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.

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 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 Mr Lauterbacher on November 19, 1937.

Lord 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, Lord 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 from Africa."

Lord Baden-Powell also told Mr 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.

A hand-written note on the MI5 file states: "Mr Lauterbacher's visit was a success, especially his interviews with Lord Baden-Powell leading to removal on bar on wearing uniforms in Germany for English groups."

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 in a magazine called The Cyclist a month later said 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".