Proksch enrolled in the Kaiser Infantry Regiment No. 1 of the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1910 and then the Railway Academy in Linz in 1912 before taking a job with the government railways. He returned to the army in 1914 with the Infantry Regiment No. 91 and saw action during the World War I in Poland and Russia.Philip Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890, 1990, p. 305 He first became involved in politics in 1912 when he joined the German Workers' Party and worked on behalf of the party in Silesia and Moravia.
