The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policyofappeasement.
British prime minister from 1937, he followed a policyofappeasement with Nazi Germany in the years before World War II, negotiating the Munich agreement with Adolph Hitler in 1938.