From the Soviet perspective the Great Patriotic War began in June 1941. In defiance of the existing non-aggression pact the German army invaded the Soviet Union. In July 1941 Karl Linke and his son Heinz both volunteered to join the Red Army, where one of Linke's roles was as a commissar in a partisan division, a role that for two years he combined with that of a (Communist) "Party Secretary" in the partisan group. In this capacity he took part in parachute operations behind German lines in the Gomel region. During 1944 as the leader of a reconnaissance group he took part in armed Slovakian partisan operations and then in the Slovak National Uprising against the Axis government which erupted between August and October 1944. The war ended in the early summer of 1945 and Karl Linke returned to Moscow, suffering from wounds endured in the war and on account of the death of his son Heinz who had been killed while fighting with the Slovak partisans.