In 1940 Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany with the English Channel the only thing standing between them and invasion. One way Hitler planned to deal with Britain was cut off their ability to fight back by tanking their economy.
From the ancient civilizations of years past to the dawn of the Space Race, every week we’ll be bringing you award-winning documentaries featuring some of the world’s best historians. Subscribe so you don’t miss out.
Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free exclusive podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Matt Lewis and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code REALHISTORY 👉 https://access.historyhit.com/
Real History is part of the History Hit Network.
Any queries, please contact owned-enquiries@littledotstudios.com
in 1940 Hitler’s armies drove through Europe only Britain held out against their assault but the Nazis had a covert plan to undermine the British defenses in a concentration camp north of Berlin a secret weapon was rolling off the production lines its purpose to strike silently and stealthily at the heart of the British Empire and invade every aspect of daily life it was a weapon made of [Music] paper at the height of World War II the Nazis pulled off the greatest currency forgery in history producing the equivalent today of over3 billion the original plan was to produce very large amounts of of British paper currency and drop it over Britain uh some of the more honest members of the public would maybe have handed them into uh Banks or police stations but generally the Germans were banking on the idea that uh they wouldn’t and it would cause huge inflation and totally destabilize the the the currency and the British government Hitler personally authorized the plan to flood Britain with fake currency cause massive inflation and wreck the British war [Music] effort to produce these forgues the Germans relied on a unique National [Music] resource the Nazis had interred millions of Jews in concentration camps across middle Europe they gave the Third Reich a vast source of slave labor and for a secret operation they had one great Advantage when was over they could be killed the head of the camp said to us you should know here young Germany there’s nothing in France here you work hard and if you don’t work we sent you to a place you go into the gate and come out of the chimney the SS systematically trolled the camps for men with skills that could be used for counterfeiting these men were living in Terror their lives forfeit to Hitler’s Final Solution witness to the Daily VI vience and degradation of the camps and then I said what’s going on everyone stood and just stared my father lck after the I saw my father lying on the ground drenched in blood he had been in the next row and everyone was pushing from behind and in the front they were beating and one ss man had hit him in such a way on the head so that head cracked open and he was lying streaming with blood in any event he was dead and I was really shaken by it I just wanted to run into the wires the electric wires I blamed myself because I should have looked after my father better but Jack pla was to be rescued by an unlikely savior an SS major or Schuman furer called burnhard Krueger a specialist in forging passports and other documents this was the man who would give his name to the secret operation to wreck the British economy he would recruit the workers and direct every aspect of their labor he would be their keeper and if necessary their executioner Krueger was as far removed from the Nazi ideal as you could possibly get it was about 5’8 receding hairline a little pudgy certainly nothing like the idealized blonde blueeyed six-foot Nazi hero stman F Krueger was a doubleface man his appearance was distinguished civil well-mannered and however his other sight was very devoted SS a high ranking SS I would even say a murderer with a smile ruthless and energetic Krueger set out to make operation burnhard the deadliest weapon in the Nazi Armory but there was a more personal motive for his labors as fa it he was very practical this is one way of not being sent to the Russian front which was murderous uh so as long as he had this he was safe Krueger’s main source of recruits was aitz the most notorious death camp in the third right over the course of the War 2 million prisoners would die here Paul Londo was one of those paraded before the Nazi physician who made the selection for the gas Chambers it was very cold we’re told to un entirely from a St close and as we passed in front of that physician from time to time picked up the arm and he you to show the number and when the number was taken you knew it means you were going to be gased that day I was fortunately I wasn’t picked and 2,000 Jews were uh chosen to be gas just 2 Days Later Krueger arrived at aitz and recruited Paul Londo with 54 other Jewish prisoners for a secret mission we were assembled and took the train destination we didn’t know they didn’t advise us in advance where we’re going to we were taken to a concentration camp called saxonous some 6 kilm outside of Berlin saxonous was to be the production Center of operation burnhard among the 140 prisoners who eventually worked here were four men who survived to tell a story never meant to be told Hans valter professional cyclist and engineer chosen for his metal working