COMPARING NOTES

The Nazi plot depicted in the new Peaky Blinders film might seem like the fanciful creation of its screenwriter, but it turns out that the truth is stranger than fiction, writes Guy Walters

- Guy Walters

Anyone who has already seen the new Peaky Blinders movie will know that it centres on a dastardly Nazi plot to crash Britain’s economy by flooding the country with forged banknotes.

It sounds like something a screenwriter might concoct after a particularly heavy night on the sauce. Except the idea is rooted in fact.

During the Second World War, the Nazis really did launch a vast operation designed to undermine Britain financially. It was called Operation Bernhard, and it remains among the largest and most sophisticated counterfeiting enterprises ever attempted.

I recently revisited this extraordinary episode while filming my documentary series The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold, which took me to a remote lake in the Austrian Alps where thousands of the forged banknotes were dumped in the final days of the Third Reich. Yet the most remarkable part of the story lies not in the banknotes themselves, but in the men forced to produce them.

The idea of attacking Britain through its currency emerged within the Nazi security apparatus early in the war. Confidence in sterling was one of Britain’s great strategic strengths. Undermine that confidence, the thinking went, and Britain’s ability to finance its war effort might collapse.

Responsibility for turning the idea into reality eventually fell to Bernhard Krüger, a meticulous SS officer working within the Reich Security Main Office. Krüger’s solution to the enormous technical challenge of forging British banknotes was chillingly pragmatic: he would recruit the best printers and counterfeiters in Europe - from concentration camps.

Across Nazi-occupied Europe, prisoners with a background in printing, engraving or graphic design were identified and transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin. There, they were housed in a sealed compound known as Block 19.