Only ten days later on April 6, 1941, the German army invaded Yugoslavia and met little resistance. Vladko Maček, refusing to leave his people, asked Krnjević to replace him as vice-premier in the Yugoslav government - now about to flee the country. Together with some other Croat ministers and Ivan Šubašić (the Ban, or head of the new Banovina) Krnjević drove to Pale, near Sarajevo, where they joined the rest of the government. After a further drive to Nikšić (Montenegro), all flew out to Greece. After a few days in Athens, they traveled to Egypt and then to Jerusalem, where the government was reconvened on May 4 by King Peter II. To ensure the support of its Croatian members, one of the first acts of the government was to reaffirm its acceptance of the 1939 Sporazum and the Croatian Banovina. The Palestinian interlude lasted only three weeks. The senior members of government flew from Egypt to England, by a roundabout route via equatorial Africa, arriving in London at the end of June (1941).