BUCHMAN'S COMMENTS ABOUT HITLER
Frank Buchman was the founder of the Oxford Group, which is where AA got most of their Steps and spiritual principles from.
Regarding the interview by William Birnie of the New York WorldGarret Stearly, who was there, wrote, "Buchman said Germany needed a new Christian Spirit, yet one had to face the fact that Hitler had been the bulwark (which means to fortify or safeguard) against Communism there _at least you could thank heaven for that. It was a throw away line. No eulogy (which means high praise) for Hitler at all." Birnie himself said later that
he found the tone of his article different than what he submitted, "My recollection was that he was not endorsing nor condemning Hitler."
In April 1936 Buchman met with Himmler to try and get an interview with Hitler hoping to affect a change in the German leader. The meeting with Himmler was a complete disaster and Buchman was never able to reach Hitler.
Buchman was vilified (which means to utter slanderous and abusive statements against) for never denouncing Hitler. He never denounced anyone, even his most vicious detractors, because he believed it would limit his ability to help in the future.
In the same month as the Buchman interview (1936), Prime Minister Lloyd George called Hitler the "George Washington of Germany." In 1938, Winston Churchill said, "If Britain were defeated in a war, I would hope we could find a Hitler to bring us back to our rightful place among nations".
In 1939, the Gestapo produced a 126 page report that stated, "The Oxford Group constitutes an attack upon the nationalism of the state and demands utmost watchfulness on the part of the state. It preaches revolution and is our Christian opponent." In 1942 the Gestapo described the Group as, "Preaching equality of all men... No other Christian movement has underlined and so strongly played up the characteristic of Christianity as being supernational and independent of all racial barriers...... It frantically tries to make all men brothers."
In describing the Oxford Group work in Denmark, the Dutch Nazi's decried, "The Oxford Group was founded by the British Jew Frank Buchman. We all remember the disgustingly unOxford Group demonstration in our country a few years ago."
The United States Selective Service Administration found that, "MRA (the Oxford Group changed its name to Moral Rein the late 1930's) drew the fire equally of Nazis and Communists, of the extreme right and extreme left in politics, of aggressive atheists and narrow ecclesiastics. It was charged with by radicals as being militaristic and by warmongers as being pacificistic. Certain elements in labor denounced it as anti; certain elements in management as pro
In Britain, MRA was accused by some as being a clever front for Fascism; in Japan and Germany of being a superarm of the British and American Secret Service. One day a section of the press would announce that MRA was defunct (which means no longer existing); and the next that it numbered nearly the entire British Cabinet at the time of Munich, and was responsible for Hitlers attack on Russia.
Nothing but a potentially vast moral and spiritual reformation of global proportions could possibly be honored by antagonisms so venomous and contradictory in nature, and so in worldwide scope.
Taken from "On the Tail of a Comet" by Garth Lean.