Buchman also realised, from the beginning, that the total claim which Hitler put forward for the state, if not modified, must ultimately clash with the total demands of God which he himself insisted on. This attitude was typified in a comment written by Ruth Bennett to Frau von Cramon in June 1933: 'I do hope, for Germany's sake, that God will come first and your country second all the way through. In Los Angeles you reversed the order.'11

Reginald Holme was at first greatly taken by the Nazis' flair and efficiency. He travelled with Buchman in Germany in 1934, and writes, 'I remember Buchman telling me, "Be very clear on this. What we see here is not Christian revolution. But why are the Christians still asleep in their beds when the Nazis can get their men marching early on Sunday morning? The trouble is that when you think of religion, you think of a preacher. You have got to think in terms of a whole nation becoming Christian."'

Buchman felt keenly that the German Lutheran Church, the tradition into which he had been born, had failed to give Germany an adequate challenge to live complete Christianity: 'I am convinced that, if it had been living the life and been on the march for Christ, the Lutheran Church would have had an answer for Germany.'

Having failed to reach Hitler directly and aware that the National Socialist movement had pre-empted any attempt he might have made to work for a large-scale Christian awakening through campaigns after the model of South Africa and Canada, Buchman now concentrated, in what time was available to him, on those Lutheran leaders who appeared to have any chance of redirecting the regime and its followers.

The Lutheran Church was already deeply divided, politically and theologically, into two main streams - the traditional Evangelical Church and the 'German Christians' - and many rivulets. Hitler was hoping to gain control of the Church through the 'German Christians', a body organised by the Nazis in 1932 on foundations stretching back into the early 1920s. At the National Conference of the German Christians in April 1933 those who wished to apply Nazi Party tenets to a unified German Church mingled with many moderates who were, in Eberhard Bethge's words, 'less drastic' and 'at bottom inspired by true missionary zeal . . . for example Professor Fezer of Tübingen'.12 The young Bishop Hossenfelder of Brandenburg was the leader of the German Christians. On 26 April Hitler appointed Ludwig Müller, a hitherto unknown chaplain to the forces in Königsberg, to be his confidential adviser and plenipotentiary in questions concerning the Evangelical Church.

209