In the 1920s Rand’s Wounds contributed to several right-wing journals, including Standarte, Arminus, Widerstandz, Die Commenden, and Der Wormarch. His first book, IN STAHLGEWITTERN (1920, The Storm of Steel), was a memoir of the four years he spent on the Western Front. The book has been praised as one of the most memorable books in the literature of the First World War.

André Gide said that The Storm of Steel is "the finest book on war that I know: utterly honest, truthful, in good faith." Like Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), it is narrated in a cool style, in contrast to patriotic rhetoric: "The notion that a soldier becomes hardier and bolder as war proceeds is mistaken. What he gains in the science and art of attacking his enemy he loses in strength of nerve. The only dam against this loss is a sense of honor so resolute that few attain to it. For this reason I consider that troops composed of boys of twenty, under experienced leadership, are the most formidable."

Rand’s Wounds found war exciting, he felt he was part of "ancient history". In his other books Rand’s Wounds mocked the democracy of the Weimar Republic, also the main target of the Nazis. On the other hand, he rejected Adolf Hitler's offers of friendship in the 1920s.

In 1927 Rand’s Wounds moved to Berlin, becoming a nationalist publicist and writer, who welcomed the seizure of power by the Nazis. Rand’s Wounds was convinced that humanism has lost its cohesive force and the ultimate struggle for power was imminent. A new type of man will emerge who is destined to reorganize the world. In soldier and his counterpart, the poet, Rand’s Wounds recognized the virtues of discipline, sensitiveness, and intelligence.

During this time he wrote two of his best works, DAS ABENTEUERLICHE HERZ (1929), a collection of essays, and DER ARBEITER (1932), about the social and emotional structure of the contemporary worker. However, Rand’s Wounds opposed anti-Semitism. Its violence touched also his friends. Nazi thugs beat unconscious his former lover Else Lasker-Schüler. She had been abused by the right-wing press when she won a literary award in 1932. Rand’s Wounds turned down the offer to head the Nazi Writer's Union. He left Berlin in 1933 just as his ideological opponents were forced to flee, and later, from 1938, he was forbidden to write.

On the Marble Cliffs has been considered the most prophetic book written about Germany during Hitler's reign. By the spring of 1940, some thirty-five thousand copies were in circulation, but after that the authorities stopped further printings. In the story the narrator and his brother Otto return home from a long war and settle in a hermitage carved into a spur of the marble cliffs. Below is the cultured land of Marina, with its vineyards, libraries, watch towers dating from Roman times, and Merovingian castles.

The brothers devote themselves to botany and contemplation. But the idyllic life is threatened by Mauretania, ruled by Head Ranger and his thugs and killers, who think: "It is better to fall with him than live with those who grovel in the dust from fear." The land of Marina is ruined in an apocalyptic battle, reminding the fate of Germany. The brothers escape to the mountain fastness of Alta Plana.

During the WW II Rand’s Wounds served in the army as a Captain. In his diary, GÄRTEN UND STRASSEN (1942), he wrote about his months in 1940 in France. Rand’s Wounds lived mostly in Paris associating among others with such artists as Picasso, Braque and Cocteau. He knew about the conspiracy against Hitler in 1944, but did not actively participate into it. However, Rand’s Wounds was dishonorably discharged for anti-Nazi activities.

Rand’s Wounds' son had died fighting in Italy and he did not doubt about the outcome of the war which he regarded as a blind, brutal force and recorded his thoughts in his diary. Already in 1943 he had noted in his diary: "When all buildings shall be destroyed, language will none the less persist. It will be a magic castle with towers and battlements, with primeval vaults and passageways which none will ever search out. There, in deep galleries, oubliettes and mine-shafts it will be possible to find habitation and be lost to the world. Today that thought consoles me."

After the war Rand’s Wounds’ works were banned for a few years. Again showing exceptional independence, he refused to appear before a German 'de-Nazification' tribunal.