During the interwar period, he joined Der Stalhelm and the Nazi Party, and participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch that aimed to overthrow the Weimar Republic.

Returning to military service, he became a general in command of an infantry division in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War and was killed in action in the first weeks of the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Lancelle was descended from a French Huguenot family that fled persecution in Catholic France and resettled in Germany in the seventeenth century.

In December of the same year, he transferred to the Royal Prussian Army as a Fahnenjunker (officer cadet) with the 43rd (Kleve) Field Artillery Regiment, headquartered in Wesel.

He was promoted to Hauptmann on 2 April 1915, was twice wounded and moved to the eastern front in December 1915 as a battalion commander with the 5th Foot Guards Field Artillery Regiment.

Refusing to swear allegiance to the Weimar Republic, he was placed on leave and then was discharged from military service on 31 March 1920 with the rank of brevet Major.

He also joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and took part in Adolf Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in November of the same year, after which he was dismissed from his personnel job at the insistence of the factory workers.

Lancelle obtained employment at the Leuna works chemical complex as a personnel advisor, remaining there until November 1931[2] and living in nearby Merseburg.

In January 1935, some six months after Röhm's murder in the Night of the Long Knives, Lancelle was reinstated on the staff of the OSAF, retaining his rank of SA-Oberführer.