[1]: 96 [2] After being drafted into the Reich Labor Service (RAD) in 1937, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht in 1938, where he served as a soldier throughout World War II.
[5][6] The department additionally financed the Deutscher Freiheitssender 904, a clandestine radio station of the banned KPD.
[1]: 44 Against the wishes of department head Adolf Baier, but with support from the Stasi,[1]: 25, 32, 91, 97 Cebulla was promoted to deputy department head on 15 July 1954,[1]: 97 [2] a position he would hold for the next 32 years, with a brief interruption from 1956 to 1959 to attend a three-year course at the "Karl Marx" Party Academy, where he graduated with a diploma in social sciences (Dipl.-Ges.-Wiss.).
[1]: 98 In October 1986, Cebulla succeeded the retiring Josef Steidl, with whom he had a similarly tense relationship like with Baier,[1]: 98 as department head.
[1]: 150–151 Cebulla was responsible for personnel matters, while Schalck-Golodkowski handled economic affairs of the SED's secret companies in West Germany.