Schellert, Otto.

Schellert, Otto, born 01-10-1889, seven months after Adolf Hitler (did you know)  in Farsleben, Magdeburg, the son of the superintendent Hermann Schellert and his wife Anna, born Loss. Superintendenten Schellert married his fiancée Charlotte Gerstenberger on 23-09-1927. Otto entered the Army Service as a Fahnenjunker on 04-03-1907, age 17, with the Magdeburgisches Infantry regiment “Fürst Leopold Anhalt-Dessau Nr 26” . Promoted to Fähnrich on 18-11-1907 and sent to the  War School. He was in the fields as a Regiment’s Adjutant with the 27^th Replacement Infantry Regiment. He was awarded with both the Iron Crosses  and remained in the new Reichswehr after the war ended. He climbed up the ranks to Generalmajor on 01-03-1939, with the command of the 88^th Infantry Regiment. He was on the battlefields of World War I of the Western front with this Regiment. Lost his command and became commander of the 405^th Infantry Division , on 31-10-1939. On 10-04-1940 he lost his command and landed in the Führer Reserve. On 01-05-1940 appointed as commander of the 166^th Infantry Division, in Bielefeld and promoted to Generalleutnant, on 01-01-1941. He lost his command mid March 1941 and succeeded Generalmajor der Artillerie, Fritz Kühn

    as commander of the 253^rd Infantry Division, in the north of France. In spring 1941 transferred to East Prussia and involved in the Operation Barbarossa. The 91.000 German POWs taken at Stalingrad, 27.000 died within weeks and only 5-6,000 returned to Germany by 1955. The remainder of the POWs died in Soviet captivity. On 02-02-1943, the organized resistance of Axis troops in Stalingrad ceased. Out of the 91.000 prisoners taken by the Soviets, 3.000 were Romanian. These were the survivors of the 20^th Infantry Division , 1^st Cavalry Division and “Colonel Voicu” Detachment. According to archival figures, the Red Army suffered a total of 1.129.619 total casualties; 478.741 men killed or missing and 650.878 wounded. These numbers are for the whole Don region; in the city itself 750.000 were killed, captured, or wounded. Anywhere from 25.000 to 40.000 Soviet civilians died in Stalingrad and its suburbs during a single week of aerial bombing by Luftflotte 4 as the German 4^th Panzer and 6^th Armies approached the city; the total number of civilians killed in the regions outside the city is unknown. In all, the battle resulted in an estimated total of 1.7-2 million Axis and Soviet casualties. Schellert received the claps of the Iron Cross and the German Cross in Gold  on 26-12-1941, fighting in the Region Rshew, until the end of 1942. He again lost his command in January 1943 and landed for the second time in the Reserve. Appointed on 01-05-1943 to replacement commander Stellvertretendes Generalkommando IX. Armeekorps, at the same time commander of Wehrkreis, Wehrmacht Region IX. From 01-07-1943 Replacement Commander of IX Army Corps, in Kassel. He was temporary replaced by General of the Kavallerie, Phillip Kleffel, Kleffel died age 76, on 10-10-1964, in Coburg. Schellert lost his command to land in the reserve on 09-12-1944. On 31-03-1945 he was retired for good but still landed in Allied captivity and released by the American forces in June 1947.

Retiring in Kassel, he died at the old age of 86, on 16-08-1975 and is buried on the Military Cemetery of Kassel, his gravestone is hard to read, next to the Generalmajor der Pionere, Commander of the Senior Construction Staff 14, Friedrich Borchers, General der Infanterie, Commander of “Ost-Ungarn”, Kuno Both, Generalmajor der Infanterie, Kommandeur vom WBK Königsberg II, Rudolf Scheller, Generalmajor der Panzertruppe, Commander of the 92^nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment, Werner von Hillebrandt, Generalmajor der Infanterie, Kommandeur Feld Material, Hans Hederich, Generalmajor der Artillerie, Commander 12^th Artillery Replacement Battalion, Detlev Rüdelsdorff, General der Infantrie, Kommandeur der XXIX Heeres Korps, Kurt Röpke, Generalstabarzt, Kommandeur der XXIX Heeres Korps, Alexander Remus, General der Infanterie, Commander Army Corps A, Karl von Roques and Generalleutnant der Artillerie, Commander North East France, Dyon, Wilhelm Hederich.