The beginning of April 1942 witnessed a week of festivities the state media wrote about for days afterward. In the mornings, there were marches by the student units of the Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion (Poglavnikova tjelesna bojna—PTB) and the Ustasha Corps; processions by members of the Ustasha Youth, Ustasha students, and peasant and worker organizations; masses of thanksgiving; sports events; lectures; and the singing of the state hymn and Ustasha anthem in schools across the state. In the evenings there were concerts of the Croatian Philharmonic Orchestra and speeches and performances by members of the Zagreb State Theater and Ustasha cultural organizations. There were more raucous celebrations, too. Away from the sedate evening galas, streets and squares were packed with boisterous students, shop girls, factory workers, and militia men, some of them clearly inebriated. Nonetheless, whoever they were, wherever they came from, and whatever condition they were in, those who turned out on the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities in chilly spring weather were determined to make the most of the first anniversary of the founding of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska—NDH), or Ustasha state, the “resurrection” of national independence, and the triumph of the liberation struggle.

In a special edition, the newspaper Nova Hrvatska recited the achievements of the Ustasha state in statistics: the number of new homes built for workers, the millions of kunas spent on the construction of new hospitals, the thousands of square meters the new student accommodation and scientific laboratories comprised, the miles of new railway track built, the number of frequencies and coverage of the planned new radio hall, the millions of hectares of agricultural landirrigated and reclaimed, and the percentage rise in the nation's birth rate. The impression was of a state that was modern and dynamic, leaving the oppression of the Yugoslav past behind and committed to the construction of a utopian society fit for a reborn nation-state.

Among the features in Nova Hrvatska on the modernization of the Croatian university in Zagreb and the activities of students in the first year of independence was one in which the newspaper drew attention to the numerous young Ustasha students who had joined the Thirteenth Shock Student Unit of the PTB militia.