At the beginning of the
First World War, Neidholdt and his regiment were sent to the
Western front, where he took part in the
Siege of Namur. At the beginning of 1915, his unit was sent to fight
Russian imperial forces near
Bzura. Between March 1915 and April 1917 Neidholdt served at various positions at army, divisional, brigade, and company level on the eastern front. After the
Reichswehr became the
Wehrmacht, he retired from the army on 21 May 1935. On 1 December 1938, he returned as an officer in the army and in the spring of 1940, he led a regiment on the
Western Front then commanded an infantry regiment for short time in Poland before ending up on the reserve list of the army high command. On 1 October 1942, Neidholdt was promoted to major general and appointed commander of the new
369th (Croatian) Infantry Division, a
legionary unit composed of volunteers from the
Independent State of Croatia under German
cadres, based in Yugoslavia. The Division began formation in
Stockerau,
Austria with the survivors of the
369th Croatian Reinforced Infantry Regiment and new volunteers from Croatia, it adopted the nickname of ''Devil's Division'', in honour of the
42nd Home Guard Infantry Division of the
World War I Austro-Hungarian Army. The division was deployed in the Balkans against
Yugoslav partisans at the beginning of 1943 instead of the Eastern Front as originally intended. Under Fritz Neidholdt's command the division took part in
Case White (also known as the Fourth Axis Offensive) in northern
Bosnia where, inexperienced in
guerrilla warfare, it became notorious for its extreme brutality. The division then took part in
Case Black in Northern
Montenegro and southern Bosnia, where it reported the largest number of casualties of all the units engaged. On 1 October 1943, Neidholdt was promoted to
lieutenant general. According to British historian
Ben H. Shepherd the only way in which the division he commanded distinguished itself was in the number of civilians it killed. On 11 September 1944, under Fritz Neidholdt direct orders, the 369th division destroyed the villages of Zagniezde (Zagnježđe) and Udora (near
Bjelojevići,
Burmazi and
Stolac), hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children. At the beginning of October 1944 he gave up command of the 369th Infantry Division. Neidholdt was captured on 8 May 1945. Prosecuted as
war criminal during the fourth process of the Yugoslav War Crimes Trials Proceedings (5–16 February 1947), he was tried along with six other major war criminals: Generaloberst
Alexander Löhr (commander-in-chief of Army Group East), Generalleutnants Josef Kübler and
Johann Fortner, Generalmajor Adalbert Lontschar, Oberst
Gunther Tribukait and SS-Brigadeführer
August Schmidhuber. All of them were sentenced to death and executed in mid-January 1947 after petitions for clemency were rejected. == References ==