Submitted by rkadeYT t3_xwv3hr in todayilearned
Some random German advisor: "What if we destroy our enemy by paying them a massive sum of money?"
Hitler: "Brilliant!"
It seems like that, doesn't it? lol
How did they finally detect them?
It sounds like they had some warning of the plan from gathered intelligence:
>The Bank of England first learned of a plot from a spy as early as 1939. It first detected the existence of the notes in 1943, and declared them “the most dangerous ever seen.” (source)
There are also very subtle differences, a couple of which are described here.
Elyesa Bazna tried to buy a hotel with money the Germans paid him to spy on the British ambassador.
The Fed is laughing at their paltry 130 million.
BCE are more successful at it
The Nazis were terrible economists. 130 million pounds wouldn't have collapsed anything.
The original plan was to print 30 billion pounds worth of notes.
correct spelling, unless you were suggesting fowl play.
That’s a lot of poultry
And now imagine that most central banks do that today with little to no real oversight or transparency, taking money from the poor and placing it in their pockets and blaming "covid" "inflation" "supply chain issues"...... O wait ......
There was a BBC comedy/drama made about this in the 1981 called Private Schulz, starring Michael Elphich and Ian Richardson. Can be bought on DVD.
Imagine your job in the middle of a world war is to go spend as much cash as you can.
Man I bet those fakes are worth a FORTUNE today.
I believe this was mentioned in the absolutely wonderful book “double cross” by Ben Macintyre. When reading a book and you read the line that at one point, every single spy working in Europe was working for British Intelligence as they had all been turned shows the brilliance of this amazing story or department x
It took until 2008 for the Fed to print the first Trillion dollars. Between 2008-today they've printed around 8 Trillion more dollars. Germany was amateurs.
Adolf Burger, a prisoner in Ausschwitz and later Sachsenhausen, who was forced to work in this operation, came to my school and talked about his experience. Very chilling, great man and I would recommend his book to learn more. In my head I can still, after more than 20 years, hear his words when he talked how the prisoners who lived, who were experimented on andcwho were killed were selected on the welcoming ramps in Ausschwitz.
No need to get your feathers ruffled over it though.
Also a movie called " The Counterfeiters"
Watched it recently
Jesus Christ
A fictional comedy drama of this was 'Private Schulz', made in 1981 starring Michael Elphick.
Fed printer go brrrr
got a source for that?
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There were sure a lot of spies in Germany helping out the Allie’s. Almost as if the Nazi ideology was designed to create dissidents.
that link says that "Currency in Circulation" hit 1 Trillion on 9-Mar-2011, and is currently at 2.2 Trillion.
The "Total Assets of the Federal Reserve" follows the 2008 1t to 8.7t today curve, also, this is raw data, which is effectively unusable for the average person, because it doesn't say exactly what was asked so I have no idea what all is tied up in the various statements.
Yes, it’s raw data directly published by the federal reserve. When the OP referred to the fed printing money they weren’t referring to physical notes printed, but the act of adding money into the system. The way they do that is through the repo system and their balance sheet shows how much they have created… this is extremely oversimplified of course..
So the $8.7T is money they have created which the banks can use to make more money and it all ends up in the system and driving inflation.
Sure, that could be true, however quoting raw data at me is useless because I have no idea if your interpretation of the meaning of those number is correct, because "Total Assets of the Federal Reserve" could mean a bunch of different things.
Imagine if Nazis delayed hating Jews for a couple years, just enough to trap more nuclear physicists to work with Heisenberg.
Go listen to the excellent Civil War podcast "Uncivil". The episode called "The Paper" tells the story of how a small shopkeeper in Philly started making counterfeit Confederate notes and it almost completely destroyed the Confederate economy.
What about the universe where Hitler cured cancer? The answer is Don’t think about it.
Every spy in England
Don't tell me what to do! You're not my real mom!
But seriously, do think about it. Recent resurgence makes it clear they'd be happy to try at Holocaust again, and it's predictable they'd be slightly more tactical about it.
