Following the unsuccessful attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1922 and 1924, the British waited eight years before the 13th Dalai Lama granted permission in August 1932 for the mountain to be approached from Tibet in the north, on the condition that all the climbers taking part were British. This permission was won by the combined work of the India Office, the government of India and Lt-Col J. L. R. Weir, the British political agent in Sikkim. There was an urgency to their work owing to a British fear that the Germans, who had recently mounted expeditions to Kangchenjunga and Nanga Parbat, might next be targeting Mount Everest.