By December 1942, the German High Command chose to deploy the division in the Balkans to fight Tito's Communist Partisans.

On 11 September 1944, under orders from its commandant, the 369th division destroyed two villages near Stolac, hanging all the men and driving away all the women and children.

Following the Nuremberg Trial, General Neidholt, commandant of the division, was found guilty of war crimes; he was executed by hanging on 27 February 1947.

Its forerunner, the 369th (Croatian) Infantry Regiment, had been attached to the 100th Jäger Division and virtually destroyed with it at the Battle of Stalingrad.

[9] Following its return from training in Austria, desertions began with an average of 25 men absent without leave from each company.

There were a range of factors encouraging desertion, including reverses suffered by Axis forces in North Africa and at Stalingrad and elsewhere on the Eastern Front, Partisan propaganda and infiltration, and the work of politicians of the Croatian Peasant Party.

[10] Although originally intended for use on the Russian Front, the division did not deploy there and was returned to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in January 1943 due to the need to combat the Partisans.

The Ozren and Zenica Chetnik groups were forced to surrender most of their weapons and allow undisturbed passage through their territory to the German and NDH troops.

[16] After the Operation Schwarz, strong Partisan battle group penetrated into eastern Bosnia, destroying Ustasha garrisons Vlasenica, Srebrenica, Olovo, Kladanj and Zvornik on its way.

After four days of street fighting, Tuzla fell to Partisans, and the commander of the 369th Artillery Regiment lieutenant colonel Kuchtner saved himself by escaping to the Chetnik territory.

[19] Battle Group Fischer (main force of the 369th Infantry Regiment reinforced with artillery, 187th Reserve Division elements, and Home Guard formations) defended Doboj and sought to recapture Tuzla, in cooperation with the parts of the LXIX Corps from Brčko.

In early October 3 Battalion of the 370th Regiment in Višegrad fell under attack of the strong Chetnik battle group from Serbia.

[20] For several months from early December 1943, elements of the division took part in series of operations by the V SS Mountain Corps against the Partisans in eastern Bosnia known in the former Yugoslavia as the Sixth Enemy Offensive.

On 26 and 28 March Anti-Tank Battalion with artillery elements, the NDH police unit, and Chetnik detachment, carried out an attack from Stolac towards Ljubinje.

[29] On 11 September 1944, under orders from General Fritz Neidhold, the 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.

[3] After Tuzla was captured by the partisans on 17 September 1944, the 369th Infantry Division experienced a swell in desertions by its non-German members; among the ranks of II./370 battalion, German officers and liaisons were spontaneously murdered by some of their Croatian subordinates.

[30] On 21 September Trebinje garrison, consisting of the reinforced 1st Battalion of the 369th Grenadier Regiment, Italian Fascist Legion San Marco, and parts of the 9th Home Guard Brigade, came under an attack of the Vojislav Lukačević Chetnik group.

The Partisan attack begun on 4 October, and only small groups from Trebinje garrison managed to evade death or capture.

[6] The remaining group attacked a brigade of Partisans near Dravograd as it tried to cross into Austria; on 15 May 1945 most of the Croatian Armed Forces survivors formally surrendered.

[36] In total 160 officers and 2,876 men from the 369th Croatian surrendered to the British, they were then separated with the Germans members of the division assigned to a camp near Griffen in Austria and never sent back to Yugoslavia as prisoners of war.