LORD Baden-Powell who held his first Scout camps on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour was invited to have meetings with Hitler about forming closer links with his Youth Movement.

The startling information has just been released in declassified MI5 files.

Lord Baden-Powell met 28-year-old Hartmann Lauterbacher, chief of staff of the Hitler Youth Movement, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, German Ambassador to London, in November 1937.

The main aim of Lauterbacher’s visit was to foster closer relations with the British Boy Scout movement formed by Baden-Powell in 1907.

Baden-Powell also discussed with von Ribbentrop the difficulties he had with the “socialist press” after some British Scouts had appeared in uniform at a fascist demonstration in Germany.

After the meeting Baden-Powell wrote to von Ribbentrop, who later became Hitler’s Foreign Minister, saying: “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 the meeting he wrote about the possibility of sending a representative or two to go to Germany to meet the Jugend [Youth] leaders and that Ribbentrop wanted him to travel to Germany to meet Hitler at a later date.

He continued: “I told him [Ribbentrop] 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 from Africa.”

However, there is no evidence that any such meeting with the Nazi leader ever materialised.

The exchange happened at a time when Britons were being warned about German “spyclists” touring the country and noting landmarks for the “some time benefit of the Fatherland”.