She was recruited by the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) in October 1939. She worked initially as a security services "mail clerk" but in July 1940 was transferred to Berlin where she became an Italian interpreter. In July 1942 she was sent to Rome where at various stages she worked, ostensibly, as a secretary and/or an interpreter. Between September 1943 and July 1944 she played a pivotal role in the so-called "Ciano operation". After the defeat of Nazi Germany the American intelligence services benefited from her wartime intelligence gathering. They also acquired valuable additional intelligence because she took extra carbon copies - unbeknownst to German intelligence - of more than 700 sheets that she had translated from Italian source documents into German during the final months of the war. She sorted and sequenced these, and buried them in a large carefully sealed tin under the strawberry patch beside the apple tree in the garden at the family home where her widowed mother still lived.