If you’re interested in the topic, this article explains it pretty well: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/making-sense/how-the-feds-balance-sheet-works-and-why-investors-care
Topic of the foreign language oscar winning movie The Counterfeiters
Curing cancer is Fucking easy as hell. It’s not killing you to do it that’s tough.
To be fair: Look at the original notes. They were an absolute joke when it comes to security and pretty much only relied on backchecking with the serial numbers.
The forgery was done in a KZ near Berlin, Sachsenhausen, by prisoners of the concentration camp.
one of the marks was that according the habit of the time the banknotes were pinned together to look authentic but either the prisoners working in the printing press or unaware spies put the pin in the place no Briton would put - through the face of the monarch or the coat of arms, I'm not sure now.
The other reason was that the prisoners actively sabotaged the printing, making little mistakes.
​
There is a movie about prisoners who worked in the printing press made from a book which was written by an actual prisoner who survived it.
There's also an austrian-german drama from 2007: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813547/
Starring renowned austrian (Karl Markovics) and german (August Diehl, Devid Striesow) actors
Could someone please explain how would this collapse an economy? I know that with more emission, then the currency is worth less, but how could secretly bringing more currency impact it? How would you detect it and what would be the consequences? I don't know much about economy sorry
A lot of the Abwehr were not sympathetic with the Nazis (Either because of ideological differences or the fact the Nazi party operated its own parallel intelligence agencies that competed with them). So as it turns out, most Abwehr agents sent over to great Britain basically turned themselves in as soon as possible and became double agents. Which usually means their job was to go to a bunch of high profile parties so they can be seen with people of influence to maintain their cover so that German intelligence would think they are doing work. In reality they were just getting drunk and spending money on both the British and German dime. I believe some of them even got to keep their German pensions after the war.
I wonder what would happen if you carpet bomb the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine with a trillion in Ruble bank notes.
It's just hard to fight counterfeiters who have access to government resources, for a small time crook the one off costs/hassle to forge banknotes is hard to recoup,if you spend too much you'll get caught, for a government doing it on mass those costs are spread.
For example it's believed north korea produces many high end US banknotes
Do you have further reading on that, or podcasts? Seems like something out of a movie
check out "spies and ties" on youtube, excellent series on spies in world war 2. episode 6 is about the abwehr specifically
The idea is that more fake money makes the real money worth less and reduces consumer confidence in the money. Just like how money is taken out of circulation often to keep the value up, the thought was a lot of money put into circulation with nothing coming out would be effective. It turns out, the most effective move would've just been to put liz truss in as PM.
American dollar: stronger against world currencies than pretty much ever
You: The fed is causing inflation!
There’s a great book about an American woman who essentially founded spy craft by her work in occupied France: A Woman of No Importance. The Abwehr features prominently and comes off as mostly incompetent except for 1 extremely dangerous counterintelligence agent.
It’s because all the other world governments are doing exactly the same thing right now
That’s just not true though.
What you’re saying implies that the central banks of every other nation are stronger than the American central bank, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to put inflate the dollar with their policies.
Which they don’t. In fact, we see the opposite, with the American central bank actually crushing every other country in restricting money to fight inflation, primarily due to the fact that the American central bank is the strongest one in the world, for better or for worse.
The Counterfeiters is an excellent movie
The best alternate universe would be one where Hitler had enough artistic talent to make a living painting movie posters and magazine advertisements.
This would in fact stimulate the economy
The REAL reason why we switched to the metric system?? (/s)
Couldn't likely have happened - hating Jews (and the associated fear that was manufactured in the populace) was fundamental to the Nazi rise to power.
We were both wrong (I looked it up) - it was every German spy was working for dept XX
Yes it is
That's hilarious. I hope some day I can obtain a job like that.
Would this have any meaningful effect though? If anything, couldn't the British government just say "Hey, these are good enough we'll accept them." and then save some money on minting?
