commander of the
7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. In May 1935 Schmidhuber joined the
SS where he was appointed SS-
Obersturmführer and immediately attached to the
SS-Verfügungstruppe. Initially he commanded the 7th platoon of
SS-1 Standarte and commanded troops there until early February 1936, when he was transferred to the SS
Germania Regiment. There he led the 1st Company until 1 May 1936. On 13 September 1936 Schmidhuber was promoted to SS-
Hauptsturmführer and transferred to the regimental staff of SS
Germania. He remained there until mid-November 1937, where the company was responsible for training noncommissioned officers, until the end of February 1938. On 30 January 1939 Schmidhuber was promoted to the rank of SS-
Sturmbannführer. From 1 May to 1 November 1939, Schmidhuber was put in command of the 1st Battalion of SS Germania, while it took part in the
invasion of Poland, he held this command until the end of 1940. On 21 June 1941 he was promoted to SS-
Obersturmbannführer and a year later he became regimental commander in the
7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. On 20 April 1943 Schmidhuber was promoted to SS-
Standartenführer (colonel). From 28 November to late December 1943, then from 11 January to early February 1944 he temporarily held the command of Division Prinz Eugen. On 17 April 1944 Schmidhuber became commander of the
21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian), a volunteer force of ethnic Albanians under German command, which operated principally in the region of Kosovo. The division became notorious for its looting and atrocities against unarmed civilians, especially
ethnic Serbs. In May 1944 the SS Skanderbeg contributed to the
Holocaust when it took part in the
roundup and
deportation of Jews from Kosovo to the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where almost all of them perished. On 21 June 1944 Schmidhuber was promoted to SS-
Oberführer. With regard to his anti-partisan activities in
Kosovo during the war, the scholar
Bernd Jürgen Fischer noted that Schmidhuber issued orders to "increase the burning of villages and killing of people, in keeping with these orders, between 19 September and 23 October, 131
NLM prisoners including women . . . were shot or hanged in Kosovo". The division also use retributive
hangings as a response to acts of
sabotage. After six months in existence, following mass desertions within its ranks, poor combat record and history of atrocities, the division was ordered disbanded on 1 November 1944 by
Heinrich Himmler. Schmidhuber blamed the divisions failure on the Albanian soldier stating that "during the attack he goes only as far as he finds something to steal or sack". Schmidhuber became a SS-
Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS in January 1945. Following the German evacuation of
Albania, on 21 January 1945 Schmidhuber replaced SS-
Brigadeführer Otto Kumm as commander of the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. The German cadres of the 21st division (
Reichsdeutsche and
Volksdeutsche) were absorbed into the
SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgsjäger Regiment 14 of
Prinz Eugen, which was given the honorific name
Skanderbeg in memory of its sister formation, most of the Albanian Muslims were released from service. While Schmidhuber was in command and Prinz Eugen was deployed in
Dalmatia, the unit committed multiple war crimes in
Split and
Dubrovnik. Division Prinz Eugen fought rearguards actions against
Yugoslav partisans and
Russians units as part of
Army Group F while the Germans were in full retreat out of the country. ==Capture and death==