Hitler and told him of his fears of a general war and of his belief that the British were prepared to pressure the Czechoslovak government into ceding the Sudetenland to Germany as the price for peace. Hitler was not interested in a peaceful resolution of the Sudetenland dispute or in Dirksen's views. During the congress, Hitler, in his keynote speech on 12 September 1938, laid claim to the Sudetenland and announced if it was not allowed to return to Germany by 1 October, he would invade Czechoslovakia, which escalated the crisis and took Europe to the brink of war. In the September 1938 crisis that led to the Munich Agreement, Dirksen played only a small role, but as a diplomat with an elegant bearing and aristocratic manners whose fluent English and polite ways charmed many in Britain, Dirksen was the respectable face of Germany in Britain in 1938. As a professional diplomat and an aristocrat, Dirksen enjoyed a good rapport with the British elite. His insistence that Hitler was wanted only to correct the "injustices" of Versailles, not to dominate Europe, impressed many of the British policymakers he met. Unlike Ribbentrop, whose arrogance and ignorance led him to commit many social gaffes, the eminently-"correct" Dirksen, with his perfect gentleman's manners, made a favourable impression in London. Immediately after the Munich Agreement and the Anglo-German Declaration, both signed on 30 September 1938, Dirksen was told by Ribbentrop that the declaration, which committed the two nations never to go to war again, meant nothing to Hitler. However, knowing that Chamberlain attached great importance to the declaration, Dirksen was told to act as if it did. In October 1938, in a dispatch to Berlin, Dirksen reported that the British public reaction to Hitler's Saarbrücken speech on 3 October 1938, stating that Germany would not tolerate British "interference" in the affairs of Europe, had been highly negative. Dirksen also advised Hitler to stop attacking by name two Conservative backbenchers in the House of Commons, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, since his speeches raised their profile in the British press. Finally, Dirksen reported that based on his meetings with members of the British cabinet that, he believed that the Chamberlain government was seeking an Anglo-German détente. Dirksen advised that Germany take up the British offer of "disarmament", which, in the 1930s. He predicted that to lead to Chamberlain offering to return to Germany its former