This is not exactly about paper money, but rather about a movie and fake notes. May still be interesting for some here ...

During WW2 the German nazi regime had the plan to produce lots and lots of counterfeited pound sterling and then US dollar notes. This way they wanted to undermine the economy of the enemy. The work was done by concentration camp prisoners, primarily in Sachsenhausen near Berlin. They had better conditions than the other prisoners, an almost privileged status, as long as they delivered high quality "money".

Now a new movie, the Austrian-German coproduction Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters), tells the story of this Operation Bernhard. Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a "master" counterfeiter; August Diehl plays Adolf Burger, today one of the last living witnesses of the operation. The movie is mostly based on Burger's books and stories - he is almost 90 years old, and still regularly talks, at schools and on other occasions, about the nazi crimes and in particular the dilemma the counterfeiting prisoners were in: do a good job (and thus help the nazis) and hope to survive, or be killed.

While Sorowitsch tries to convince the others that cooperation is necessary in order to survice, Burger aims at a third way: He and some others do what they are expected to do, but at the same time slow the development and production down in various ways, hoping that the allied forces would at the end be faster than their operation.

Movie website (German): http://www.diefaelscher.de/
More clips: http://www.kino.de/kinofilm/die-faelscher/clips/85710.html

Operation Bernhard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard
Adolf Burger (in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger

"Die Fälscher" had its premiere at the Berlinale in February and can now be seen (started a few days ago) in Austrian and German movie theaters. As from September it will also be in theaters in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Christian

I want to buy the Operation Bernhard notes at some point, they are historical material and along with the Concentration camp money I am looking for will form a valuably important part of my collection.

Sounds like a very interesting movie.

I look forward to seeing this movie one day. Thanks for the info!

There is also a new book out in English called Krueger's Men that covers Operation Bernhard.

I hope that they will translate it into English-sounds like a very interesting movie, much better than the crap in my box office ATM

Don't think so. You may know the saying about how a good foreign language movie is "exported": It is shown with subtitles in the Netherlands, in a dubbed version in Germany, and as a remake in the US. Besides, I have not seen "Die Fälscher" yet, just various previews, so I cannot tell yet how good or bad it is in my opinion. But the story I sure find very interesting; partly because of the conflict of interest these prisoners were in, and also because of the idea to use counterfeits as a kind of weapon.

@mufelika: Right, see the "Further Reading" section of the Wikipedia article (and the link to the author's website). The movie has a somewhat different approach and of course focuses on a few (partly fictitious) characters ...

Christian

i've got one of these notes stashed in a box somewhere. i went and picked it up after a seeing a show on the history channel about them. i sorta forgot about it because it didn't fit in any of my currency album pages. pretty historical note!

i remember in stuttgart there was a park that showed free movies at night. the movies were from all over europe and had subtitles. heheheh...i can't see the u.s. movie-going public ever getting big on subtitled foreign films. hollywood spoiled us. and no matter what they feed us, we'll keep watching their terrible remakes of great foreign films...like 2002's "the ring" (1998 "ringu" from japan). i think the last time german filmmakers had a cross-over hit in the u.s. was in 1981, with "das boot".