Berchtesgaden, Powell wrote in a letter to his parents on 18 September 1938: During the winter of 1938–1939 he travelled to Britain to arrange his appointment as professor of Greek and classical literature at Durham University, which he was due to take up in 1940. After his arrival in Britain he visited Germany and later remembered his "sensation of embarrassment on producing a British passport at the German frontier in December 1938". He met again Paul Maas, other German Jews and members of the anti-Nazi movement, and helped Maas obtain a British visa from the British consul, which enabled Maas to escape Germany just before war broke out. In another letter to his parents in June 1939, before the beginning of war, Powell wrote: "It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors". At the outbreak of war, Powell immediately returned to the UK, but not before buying a Russian dictionary, since he thought "Russia would hold the key to our survival and victory, as it had in 1812 and 1916". Military service During October 1939, almost a month after returning home from Australia, Powell enlisted as a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He had trouble enlisting, as during the "Phoney War" the War Office did not want men with no military training. Rather than waiting to be called up, he claimed to be Australian, as Australians, many of whom had travelled to Britain at great expense to join up, were allowed to enlist straight away. In a poem, he wrote of men joining the army like "bridegrooms going to meet their brides", but his biographer points out that it is unlikely that many other men shared his joy, particularly not those who were leaving actual brides behind. He purchased a copy of Carl von Clausewitz's On War in the original German in a second-hand bookshop, which he read every night. In later years, Powell recorded his promotion from private to lance-corporal in his Who's Who entry, on other occasions describing it as a greater promotion than entering the Cabinet. Early in 1940, he was trained for a commission after, while working in a kitchen, answering the question of an inspecting brigadier with a Greek proverb; on several occasions, he told colleagues that he expected to be at least a major-general by