During World War II, she played a minor role in the attack on Oslo, the capital of Norway, during the Norwegian Campaign of 1940.

Kondor spent the next several months escorting minelayers as they laid minefields and damaged heavy ships back to Germany before she was transferred to France around September.

The boat returned to France in 1942 and helped to escort blockade runners, commerce raiders and submarines through the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay.

Recognizing that she could not be repaired quickly, the boat was decommissioned later that month and was then further damaged by British bombers so that she was declared a constructive total loss.

[10] Now assigned to the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, Kondor supported the North Sea mining operations that began on 3 September 1939.

[11] During the Norwegian Campaign, the boat was assigned to Group 5 under Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz on the heavy cruiser Blücher, tasked to capture Oslo.

Her sister ship, Albatros, had become separated from the main body while crippling the Norwegian patrol boat HNoMS Pol III earlier that night and followed Kondor's group to Horten.

The torpedo boat, with only a single gun able to bear on the minelayer, withdrew behind one of the outer islands and started blindly bombarding the harbor.

After the heavy cruiser Lützow had been crippled by a British submarine off the Danish coast on 11 April, Kondor and her sister Möwe, among other ships, arrived later that morning to render assistance.

[14] Escorted by two destroyers, Kondor, Möwe, and the torpedo boat Wolf, minelayers laid a minefield in the Skaggerak on 29–30 April.

Rejoining the 5th Flotilla before the end of the month, Kondor and her sisters, Falke, Greif, and Seeadler laid a minefield in the English Channel on 30 September – 1 October.

[16] The flotilla joined the escort force for Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen on 12 February 1942 off Cap Gris-Nez during the Channel Dash.

Falke and Kondor and the torpedo boats T22 and T23 escorted the Italian blockade runner, SS Cortellazzo, from Bordeaux through the Bay of Biscay on 29–30 November.

Another Italian blockade runner, Himalaya, escorted by Kondor and the torpedo boats T2, T5, T22, and T23, failed in her attempt to break through the Bay of Biscay when she was spotted by British aircraft and forced to return by heavy aerial attacks on 9–11 April.

On 17–19 April 1944, the 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, including Kondor, Greif and Möwe, sailed from Brest, France, to Cherbourg as distant cover for a convoy.

Kondor began a lengthy refit in Le Havre, but was cannibalized for spare parts after the Allies landed in Normandy on 6 June.