Counterfeit British £5 notes during WW2

I don’t know how many people know this but I just wanted to share a story I found very interesting.

Back in the early 1940s during WW2 Nazi Germany actually used concentration camp inmates with skills in counterfeiting to forge counterfeit £5 notes.

The Germans knew the £5 note was the most common British note in circulation and they planned on air dropping a bunch of them in England in an attempt to utterly ruin the British economy.

Operation Bernhard was the name of the operation.

The biggest challenges the concentration camp inmates faced in creating the fake notes were:

1). Duplicating the rag paper used to make the note.

2). Deducing the alpha-numeric serial code on each note so that the serial numbers on the fake notes matched up with the serial numbers of real genuine notes.

We all know that the operation never succeeded and Germany was defeated so what did they do with the fakes they had?

They dumped them in a lake!

The one good thing that came out of the counterfeit operation? The concentration camp inmates working the operation were treated relatively well, fed decently, and most importantly were not randomly tortured &/or killed like concentration camp inmates at other camps.


Anyway this is what the fake notes looked like and I just wanted to share with you guys because I thought it was interesting.

 

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Thanks. Some of them went up for auction a few years ago but I didn't bid.
Heritage auction Nov. 10, 2018; sold for $216.00; PCGS EF 40

Great Britain - Bank of England £5 June 4, 1936 "Operation Bernhard" Counterfeit Pick 335ax. PCGS Extremely Fine 40 Appa...

Lot 20347 » World Paper Money

 

The note has the date March 16, 1936.
Edward VIII was the king of England then.

 

Yes, they did do this. The concept of counterfeit currency to bring down an economy is nothing new. I recently make a thread about a "Swedish Livionian" coin from "Riga". Turns out it was a Romanian attempt to bog down the economy of the swedes, the fake date on the coin indicated it.

The counterfeits of that type are more valuable than the real, as far as I can tell, so I was happy.

For all I know, the Polish, Lithuanians, United Kingdom, and China have been targeted with this. If anyone knows any more I would be incredibly interested to learn more.

 

Didn't either the US/UK (or both) do they same with the Iraqi Dinar between the 1st and 2nd Gulf wars?

Didn't North Korea try the same with the $ 100 US note-or was that a way just to make money and involved the IRA?

 

Yes they faked older notes. In other words during the 1940s they made notes dated in the 1930s but they weren’t really from that date.

 

Ive never heard of the US or UK doing that to Iraq’s currency.

I do know that North Korea has been counterfeiting $100 “super notes” and they’re called that because they are actually higher quality than the ones made by the Federal Reserve.

 

If I remember correctly, these "super notes" have become less prevalent in recent years, surprisingly. However, I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea refined the counterfeit production process considering how important illicit activities are to the North Korean regime. Although, I do remember that there was an article from 2017 that one turned up at a bank in Seoul.

https://www.businessinsider.com/counterfeit-supernote-found-in-south-korea-2017-12

https://coinweek.com/people-in-the-...pened-north-korean-counterfeit-u-s-100-bills/

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23counterfeit.html

 

Over this past weekend (December 13th) "Sixty Minutes" a U.S. news program on Sunday nights ran a program about Peru being the principal source of counterfeit U.S. $100 over the past several years. The news may be old but it does seem to have resurfaced again.

 

The Operation Bernhard notes have varying opinions on the level of difficulty in their manufacture. The impression most people have of the Bank of England(BoE) notes from that time period is that they were easy to fake based on the notes were very plain looking. But actually the BoE white notes are quite surprisingly and fiendishly clever -giving the impression that they are easy to forge but in fact there are many tantalising features in the paper and in the printing that only the BoE knew all the details of. Even the selection of the serial numbers printed on the note involved a process that the Germans had to crack to make it appear as though they were actually issued notes.

The Germans had the Jewish forgers handle the forged notes to make them appear as though they had actually seen some use to give an air of authenticity. This included folding, bending and scuffing. They also poked pins in the notes to mimic the then common practice of pinning notes together. And the forgers then sabotaged the notes (similar to the slave labourers building German jets left bolts and rivets out to cause a later disaster) by putting pinholes in "Britannia's" eyes - they knew no Brit in their right mind would ever do such a thing.

