August Jäger, the Nazi-appointed President of the Supreme Church Council, chose this moment to extend compulsory centralisation for the first time to the South German Regional Churches. In the first weeks of October he put first Wurm, then Meiser, under house arrest. This led to spontaneous demonstrations in support of the two bishops in the streets of Stuttgart and Munich. The general clamour, together with the surprising unanimity at Dahlem, even penetrated to Hitler. On 26 October Jäger resigned. The two bishops were released and, together with Bishop Mahrarens of Hanover, were received by Hitler. Hitler then publicly dissociated himself from the Reich Church. It seemed for a time as though a victory had been won. But after some weeks cracks began to appear in the Confessing Church once more. 'It had taken fright at its own daring,' writes Bethge, 'and there was growing criticism of the Dahlem resolution.'24 As a result, Hitler never needed to take further notice of the emergency organisations set up by the Synod. No further attempt was made, however, to bring the Southern regions and Hanover under central control.

At the Stuttgart gatherings in January 1934 Buchman and his friends received the first intimation that their meetings were being watched by the Gestapo. At one of the early meetings they realised that there was an informer amongst them, and those leading the house-party decided to speak with this man in mind - to give him the fullest information of what God could do in a person's life. He is said to have reported back to his chief, 'Those people have a strange God who can actually help them!' In April Dr Alois Münch, who had begun to have group meetings in his house in Munich, was questioned for two and a half hours by the political police - probably because some Jewish people were attending.25 When some Germans went to a house-party in Thun, Switzerland, in August of the same year, their statements were known to the Gestapo within a few days. Word reached Frau von Cramon, through her SS source in Silesia, that the Gestapo were about to take action against the Oxford Group as an international spy network. She prepared a memorandum which was sent to headquarters by the Silesian SS officer. This, for the time being, averted the danger of suppression. The original report, however, lay on the files.

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