page_title: Operation Bernhard
section_title: Operation Andreas
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Bernhard / Background / Operation Andreas
caption_attribution_description: Alfred Naujocks (1911-1966), high-ranking German SS officer. Identification photograph taken by the U.S. Army after Naujocks had deserted to the American forces on 19 October 1944.
context_page_description: Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst under the title Unternehmen Andreas. The unit successfully duplicated the rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and deduced the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in early 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich.
  The operation was revived later in the year; the aim was changed to forging money to finance German intelligence operations. Instead of a specialist unit within the SD, prisoners from Nazi concentration camps were selected and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to work under SS Major Bernhard Krüger. The unit produced British notes until mid-1945; estimates vary of the number and value of notes printed, from £132.6 million up to £300 million.
context_section_description: On receipt of Hitler's go-ahead, Heydrich opened a counterfeiting unit under the operational title Unternehmen Andreas (Operation Andreas). Heydrich's order to set up the unit stated that
  This is not to be a forgery or counterfeiting in the usual sense, but authorised facsimile production. The notes must be such a perfect copy of the original that even the most experienced bank-note experts cannot tell the difference.
  In early 1940 the forgery unit was set up in Berlin within the technical department of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), headed by Alfred Naujocks, a major in the paramilitary Schutzstaffel (SS). Daily operational control fell under the auspices of Naujocks's technical director, Albert Langer, a mathematician and code-breaker. The pair broke the task down into three stages: producing identical paper, preparing identical printing plates to the British notes, and duplicating the British serial numbering system.
  The Germans decided to concentrate on the notes with the largest number in circulation, the £5. Samples of British notes were sent to technical colleges for analysis, which reported back that it was rag paper with no added cellulose. Naujocks and Langer realised that the paper would have to be handmade. The colour of the first samples differed from the original; the Germans had used new rags. After tests at the Hahnemühle paper factory, the rags were used by local factories and then cleaned before being used to make the paper; the colours of the counterfeit and original notes then matched. When the initial paper samples were produced, at a factory in Spechthausen, they looked identical to British notes in normal light, but looked dull in ultraviolet light when compared to the originals. Langer surmised it was because of the chemical composition of the water used for making the paper and in the ink. He duplicated the chemical balance of British water in order to make the colours match.
  To break the coded arrangement of the alphanumeric serial designation, Langer worked with banking experts, examining records of currency from the previous 20 years in order to replicate the correct order. No records were kept by Operation Andreas and the method of how the Germans identified the correct sequences is not known; the paper historian Peter Bower states that it is possible that techniques adapted from those used in cryptanalysis were used to break the sequences. The German engravers working on the engraving plates struggled to reproduce the vignette of Britannia, which they nicknamed "Bloody Britannia" because it was so difficult. After seven months the forgers finished what they thought was a perfect copy, although Kenworthy states that the figure's eyes are incorrect.
  By late 1940 Naujocks had been removed from his position after he fell out of favour with Heydrich. The counterfeiting unit continued under Langer before he left in early 1942 at which point it closed down; he later stated that over 18 months, the unit had produced around £3 million in forged notes; the historian Anthony Pirie puts the figure at £500,000. Most of the currency produced in Operation Andreas was never used.
caption: Alfred Naujocks, who oversaw Operation Andreas
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