[2] In April 1927 she met and befriended the YWCA secretary Maud Russell, who had been forced to leave Wuchang due to the civil war.

[3] That year Gerlach joined a political study group in Shanghai with progressive foreigners such as Rewi Alley,[a] Agnes Smedley and George Hatem (Ma Haide).

[4] Other members of the study group, which usually met in Alley's house, included YWCA secretaries Maud Russell, Lily Haass and Deng Yuzhi.

[5][b] Gerlach came to the conclusion that the sincere, capable and forward-looking Communists were best able to change China from a poor country oppressed by foreigners into a strong, wealthy and independent nation.

The Chinese had a real respect for nearly all the [YWCA] secretaries they worked with, particularly for such persons as Talitha Gerlach, Maud Russell, Lily Haass and a few others.

She became involved with the Communist Party and the "national salvation" groups led by students opposed to Chiang Kai-shek's right-wing policies and efforts to appease Japan.

Gerlich was flooded by requests that arrived almost every day, such as "Can you find a place for 200 women prisoners who have been evacuated from the jail which is in the fighting zone?

[11] She would board an American liner anchored in Shanghai every week to deposit mail for the China Defense League (CDL) in Hong Kong.

[17] With the start of the Cold War the China Aid Council was accused of being a Communist front and was added to the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations.

[19] Gerlach had protectors at senior levels in the party, and unlike other foreigners was not arrested during the Cultural Revolution that Mao Zedong launched in 1966.

[23] In May 1971 she wrote to Russell asking her not to defend the imprisoned foreigners against charges of spying, but to remove works by Israel Epstein, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley and David Crook from lists of past publications in the Far East Reporter.

[24] Gerlach and 25 other foreigners were honored by Vice Premier Wang Zhen in December 1979 at a banquet in the Beijing Great Hall of the People.