Celmiņš became the secretary of Minister of Foreign Affairs, and subsequently worked in the Finance Ministry.
On 24 January 1932, the Latvian nationalist group Ugunskrusts [lv] was founded, and Gustavs Celmiņš was elected as its leader.
Common for both organisations was that they advocated a national revolution for a radical re-organisation of society, politics, and the economy in Latvia.
After the Soviet Union invaded Finland, Celmiņš enrolled as a volunteer on the Finnish side.
In July 1941, after Operation Barbarossa, together with Nazi officials, Celmiņš returned to Latvia and briefly regained leadership of Pērkonkrusts.
[1][2] Aside from front-line combat duties, some of these battalions were also deployed in anti-partisan operations Latvia and Belarus that included the massacres of rural Jews and other civilians.
Pērkonkrusts members working within the SD apparatus in occupied Latvia would feed Celmiņš information, some of which he would include in his underground, anti-German publication Brīvā Latvija.
[4] In late April 1945, he was, together with other prominent concentration camp inmates, transferred to Tyrol where the SS left the prisoners behind.
Our God, our belief, our life's meaning, our goal is the Latvian nation: whoever is against its welfare is our enemy.