Exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes
A £5 note (White fiver) forged by Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners
Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under the title Unternehmen Andreas (Operation Andreas). The unit successfully duplicated the rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and deduced the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in early 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich.
The operation was revived later in the year; the aim was changed to forging money to finance German intelligence operations. Instead of a specialist unit within the SD, prisoners from Nazi concentration camps were selected and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work under SS Major Bernhard Krüger. The unit produced British notes until mid-1945; estimates vary of the number and value of notes printed, from £132.6 million up to £300 million. By the time the unit ceased production, they had perfected the artwork for US dollars, although the paper and serial numbers were still being analysed. The counterfeit money was laundered in exchange for money and other assets. Counterfeit notes from the operation were used to pay the Turkish agent Elyesa Bazna—code named Cicero—for his work in obtaining British secrets from the British ambassador in Ankara, and £100,000 from Operation Bernhard was used to obtain information that helped to free the Italian leader Benito Mussolini in the Gran Sasso raid in September 1943.
In early 1945 the unit was moved to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, then to the Redl-Zipf series of tunnels and finally to Ebensee concentration camp. Because of an overly precise interpretation of a German order, the prisoners were not executed on their arrival; they were liberated shortly afterwards by the American Army. Much of the output of the unit was dumped into the Toplitz and Grundlsee lakes at the end of the war, but enough went into general circulation that the Bank of England stopped releasing new notes and issued a new design after the war. The operation has been dramatised in a comedy-drama miniseries Private Schulz by the BBC and in a 2007 film, The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher).
and 23 Related for: Operation Bernhard information
OperationBernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse...
Jewish typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in OperationBernhard. The film The Counterfeiters, based largely on his memoirs, won the...
Switzerland, in June 2009. In the United States, counterfeiters in small operations develop the fake currency using tools which often include printers, an...
1976) was a Jewish counterfeiter and Holocaust survivor involved in OperationBernhard. In the 2007 film The Counterfeiters based on Adolf Burger's memoirs...
for counterfeit money detected by banks, even if it is confiscated. OperationBernhard was a counterfeit campaign conducted by the Nazi regime to flood the...
After the start of the World War II in September 1939 the German OperationBernhard attempted to counterfeit various denominations between £5 and £50...
heavy water produced to commemorate WWII's Operation Gunnerside. A printing plate used in OperationBernhard, an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British...
sterling notes were claimed to have been dumped in the lake after OperationBernhard, which was never fully put into action. In 1959, investigators recovered...
used counterfeit notes with a face value of £100,000 forged under OperationBernhard to help obtain information.[citation needed] Skorzeny used information...
counterfeit British bank notes with a face value of £100,000, forged under OperationBernhard). It was determined that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore...
: 25, 58 Sachsenhausen was the site of OperationBernhard, one of the largest currency counterfeiting operations ever recorded. The Germans forced inmate...
German SS-Sturmbannführer who participated as the sales manager of OperationBernhard during World War II under the control of the Reich Security Main Office...
time on 22 November 1928. During the Second World War, the German OperationBernhard attempted to counterfeit denominations between £5 and £50, producing...
government has been wary of large banknotes since the counterfeiting OperationBernhard during World War II, which caused the Bank of England to withdraw...
impossible to detect." Counterfeit United States currency OperationBernhard—a similar operation run by Nazi Germany during the Second World War with forged...
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈbɛʁnhaʁt ˈʁiːman] ; 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made...
of the Bank of England. Fearful of mass forgery by the Nazis (see OperationBernhard), all notes for £10 and above ceased production, leaving the bank...
for their services with hard currency rather than banknotes. Under OperationBernhard, the Nazis planned to collapse the British economy by flooding the...
made about one-half of his payments in counterfeit bank notes under OperationBernhard. According to Mummer Kaylan, author of The Kemalists: Islamic Revival...
the high-quality forged British currency produced by the Nazis in "OperationBernhard". The city has also been a subject for many spy fiction books and...
Hauptmann's handwriting, by expert Albert S. Osborn, was crucial OperationBernhard, a secret Nazi plan to destabilize the British economy through counterfeited...
During World War II, the Nazis attempted to implement a similar plan (OperationBernhard) against the Allies. The Nazis took Jewish artists to the Sachsenhausen...