On 6 May 1939, Goerdeler leaked information to the British Foreign Office stating that the German and Soviet governments were secretly beginning a rapprochement, with the aim of dividing Eastern Europe between them. In May 1939, Goerdeler visited London to repeat the same message to the British government. During his London trip, Goerdeler told the British that the state of the German economy was so deplorable that war, even if it occurred, would only accelerate the German economic collapse and that Germany simply lacked the economic staying power for an extended war. During the same visit to London in May 1939, Goerdeler claimed that the German Army leadership was willing to overthrow the regime, that he himself favored launching a "putsch" immediately, but that "the leaders of the whole movement... still considered it too early". The German historian Klaus-Jürgen Müller commented that Goerdeler in making these claims was either lying to the British or else was seriously self-deluded. Goerdeler's assessment of the German diplomatic-military-economic situation had considerable influence on decisionmakers in the British and French governments in 1939, who, based on his reports, believed that a firm Anglo-French diplomatic stand for Poland might bring about the fall of Hitler without a war or, at least, would ensure that the Allies faced war on relatively auspicious economic terms.