skills and excellent eyesight Abraham kovski Clark arrested with his fiance and chosen by krugger for his accountancy skills Paul Londo a furier before the war he led the Germans to believe believe he was a carpenter and Jack plaer painter and decorator chosen for his practical abilities of ss off suddenly an SS officer approached a major with four stars he shouted so where have my Jews been his Jews his Jews that was us the ones he had chosen saxonous was a labor camp for political prisoners homosexuals Gypsies and Jews here some 30,000 prisoners were forced to work for the Reich on the premise that work makes you free but very few would leave saxonous alive sax sax was planned by an SS architect who tried to incorporate the ideology of concentration camps into the design one modern feature was a system of total control from one point a single machine gun was supposed to be able to control the entire 68 Barracks of the camp this was as we say the geometry of Terror the operation burnhard recruits were isolated from the other prisoners in two separate blocks a prison within a prison bar wire was extended around our block and not in communication with anybody else in the camp we knew from the V something suspicious there but we come in from aitz and nothing to lose you could not see inside the barracks because the windows were whitened so you could look out of the windows but from outside you couldn’t see what was happening within none of the 140 prisoners were recorded at the Cam’s registry office it was as if they had disappeared inside the camp the barracks look just like the others only with a slight difference that there were printing machines inside and there was a guarded Cordon to make sure that we did not get out or approach the fence where we could have spoken to the other prisoners because they were certainly curious to know what was going on inside here before revealing their new role in the Nazi war effort Krueger made the alternative perfectly clear if you don’t do the job he told us was a sec job he had to be uh eliminated shut outside and uh he don’t do the job but he got people for do it for him so uh nobody of 60 people that came from aitz put his hand up and said he wouldn’t do the job but he assigned us to so we took the job Bernard krer Kruger spoke to us well comrades suddenly we were comrades yeah you have been chosen we have something in mind for you you are all Specialists good printers good [Music] engravers you are to work on these printing machines and then we were given these printing plates from Berlin and we printed British pound notes krugger had set these men a challenge make forgeries that will fool the bank of England or die like it or not the Jewish prisoners were now helping Krueger to produce the secret weapon that the SS believed would wreck the British war effort and when the job was done they would be shot if we didn’t corporate we knew it was our end so we were better treated than in asit for sure but we are still in a concentration camp and we knew as long as they need us they might treat us almost normally but God forbid if they not need us anymore fighten listen be very very used to it we got used to it whatever will be will be but I never lost the Hope never lost hope since the first day I was in a camp in Germany I heard prisoners saying I would like to live one hour longer than the Germans see that defeat I don’t care if I die and as time went on it became also my light motive my thinking let’s survive them even for a short time I’m sorry you see when I say it I live it [Music] so the Bank of England this massive Fortress in the heart of London has financed Britain’s Wars for 300 years in 1942 Hitler made it a prime target not for bombs but for a silent weapon that would Infiltrate The vaults by stealth and destroy the credibility of the British pound at Saxon Housen concentration camp north of Berlin just 30 Jewish prisoners were initially employed on the project isolated from the rest of the camp by barbed wire their task was to forge pound notes good enough to fool the experts at the bank of England forgery had never really been a problem the bank was a little bit complacent about the design of its notes and the production of them they were printed on one side only in Black Ink it was beautifully handmade paper a very attractive watermark in it but technologically a very simple note and as we know at the time it was it was wasn’t too difficult to forge quite successfully the first problem was the paper the British pound was made from rags pulped and shredded to produce a paper that still had a slight texture of cloth the Germans started using new linen whereas the British for the genuine notes were using old rags from a variety of sources including odd things like corset cuttings and uh all sorts of things um the paper looked right initially um but it didn’t feel right tests to replicate the British paper were conducted at the famous Hana Mula paper mill near Hanover here SS guards sealed off an entire Wing to protect their secret they collected together all the rags they had the new linen and and uh sent it out to local factories where they were used for sort of industrial wipes and cleaning then they were brought back to the mill and uh washed and cleaned um much as the British would have done it and this this produced uh fiber of the right sort of quality and character when we took