The next year the couple fell foul of the dictator's belief - not necessarily unfounded - that some comrades thought that someone other than him, such as, for instance, Leon Trotsky, should be running the Soviet Union. Unlike many arrested political exiles from Nazi Germany, Heinrich and Wilma Landwehr were not killed, but in the context of the purges of 1936-38 they were sent into internal exile in 1937, ending up in or near Rostov-on-Don where Wilma Landwehr was sent to work in a tobacco factory. Following the remarkable news in October 1939 that a non-aggression pact had been concluded between Germany and the Soviet Union, Heinrich Landwehr, who at this point was serving as a forced labourer on an agricultural unit, was handed over to the Gestapo back in Germany, and Wilma Landwehr successfully submitted an application to be returned to Germany. She arrived back in Bremen at the end of the summer, a week or so ahead of her husband. Her baby daughter died a few days later.