Nazis tried to infiltrate boy scouts

Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, was once quite keen on the idea of his organisation forging close links with the Nazis' Hitler Youth movement, according to leaked MI5 documents.

The colonial warrior, whose best-selling military training manuals started the Scouting phenomenon, was wined and dined by senior Hitler Youth figures and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to Britain, in the run-up to the Second World War.

von Ribbentrop made a lengthy plea in 1937 for the two organisations to be put in "closer touch".

The proposed alliance between the Scouts and the Hitler Youth, whose members were indoctrinated in anti-Semitism and told they would become "Aryan supermen", coincided with growing alarm in MI5 at a sudden influx of uniformed German youngsters taking part in pre-war cycling tours around Britain.

Amid newspaper warnings that the touring parties of Hitler Youth were "spyclists" gathering information on Britain's infrastructure, the head of the security service ordered police and Special Branch officers to report on the activities of the two-wheeled "fifth columnists" as they made their way around Britain from Surrey to Aberdeen and were treated to "sausage and mashed potato" suppers by Rotary Clubs and Scouts groups.

The documents, released by the National Archives in Kew, Surrey, reveal Baden-Powell's enthusiasm for the brown-shirted Hitler Youth during a visit to London by Hartmann Lauterbacher, the chief of staff of the Nazi organisation, in November 1937.

Noting approvingly that Lauterbacher, whose visit included tours of Eton and an Army physical training school, wanted to build strong ties between the British and German youth movements, Baden-Powell spoke in glowing terms of Von Ribbentrop, the senior Nazi who became the architect of Hitler's foreign policy.

In an internal Scout Association memo obtained by MI5 about a dinner with Von Ribbentrop at the German embassy, Baden-Powell wrote: "I had a long talk with the Ambassador who was very insistent that true peace between the two nations will depend on the youth being brought up on friendly terms together in forgetfulness of past differences.

"He sees in the Scout Movement a very powerful agency for helping to bring this about if we can get into closer touch with the Jugend Movement in Germany. I told him that I was fully in favour of anything that would bring about a better understanding between our nations."

Baden-Powell, who later read Mein Kampf and praised it is as a "wonderful book", added that Von Ribbentrop had invited him to visit Hitler and he had lifted a ban on Scouts wearing their uniforms while visiting Germany in the hope that British youngsters would head off on visits to the Third Reich.

But in reality, the ageing Chief Scout, who died in 1941 aged 83, had fallen for an exercise in Nazi duplicity. While Von Ribbentrop was outwardly enthusiastic about an Anglo-German alliance, he had soured dramatically towards Britain and was privately advising Hitler of the inevitability of war with London. By the time of the outbreak of hostilities, Baden- Powell featured in the Black Book - the SS masterlist of people to be arrested if Germany successfully invaded Britain.

The documents show that while Baden-Powell was receptive to the overtures of the Nazis, MI5 felt obliged to investigate public concerns about the sudden appearance of Hitler Youth in the UK. Reports from Special Branch officers detail the movements of cycling parties in locations from Caernarfon to Spalding and Harwich to Aberdeen to assess whether they were on a clandestine intelligence operation.

Public suspicion was heightened when the magazine German Cyclist offered some advice on what its members might do while riding abroad.

It said: "Impress on your memory the roads and paths, villages and towns, outstanding church towers and other landmarks... Note the names, places, rivers, seas and mountains. Perhaps you may be able to utilise these some time for the benefit of the Fatherland.

"Should you come to a bridge which interests you, examine its construction and the materials used. Learn to measure and estimate the width of streams. Wade through fords so that you will be able to find them in the dark."

The secret files suggest that no evidence was found of espionage by the Hitler Youth but also record how the British government "strongly deprecated" any entente cordiale with the Scouts.

An intelligence manual issued to MI5 and MI6 agents in 1944, warned: "The Hitler Youth is not a Boy Scout organisation. It is in no respect comparable to any organisation for young people known to the Western World.

"It is a compulsory Nazi formation, which has consciously sought to breed hate, treachery and cruelty in the mind and soul of every German child. It is, in the true sense of the word, `education for death'."

- INDEPENDENT