British spies also tracked the group’s efforts to forge ties with Britain’s Boy Scout movement, with which it shared a fondness for shorts and outdoor exercise, though not a fascist ideology.
The file records a trip to Britain by Hitler Youth chief of staff Hartmann Lauterbacher and Nazi officials that included a visit to an army physical training school.
“I noted that their party smoked and drank double whiskies, and I wondered whether they did this when they were with the Hitler Youth,” a British official said.
The visitors also dined with Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the scouting movement, who reported that Lauterbacher had invited him to meet Hitler.
He told Lauterbacher that “I was fully in favor of anything that would bring about a better understanding between our nations,” but sought official advice on what attitude to take toward the German advances.
MI5 was noncommittal, hoping to use links with the Hitler Youth to get information on German activities.
By 1944, British spies were under no illusions about the nature of the group, whose members were increasingly being mobilized as troops to make up for heavy German casualties in the war.
“The Hitler Youth is not a Boy Scout or Girl Guide organization,” said MI5’s 1944 handbook on the organization, underlining the word “not.”
“It is a compulsory Nazi formation, which has consciously sought to breed hate, treachery and cruelty into the mind and soul of every German child. It is in the true sense of the word, ‘education for death,’” it read. “Under no circumstances should the Hitler Youth be taken lightly.”
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