it in our hand you could feel the difference and we were trained for that that the sounding of the paper was like paper and not like a rag which the British PS were supposed to be another problem was the watermark formed by laying a wired pattern on top of the wet pulp watermarking is a very complex science because paper shrinks as it dries it is a wet process so you have to make your water mark slightly bigger you have to beat the fiber so that it will shrink at a particular rate to a particular Point uh you have to be able to consistently make the paper shrink to exactly the right size so that the watermark itself uh all of this relates and registers correctly with the printing in the German paper The Watermark is more noticeable in ordinary light and that’s one of the most obvious giveaways from Hana muler the watermarked paper was sent direct to saxonous for printing Jack pla was one of the first group of prisoners to be employed here is must St and and St and these I had to stand and stand by these machines for hours and hours check that the serial numbers were printed in the right order and were not duplicated we didn’t talk when we were working because we had to keep our eyes on the printing we had to concentrate that was all we ever did we just stood there the whole time there always was the noise of the Machinery [Music] gate to improve the workmanship krugger scoured the camps for illustrators and designers one he found was the artist Peter Adel who varied his work on the fake pounds by making secret sketches of his fellow inmates hidden from the SS guards and preserved through the War I was very lucky that my best friend was Peter Adel was he was a big painter for his young years he had very high grading on the artist and he made h of picture in a concentration K from his prison bodes and here’s a picture from me looks like a cartoon picture how I stay on the cold water in our shower room on December the 7th and then up on the top it show how my dream was always by classical racing artists such as Peter Adel worked directly on the printing plates to improve the fine detail the delicate imagery of Britannia needed constant attention the only figurative engraving was Britannia Britannia was not there fun enough originally as a an antiforgery device but she became one the eyes of Britannia were particularly bad and I don’t know quite why they got that so wrong britania was the most difficult thing to print we were told to use a pin which we are given to make believe they were attached together and making pin holes on top left was the best way to hi imperfections in our printing one of the reasons for having the raw portrait on our notes today is that it’s more difficult for a forger to reproduce a phase to improve the quality of the Forger Krueger brought in a professional crook suly smolanoff a Russian Jew had been convicted of forging British pound notes before the War I remember the day when zi came to our Workshop H Bernard kriger uh introduce him to is very short but very strict ker was so pleased to have zoy working for him does he say dead man here I take my head off to him he is the maest counterfeit in z was a little God he was shown British pwns right away and uh he was amazed a good job we do and we looked at him like he was really the governor of the bank of England and he knew exactly what they should look like when he came into their midst they had very mixed feelings don’t forget these were essentially a bunch of middle class Jews and here was a an out now crook who done time in penitentiaries and was a well-known International counterfeit he was in fact a criminal who had done the same work as we do but we are not criminals who did it for the German State and under the rest the printing was a bit of a problem for the Germans because initially they were um doing it almost in laboratory conditions uh and it was only when the actual forges were involved in the process and pointed out to them that printers don’t actually work that way they do leave the lids off ink cans and and oxygen gets at it and so it behaves slightly differently and they don’t clean the plates as sparkling clean and it was those kind of touches that actually got made it right during 1944 when the workshop was in full production the prisoners produced over 8 million British Bank notes ranging from fibers to 100 notes Krueger had a room full of about 50 men checking the quality of every forgery had original English pounds and things to look to see what what is nearer to the look of the of the original I had at least 2020 Vision to my bicycle racing I saw more mistake so he made me to a money sorder to inspect the other people’s work down there so and that was my job till that ended little knives were given to us to try to get out the wood if we found pieces of wood in the paper which were never contained in the original British PS yeah this not is a one this is right way because of the F on off right away everybody sees is no good you can see this is a f note the F on off has a wasn’t a normal F but the F was like this yeah yeah this not is I’ve [Music] first the prisoners in the Sorting room passed the notes from hand to hand folding and refolding them to make them look as if they’ve been in circulation for some [Music] time Krueger was continually expanding his operation by the end of 1944 he had 140 prisoners working in saxonous in two adjacent