You mean printing money and circulating it can cause the collapse of a country??!!! No way!! Who knew?
Department XX was a British counterintelligence program so by definition that statement must be true. Wikipedia says all German spies were turned except for one that committed suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_C._Upham if you just want to read a few paragraphs about it.
It was good from what I remember.
They just had to wait another 80 years for us to do that ourselves.
Look up Juan Pujol Garcia. Originally a "double agent" helping the British and later hired by British military intelligence.
Who exactly are you talking about when you say "they'd be happy to try again"?
Incompetent if incompetence was legitimately attempting to sabotage the Nazis. On more than one occasion Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, meet with Allied representatives and basically said "So what if one day Hitler were to suddenly die and all the top Nazis were rounded up and arrested, what kind of peace deal would offer?"
Canaris later being executed and the Abwehr being basically abolished after the Nazis figured out what he was up too.
The first influencers
Game over man!!! Game over!!!
Crumpets 🥸
There's no money in curing cancer...only treating it
Right. It's just saying that the Nazis could have done better... if they weren't the Nazis. Of course. But if they weren't nationalists/racists/antisemites, then they couldn't have won the war, because they wouldn't have started one.
Kindve content I come here for
If Hitler was around today he would be a hentai artist
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Iirc there was an adventure game, set on the Titanic. If you don't save some portraits they get famous for sinking with the ship, artist was A. Hitler
That's is very untrue
The article says the estimate of notes counterfeited is between £132 to £300 million; and another comment in this thread says that the plan was to print £300 billion.
It took until the 2020's but the German plan to collapse the British economy has finally worked.
Except it’s not. Chemo can and usually is a treatment required multiple times. And it costs thousands of dollars. If the cure existed it would kill recurring customers (not literally). There have been feasible treatments for cancer for decades but big pharmaceutical companies do what they can to prevent its exposure to the public.
He's by far my favorite author - he writes about stuff I love and I have all of his books about Military History. And he tells the stories so well
Operation Mincemeat was made into a film based on his book by Netflix. However I really want Double Cross to be made into a movie - an ensemble cast and like the big war films used to be. Think the Great Escape - the characters in the original story would make it epic.
Maybe I should right a screenplay myself?
I guarantee you that a cure for cancer would make the inventor rich.
Who’s gonna buy it?
Observe: Germany today. Not perfect, but economically wealthy, respected for their industry, and Berlin is one of most desirable cities for Jewish refugees.
Have you heard of The Iron Dream?
People with cancer.
And who’s gonna distribute it? Mass produce it?
Same as the cures for chlamydia, rabies, syphilis, tuberculosis, etc.
There is no cure for any of the things you listed. All are treated either with anti-biotics or penicillin, which are repetitive treatments that make lots of money, or in the case of rabies there is no cure. There is a vaccine that is painful and only a one time treatment, and are only administered after someone has been possibly exposed because of how not only expensive it is, but painful as well.
All you did was prove my point. Big pharma isn’t going to invest into a one time cure all because it doesn’t make them as much money as prolonged treatments like chemo and anti-biotics do.
Prove that there’s a cancer cure.
Prove there isn’t 🤷♂️
See how easy it is to say shit like that? You made an argument that big pharma would indeed fund a cure, and I debunked every single one of the examples you used. Hell one of them doesn’t even have a normal treatment.
I can’t prove there isn’t a cure and that was never my claim. You claimed there is a cure and can only Gish gallop when put on the spot.
I knew I watched a movie about this once
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Not sure what you're getting at.
Germany without Nazis in power in awesome.
I never said it wasn't. Love Germany, love Austria.
I hope they’re getting a better deal on printer ink than I am. Cries in HP.
It’s about quantity.
If the quantity of money in circulation doubled, the purchasing power halves — and everyone loses faith in the currency.
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” — John Maynard Keynes
His book ‘Prisoners of Colditz’ is another great read! 📖
gofatwya t1_ir8mstm wrote
Now, in the US, we do that to ourselves.