He became a Soviet agent by choice and subsequently became an important member of the Red Orchestra organisation in France during World War II.
[2][4] Maximovitch became an interpreter for the German officer in charge, Wehrmacht colonel Hans Kuprian, who was on a committee that processed prisoners from the Vichy government for slave labour, after the French armistice.
[2] Maximovitch had an affair with Margarete Hoffman-Scholz, secretary to Kuprian, and a niece to General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military commander of Paris.
[9] Maximovitch was arrested with his sister on 12 December 1942[10] at 14 rue Émile Zola in Choisy-le-Roi[2] by French police and taken to be interrogated at Rue des Saussaies by members of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, a special Gestapo and Abwehr commission establish to track down members of the Red Orchestra in France, Belgium and Low Countries.
[2] A trial was held on 8 March 1943 at 62-64 Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré by Luftwaffe Judge Manfred Roeder where he was sentenced to death by decapitation.