blocks but so long as they did it he wished Krueger was prepared to make their lives as easy as possible within the camp system Krueger realized what a position he was in and his only hope was to befriend the prisoners and get them to cooperate otherwise they could sabotage the goddamn thing every day we must admit that we did a fair good job in collaborating with the Germans against our will everybody was almost proud of that job what do sorting the money out or printing the money nobody would make a bad job so there was no sabotage my impression of krer first of all was surprising he never said was you je and so on he spoke on a normal way I must admit that I don’t know if he killed other juice outside who ordered killing but with us he wanted coroporation and he got it and we no alternative the gods at saxonous were notoriously brutal there were daily hangings floggings and Casual executions but in blocks 18 and 19 prisoners and guards had a very different relationship more akin to workers and foremen and on Saturday nights there was [Music] Cabaret when the SS asked for entertainment it was on Saturday night and those of us who were capable had to comply with it Jan Kruger had foren that and he also took to saxen some musicians like an Blast for instance he gave him an accordion and then we arranged these evenings we would stand on the most expensive stage in the world we always used to say that we stood on the wooden crates inside of which lay the pound notes when place with Accord known German Austrian songs people automatically got into it and sang with them they say of course we privilege we were not the same category as the SS they had reserve seats in front and we were allowed to sit in and the music gets you involved and I must admit we even enjoyed it and we had a laugh there but it was always somebody that says when we might have a laugh and if we have one but the prisoner’s survival was linked with doing a good job for the Fatherland in the workshop there was no room for Slackers those who fell sick were taken outside and shot it happened to a young very nice boy by the name of sukenik he took sick and he was murdered because they couldn’t take him outside to be treated in case he would talk about what we do always there was the knowledge that they were entirely at the mercy of the SS we were always scared in SX as long as St F needs us we hoped we stay life but once he doesn’t need us it’s finished with our life and said it to us openly that was our greatest problem and worry that they would do us in kill us at once because we knew such great secrets under the constant threat of execution the prisoners eventually succeeded in producing near perfect forgeries these are some of the best ever done there were four grades they graded these notes in in to four qualities and grade one and our extraordinary they are very very close indeed grade two are pretty good in fact probably better than uh any of the forgeries you see of Bank notes these days Englander good English Bank of England they were so well made that even the bank of England thought they were genuine yeah imagine should I be proud of that the bank of England bank of England thought they were genuine account yeah good enough to fool the bank of England the burnhard forgeries would certainly have deceived the man on the street and by 1943 the Germans could have swamped Britain with millions of highquality forgeries but the order never came why didn’t the Germans drop the forged Bank of England notes over Britain I’m really not sure um big mistake you could say in fact the SS had come up with what they considered to be a better plan a plan that would dramatically increase their iron grip on Europe and make some of them very rich by 1943 the Jewish prisoners working on operation Bernhard had produced millions of fake British Bank notes but they could only guess what happened to them when they left the Secret Workshop in fact every month The Fakes were taken 800 Mi under armed guard to a castle in the Italian Alps schlo labas overlooking the resort town of Morano was the distribution center for the fake Bernhard millions and the headquarters of the man charged with the operation a financial Wheeler Dealer called Friedrich schwend he was a a very shrewd businessman and he came with the idea that you can use the money and instead of giving it away friederick schend was ideally placed to put his idea into practice a Nazi opportunist with important contacts in both the SS and the criminal underworld he was a man who knew the value of money especially if he had people to make it for him he persuaded his high-ranking Nazi contacts to use the Bernhard Millions not to wreck the British economy but to bankroll the German war effort they didn’t have enough money to buy materials they were very crucial for their economy for the war you had to have a foreign currency so he offered another possibility of laundering this money using to buy with it different kind of goods all all kind of goods and then was these Goods then selling them again for real money in 1943 Hitler’s armies were in Retreat and the fortunes of the Reich in in terminal decline the German Mark was worth only 14th of the British pound and unlike Sterling it was not recognized as an international currency but the fake pounds at Schloss labas could be used to buy vital War supplies for the right and for every counterfeit