After her release Ullrich returned to Berlin and supported herself as a seamstress and with warehouse work. Later she found a position as an accounts clerk, and also obtained jobs as a simultaneous translator. She resumed her "illegal antifascist work". It was only after August 1939, when some (though by no means all) of the details emerged of the astonishing non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, which the government had been negotiating since April, that Ullrich arrived at an appreciation that her release in May, and that of several other comrades with good connections in Moscow, had been part of a diplomatic scene-setting exercise by Himmler, intended to show the Soviets that the Nazi government was softening its line, just a little, on Germany's own communist activists. Inevitably, however, she remained under intense surveillance following her release, which left her acutely nervous about venturing out onto the street, except for walking to and from her work. She was able to live quietly in a little house that her parents owned in the city. Because she had mastered Russian, she could know what was going on by listening (illegally) not merely to the German language broadcasts from Moscow but also to the Russian language ones, which she found gave a fuller picture. She also received instructions and information that came from Moscow for onward transmission to party comrades operating "underground" in Berlin, which she could translate where necessary and give to her sisters, who were not as closely observed by the authorities as she was, to be passed on beyond the walls of the little house. In this way she was able to continue making an important party-political contribution while remaining out of sight.