Drafted into the "Wehrmacht" in 1940, he deserted and defected to the Soviet Red Army three weeks after the German invasion of the USSR and fought for the Soviet Union until the end of the war. Upon his desertion, he was sentenced to death in absentia by a Military tribunal and his mother was arrested and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. He wouldn't see her again until June 1945, shortly after the end of the war, in a reunion that he considered to be "one of the most eventful and beautiful days" of his life.