pound he laundered schend and his agents took 33 and 13% frsh rent on one hand um was a convinced Nazi but on the other hand um he also worked together with Jewish people many of his agents were of Jewish origin and he tried to do everything to protect them in order to L the money once he got the green light he contacted people who he obviously KN had known beforehand people with International Connection in different kind of criminal activity part of them were respectable Bankers uh because you you have to be uh kind of talented in in order to uh to convince people to to take to trust you before the war schlo labas Shen’s heavily guarded Distribution Center had been a luxury hotel run by the grandfather of the present owner yur stap my grandfather had to give it to the SS as a headquarter for them we know that all the money was kept inside in different places and stored like not the same way as in the Bank of England most but I will show you where this is one of the store rooms and uh we still use it but at that times you can imagine with all the the money stored it looked another sort of way the whole property was very close protected there was an SS guard and the SS guard would shoot anybody especially Knight who would come here without notice one day they shoot a person near the castle it was a a farmer who got too close to the castle and didn’t uh explain himself so he was shot schend was having a good War his castle stuffed with money and replenished by a million British banknotes a month he was in a unique position to entertain friends and a world removed from the source of his wealth at saxonous where the Jewish prisoners labored to keep schend and his agents in the manner to which they had become accustomed I think he was a real Gambler he was an agent a typical agent and a gambler in one person he was certainly a Playboy he always had the need of money and uh was interested in in nice girls they choose the best rooms of course they had their own carpets and their own pictures we don’t know where they got them from and nothing stayed here they left with all schwent was a man who liked very much life he had his own horse or two horses here while management enjoyed the profits life on the production line was less comfortable we had no breakfast we didn’t stop for lunch I think with some colored water which we called jet in French socks from socks juice we got one loaf between five people on special occasions or on Hitler’s birthday it was between four men they cut the bread in half and then like this so we got a quarter of a loaf of bread otherwise we always got turnip soup when we had finished work it stank like a pigy from a long way off that was the kind of soup we got despite these conditions the prisoners continued the flow of fake Bank notes to schlo Lis they were now being used to finance SS terrorism and intelligence gathering throughout the world one agent alone was paid 1.5 million in burnhard currency for Vital Information about Allied War plans and in 1943 it funded the rescue of the overthrown dictator musolini helping prolong the war in Italy by 18 months he was imprison and the Germans were interested in in setting him free so they had a problem he was hidden and they had to locate him so um with the help of U of this money of the faked British pounds they were able to bribe different various uh Italian officials or or police person or whatever and in this way they could locate him schl labas became the Nazi Bank of England but as schent and his Network distributed their fakes around the world the real Bank of England made a startling Discovery even as late as the 1940s every note issued by the bank was recorded in vast leatherbound ledgers it literally goes back centuries to the origin of the bank note which was a receipt for coin somebody came in made a deposit of coin were given a receipt in the form of a note a promisory note I promised to pay Mr XYZ or Bearer the sum of and then the amount and that was handed back to them the numbers were entered in The Ledger as a liability on the bank it was during this archaic process that a Clark spotted in a bundle of returned notes one that had already been marked in The Ledger as paid off so either the one that had been paid before was a forgery or this one was a forgery and it turned out to be this one and the principle of the office on seeing this note described it as uh the most dangerous he’d ever seen I think um people understand that that money is important during life but it’s also equally can be a matter of life and death during wartime in the 1790s the British forged the French Revolutionary money and it was incredibly effective um by I think 17 1795 um it was 13 half th% inflation so much so that they just withdrew the C currency and burnt it in the streets big bomb fires in uh the center of Paris to avoid Panic the bank kept their Discovery a secret it was announced that to counteract the effects of the black market no new notes above £5 would be printed but for the rest of the war those in the know were in fear that millions of forged Bank notes would suddenly appear on the streets of Britain meanwhile at Schloss labas it was business as usual but by 1944 the SS knew the war was lost this could be fatal for the forgers of saxonous the Russians were coming from the east of Berlin the Americans were coming from the west and we wondered about our destiny