In 1935, Philippe Mottu meets for the first time Frank Buchman, the Oxford Group's founder who visits Geneva with a team in order to talk to League of Nations delegates.
During a British bombardment, a top German Foreign Affairs official, Hans-Bernd von Haften, asked him: "As Christians, are we allowed to kill Hitler?
A few days after the joint US-British Normandy landings on 6 June 1944, Mottu was in Stuttgart with von Trott and his group of friends : their coup was imminent.
In 1943 already, a recurring thought had come to him: "If Switzerland escapes the ravages of this war, its mission will be to create a venue where French and Germans will be able to reconcile and build peace.
[2]" With the financial support of around 100 Swiss families, Philippe Mottu and one of his friends Robert Hahnloser bought the derelict Caux Palace Hotel in 1946.
It was repaired and refurbished thanks to the efforts of the Swiss and international teams, and, between 1946 and 1950, it welcomed thousands of French and German participants, among whom Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman, who will later rely on their exceptional mutual trust to launch the first steps of the European construction.
Building on a vast culture and on a rigorous analysis of his time's trends, he for instance exposed the rise of intolerance and extremism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam;[12] he was searching in which way humanity would adapt to the momentous transformations of the 20th century, and develop a harmonious society in the future, expressing the hope is that humanity will find spiritual resources allowing it to envisage its future with « a measure of serenity".
He was also a daring entrepreneur who signed the purchase contract for Caux in 1946, together with Robert Hahnloser, risking his name without knowing whether the necessary funds would be found in order to meet the down payments deadline.