 After being recruited by the Allied secret intelligence services (via Polish officers in Bern, Switzerland, who made contact with the British), Szymańska provided a conduit of information between the Allies and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the German Abwehr.In autumn 1939 he helped her and her children move from occupied Poland to Switzerland in compensation for a contact with the British Secret Intelligence Service.Szymańska, as a British agent, met several times with Canaris in Switzerland and Italy.