Nine months of uncertainty ended in May 1940 when German forces invaded France. Paris surrendered on 14 June. Now Northern France was directly occupied by Germany while in the south, which included Rieucros, a puppet government administered a quasi-autonomous "free zone". The agreement between "Vichy France" and the Germans provided that all persons required to be handed over to the Germans should be. Maria Wachter was evidently included on the list, and at the end of 1941 she was handed over to the Gestapo. During the three months from December 1941 till February 1942 she was accommodated in a succession of 13 (as she later recalled) prisons, ending up back in Düsseldorf where she underwent extensive interrogation by the Gestapo. The Gestapo were particularly concerned to know all about her two years in Moscow, and although she initially denied ever having been to Moscow, it became increasingly clear that her interrogators were already extremely well informed, from other sources, about her time there.