A sketch said to depict a real life game of chess between Hitler and Lenin is expected to fetch thousands of pounds at auction.

The drawing is said to be signed on the reverse by the two future dictators, and drawn by Emma Lowenstramm, Hitler's then Jewish art teacher, in Vienna in 1909. When the etching was made, Hitler was 20 and a jobbing artist in the city while Lenin was twice his age and in exile.

The game was apparently played at the house of a prominent Jewish family who gave it to their housekeeper when they fled in the run up to the Second World War. Now the sketch is expected to fetch £40,000 at an auction in Ludlow, Shropshire, after the housekeeper's great-great grandson put them up for auction.

The seller's father compiled a 300-page forensic document that included tests on the paper, the signatures and research on those involved. Richard Westwood-Brookes, the auctioneer, said: "This just sounds too good to be true, but the vendor's father spent a lifetime proving it. The signatures in pencil on the reverse are said to have an 80 per cent chance of being genuine, and there is proof that Emma Lowenstramm did exist."

But historian Helen Rappaport, who has just written a book called Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, said the etching was probably a "glorious piece of fantasy". Lenin had visited Vienna during his time in exile but there was evidence he went there in 1909. "He liked the place and went there because he travelled around Europe on trains, but he wouldn't have been there long enough to meet a young Hitler," she said.

Hitler once said "I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries"... maybe that's why he lost...

Of course it wasn't always chess that they played...

The original was here