In World War II, Einsiedel served as a German fighter pilot, initially with Jagdgeschwader 2 over the Western Front, flying the Messerschmitt Bf 109.

He took part in escort operations over the cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen as they made their 'Channel dash' from Brest to Germany in February 1942.

[citation needed] He was given permission to visit West Berlin on behalf of the NKVD for intelligence-gathering purposes.

While meeting his mother, he was arrested by US Forces and sentenced by an American court for spying and having forged documents.

The governing Socialist Unity Party of East Germany acknowledged Einsiedel as a bona fide anti-fascist but a petit bourgeois who, "as soon as the class war became acute", had wavered and switched political camps for his own self-interests.

Before the August 1919 abolition of nobility as a legal class, titles preceded the full name when given (Graf Helmuth James von Moltke).