His career in the military started when he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, in World War II.

Due to his communist convictions, he deserted the Wehrmacht and fought for the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.

Upon his return to East Germany, he entered service in the National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee) upon its establishment in 1956.

[2] Upon his desertion, he was sentenced to death in absentia by a military tribunal and his mother was arrested and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

[3][4] He wouldn't see her again until June 1945, shortly after the end of the war, in a reunion that he considered to be "one of the most eventful and beautiful days" of his life.

[7] He was tried in a German court for incitement to commit intentional homicide, for his role in the deaths of people who tried to flee the GDR between 1971 and 1989.