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Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19

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It was one of Nazi Germany's top-secret operations. It was the most humiliating episode in the Bank of England's history. It saved dozens of Jewish artisans from the chimneys.

Operation Bernhard was the massive counterfeiting plot designed to destroy England's economy--and the financial wellbeing of any other nation that dared to defy the Third Reich. With the failure of its predecessor, Operation Andreas, Operation Bernhard sought talent from an unlikely source. SS Officer Bernhard Krueger selected his crew of counterfeiters from concentration camps. Some of the men were only hours away from death when they were recruited for the scheme. Printers, lithographers, artists, and others with related skills were brought to Block 19 at Sachsenhausen.

While he was nothing like Oscar Schindler, Krueger saw the sense of treating his men like human beings. Decent food and clothing meant so little to those used to it, but it meant far more to those who had been denied the most basic of necessities. Such treatment will buy respect, if not some form of loyalty.

Author Lawrence Malkin's in-depth research delves into a lesser-known facet of WWII and Nazi Germany. The first several chapters provide information of the events leading to the formation of Operation Bernhard. These chapters are somewhat slow, but they are essential to understand the remaining narrative, which grows intriguing andcompelling.

KRUEGER'S MEN would be an excellent reading choice for students of WWII history, as well as any fields that could benefit from the study of a complex crime ring.

Whether a student or casual purveyor, this book is a fascinating study of brilliance and diligent work put to an unsavory use.

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer
10/25/2006

Since the first coins were minted, men have tried (the vast majority of the time unsuccessfully) to make themselves rich by counterfeiting the world's currencies for their own prosperity. Nations too, have used the tactic in time of war for the last two thousand years with little success.

Lawrence Malkin's historical Krueger's Men, details probably the single most successful effort of a nation or state's attempt to devalue another nation's currency in time of war.

From the earliest months of World War II, Nazi Germany plotted to counterfeit one of the history's premier and most stable currencies, the British pound. Through a series of fits and starts, Heinrich Himmler and the vaunted SS hit upon a solution that would haunt the Bank of England for half a century.

What started as an experiment--with a motive of devaluing the currency of the last-standing free country of Europe--sent tremors through the shattered economies of nearly every country in Europe.

Krueger's Men explains in startling detail how the prisoners broke down the Bank of England notes to the microscopic level and eventually produced British bank notes so perfect that many were taken as real by the bank itself!

Millions of pounds worth of forged notes were surreptitiously circulated through a variety of money launderers scattered all around the European continent. This played havoc with British currency that at the inception of hostilities traded at four pounds to the US Dollar.

By the end of the war, the exchange rate was one for one and many British citizens refused legitimate bills when tendered because of the known scheme to undermine their own currency. One has to wonder whether, given enough time, would the British economy have survived?

To understand the scope of the deception, it wasn't until a little over two years ago that the Bank Of England finally admitted that its currency had been forged during the war.

Lawrence Malkin has done extensive research as the epilog, notes, bibliography and appendixes will testify.

Krueger's Men exposes one of the greatest dark secrets of Nazi deception, the will to live of the men pressed into service at the camps, and a victor's unwillingness to admit the truth.

Armchair Interviews: An amazing true story of World War II.

Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19 covers the wider context behind the decision by the Nazi hierarchy to counterfeit the currencies of Britain and America in order to undermine their economies. As such it offers background material on this military strategy down through the ages before focusing on the prisoners of Block 19. It is a useful corrective to the film which re-arranges and in some cases invents events, and merges several characters together. For example, you get no sense that over 140 prisoners were involved in the effort but the film suggests only a few dozen at most. It also corrects a technical error in the film that states that genuine US dollars were printed by rotogravure, which has a fine screen through it which would make the edges of curves and type slightly staircased. In fact, the dollar was printed by intaglio in which the plate or roller is etched and the ink is pulled from the depression by the pressure on the roller and the tack of the ink.

