he was Neurath's son-in-law, which made him stay on as State Secretary unacceptable to Ribbentrop. The German embassy in Britain was traditionally one of the most prestigious "grand embassies" operated by the Auswärtiges Amt, and his appointment was a major promotion for Dirksen. Unlike Ribbentrop who was an amateur diplomat who caused an endless number of gaffes during his time as ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Dirksen was a professional diplomat, and his appointment was very much welcomed in London, as the British regarded him as "a man of ability", unlike his predecessor. In 1938 to 1939, he was German Ambassador to Britain and was appointed on 7 April 1938. Dirksen's relations with his superior, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, were very poor since he despised Ribbentrop as "an unwholesome, half-comical figure". Dirksen wrote in his 1950 memoirs Moskau, Tokyo, London, "During my term of office in London, Hitler never once took the trouble of following up on British offers of negotiations, even if only as a pretense. He never even answered".<ref>Weinberg Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II 1937–39', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 page 100.</ref> On 24 April 1938, Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten Heimatfront, which was supported by nearly all of the ethnic Germans in the Czechoslovak Parliament, had announced the Karlsbad Program at a party congress in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic). He demanded wide-ranging autonomy for the Sudetenland but also announced that he was still loyal to Czechoslovakia. The German government declared its support for the Karlsbad Programme, which had been secretly drafted in March at a meeting between Hitler and Henlein. That began the crisis in Central Europe that was to end by the Munich Agreement. The apparent moderation of Germany to demand only autonomy for the Sudetenland masked a sinister purpose to make it appear that Czechoslovakia was intransigent by refusing to grant autonomy for the Sudetenland, thus "forcing" Germany to invade. Henlein had promised to Hitler, "We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied". On 3 May 1938, Dirksen presented his accreditation to King George VI at Buckingham Palace and formally become the ambassador to Britain. After arriving in London, Dirksen told Viscount Astor that the speech of the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after the Anschluss had "closed the door" on further Anglo-German talks for a