Article on Baden Powell in "The Telegraph"

[Engineer61]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7393323/Lord-Baden-Powell-invited-to-meet-Hitler-MI5-files-show.html

[Hawkrod]

Thanks for posting that, would never have seen it otherwise

[BadenP]

The fact that he read and liked Mein Kampf is a little disturbing, as is his fascination with Hitler. It is one thing to want to create better international cooperation between England and Germany but quite another to embrace that maniac Hitlers ideas of a supreme facist society, white supremacy and his other bizzare ideas.

[Eagle92]

Actually that is old news if you read GBB's "Two Lives of a Hero," or may one of the other BP Bios.

 

Gotta remember that with the conversion of the German Boy Scout and Girl Scout or Guide organizations into the Hitler Youth in the mid 1930s, BP wrote numerous letters to Hitler and other German officials in an attempt to reinstate Scouting and it back into the nascent WOSM.

 

As for him stating that Mein Kampf is a "A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organization etc. that is one of the scary things about the book. mixed into the hatred and vitriol ARE some good ideas. I believe it was Goebbals who said something like mixing some truth with your belief is a way to get people to support you, or something like that.

 

Grant you it has been a very long time since I attempted to read the book. But I remember the reason why I had to stop reading was b/c Hitler was very clever in writing and speaking. He would start out with an obvious truth, then twist and turn and rationalize his hatred until you agreed with him.

 

Also please remember that 1) BP was a retired intelligence officer, and you really never retire from that profession I'm told, so I bet he did report to the authorities his interactions and 2) according to the captured OPERATIONS SEA LION plans, the the operation for the invasion and conquest of Great Britain, BP was one of the folks int he catagory of the royal family, Churchil, and other high government and military leaders who was to be executed upon capture. So I don't think BP was a NAZI.

 

 

[desertrat77]

I read most of BP's works when I was a teen. There were moments, particularly in his later books, when I would read a particular sentence or para and go "wow, that's kind of odd."

 

Just an uneducated opinion but when I read the link, I wonder if BP's reasoning may have slipped a bit in his later years.(This message has been edited by desertrat77)

[BartHumphries]

Hitler was an evil, evil man. He did however pioneer and make remarkable strides in the science of sociology, or "crowd control" as it might be more popularly know. As far as organization and leadership and building popular movements went, he really was a genius. I do not support his hatred of Jewish people or the Holocaust in any way, but that doesn't change the fact that he was really smart in certain ways.

 

He'd photograph himself making poses and go through and choose the stances and movements that best communicated what he was trying to convey, then he'd practice making those movements in front of a mirror until he got them just right. And he didn't just dabble in things like this, he took notes and really started investigating it scientifically and having other people investigate, keep notes, report back to him.

 

With the idea that close confines can agitate people, he purposefully held rallies in spaces that were too small for the group, both so that the group would appear larger, and so people's emotions would be heightened by their close proximity.

 

Again, he was an evil, evil man, I do not in any way endorse his motivation or the end result, but he was really smart in certain ways. I mean, even Hannibal Lector had some good things to say occasionally.