An interesting aspect of this account is following the fortunes of the agents who had to unload the counterfeit banknotes in sufficient quantities to destabilise the real currency. The narrative is slightly diminished by the journalistic impulse to add irrelevant colour but, fortunately, the sources of information are cited in full for those who would want to immerse themselves in greater detail.

An excellent companion piece for the Academy Award-wining (Best Foreign film 2008) "The Counterfeiters." This book will take you behind the scenes on how the operation was organized and executed beyond the confines of the concentration camp. The insights into how the Bank of England dealt with the waves of fake pound notes (bottom line - they didn't) are especially interesting.

I had first heard of this story when my brother loaned me a copy of the DVD film "Die Falscher" - originally released in German with English sub-titles and then re-titled for our audiences as "The Counterfeiters". I was just so impressed with that film and especially when I had read afterwards that it was a true story. Clearly this had been one story of the war that was not well known. A few weeks ago in my trolling for discounted books I saw Malkin's hardcover edition at a very good price and bought it.

I could hardly put this book down. What I found very helpful to add extra textures were the huge number of footnotes at the end of the book. This is an author who had obviously done years of research and it shows through. The story told is all the more remarkable because Malkin reveals that the Americans and Brits both seriously toyed with the same idea that the SS under Himmler finally developed in full bloom. In the United States a personality no less than the great novelist John Steinbeck got a personal interview with FDR, an almost unheard of thing at that time and he proposed his version of dumping counterfeit papers over Germany only to see the idea totally shot down..."But Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. hated the idea. America was not yet at war with Germany, and Morgenthau felt that the Treasury had no business printing counterfeit notes. Despite Steinbeck's support, the plan went nowhere in 1940. The idea was resurrected in 1943 where it met the same fate."
[Source: thenewamerican.com/history/european/223-nazi-counterfeiters]

Another lingering and surprising theme of the book is how long after the war the Nazi plan hurt and continued to harm the Bank of England. Tight lipped and in a lock sealed state of public denial about the matter, eventually the story was the topic of discussion in the Parliament and a very embarrassed politician had to admit in less than 60 words (if memory is correct) that the story was true.

At the center of this story is the SS plan to reproduce perfect British pound notes, especially the Five pound notes. That they in turn forced a Nazi who was well out of grace with the more powerful elites....the job whether he liked it or not and that he in turn used an ingenious plan to select (mostly) Jewish skilled workers....laid the foundation for a most macabre story of survival for both Kruegger and his very frightened workers.

What I found much more focussed and developed in the book (in comparison to the film) were the last few days of the fate of the group from Operation Bernhard....that part of the story is incredibly thrilling for the extreme sense of impending doom. One can almost empathize with the men to the extent that one imagines them seeing the wings of the angel of death passing by their locations, over and over again but not quite striking them down. That most of them escaped is miraculous and breathtaking. The film version stressed the internal tensions between the men as some of them worked on sabotaging the plates; in the film it is a moral quandary and in the book it appears more to be a delaying tactic.

I must go buy a copy of this film and own it. I highly recommend this book for the wealth of detail of how the program was set up, the conflicting agendas, the surreal life these segregated workers lived in....just imagine that as they were living on comfortable cots and had lots to eat, all around them their fellow inmates were "going up the chimney" as the camp saying puts it. I cannot imagine the thoughts that crossed the men's minds as they daily contemplated their fate. A superb historical report.

The book, as problematically vague or rounded as a few of the larger facts are (numbers of victims in some death camps), is one of the very few sources to deal with the realm of economic warfare in WWII and the German counterfeiting effort. As the irritated owner of the Bank Of England's own history of itself, it is a relief to see someone study it in depth.

This book does not seek to describe the Bank of England countermeasures but rather seeks to describe the German counterfeiting process and the interaction of counterfeiting to the various governments. The psychological element was nicely covered (although one suspects most of it was gathered by supposition as such things are hard to know for sure) and the vignettes about treatment and the work gave one a feel for events. Other interesting facts (such as extremely expensive machinery that nobody knew how to operate) remind one of the chronic mismanagement that was the SS. Some Westerners seem to think that the SS was a highly efficient organization but the reality was that it served mainly in draft evasion by the Nazi elite.

