won the Iron Cross, Second Class. The American historian Carl Schorske described Dirksen as a "correct and proper aristocrat with the right connections" but also a man who was slavishly loyal to those who held power. Entering the Auswärtiges Amt in 1917, Dirksen served in the Hague (1917), Kiev (1918–1919) and in Warsaw (1920–1921). Enemy of Poland In April 1920, Dirksen arrived in Warsaw to take up the post of chargé d'affaires. As the chargé d'affaires of the German embassy in Warsaw, Dirksen's relations with the Poles were extremely difficult. As Germany had no ambassador stationed at its embassy in Warsaw, Dirksen as the chargé d'affaires was in effect the ambassador to Poland. A measure of his antipathy to Poles can be seen in that the chapter of his 1950 memoirs dealing with his time in Warsaw, virtually all of Dirksen's comments about Poland and Poles are negative. In his memoirs, Dirksen wrote that he "shared the deep-seated feeling of superiority over the Pole inherent in the German". In May 1921, a plebiscite to decide the status of Silesia led to fighting between the Germans and Poles in Upper Silesia, both of whom were supported by their respective national governments, which caused strained relations between Berlin and Warsaw. As someone who had grown in Silesia, Dirksen's sympathies were completely with the Germans, which led him to insist that all of Silesia belonged to Germany and none of the parts of Silesia that voted to join Poland should be allowed to leave Germany. In October 1921, Dirksen left Warsaw to head up the Polish desk at the Auswärtiges Amt. From May 1923 to February 1925, Dirksen served as German consul in the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland). The fourteenth of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points had announced that Poland should have its independence restored with secure access to the Baltic Sea. Taking up that point, the Poles had pressed at the Paris Peace Conference to annex Danzig, despite being mostly German, but instead, the Allies compromised by creating the Free City of Danzig, an independent city-state under the protection of the League of Nations in which Poland was granted certain special rights. Most people in Danzig wished to rejoin Germany, but the Poles were unwilling to see any change in Danzig's status. As German consul in Danzig, Dirksen often clashed with the Poles. As consul in Danzig, Dirksen played a