Adolf Hitler wanted to train German troops to play cricket because he thought it was the perfect preparation for war, a new book says.
The Fuhrer was taught the game by British Prisoners of War, but found elements of the sport distasteful.
He advocated the removal of pads, saying "artifical bolsters" were "unmanly and un-German".
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The claims are detailed in a new book on reporting in the 20th Century, written by BBC broadcaster John Simpson.
The dictator's cricket connection was originally reported in UK newspaper the Daily Mirror in 1930 by British Nazi sympathiser MP, Oliver Locker-Lampson.
'Insufficiently violent'
Right-wing Locker-Lampson wrote that Hitler had been introduced to the game in a WWI hospital while recovering from wounds sustained during battle.
"He had come to them [the POWs] one day and asked whether he might watch an eleven of cricket at play so as to become initiated into the mysteries of our national game," Locker-Lampson wrote.
"They welcomed him, of course, and wrote out the rules for him in the best British sport-loving spirit."
After witnessing the match, the Fuhrer declared it was "insufficiently violent" for German Fascists, but he "desired to study it as a possible medium for the training of troops off duty and in times of peace," The MP wrote.
"But he proposed entirely altering them for the serious-minded Teuton."
John Simpson's book, 'Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century was Reported', was released this week.
