They agreed that it would be better for her to return to France (initially to their house in Beauvallon, near Sainte-Maxime on the French Riviera) in order to save money.

[3]:83-88 In the fall of 1934, Albrecht visited the USSR and returned with a favorable impression of the Soviet Union's progress in such areas as women's rights, medical care, social assistance, schools, universities, nurseries and kindergartens.

In 1933, conscious of the dangers of Nazism and hostile to the Munich Accords, Albrecht welcomed German refugees (mainly Jews and political dissidents fleeing fascism) to her house in Sainte-Maxime, where she met Captain Henri Frenay, who was to survive the war and become one of the most famous living representatives of French resistance fighters.

Despite their political differences (at that time, he belonged to the nationalist right wing, whereas she was actively associated with left-leaning causes), Albrecht and Frenay became both lovers and, later, co-organizers of the major resistance movement, Combat.

[3]:124-135 Dismayed by the armistice, she decided to continue to fight and moved to the Free Zone where she met up with Frenay, who had escaped from a detention center for prisoners of war in Germany.

[2] She was arrested by the Vichy government, end of November 1942, placed under administrative detention and refused a lawyer or a trial.

[4] After being transferred to Saint-Joseph prison in Lyon, she was judged six months later and was condemned to spend the rest of the war in an internment camp set up by the Vichy government.

Fearing deportation, she took advantage of the reigning disorder to simulate madness and was interned in a psychiatric hospital (Le Vinatier in Bron).

In April 1943, Albrecht traveled to Marseilles to attend a meeting with Maurice Chevance, Marcelle Bidault, Jeannine Frèze-Milhaud and Jean Multon (who will turn out to be a double agent).

[3]:269-271 During this meeting, she made the mistake of revealing a contact in the Lyon region, the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Mâcon.

[7] Berty went to the meeting and was arrested by the Abwehr and the Gestapo of Lyon on May 28, 1943, in Mâcon, in the presence of Klaus Barbie, Robert Auguste Moog and Jean Multon.

Returning empty-handed, Barbie locked Albrecht up and tortured her at the Hôtel Terminus, the headquarters of the SIPO-SD in Mâcon.

Following an additional torture session, she was found hanged the same day, probably by suicide in order to avoid revealing information to the enemy.