As for the authentic notes, I have studied them thoroughly and appreciate a circa 1855 technology that served well for over 100 years until 1956.

 

Yup!

They actually stopped because American companies (Taco Bell is one example) started refusing to accept $100 notes out of fear that fake ones could be used to buy things and the person using them would receive real money in change for fake notes.

Believe it or not there are reports that the North Koreans were selling fake $100 super notes for $30 each or as low as $20 if purchased in large quantities.

They also gave North Korean diplomats a mixture of real & fake cash and even the diplomats themselves didn’t know they were fake.

It was especially scary considering only the US Federal Reserve could identify the “super notes” and even most big banks could not do so.

 

White fivers were not in common use during WWII Britain, the average civilian worker would not earn £5 per week.

My Dad informs me he never saw a White £5 until the early 50's

He will be 100 years old in two weeks time and he's not even seen a current £50 note and he does all his transactions in cash.


The U.S. counterfeited Japanese Invasion Money.

A supply of paper made from plants native to Japan was located in the U.S.

When that supply was exhausted the counterfeiting operation was transferred to Australia.

In 1943 MacArthur requested and received the following counterfeited notes; five million 10-Peso notes, three million 5-Peso notes, one and a half million 1-Peso notes and five hundred thousand 50 centavo notes.

The American forgeries are known to have the following block letter codes:

50 Centavo bills - PA, PB, PE, PF, PG, PH and PI 1 Peso bills - PH 5 Peso bills - PD 10 Peso bills - PA, PB, and PC

Counterfeit Japanese Invasion Money was produced by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia

 

Yes White Fivers were the most common notes in circulation. That’s why the Germans chose to counterfeit them.

Even Wikipedia says so.

 

Wikipedia is wrong.

The most common notes in circulation were 10 Shilling and £1 notes.

The £1 note was green and in 1940 a metal security thread was introduced, and the colour of the note was changed to blue and pink for the duration of the war, to combat German counterfeits.

That is why 10 Shillings and £1 notes are easier to obtain for collectors rather than the scarcer White £5.

The average annual wage was £248 5s 8d for men and £123 1s 3d for women

Divide that by 52 weeks and you will see the average Joe did not earn £5 per week and they were paid in cash so very few White £5 were seen.

 

I've just spoke to my Dad on the phone.
He served in the Navy between 1939 and 1945 fighting the enemy.
He stayed on an extra year helping France to clear German mines.

He told me after being demobbed in 1946 his first job after the war he earned £5 2s per week and after tax he received £4.19s in cash.

He knows full well about operation Bernhard, he said the Germans made a big mistake in picking the White £5 because it was little used and their plan would have failed.

If they had concentrated on £1 and 10s notes it might have worked.

 

Well you never know your dad could be mistaken or not remembering things correctly.

If he was around in WW2 he must be an elderly man by now and often the elderly get confused and misremember things.

I think it’s highly more likely that one person is mistaken then it is that an Encyclopedia with linked sources is wrong.

But I understand he is your father so it’s normal that as his son you would give greater weight to what he says than someone like me who doesn’t know him.

 

I 've told you he is 100 years old in two weeks time, he operates a smart phone, smart TV, a PC, a Tablet and has not got dementia.

He still has his wage packet receipts.


He lived through that period and spent the currency.

That is why Operation Bernhard was doomed to failure because it would not have worked, hardly any of the population had seen a White fiver.

I'm a banknote collector and even I know these facts.

Even a normal blue £5 note was a rare sight in the 60's when I was kid.

I have all the notes in question in my collection..


Remember the famous quote,
" Do not believe everything you read on the internet"
Abraham Lincoln

 

There is another piece of information Wiki left out.

The Jewish inmates put a little extra into the watermark that the Germans never saw.

Part of the watermark are the words Bank of England, they put a little foot on the bottom of the "E" in England.

 

As noted in my above post, I have studied the White notes thoroughly, including their circulation patterns. They might have been common currency in the top 1% of the population, but the other 99% were using 10/- and £1 notes and rarely if ever saw a White note as it was well beyond their means.

For @Gam3rBlake to infer differently, based on some misplaced anecdotal wikipedia evidence is a grave disservice and a bit rude if I interpret the message above the way I do.