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deputies. On September 6, Gutterer suggested dumping notes over Britain in quantities large enough to equal 30 percent of the currency in circulation. That would mean tons of paper for the overstretched Luftwaffe to carry, but it was the kind of mad scheme forever being dreamed up by Goebbels’s own Propaganda Ministry, the megaphone for Hitler’s Big Lies — the more often repeated, the more they stuck.
    Goebbels, a blindly devoted follower who had spread the “Heil Hitler” greeting among Nazi Party members, was the only person with an advanced degree — he had a doctorate in philology — to remain in Hitler’s immediate entourage throughout the war, and one of the very few with any college education at all. He confided his misgivings to his diary: “But what if the English do the same to us? I [will] let the plan be further explored.” Whether Goebbels was represented at the September 18 meeting is unknown, but he clearly was well aware that a whiff of counterfeit paper might blow away the Reich’s finances. They were already stacked as delicately as a house of cards because Hitler had refused to endanger his solid bourgeois support by raising taxes to rearm Germany until the day after the war actually began.
    Despite the intense secrecy, word of the counterfeiting plan soon reached London. The Berlin meeting was outlined comprehensively in a letter from Michael Palairet, chief of the British legation in Athens and the very model of an English aristocrat representing his class and country. (His daughter married into the ennobled family of Britain’s World War I prime minister, Herbert Asquith.) Palairet’s letter to London was marked “Very Confidential” and dated November 21 — just two months after the September 18 meeting — and contained material from the notebook of a Russian émigré named Paul Chourapine. Exactly how Chourapine had come by the information was not explained, nor were his sources named. He had been tossed out of Greece by the police in October and deported to France, where he could not be further interrogated. But his report was startling in both its detail and the level of its political and financial sophistication.
    During a conference of experts in monetary matters held on the 18th September of this year at the German Ministry of Finance, the following plan was discussed:
    “Offensive against Sterling and Destruction of its Position as World Currency”
    This plan, which was unanimously approved, contemplates in the first place the necessity of careful preparation and perfect execution of the work enabling the proposed aims to be realised in all the countries of the Near East as well as in North Africa, in the British Colonies and in South America.
    It was decided to proceed with the printing in the printing works of the Reichsbank of 30 milliards [billions] of forged bank notes of £1 and of 2 milliards of various other notes. The transfer of these forged notes to foreign countries would be effected through the diplomatic bags of the Ministry of the Navy.
    The consular representatives of Germany of the abovementioned countries would be charged with the disposal of this original merchandise in the most prudent manner. They have received instructions to try to obtain at first as much profit as possible until they receive the order to distribute the bank notes at a ridiculous price and even gratuitously, the main object being to flood the money markets with an enormous quantity of forged pounds.
    The plan contemplates the moment when these forged notes in spite of their perfect get-up will be discovered. This moment will be the one when the coup which is already being prepared will be executed in the largest exchanges of the world, in those of New York, Amsterdam, The Hague, Lisbon, Rome, Naples, etc. and which is to lead to the collapse of sterling or to its serious depreciation. To make the success of this coup possible, the Ministry of Propaganda is to start an accusation against