Action Bernhard

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Action Bernhard (also company or Operation Bernhard ) was called a counterfeiting action of the security service (SD) in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in the National Socialist German Reich . It is the largest known money counterfeiting campaign in history, the aim was to counterfeit the Bank of England pound notes on a massive scale in 1A quality.

procedure

Walter Schellenberg , the head of the SD, named the action after its leader, Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger . Responsible for Operation Bernhard in the RSHA was presumably the "Office VI (SD Abroad) F (Technical Aids)". Originally the action was called Andreas , after the St. Andrew's cross in the Union Jack .

Attempts to recruit suitable workers for the operation in circles loyal to the regime failed, and the RSHA closed a printing plant on its own premises. The SS then resorted to specially qualified inmates of the German concentration and extermination camps and had the printing technology moved to a concentration camp.

The counterfeiting campaign was personally approved by Adolf Hitler , who recommended limiting himself to the pound as the currency for the time being, although documents such as passports, certificates and postage stamps were also forged. a. used to create confusion abroad and for espionage.

A considerable effort was required for the action, so the algorithm for the serial numbers and the issuing time had to match real banknotes, and the quality had to match that of real banknotes completely. The correct composition of the paper posed a major problem; only after hundreds of test series was the composition determined and imitated. The paper for the counterfeit campaign initially came from the Spechthausen paper factory in the Oberbarnim district in the Brandenburg province . From 1874 to 1945, the paper factory produced the paper for the Reich cash bills and almost all banknotes as well as letters of value and credit, shares, checks and other securities for the German Reich . In the course of converting counterfeit money production to mass production, paper production was relocated to the Hahnemühle paper mill in Relliehausen (now the district of Dassel ). According to the paper mill, Hahnemühle produced around 1.5 million printed sheets for pound notes. The factory was declared an important operation for the war effort and the workforce was taken under oath. In terms of printing technology, this state contract was carried out in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin .

In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, in the concentration camp barracks 18 and 19, 144 Jewish prisoners forged foreign currencies with the help of professional counterfeiters, especially British pound notes with a face value of 132 million pounds, in order to destabilize the economies of the Allies . That corresponded to 15 percent of the British currency in circulation. Production peaked in the summer of 1943 with around 650,000 banknotes a month.

From 1942 to 1945 banknotes of 5, 10, 20 and 50  pounds sterling were produced. The plan to circulate the fake pound notes on a larger scale was later abandoned. Friedrich Schwend , seat of Schloss Labers , became sales manager for the counterfeit foreign currency in 1943. Instead, it was used to buy foreign currency and support various SS campaigns with the forged pound notes. So was z. B. the spy Cicero ( Elyesa Bazna ) paid with forged pound notes.

Towards the end of the war, printing plates and remaining counterfeit money were sunk in the Austrian Toplitzsee . There they were partly recovered by divers in 1959.

The forgeries were so perfect that they could hardly be distinguished from the original money. However, to the surprise of his British interrogators, one of the former inmates was able to spot fake notes with astonishing speed. As an explanation, he stated that the notes, fresh off the press, were being reworked to give them the appearance of used notes. This also included stapling notes together with safety pins, a common practice at the time that left small puncture holes in the paper. In an effort to thwart the plans of their employers, the prisoners stabbed through the coat of arms, which no patriotic British would do.

The flowers were sorted according to A, B and C grades. The flowers of the A-class were banknotes “that banks have also accepted”, while the C-notes were intended to be dropped via Great Britain.

The Bank of England recalled all pound notes above five pounds after the war. It also destroyed the real banknotes, but all forgeries were withdrawn from circulation. But there was no other option because they could hardly be distinguished from the wrong ones. New pound notes were gradually reissued (£ 5: 1945, £ 10: 1964, £ 20: 1970, £ 50: 1981) and then had additional security features.

On May 5, 1945, the special command in Ebensee was handed over to the Red Cross . Almost all of the 142 concentration camp prisoners had survived the time in the concentration camp and were liberated. Kruger could be arrested. Of the former 144 Jewish prisoners, three were still alive in the 2010s. One was Adolf Burger , who was marked as number 64,401 in Auschwitz-Birkenau . He wrote a book about his experiences during this time (see also the film Die Fälscher ). Another is Abraham Sonnenfeld , whose father owned a printing house in Transylvania .

