In 1936, the year of the occupation of the Rhineland and of the Berlin Olympic Games, criticisms of Buchman's work began to appear in Nazi publications. In February, General Ludendorff’s extremist newspaper Aryan lined up the Oxford Group as one of the 'sinister international forces which wage constant underground war against Germany'.2Berlingske Aftenavis of Copenhagen added, 'His (Ludendorff’s) last issue contained the most fearful curses against the movement. He has discovered that the Oxford Group together with the Jews, the Freemasons, the Pope and the League of Nations constitutes a supernatural power which wants to kill the German spirit.'3 In February, too, the principal article in the confidential paper issued by the ideologist of the Nazi Party, Alfred Rosenberg, was an indictment of the Group Movement in Germany,4 and on 21 July the Bavarian Political Police ordered all police authorities to send reports on the strength and composition of the Groups in their districts within two weeks.5 Later, Rosenberg described the movement as 'a second world-wide Freemasonry'.6 Time was obviously running out.

In April 1936 Countess Ursula Bentinck wrote to Buchman on his return from America, 'I want you to know that I and others feel it is high time you went to see Hitler ... I cannot write more.'7 On the back of the letter Buchman wrote, 'There is enough power in the Cross to solve the world's problems, but we Christians have not used it. A vital experience backed by national and international action would startle the world - not in old moulds but in new thought.'

Influential people in Britain and America were also urging him - some tauntingly, some seriously - to see Hitler. With some the attitude was: 'Don't bother us. We're all right. It's Hitler you need to change!' Others, while seeing the difficulties, genuinely thought he might pull something off.

Buchman went to the Olympic Games in August. When he reached Berlin, Moni von Cramon arranged for him to be invited to a lunch party with Himmler at which the hosts were a German diplomat and his wife. Buchman's objective was to get an interview where he could talk more directly to Himmler and through him reach Hitler. He got his appointment for a couple of days later.

By chance an independent witness to the purpose and outcome of this meeting presented himself twenty-six years afterwards. A Danish journalist in Berlin, Jacob Kronika,* wrote in the paper he then edited, the Flensborg Avis:

(* Kronika was the Berlin correspondent of Nationaltidende, Copenhagen, and Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, and was Chairman of the Association of Foreign Journalists in Berlin during the war. He was also the spokesman of the Danish minority in South Schleswig vis à vis the German Government (see his book Berlins Untergang (H. Hagerup.)

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