In March and April 1941, Prince Pavle's balancing act finally failed: he was deposed in a popular pro-Western military coup, upon which the Nazis invaded and occupied Yugoslavia. Muhamed Kulenović was immediately imprisoned as a KPJ member; in July, he was shot after an escape attempt. In November the same year, Skender joined Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans, and was readmitted into the Communist Party. In 1942, just after the German summer offensive had narrowly failed to wipe out the Partisan army, he composed perhaps his most famous poem, “Stojanka Majka Knežopoljka” (“Stojanka, the mother from Knežopolje”), a modernist Partisan version of the traditional Bosnian lament with strong elements of the Serbian folk-epic. In the same year, Skender's remaining brother Muzafer was executed in Belgrade.