War, not a world war. To prevent any British offer that might stop the war, Ribbentrop ordered for none of his ambassadors in London, Paris and Warsaw to be at their posts. On 14 August 1939, Dirksen arrived in Berlin to take a vacation in Germany and was told by Weizsäcker that he was under no condition to return to London. At the same time, Weizsäcker also informed Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador to France, and Count Hans-Adolf von Moltke, the German ambassador to Poland, who had also been ordered to take a vacation in Germany, that neither men were to return to their posts. Dirksen, in turn, mentioned that to Baron Bernardo Attolico, the Italian ambassador to Germany, to say it was going to be war for certain in the summer and observed that if his country wanted a peaceful resolution of the Danzig Crisis, the ambassadors to Britain, France and Poland would have been ordered to return to their embassies. Attolico reported that to Rome, and as the Germans had broken the Italian diplomatic codes, Dirksen was summoned to the Wilhelmstrasse by Ribbentrop to be screamed at and berated for his incompetence and to be told that he was now excluded from all political discussions as a security risk. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, that was followed by a British declaration of war on Germany on 3 September, an effect of which was the ruin of Dirksen's diplomatic career, and he never held a major post again. World War II Dirksen spent most of the war at Gröditzberg and his estate in Silesia at Gröditz (now Grodziec, Poland). As a leading expert on the subject, Dirksen often gave talks on the Soviet Union at various locales throughout Europe, such as to Wehrmacht generals, most notably Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, who visited Gröditzberg to ask Dirksen for advice. As many of the farm labourers who worked Dirksen's estate were called up for service with the Wehrmacht, Dirksen used slave labour from Poland as replacement workers to tend to the sugar beet fields on his estate. In 1943, Dirksen published a picture book, Freundesland im Osten ein Nipponbuch in Bildern, containing a collection of photographs of daily Japanese life that he had taken during his time as ambassador in Japan. In February 1945, Gröditzberg was taken by the Red Army. Dirksen chose to stay