Spyclists: how Hitler Youth's cycling tours caused panic in prewar Britain

[jimmy olsen]

I found this story quite amusing for some reason. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/08/hitler-youth-prewar-cyclists-boy-scouts

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Spyclists: how Hitler Youth's cycling tours caused panic in prewar Britain

Nazis' bid to forge ties with Lord Baden-Powell and boy scouts rang government alarm bells

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    * Owen Bowcott
    * The Guardian, Monday 8 March 2010
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National Archives records released

The front page of the Lincolnshire, Boston and Spalding Free Press from 3 August, 1937. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, was invited to meet Adolf Hitler after holding friendly talks about forming closer ties with the Hitler Youth, newly declassified MI5 files reveal. Photograph: National Archives/PA

Cycling tours by Hitler Youth groups and Nazi attempts to establish close links with the Boy Scout movement caused a security panic in prewar Britain, according to MI5 files released today.

Police officers were alerted to monitor German students on bicycle holidays in the late 1930s as they stopped at schools, Rotary clubs, factories and church services.

An effusively amicable meeting between Lord Baden-Powell, head of the Scout movement, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, rang even louder alarm bells in Whitehall.

Fears that these "spyclists" were on clandestine reconnaissance rides first emerged in spring 1937, triggering concern at the highest levels of the security service as the arms race with Nazi Germany intensified.

Many of the letters requesting surveillance that have now been released to the National Archives at Kew are by Sir Vernon Kell, who was director-general of MI5 at the time.

Anxiety about the activities of the Hitler Youth movement coincided with the appearance in Britain of one of its most senior figures, Jochen Benemann, who had been sent to London in 1937, ostensibly to study English. His post was routinely opened and copied by British intelligence officers.

The term "spyclists" was initially coined in an excitable Daily Herald article. Delving into its source, intelligence officers discovered it came from an anti-fascist freelance writer in Prague who based his story on an item in the German Cyclist magazine.

"Impress on your memory the roads and paths, villages and towns, outstanding church towers and other landmarks so that you will not forget them," the magazine item suggested. "Make a note of the names of places, rivers, seas and mountains. Perhaps you should be able to utilise these sometime for the benefit of the Fatherland ... Wade through fords so that you will be able to find them in the dark."

An MI5 officer described these as "alleged instructions to Nazi parties cycling in foreign countries". Requests went out to chief constables asking police officers to report on any German cycling parties.

One of Kell's letters, sent to Grimsby, said: "We have received information that a party of young Germans [are] due to arrive [and] are intending to bicycle to London by easy stages. Should they pass through your area we should be interested in any details you can let us have about the route they follow."

Police superintendent T Dawson informed the security service from Spalding, Lincolnshire, that: "At about 4pm on Friday the 16th July, I saw a party of seven young men cycling along the Bolton to Spalding main road ... These young men were dressed in shorts with jackets, each off them had what appeared to be a food can strapped on the carriers at the rear of their cycles. I feel confident they were German subjects. I did not speak to any of them."

A newspaper story from the Boston and Spalding Free Press, included in the MI5 files, recorded the party's reception at a Rotary club dinner. Other cycling parties were monitored.

The Home Office also informed MI5 it was worried about "Nazi youths foregathering with Boy Scouts". Kell wrote back that he had learned that "the Tamworth Boy Scout troup is to take part in a Hitler Jugend [Youth] camp near Hamburg".

There were reports of German students carrying cameras on visits to steelworks in Sheffield and singing German songs in a church in Dalston.

The arrival of Hartmann Lauterbacher, deputy leader of the Hitler Youth movement, in November 1937 raised the level of anxiety. Lauterbacher and Benemann were present when Baden-Powell was invited to the German embassy. The chief scout's gushing letter of thanks and a report to the Scout movement were handed to MI5 – presumably by another Scouting official – and are preserved in the files. Baden-Powell's letter to Ribbentrop said: "I sincerely hope that we shall be able to give expression to [co-operation] through the youth on both sides."

In his letter to Scouting colleagues, Baden-Powell revealed he had been invited to visit Hitler in Germany and added: "Both Lauterbacher and Benemann are most anxious that the Scouts should come into closer touch with the youth movement in Germany.

"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 ... Ribbentrop seemed very much in earnest and was a charming man to talk to. I knew his uncle in India who was head of the woods and forests there."

A ban on Scouts wearing uniforms on visits to Germany would be lifted, the chief scout added. It had been imposed because the "Socialist press" made difficulties about a scout troop being present at "a fascist demonstration in Germany".

Shortly afterwards Baden-Powell left to visit South Africa and an MI5 officer went to talk to the Scouting movement. He advised that they might want to "discuss the issues with someone in the government". Lord Cranborne, then a Dominions Office minister, subsequently discouraged the idea of closer links between the Hitler Youth and Boy Scout movements.

While in Britain Lauterbacher also toured Eton and the army school of physical training in Aldershot. Lieutenant Colonel TH Wand-Tetley, its commander, submitted a report to "Box 500", the old term for MI5.

"I piloted the party around the school myself and showed them our normal work and later gave them lunch at the officers' club," Wand‑Tetley said.

"They expressed no opinions in regard to youth movements but seemed very interested in the technique of our training. I noted that their party smoked and drank double whiskies and I wondered whether they did this with the Hitler Youth."