From June 1943 to April 1945, he was deployed in the Reich Labor Service in Poland, France, and the Netherlands, ultimately as the head foreman.

In April 1945, he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a soldier and was captured in early May 1945 in Hagenow, initially by American forces, later ending up in British captivity from June to July 1945 in Eutin.

[2] From 1954 to 1960, he pursued a distance learning program at the SED's "Karl Marx" Party Academy in Berlin, graduating with a diploma in social sciences (Dipl.-Ges.-Wiss.).

Walde subsequently rose to the Bezirk Cottbus SED Secretariat, being made Second Secretary, also responsible for Organization and Cadre Affairs, in April.

Party Congress) until his resignation in November 1989, he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED,[2][6] the de facto highest leadership body in East Germany, the Bezirk Cottbus being an important centre for coal and energy.

[3] He additionally became a member of the Volkskammer in 1971,[2] nominally representing rural constituencies in his Bezirk, first the west,[7] then the southeast.

While he lived a modest lifestyle for a top SED functionary and was viewed as sticking up for the districts in his Bezirk, he was known for being a hardliner when it came to military service and those refusing to do so.

[9] On 8 November 1989, on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Böhme was reelected to the Politburo at the 9th Meeting of the Central Committee.