All those instructions to memorize the landscape are pretty standard fieldcraft skills that any outdoorsey/scouting organisation would have taught.
Relations between average Britons and Germans at that time are constantly being played down these days and it wasnt just the Great and the Good with open admiration or mutual respect for what they saw as they way Germany was scrambling out of economic disaster.
The generation that had fought in the mud and blood of 14/18 were by this time fathers of sons who they didnt want to see going through the same thing as they had and had made concious efforts to connect with germans.
Ive got evidence of this from my own family, post cards to great uncles from members of the Hitler Youth and post cards sent back from visits to germany by my uncles. Right up untill the moment war was declared no one was screaming for a war against germany apart from a few immigrants but ironically when war came it was young men like my Uncles,who had good friends in Germany,who went off to war.
In an almost Commando Comic story line one Uncles best German friend had joined the Luftwaffe at the same time as he had joined the RAF,they both fought in the Battles of France and Britain and both thankfully survived the war. I cant say our families are still friends as my Uncle passed away in the 50s but it does prove to me the point that no one wanted the war in 39 and even those who had chosen what is now classed as the wrong side in the battle of cable street were never the traitors they are painted as now but simply people who no longer believed the lies of those in power who even then chanted the mantra of "never again" while planning the most effective ways to conscript huge numbers of young boys.
PS, if those HJ boys were spies does that make the young german pen pall of my Uncle a spy for us as his postcards often talk in detail about new building work and autobahn networks in germany and austria?
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