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the Bank of England of having itself put the forged currency into circulation with the object of ensuring the support of the “pays états” [nation-states] and of concealing from the world its own bankruptcy.
    The Navy and the Air Force of the Reich will be called upon to perform certain great exploits, if possible spectacular, which should coincide with the execution of the coup explained above.
    Confidence in the British currency having been destroyed, the [German] mark will be able to overrun the world market.
    This document is the only known contemporaneous description of the Germans’ original plan. Although the scheme was modified by the exigencies of war — and what battle plan is not? — Chourapine had captured its essence.
    British diplomats shared the Athens memo with the Americans in February 1940. Herschel Johnson, the highly respected senior career diplomat at the American embassy in London, quickly passed a summary to Washington, where the State Department then warned the Treasury. Washington was watching apprehensively lest the dollar also become a counter in a game that many Americans hoped to stay out of, considering it Europe’s war and the Nazis as Europe’s problem.
    The directors of the Bank of England, anachronistically known as “the Court,” were soon alerted, along with Sir Montagu Norman, the Bank’s governor. Norman ran the place with an iron hand, and the Bank’s inner circle kept the information so close that for many years the staff did not know Palairet’s letter had been its principal tip. Instead, they believed it had come via a dubious character dealing with the British embassy in Paris. This kind of obfuscation characterized the Bank’s smug, pusillanimous behavior from then on. And indeed, for years the Bank of England was unable and, until recently, unwilling to tell the full story because its officials insisted that many of their own records had been transferred to the British secret services or lost. After the war, officials of the Bank even destroyed some records on their own.
    If viewed merely as an espionage caper, the plot is one of the more benign in the nefarious history of this gangster regime. But the story touches a deeper nerve and still prompts inquiries to the Bank of England in a perverse tribute to the continuing fascination with Nazi totalitarianism, which stimulates the darkest infantile fantasies of absolute power and stolen wealth. Allied technical experts judged it “the most successful counterfeiting enterprise of all time,” and in sheer quantity it was certainly the largest. But Allied strategists quickly recognized their own vulnerability and backed off. While its initial tactical success embarrassed London, the plot was a strategic failure. Nevertheless, the Nazis, their aggressive ideology only loosely fettered to reality, literally forged ahead. Only a small proportion of the bills were put into circulation to buy raw materials from neutrals and guns from dispirited partisans. Some helped finance espionage and unconventional warfare of only marginal military utility but great propaganda value. The Nazis’ best spy ended up in the movies even though Berlin ignored his information. Their most daring commando won a place in history books, where he hardly deserved a mention. So the bizarre plot succeeded, but certainly not as intended. The story demonstrates how easily authoritarian command can degenerate into self-destruction. The fundamental lesson is applicable whenever new kinds of warfare appear: even a clever and imaginative idea can spin out of control if untested by the critical questioning essential to democratic government.
    A criminal subculture of counterfeiting coalesced early in the twentieth century as gold coins began giving way to printed banknotes. Between the wars, counterfeit currency circulated in the streets, shops, and back rooms of Europe. Some of the most notorious counterfeiters were failed artists like Hitler himself.
    But