For Baden-Powell, Scouting was a “character factory” whose purpose “from the very beginning [was] conceived as a remedy to Britain’s moral, physical, and military weakness.”14 Intrinsic to Baden-Powell’s vision of the Boy Scouts was the formation of an idealized national citizen who would embody the perfect white male. Baden-Powell’s emphasis on national patriotism flirted with fascism, since as late as 1937 he was arguing for links between the British Scouts and the Hitler Youth groups; he was overruled by the Boy Scouts International Committee.
