Nothing looks particularly remarkable about theWorld War II - era printing plate at the Spy Museum in Washington , D.C. It exhibit the text and sequent numbers racket you would wait to find on British banknotes from the fourth dimension , but this artifact did n’t add up from the British government — as the video fromAtlas Obscurabelow excuse . The plate was a tool used by Nazi Germany in an attack to delegitimize the economy of Great Britain .
When they were n’t battle troops on the battlefield , Germany was devising ways to bring down other European nations using spy manoeuvre . One of these strategies was called Operation Bernhard . By printing 130 million Irish punt of fake British currency and slipping it into Britain via airdrop , Germany hoped to stultify the body politic ’s economy .
To make the banknotes , Nazis swear on forced labor from artists , bankers , and have sex forger being held captive in absorption clique . Details from the reliable bills — including watermarks , successive number , and the type of paper used to make them — were reduplicate in the forged documents .
Despite the effort put into the project , the false banknotesnever made itinto British circulation . The Luftwaffe , the airfleet Germany had planned to apply to drop the bills over Britain , had sustained too many losses by the time the program was quick to be set in motion . Germany may have used some of the counterfeit cash to launder money and pay off spy working for the army , but by the close of World War II , any remaining grounds of the strategy was disposed of in a lake in Austria .
twelvemonth subsequently , those artefact were recovered , and the Spy Museumrecently addedthe pound notes and a fashion printing plate to its collection . harmonise the museum , the plateful is the only known surviving impress plate create by Nazi Germany for Operation Bernhard .
To see the artifacts and get wind more about them , turn back out the video from Atlas Obscura below .
[ h / tAtlas Obscura ]
