This photo shows a group of Hitler Youth pictured at a location you will most likely recognise.

The youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany came to the county town at the invitation of the 5th Dorchester Troop Boy Scouts (Mill Street Mission) on April 5, 1935.

As you can see in this photo they were welcomed at Thomas Hardy's Dorchester home Max Gate.

They were invited by the Wessex novelist’s wife Florence – although she was absent at the time.

The Dorset County Chronicle covered the visit with the headline ‘Visit of German friends to Dorchester'. The Hitler Youth came to the town to pay their respects at the German memorial laid down in Fordington cemetery after the First World War.

The newspaper noted how ‘lined up along the pathway before the memorial the German lads – hatless and clad in black shirts and shorts and long khaki greatcoats, smartly belted – stood stiffly to attention as their leader, Herr Jocken Benemann, of the Anglo-German Academic Bureau in London, bore a wreath to the cenotaph.

‘He gave the Nazi salute as the English Boy Scouts behind him gave the BP (Baden Powell) salute’.

Following the ceremony at the memorial, the boys also visited Max Gate.

According to the County Chronicle, Herr Benemann gave a speech during which he said: “Germany’s youth nowadays is ready… not only to keep good friends with everybody, but to cooperate with you as closely as possible to do everything we can to help understand other nations and to help in keeping the peace in the world.”