The directive is in DVP, 1936, XIX, doc. 71. Expressing his personal views, Maisky warned against Hitler’s proposal for a non-aggression pact with Czechoslovakia and Austria. He expected the Germans to concoct some internal agitation which would ‘lead to an Anschluss’. Negotiation on Germany’s return to the League could only take place after a show of force by the ‘three great nations of the League’ – England, France and Russia. At a follow-up meeting, he conveyed the Soviet government’s grave concern and opposition to any negotiations or exploratory conversations with the German government. It was ‘the last in a long chain of actions which … could only end, if not stopped, in the complete destruction of the League and collective security’. Germany had become, ‘to use an American phrase, “Aggressor No. 1”’ and the Soviet Union was prepared to ‘take part in any action, whatever it might be, which was decided by the League’; TNA FO 371 19889 C1602/4/18 & 19890 C1716/4/18. The Soviet opposition to any negotiations was conveyed by Maisky through Corbin, the French ambassador in London, and provoked strong German reactions, Documents on German Foreign Policy (London, 1956) (hereafter DGFP), V, 141. See also H. Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II (Cambridge, UK, 2004), p. 28.