was formed. The division was named for the Mura river, a tributary of the Drava.