At a Cabinet meeting on 3 May 1939, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Stanhope, stated that "at the present time Germany was building ships as fast as she could but that she would not be able to exceed the 35 per cent ratio before 1942 or 1943". Chatfield, now Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, commented that Hitler had "persuaded himself" that the UK had provided the "Reich" with a "free hand" in Eastern Europe in exchange for the agreement. Chamberlain stated that the UK had never given such an understanding to Germany, and he commented that he first learned of Hitler's belief in such an implied bargain during his meeting with the Führer at the Berchtesgaden summit in September 1938. In a later paper to the Cabinet, Chatfield stated "that we might say that we now understood Herr Hitler had in 1935 thought that we had given him a free hand in Eastern and Central Europe in return for his acceptance of the 100:35 ratio, but that as we could not accept the correctness of this view it might be better that the 1935 arrangements should be abrogated".