The limited scope for delivery of the notes was also important. Few sources discussed the reporting of the problem or Bank of England countermeasures. The author does so here in more detail than I have seen anywhere else. He also explained why the issue was ignored in the Bank of England's history. The prime fear for English bankers for decades had been a loss of confidence in the pound. The prospect of counterfeit pounds, even if properly dealt with, would be seen as a danger to that confidence. Rather than publicize the threat and seek to enlist aid in getting the counterfeits out of circulation, the Bank of England chose to hide the problem (even as it dealt with the problem) even into the 90's.

A fascinating and entertaining book. My main complaint is that some dubious facts about the larger situation warrant greater scrutiny than I can give. While I understand that endnotes are the norm, I would love a return to footnotes so I could more easily scan the book while looking up the more dubious references.

I read this good book, here in Brazil.This book is about the massive production of fake notes of British pounds, by nazi Germany, during World War II.The production of false notes of England's money was massive and of good quuality.Even so, it was next to nothing, in nazi Germany war effort.The chapter 10 is about what really these fake notes,were really used.Chapter 11 is about the failure, with the american dollar.The last chapter is about what happened with the men involved, into this operation.
This book is good, but its real problem, is that this operation had almost no impact in World War II.

This is a very interesting book. The author does an excellent job of turning historical facts into a story. He manages to form complex history into a narrative that is interesting and informative. I was particularly impressed by the insightful analysis of the Nazi bureaucratic structures and their players. This is a well-written book and reads quickly. It will be of interest to both the WWII historian (especially if concerned with economics) and to those who study the Holocaust.

I am glad I read this book and I learned from it, but there are two areas in which I feel it falls short. First, there are a lot of controversies surrounding the interpretation of WWII history. The author typically picks one of these interpretations, presents it as fact, and neglect to mention that it is not fact at all, but supposition. One of the most egregious examples is the author's explanation for the calling of the Wannsee Conference and the switch (in 1942) from shooting Jews to killing them in concentration camps (predominately, by gassing them). The author explains that Heinrich Himmler was repulsed by the idea of German soldiers shooting people, even Jews and sought other solutions. This explanation is based in fact, but it ignores the many other explanations that reputable historians have offered for this change in policy. Among these is the inefficiency and messiness of killing millions of people by shooting them one at a time, the strain this posed on a stretched German military apparatus which was failing to win the war in Russia, internal power struggles in the German bureaucracy and the clearer articulation by Hitler of his desire to exterminate all the Jews.

Second, there are a distressing number of errors in facts in this book. I will give but two examples: The author states as fact that 900,000 people were murdered at Treblinka. Most scholars agree that 800,000 is the correct number. The author provides a list of extermination camps in Europe, but neglects to mention either Chelmno (150,000 killed) or Belzec (430,000 killed). There are literally scores of such errors in the book. They don't alter the overall story or the analysis, but they are noticeable to the more knowledgeable reader.

I do not know anything about currency and economic policy in Britain, but the number of errors related to the history of the Holocaust led me to wonder how accurate the other facts in the book are. I would ask that a knowledgeable reader in this area assess this question.

Only so-so as a book 2 1/2 stars, really. An interesting story, a more modest book. the author spends a lot of energy trying to stretch the material out into book format, and insists on making numerous unnecessary editorial comments on all things Nazi. Like many of those picking up the book at this point, I saw the Counterfeiters and wanted to know more. Here's one book where the movie was far better, if not entirely accurate, it would seem. Another film "inspired by true events."

Although I finished reading this book I did so imagining that at some point there would be a real narrative of experiences by those who lived it, i.e. a story of what happened. Instead it is like an assembly of facts and names and dates all of which I began to ignore. Without the story of what happened what difference do the dates, names, etc. make to anyone? Very disappointing read.