ww2 counterfeit £ notes

[phrenzy]

During ww2 the Germans had a pretty serious counterfeiting operation was primarily run out of Auschwitz and resulted in very high quality fakes that were successfully passed through swiss banks in a test run.

I would really like to find some of these notes. I read that sealed boxes of them have been found at various times at the bottom of lakes around Germany.

Has anyone seen one come up for sale?  I suppose many might have come up as real without anyone knowing it's real provenance.

does anyone know the differentiating features between the real and the fake? Does anyone here have one?

[Sapyx]

The Nazi programme was called "Operation Bernhard". Wikipedia. Google that phrase and you'll find more than enough information on the notes, and how to detect them. This website, for example, lists all known serial number-signature combinations of Operation Bernhard notes, as well as giving some genuine-versus-fake comparison pics of key features.

As for owning one by accident, it's possible, though unlikely. The vast majority of Operation Bernhard notes on the market today came from known post-war stashes.

[Bigfellani5]

I picked up a fake a year of so ago. My customer paid big dollars for what termed out a fake. Still these fakes sell for a couple of hundred anyway

[Enlilninlil]

So is there anymore counterfeit notes from WW2, I read about the counterfeit General Government 100 and 500 Zloty but that is all. There has to be more than that.

[drakesterling]

There were also a small amount of US dollars as well, from what I recall reading somewhere.

They made a movie about it called Die Fälscher. It's a pretty entertaining dramatisation of the operation.

Eric

[Sapyx]

Both sides of WWII counterfeited the notes of their enemies; Operation Bernhard was merely larger and more famous than most of the others. For example, there was an Australian operation to print counterfeit Japanese and Japanese Occupation notes, to give to special ops forces for use as bribes. The Americans also made counterfeit JIM with anti-Japanese propaganda printed on the back, for dropping out of aircraft over occupied villages. These "propaganda notes" form an interesting subset of wartime monetaria; there was an article about them in CAB a couple of years ago, I seem to recall.