The confluence of imperialist ideologies, power and opportunity produces extreme violence in the international system from time to time. In the aftermath, the question arises whether actions taken in time might have averted the disaster. Could carefully conceived diplomatic interventions have altered the paths of Napoleonic France or Imperial Japan? Many observers of international affairs have argued that well-calculated diplomacy can indeed influence world affairs to this degree. Russian statesmen believed, for instance, that Prussia's rise to power in Germany was postponed for more than a decade by the Tsar's personal intervention in 1850 in a dispute between Prussia and Austria. One leading Russian diplomat wrote at the time to his brother that it was “a result of the legitimate influence of our Emperor that Germany and Europe are at peace.” In the 1930s, later British Prime MinisterWinston Churchill believed that the rise of Nazism would have been arrested if British policy towards Germany had not been “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, [and] all-powerful to be impotent.”

This chapter focuses on the British attempt to thwart German imperialism in 1938–1939. It examines British threats, offers and assurances and the German high command reactions. It considers what the British did, and what they might have done. Through a systematic analysis of documentary material, it evaluates the signaling hypotheses against the documentary record of determinants of German perceptions of British intentions, from the posturing over the Czechoslovakia question to the start of the Second World War.

The series of cases embodied in German views of British intentions in 1938–1939 are well-suited to evaluating the signaling hypotheses for three principal reasons. First, the facts of the cases correspond closely to the setup of the formal models and, of particular note in this regard, the bargaining involved decisions about the scope of demands. In the crises over both Poland and Czechoslovakia, the sides negotiated over several recognized options to settle the disputes and the parties had opposite preference rankings over these possible outcomes. Prior to diplomatic signaling, both sides were also believed by the other to be relatively unlikely to be willing to make maximalist concessions. Thus, the basic facts of the case suggest informative costless signaling based on the Scope of Demand mechanism.