During the war he passed on to the French Resistance information which he received in the course of his work as a navy radio operator based for six months in Jersey, and subsequently in mainland France.
[2] Hälker had managed to live the first nineteen years without taking too much interest in political developments, and his initial reaction to being sent to Paris as a member of an army of occupation was delight that he would become a "god in France".
Half a century later, in a television interview, he recalled how the daily experience of Nazi occupation, including the frequent shooting of hostages, progressively transformed "essentially unpolitical people" such as himself into committed opponents of the war.
[2] After the formation of CALPO ("Comité „Allemagne libre“ pour l'Ouest" /"National "Free Germany" Committee in the west") in September 1943 he was also involved in distributing printed anti-war material provided by the Resistance to members of the German army.
[2] In the run up to the Liberation of Paris Kurt Hälker slipped away from his work with the German navy and joined the rapidly emerging French resistance force, using the cover name Robert Vidal.
At around this time he became a member of the French Communist Party, till the start of 1945 acting as a German speaking representative of the CALPO on the frontline in Alsace-Lorraine where the fighting continued for several months after Paris itself had been liberated.
However, it quickly became apparent that the speed of the German military collapse during the next few weeks was making Hälker's original understanding of the tasks to be undertaken out of date.
Instead of being trained in close combat with fire arms and use of plastic explosives, the real objective became working to ensure that with Germany under military occupation, political developments should progress towards the right kind of democratic future according to the evolving perceptions in Washington and London.
There are suggestions that one reason for moving may well be that since 1945 he had been repeatedly contacted by the British and American intelligence services, keen to find out more about the war time exploits of Robert Vidal and Hugo Erb.