Counterfeit Sterling Plan Germany gambles 1943

Kanzler Hitler, Luftwaffe General Udet, Air Marshall Goering and General Keitel, with Obergruppenfuehrer Himmler in the background

A known Jewish criminal and forger was recruited from the WW2 German concentration camps and certain death by an SS officer in 1943, eventually leading to civilian printers, dyers, artists, engravers, metalworkers, mathematicians and photographers from all over central Europe working to forge sterling notes. The Bank of England was very different, England was using rags from old clothing that had been pulped on which to print their notes, a small amount of £5 notes were made. A Swiss bank sent a telegram to the Bank of England to confirm these notes were genuine. Confirmation led to £140,000,000 being forged.

By 1943 Germany was short of hard convertible currency, the forgers infiltrated the global reserve currency though middlemen laundering the cash for Berlin. The last few months of the Third Reich led to a black market in passports, visas, new identities and a market in stolen goods. Nazi war criminals used faked documents to escape Europe for Argentina. England retired all its £5 notes at war's end, replacing them with an entirely new batch.

This entire exercise ensures messing with money and the price system, inflation and economics, human frailties, crowd dynamics and the effect of free money and the descent of man is perilous to society. Te story of money is the story of humankind.