During the First World War, he headed the Moscow Military District and the 26th Army Corps and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Miller opposed "democratization" of the Russian army and was arrested by his own soldiers after he ordered them to remove red armbands.

However, after an unsuccessful advance against the Red Army along the Northern Dvina in the summer of 1919, British forces withdrew from the region, and Miller's men faced the enemy alone.

[5] On 22 September 1937, former Tsarist officer, All-Military Union counter-intelligence chief, and NKVD mole Nikolai Skoblin led Miller to a Paris safe house, ostensibly to meet with two German Abwehr agents, who were in fact officers of the Soviet NKVD disguised as German military intelligence operatives.

They drugged Miller, locked him inside a steamer trunk, and smuggled him aboard a Soviet ship in Le Havre.

[8][9] The NKVD successfully smuggled Miller back to Moscow, where he was tortured and summarily shot nineteen months later on 11 May 1939, aged 71.

"[10] Sudoplatov also claimed that Western accounts of NKVD agent Leonid Eitingon having played a role in the abduction of Miller are false.