Himmler looked perplexed. 'Are you so tied up with this foreigner and his group?'

She replied, 'Yes. I have accepted the total claim of God on my life, and it was these people who showed me the way to that.'

'Well,' said Himmler, 'as far as I am concerned you can ask them.'

During these conversations Himmler, who had been brought up a Catholic, said to her, 'Tell me, who is Christ?' He maintained it was 'Jewish' to push off on to others the responsibility for one's sins. 'I do not need Christ,' he said.

She asked, 'What are you going to do about your sins which no one can take from you and which you cannot put right?'

He replied, 'As an Aryan I must have the courage to take the responsibility for my sins alone.'

She said, 'You cannot do that, because your disobedience to God is robbing Germany of the plan He has for her.'

He concluded, 'I can do without Christ because Christ means the Church and my Church has excommunicated me.' Several times he came back to this topic.

Moni von Cramon did not like Himmler's offer. She and all her family distrusted Hitler. But she continued to feel that it was her duty to maintain contact with the leaders of Germany so that perhaps some of them might change, as she had changed. That, she thought, was the only hope of averting disaster.

After consulting with Buchman, Frau von Cramon agreed to do what she could for the German women, stipulating that she would on no account compromise the basic convictions of her faith or her freedom of operation. This was conceded; but she was speedily neutralised by others in the organisation. She functioned in name for eighteen months, in fact - due to illness - for five months, and exercised some influence in restraining hotheads, but was removed when her enemies found that she had warned an Oxford Group friend who was helping Jews in Berlin. After that she never saw Himmler again. She was finally dismissed when, during an investigation by Frau Scholz-Klink, the national head of the Nazi women, she refused to take the oath of total obedience to the Party.

Buchman used the brief breathing-space provided by the Gestapo's knowledge that he had a friend at Himmler's court to express his message through local meetings, conducted under the eyes of police agents, and through the printed word. As late as 20 May 1937 the North West headquarters of the Gestapo reported that 'the Group is beginning to spread effectively through Germany and is trying, apparently with success, to gain influence in Party circles' and stated that 'the Reichsführer SS has ordered the maintenance of the strictest observation of the movement'.1

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