Denial and sabotage

The technical and logistical framework conditions in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp existed for a large production volume, but the concentration camp inmates resisted and risked their lives because of the ubiquitous danger of death. For example, around nine million British pound notes were printed, but only 670,000 notes were delivered to the Reich Security Main Office , resulting in a waste rate of 92%. The skilled workers deliberately delayed the action and produced scrap.

rating

There were two goals: On the one hand, to flood the British economy with counterfeit money. Had the campaign been implemented consistently, it would have had the same negative effects as an extremely expansionary monetary policy by the Bank of England - if the economy had been flooded with money, inflation would have been enormous . It could still be assumed that if the action had become known to the British public, it would have lost the credibility of the pound sterling. Thus, it would have to a large extent to a loss of cash can function of the British money coming (d. H. British consumers and shops have their own currency no longer accepted), whereby the economic cycle had been seriously disrupted the economy.

The other goal was to enrich and eliminate the acute foreign currency shortage of the Nazi regime. The operation generated significant income from money creation profits as it was able to sell the counterfeit banknotes on the international financial market. Furthermore, high members of the regime were able to enrich themselves personally by exchanging the flowers for other currencies and gold.

The Bank of England admitted in 2003 that the counterfeit campaign had seriously threatened the stability of the pound during the war. It can also be assumed that there is a danger to the stability of the international financial system during this period.

During the operation of the SS murdered concentration camp prisoners of the "forger workshop"

  • Hermann Kind, stateless
  • Abraham thimble, stateless
  • Abraham Kleinfeld, Austria
  • Ernst Stiasny, Czechoslovakia
  • Isaak Sukiennik, Soviet Union
  • Karl Sussmann, Austria

Forgery of postage

On the instructions of Heinrich Himmler , the forgery of British postage stamps was also commissioned. The first propaganda forgery was a forgery of the motif of the commemorative stamp for ½  penny on the occasion of the royal silver anniversary in 1935. The head of the British king was replaced by the head of Josef Stalin . Other motifs were forged, such as the stamp on the occasion of the royal coronation in 1937 and the British definitive stamp series from 1937 with the portrait of King George VI.

Bernhard Krüger commissioned the painter and graphic artist Leo Haas to carry out these forgeries .

literature

  • Adolf Burger : The devil's workshop. The counterfeiting workshop in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1985. Extended new edition Hentrich & Hentrich , Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-933471-80-2 .
  • Peter Edel : When it comes to life , autobiography, 1st edition, part 2, p. 54 ff., Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-87682-714-0 .
  • Shraga Elam : Hitler's forger. How Jewish, American and Swiss agents helped the SS launder counterfeit money. Ueberreuter Verlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-8000-3757-2 .
  • Werner Kopacka : Toplitzsee secret revealed. Steirische Verlagsgesellschaft, Graz 2001, ISBN 3-85489-041-9 .
  • Charlotte Krüger: My grandfather, the forger. A search for traces in the Nazi era , DVA, Munich 2015. ISBN 978-3-421-04623-9 .
  • Julius Mader : The bandit treasure. A documentary report on Hitler's Germany's secret gold treasure , Chapter III: The Paper Weapon , pp. 56–86, Verlag der Nation, revised and supplemented edition, Berlin 1973.
  • Lawrence Malkin: Hitler's Counterfeiters. How the Nazis planned to undermine the international currency system , Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008. ISBN 978-3-404-64228-1 .
  • Florian Osuch: "Blossoms" from the concentration camp. The "Operation Bernhard" counterfeit money campaign in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89965-389-2 .
  • Gerald Steinacher : Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy , Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1 (p. 180 ff.)
  • Franz Wegener: The alchemist Franz thousand. Alchemy and National Socialism , KFVR, Gladbeck 2006, ISBN 3-931300-18-8 (Chapter 5.3: From gold to money making : Himmler's forgery workshop ).
  • Wolf H. Wagner: escaped from hell. Stations of a life. A biography of the painter and graphic artist Leo Haas , Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-362-00147-5 .

Movies

Adolf Burger (Avant premiere: The Forgers )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Enterprise Bernhard": Searching for traces in the Toplitzsee. Hans Fricke on his research on documentation. (No longer available online.) In: Terra X. ZDF, September 2, 2003, archived from the original on December 3, 2016 ; Retrieved August 26, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Florian Osuch: "Flowers" from the concentration camp , VSA Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89965-389-2 .
  3. ↑ State Main Archives Brandenburg: Brandenburg Archives (PDF; 1.2 MB)
  4. ^ British Association of Paper Historians: The Exeter Papers, Studies in British Paper History
  5. ↑ a b Thorsten Schmitz: The real life of the forger. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung 2008 No. 53. March 2, 2008, p. 3 , accessed on August 26, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Bank of England: Withdrawn Banknotes Reference Guide . Bankofengland.co.uk.
  7. ↑ Peter Edel : When it comes to life , autobiography, 1st edition, part 2, p. 54 ff., Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-87682-714-0 .
  8. ↑ Wolf H. Wagner: Escaped from hell. Stations of a life. A biography of the painter and graphic artist Leo Haas , Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-362-00147-5 .