He became a national hero during the Second Boer War in South Africa for defending a town for 217 days and is mostly known today for founding the world Scout Movement.
But Lord Baden-Powell is also considered as a racist by some for forcing Africans out on cattle drives by threatening them with floggings and forcibly requisitioning food from households for British troops – as well as later being apparently enthusiastic about fascism in Europe after the First World War.
Baden-Powell also mounted an attack on masturbation and homosexuality, linking them to sexual and moral dissipation. The Scout movement used to refer to masturbation as ‘self abuse’ – and Baden‐Powell was keen to prevent boys doing it amid fears it led to insanity and moral ruin.
Lord Baden-Powell was honoured with a statue in Poole because he founded the world Scout Movement – but it is being pulled down today.
The man who became known as B-P was born Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in London on 22 February, 1857, the son of an Oxford University professor.
B-P got his early education from his mother, but he later won a scholarship to Charterhouse School. At Charterhouse, he began to turn his attention to the great outdoors, hiding out in the woods around the school to track wildlife, and even catch and cook rabbits, being careful not to let the tell-tale smoke give his position away.
During the holidays, the young adventurer would head out with his brothers in search of adventure. On one occasion, they went sailing around the south coast of England. On another, they paddled up the the River Thames by canoe to its source.
He joined the Army and in 1876, headed to India with his new regiment. As a young army officer, he specialised in scouting, map-making and reconnaissance, and soon began to train the other soldiers in what were essential skills for any soldier of the time.
He became a national hero after the Second Boer War in South Africa when he was a Lieutenant-General and he and a small garrison of British troops defended the town of Mafeking from 5,000 Boer soldiers for 217 days until reinforcements arrived.
But in the aftermath it was claimed he chose to deprive most Africans in the town of food to feed the soldiers defending Mafeking and forcibly requisitioned food from households. It is alleged he also forced Africans out on cattle drives by threatening them with floggings. Often they were murdered by the Boers. Critics say this is why he should be considered racist.
He arrived home in 1903 and began laying the ground work for the scouting movement, holding the first camp on Brownsea Island off Poole in 1907. Millions of children worldwide have benefitted from the scheme run mainly by volunteers.
But Baden-Powell was a controversial figure was said to be enthusiastic about the fascism which was spreading through Europe after World War I.
After visiting Italy in 1933, he wrote about Benito Mussolini and called him a ‘boy-man’ who had absorbed the Boy Scouts message and turned it into a nationalist youth movement.
And if were up to him, the Boy Scouts may have formed close ties with Hitler Youth. Baden-Powell also admired most of Hitler’s values and wrote in a 1939 diary entry that Mein Kampf was a ‘wonderful book with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc’.
Intelligence chiefs feared the Nazis were plotting to destabilise Britain through infiltrating the Boy Scout and Girl Guide movement, previously secret documents revealed in 2010.
Hitler Youth leaders also had a warm meeting with the then-chief scout, Lord Baden-Powell, and invited him to meet the Fuhrer in Berlin.
Baden-Powell wrote to German Ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop – later Hitler’s foreign minister – in in 1938. In letter that was later intercepted: ‘I want to offer my grateful thanks for your kindness in receiving me yesterday and giving me the opportunity of meeting Mr Beneman and Mr Hartmann Lautenbacher.
‘More especially, 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.
‘True peace between the two nations will depend on the youth being brought up on friendly terms together in forgetfulness of past differences.’
He said that the two Germans had suggested he go to see Hitler. However, no meeting took place because war broke out the following year.
It has also been claimed that Baden-Powell somewhat approved of Nazi attitudes towards homosexuality.
When a Scout colleague told him that a German scout leader had been sent to a concentration camp, Baden-Powell is said to have responded that he had been taken there for ‘homosexual tendencies’.
He died in January 1941.