During World War I, he served in the Imperial Russian Army. In 1919, he joined the Lithuanian Armed Forces and fought in the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. From 1929 to 1934, he was Chief of the Lithuanian General Staff. He received a death sentence for his role in the anti-government coup of June 1934. However, his sentence was commuted and he was released from prison in 1937. During the occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944, he collaborated with the Nazis and was general counselor of the Generalbezirk Litauen. After the war, he fled to the British Occupation Zone but was kidnapped by soviet agents and executed in Moscow in 1946.