On 1 August of that year, he joined the Royal Bavarian Army as a three-year volunteer with the 16th Infantry Regiment in Passau.

After his recovery, Hofmann served as a battalion commander with the 10th, 21st, 13th and 28th infantry regiments, attaining the rank of Major on 17 January 1917.

After the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919, Hofmann served on the military tribunal that condemned to death Eugen Leviné, one of the leaders of the ousted regime.

During Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 9 November 1923, Hofmann acted as an intermediary between the putschists and the Reichswehr.

Between September 1932 and March 1933, he again took up a major field command as the Führer of the newly-established SA-Obergruppe IV, which included all the SA units in Bavaria: SA-Gruppen Bayerische Ostmark, Franken and Hochland.

[3] In 1934, Hofmann edited a brochure dubbed the SA-Katechismus (SA Catechism) that explicitly stated the Nazi movement was pledged to protect the two main Christian sects, Protestants and Catholics.

He formally joined the Nazi Party Ortsgruppe (local group) in Ingolstadt on 1 June (membership number 550,075).

[7] At the July 1932 parliamentary election, he obtained a seat as a Nazi Party deputy in the Reichstag from electoral constituency 25 (Lower Bavaria).

After the Nazi seizure of power, Hofmann was briefly assigned as the acting Police Director in Regensburg between March and April 1933.

On 5 July 1934, he became State Secretary and political advisor to the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of Bavaria, Franz Ritter von Epp, his former Freikorps commander.

Hofmann was also given a five-year appointment as an honorary lay judge of the People's Court at its founding on 13 July 1934.

[10] On 28 April 1948, a posthumous denazification tribunal in Munich classified him as being in Group II (offender) and ordered the confiscation of 40% of his estate.