Forgery as a war weapon
Decades before the globally popular series, Money Heist, had euros rain from an airship, an identical real-life plan to rain money from the skies was conceived of in the thick of the Second World War. Operation Bernhard was launched in 1942 during WW2 under the leadership of SS (German paramilitary) Major Bernhard Krüger and aimed to flood Britain with counterfeit banknotes in order to destabilize the British economy.
To carry out the plan, the Nazis recruited skilled Jewish prisoners from concentration camps, particularly the Sachsenhausen camp in Oranienburg, Germany. Under constant threat but slightly better living conditions, these inmates forged currency with extraordinary precision - replicating about 150 different security marks.
The idea was to mass produce fake £5, £10, £20, and even £50 notes so convincing that they could pass off as real and trigger inflation, financial panic, and collapse of trust in British currency. One phase of the plan even considered dropping the fake money over British cities to cause inflation and chaos, à la Money Heist.
Daily operations were overseen by Albert Langer, a mathematician and codebreaker, under the direction of SS Major Alfred Naujocks. They divided the mission into three key phases: replicating the exact paper used by the British, creating identical printing plates, and reproducing the British serial numbering system.
A sinister plan with lasting echoes
Some counterfeit notes were laundered through banks in neutral countries, while others were planned to be dropped over Britain from aircraft: a literal money rain designed to disrupt the economy. Over 130 million pounds worth of fake notes were produced. Although the plan didn’t succeed in completely crashing the British economy, Operation Bernhard was one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history. Despite the Nazi cash airdrop never coming to fruition, their economic sabotage left a real imprint on history.
A large portion of the unused forged currency was dumped into the Toplitz and Grundlsee lakes high in the Austrian Alps as an Allied victory became obvious, but enough entered circulation that the Bank of England halted the release of existing notes and introduced a new design post-war. The operation was later portrayed in the BBC’s 1981 comedy-drama miniseries Private Schulz and the 2007 film The Counterfeiters.
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