we were told that we would be killed at the end in no uncertain terms in January 1945 with the Germans close to surrender Benard krugger was ordered to seize production and quit saxonous the men and their equipment were loaded onto a train and sent far to the South the relationship asess in US was not the same anymore I think on their side they were wondering about the turn the war will take and we on the other hand we just as anxious not KN if they’re going to kill us or not I was learned one thing don’t believe in anything what they say you see it you see and we went off far far away to mous in Austria mous it was generally known that mous was also called murderous M and the camp commandant of mous did not want to take us at all the camp was full but eventually special quarters were made available for them Hans valter entered with his artist friend Peter Adel who had continued to Chronicle their journey in his Sketchbook he a look at the closet full of blood so uh hand marks he said put your hand on there you can manage it he said it’s still vet I say no I don’t put my hand on on that to the splot I see nothing but bullet holes the barracks have been cleared for Krueger’s Men by killing the previous inmates our G guards they say we had nothing to do with it we need a sleeping area and they killed the people years before you came in knowing this could be their own death chamber the secret forges awaited the decision of their SS Masters [Music] abandoned by Krueger and isolated from the other prisoners at mous the burnhard forges knew time was running out we were really in limbo we didn’t know if this means life or death for us and so we were pleased when our leader turned up one day Kruger and said they now wanted to take us to R zip that was a sort of satellite Camp of M we W up in a small place R tiip where there were mountains and Tuners in the mountains which were bomb proof the SS planned to continue operation Bart from fortified tunnels under the Austrian Alps and then we had to start assembling the machines again and so we were very happy about this because we thought they still needed us a little bit and they would therefore not do us in we started digging and making the foundation to support our heavy equipment Printing and so on and after we had made the foundations and now the order came apparently the war was turning sour and the Germans had decided to put an end to our lives and then major Kruger turned up again with his escort and said stop no more the war has come to a point where it is nearly at an end we are now stopping then we had to set fire to the crates the ones containing the pound notes the prisoners were left with their SS guards Krueger disappeared and SED most of the money in the final days of the war Ida visen Becker was living on her family farm near Lake toppets in the Austrian mountains at 5:00 a.m. two SS men came and knocked and knocked at the door I got up with my grandfather and went outside hitch up your horses they called out because we need cards at leg toplet Ida and her neighbors were ordered to help the SS cart 70 heavy crates to the lake as I got there I saw that they were out there on the lake with a raft on which there were boxes they were really panicking it seemed and they threw them into the lake I said to the SS man sitting next to me why do they throw them into the lake he didn’t know me neither [Music] meanwhile the prisoners were moved to yet another Camp you could see our SS became very nervous they decided that they’re going to evacuate us from rip and told us we’ll go by truck but we have only one truck at our disposal so divide yourself in three groups and the truck will make three trips back and forth to e your new destination we go without equipment the truck carried the first two groups to aeny a concentration camp deep in the Austrian mountains where thousands had been worked to death this was to be their final destination the order had been given to kill them all but it stated that they must all die together and the third group had gone missing the truck had broken down and they were forced to march across the mountains to aeny Jack pla was among them our SS Sergeant Vera said don’t be stupid nothing will happen to you we only have the order to hand you over to aeny concentration camp and the local people called don’t go there you will all just be shot we felt quite good as you can probably imagine back at aeny the gods knew the Americans were closing in after two nights in the SS bars and the third group has not arrived in our own assess decided to save the own skin to be free to move their hand and switch their uniforms said let them in Krueger’s SS men handed groups one and two over to the guards at aeny and fled we entered on May the 5th in the morning this was a miracle because on the same day in the afternoon the third group arrived but groups one and two were already lost among the 16,000 inmates the gods of group three decided to let their prisoners join them and make their own Escape thanks to the precise order that the groups must die together they had all survived the very next day the Americans arrived and as it happens the Americans actually did turn up around noon we heard their tanks rumbling in and from afar we could already see the white flag in the distance and the war was really at an end we had survived it with the war last schent and his agents looked to