Scout founder wanted closer ties with Nazis

His cordial meeting with a leader of the Nazi boys' club came as intelligence chiefs were investigating fears that Hitler Youth groups were using cycling holidays in Britain as a cover for espionage.

The Security Service was so concerned about the danger posed by "spyclists" that it ordered police to report whenever a group of touring German cyclists arrived in the country.

MI5 took a close interest in a visit to Britain by 28-year-old Hartmann Lauterbacher, chief of staff of the Hitler Youth, in November 1937, the previously secret files released today by the National Archives show.

The main aim of his trip was to foster closer relations with the British Boy Scout movement formed by Baden-Powell in 1907, although he also visited Eton College in Windsor, Berkshire, and the Army Gymnastic School in Aldershot, Hampshire.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was German ambassador to London at the time and became Hitler's foreign minister the next year, invited the Scout leader to tea with Lauterbacher on 19 November 1937.

Baden-Powell, who attended with a Girl Guides leader, appears to have been impressed by the senior Nazi officials.

He wrote to von Ribbentrop the next day: "I am grateful for the kind conversation you accorded me which opened my eyes to the feeling of your country towards Britain, which I may say reciprocates exactly the feeling which I have for Germany.

"I sincerely hope that we shall be able, in the near future, to give expression to it through the youth on both sides, and I will at once consult my headquarters officers and see what suggestions they can put forward."

In a report on his meeting, Baden-Powell described von Ribbentrop as an "earnest" and "charming" man, noting that he knew his uncle from his time in India.

He wrote: "I had a long talk with the ambassador, who was very insistent that the 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 (Youth) movement in Germany.

"To help this he suggested that if possible we should send one or two men to meet their leaders in Germany and talk matters over and, especially, he would like me to go and see Hitler after I am back from Africa."

He went on: "I told him that I was fully in favour of anything that would bring about a better understanding between our nations, and hoped to have further talks with him when I return."

Baden-Powell also told von Ribbentrop about the difficulties he had with the "socialist press" when a number of British Scouts appeared in uniform at a fascist demonstration in Germany.

There is no evidence that Baden-Powell's meeting with Hitler ever took place.

The MI5 files also reveal that Hitler Youth officials tried to get prime minister Neville Chamberlain and other leading British parliamentarians to write articles for a special English edition of their paper, Wille Und Macht.

In December 1937 Philip Conwell-Evans, secretary of the Anglo-German Fellowship, wrote to Hitler Youth co-ordinator Jochen Benemann offering to help commission pieces for the issue. He said: "We have many distinguished members of both Houses of Parliament, and I will write to four or five of them, Lords and Commons, for contributions. I will then approach the prime minister and ask whether he would also contribute something."

The fear that German cyclists were carrying out covert spying operations in Britain appears to stem from a May 1937 article in the now-defunct Daily Herald newspaper.

Under the headline "NAZIS MUST BE SPYCLISTS", it warned that the Nazi Cyclists Association had just issued orders to its members who were spending holidays abroad.

A similar article appeared in a magazine called The Cyclist a month later, saying that touring German cyclists had been told: "Impress on your memory the roads and paths, villages and towns, outstanding church towers and other landmarks so that you will not forget them.

"Make a note of the names of 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 the 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."

MI5 was sceptical about the authenticity of these instructions because it could not trace their source in German publications.

Nonetheless the intelligence agency collected dozens of reports of groups of uniformed Hitler Youth touring Britain.

In the years before the outbreak of the Second World War, parties of German boys criss-crossed the UK on bicycle, receiving warm welcomes almost everywhere they went.