In the early stages of the war, Germany had a formidable foe in Great Britain. Because of the size of its empire, Britain’s economic surpassed that of the Third Reich, meaning it could sustain a protracted war longer that the Germans. Moreover, in those days the Pound was the world’s reserve currency which gave the British an advantage in global trade deals. Determined to even the odds and win the war, the Germans devised a plan to bring the mighty British empire to its knees.
In September of 1939, Arthur Nebe, a key player in the police and security apparatus of Nazi Germany, proposed a scheme known as Operation ANDREAS. Nebe’s idea was to employ counterfeiters to forge British money, thereby devaluing the currency and causing a financial collapse through hyperinflation. Moreover, the plan could potentially ruin global confidence in British Pound and other nations’ willingness to trade with Britain.
There was, however, a serious problem. Forging other nations’ money was against international law. If other nations learned of the Germans’ illegal practice, they might no longer want to trade with Germany, fearing they would be paid in counterfeit money. This could jeopardize the vital international trade needed to keep the war effort going. There was a lot of debate among Nazi officials, but ultimately Adolf Hitler himself gave his approval of the plan, and the production of counterfeit money, especially the most widely used 5 Pound notes, was started.
Counterfeit 5 Pound note
Contemporary British paper money had remained almost unaltered since its introduction in 1855, and John Keyworth, the curator of the Bank of England described the notes as "technologically very simple". Fortunately for the British, the simple design would prove rather difficult to reproduce. Moreover, details of the plan were leaked to Russian intelligence officials within a month. They, in turn, forwarded the information to the British who immediately stopped printing additional 5 pound notes and warned the public.
Initially, the plan was to air-drop the counterfeit notes as it was assumed most British people would keep and spend the notes. However, this approach was cancelled as not enough planes were available and by that time the operation was in the hands of Schutzstaffel (SS) foreign intelligence. Instead, the notes were printed and transferred to a location in Northern Italy. They were then laundered and used to pay German agents. When the unit closed in early 1942, an estimate of between £500,000 and £3 million British Pounds had been forged.
The operation was revived later in the year and this time, rather than disrupting the British economy, the aim was to finance German intelligence operations. Prisoners from various concentration camps were selected and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, close to Berlin, where they would work under SS Major Bernhard Krüger.
Major Krüger
Operation BERNHARD started in January 1943 and some 140 prisoners worked in two twelve-hour shifts to ensure non-stop production of counterfeit notes. During the operation’s peak between mid-1943 and mid-1944, approximately 65,000 notes were produced each month. Nazi authorities thought so highly of the results that twelve prisoners, three of whom were Jewish, were awarded the War Merit Medal recognize outstanding service by civilians.
The unit was relocated to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria in March 1945, and shortly after to a series of tunnels in nearby Redl-Zipf. Ultimately, the prisoners arrived in Ebensee. Shortly after their arrival, part of the money they had brought with them was burned. The printing equipment, along with the leftover counterfeit notes, were dumped in the Toplitz and Grundlsee lakes. When the entire operation was closed down several weeks later, an estimated total of some 130 to 300 million Pounds had been forged.
Diver retreiving the counterfeit money from Lake Toplitz
The prisoners, who would be divided into three groups, were to be transported to the nearby concentration camp and killed to make sure they wouldn’t be able to talk about Operation Bernhard. A truck was to take each of the groups to the camp. The three groups were to be kept apart from the other prisoners, and only to be killed when all three groups had arrived in the camp. After delivering the first two groups to the camp, the truck broke down. The men in the last group then had to march the entire distance, which took them two days.
The first two groups, meanwhile, were safe as they were not to be killed until everyone had arrived at the Ebensee concentration camp. As a result of the delay and the fact that the advancing Allied troops were close to the camp, the SS guards put the two groups of counterfeiters with the rest of the camp prisoners and then fled the camp. That afternoon, the men of the last group arrived at the camp. Rather than killing the prisoners, the guards had the prisoners join the main prison population and fled as well. Everyone in the camp was liberated the following day, when American soldiers arrived at the camp.
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