Nazis tried to flood Europe with fake British banknotes, MI5 files show
Richard Norton-Taylor
MI5 files newly released by the National Archives show that Nazi Germany flooded Europe with fake British banknotes in an attempt to destroy confidence in the currency. The forgeries were so good that even German spymasters paid their agents in Britain with fake notes.
"There is thus the diverting picture," noted a senior MI5 officer after the war, "of one department of the German secret service selling forged notes ... and another department of the German secret service buying them in the belief that they were genuine in order to give them to agents being sent to this country."
It would have been a more significant blunder, Sir Edward Reid noted in his 1945 memo, had not the agents, including two codenamed Tricycle and Treasure, already been detained and turned into double agents by MI5.
Pour citer cette ressource :
"Nazis tried to flood Europe with fake British banknotes, MI5 files show", La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), février 2012. Consulté le 28/03/2023. URL: http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/archives/archives-revue-de-presse/nazis-tried-to-flood-europe-with-fake-british-banknotes-mi5-files-show