their own Survival and the burnhard millions still had a part to play at the end of the war schent took precautions enough first of all to to get a false identity including a card saying that he’s working for the International Red Cross he understood that’s getting too hot here to stay in Europe and he decided to go away from Europe like other Nazis to South America the barard uh pounds were crucial for financing the Flight of the Nazis we have some evidence that uh this money helped to convince American agents Italian partisans uh to work with schwent and his group for let’s say a better future for these Nazis as an SS officer Bernhard Krueger was imprisoned by the Allies for 3 years and spent part of that time helping the French Secret Service Forge documents and passports in the mid1 1950s he was brought before a dentification court some of his former prisoners spoke in his defense he was very good to us but as for anything else that he may have done wrong I couldn’t say anyway we signed something to say he’d be nice to us good he was a savior he saved a lot admittedly he was done for personal reason reasons too but unquestionably he had saved the lives of all those prisoners no question about it the money too survived some hidden in Swiss bank accounts the rest in the waters of Lake toppets where most of it was recovered by divers in 1959 afterwards one of the men who recovered the boxes from the lake gave me a few pound notes as a souvenir for my help had the SS stuck to their original plan this money might have changed the course of the war instead just a few notes remain as collector’s items Souvenirs of the Nazi plan to destroy the bank of England as for the plotters Friedrich schen escaped to Peru he died in 1980 Berard Krueger took a mundane desk job at the Hanam Mula paper mill which had once applied the paper for operation burnhard he died in 1989 after the war Jack pler eventually settled in Berlin running his own Decorating Company he still lives [Music] there I was going to be an opera singer but our dear fura had other plans for [Music] me Abraham kovski immigrated to New York he is still married to the fiance he thought he lost in [Music] aitz Hans valter moved to America settling in Ohio where he now lives with his son and daughter his friend the artist and writer Peter Adel died in Berlin in 1983 his drawings still bear witness to what he saw in saxonous Paul Londo returned to Paris but eventually left France he now lives in Montreal with his wife and his memories without these men all the would remain of operation Bernhard would be scraps of paper and theories on what might have been the real value of the forged Millions is that these men survived yes Miracles happened we were supposed to be murdered by a Nazis and we survived by a miracle [Music] d [Music]
20 Comments
just like bit coin
Nothing new Our Govt has just done it too us today
I knew about this story but this documentary brilliantly brings together the more detailed outcome of operation Bernhardt.. Huzzah!!
So a kill camp was making counterfeit notes? That didn’t affect anything? Lol
An economist once told me a joke which I didn’t understand or find funny. Only now does it click man 😂❤
If Hitler could drive, what car would he drive? Fiat £
Oooooooh 😂❤
Didn't the British use this trick during the American revolution?
Did anyone ever locate Himmler's grave or remains? I last heard maybe they had a skull fragment? Just curious.
Good Program.
Makes me want to become a forger 😂
Today we can safely say there's no gold or money in that lake I'm not saying it was never there.. Its been searched and people have died looking for it. And as Usual for Hitler it was another one of his to little to late schemes. Okay he was evil and mad which dose require a brain other than that there wasn't much between his ears. Hitler the only person in history who set out to start and loose a war.
I thought fake money was the job of central banks.
Superb documentary.
Indeed the banknote was primitive even by the standards of the 1940s; however, it was the archaic accounting system of the Bank of England that helped discovering the forgery. The decentralized British registration system is primitive cumbersome but effective in discovering identity theft (The Day of the Jackal trick) because one need to know all the minutiae that appears on the long version birth certificate. The British don't carry ID card and don't have personal identity numbers issued at birth, and the British Passport Office was not computerized up until 1984. It was only after Operation Wisdom (the compiling of a list of 400,000 names of individuals who died in their infancy, that the The Day of the Jackal trick was almost irradiated.
The fact is it worked and went on for years.
The Americans do this even now. In the Afghan war for instance. The US printed so much Afghan currency that effectively destroyed its economy.
Sadly, the Labour Party and the Tories also carried on wrecking Britain's economy.
As a South African, I cannot fault this team…I regard the England fullback as the overall best player this weekend.
They also forged US Dollars ( $20 & $50 notes) and they distributed even after the war !
Is this not what the Wes did to Soviet Union by flooding their economy with fake Russian Roubles ???
the bank of england completed the job of destroying the uk.
Imagine what AI can do? printed or transmitted values?