Apart from looting and plundering Greece during the WWII occupation (April 1941-October 1944), Axis forces — Germany, Italy and Bulgaria — found another way to suck the life out of the devastated Greek economy and society, namely, by circulating counterfeit reichmarks.
These useless banknotes, which weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, were used in all “purchases” by German occupation forces with local merchants, producers and manufacturers, but they demanded drachmas in exchange. Paying with paper worth zilch, they received coinage in exchange thus reaping a double benefit. According to researchers and WWII resistance icon Manolis Glezos’ own investigation, the Wehrmacht stole an estimated 850 million euros just through this tactic.
