Theodor Scherer (17 September 1889 – 17 May 1951) was a Major-General of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Biography[]
Theodor Scherer was born on 17 September 1889 in Hochstadt an der Donau in the Kingdom of Bavaria, then a part of the German Empire (present-day Germany). In 1910 he was commissioned into the army and he served in many machine-gun detachments of the Reichswehr during World War I. From 1920 to 1935, Scherer was a member of the police force of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, but he returned to the army after a while. In 1940, he was given command of the German 507th Infantry Regiment and in October 1941 he was made the commander of the police-like Security Division 281. 281 was supposed to deal with Red Army stragglers and partisans in the Soviet Union during the German invasion during World War II, but his 5,500-strong Kampfgruppe Scherer (made up of many different units) defended the Kholm Pocket in January 1942 from a Red Army assault.
Scherer took over the German 83rd Infantry Division later in 1942 and defended Velikiye Luki from Red Army attacks, but 7,500 German troops were trapped in the city by the Soviet 3rd Shock Army. On 16 January 1943 the city fell and less than 200 German troops escaped from the pocket, and in 1944 he was sent to take over coastal defenses in Ostland (Baltics). In 1945 he took over the southern sector of the Elbe River defenses against the Allies under Maximilian von Edelsheim. Scherer was killed in a car accident in May 1951 in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Wurttemberg.