Great Britain, Operation Bernhard forgery, 1933 50 pounds, B...

Hammer

£120

Great Britain, Operation Bernhard forgery, 1933 50 pounds, B. G. Catterns signature, serial no. 50/N 54346, London, 15 Jun 1933. P.331. Good Extremely Fine - Near Uncirculated.

Operation Bernhard was a Nazi operation 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. 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 from forging money to financing 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.