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Operation Bernhard
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 The economy of the United Kingdom is a highly developed social market and market-orientated economy. It is the sixth-largest national economy in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), ninth-largest by purchasing power pa ... during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the (SD) under the title (Operation Andreas). The unit successfully duplicated the cotton paper, 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 inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money Laundering
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions with varying definitions. It is usually a key operation of organized crime. In US law, money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions to conceal the identity, source, or destination of illegally gained money. In UK law the common law definition is wider. The act is defined as "taking any action with property of any form which is either wholly or in part the proceeds of a crime that will disguise the fact that that property is the proceeds of a crime or obscure the beneficial ownership of said property". In the past, the term "money laundering" was applied only to financial transactions related to organized crime. Today its definition is often expanded by government and international regulators such as the US Offic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Counterfeiters (2007 Film)
''The Counterfeiters'' (german: Die Fälscher) is a 2007 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by Nazi Germany during World War II to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England pound notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film is based on the 1983 Czech-language memoir ''Komando padělatelů'' ("The Commando of Counterfeiters") by Adolf Burger, which would eventually be published in English as ''The Devil's Workshop''. Burger was a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation and was later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard. Ruzowitzky consulted closely with Burger through almost every stage of the writing and production. The film won the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Private Schulz (TV Series)
''Private Schulz'' is a 1981 BBC television comedy drama serial set mostly in Germany, during and immediately after World War II. It stars Michael Elphick in the title role and Ian Richardson playing various parts. Other notable actors included Tony Caunter, Billie Whitelaw, Billy Murray and Mark Wingett. It was shown on ''Masterpiece Theatre'' in the US. Plot summary Over six one-hour episodes, it tells the story of Gerhard Schulz, a German fraudster and petty criminal who is forced against his will to serve in the SS. In a story based on the real, though unrealised, plot by the Germans known as Operation Bernhard, he persuades his superiors to authorise a project to print counterfeit British five pound notes for the purpose of destroying the British economy. Schulz has little interest in the defeat of Britain, and simply wants to steal the forged notes, although he is also strongly motivated to help a former criminal colleague, a Jewish master forger imprisoned in a concentrat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bank Of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of the United Kingdom, it is the world's eighth-oldest bank. It was privately owned by stockholders from its foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946 by the Attlee ministry. The Bank became an independent public organisation in 1998, wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government, with a mandate to support the economic policies of the government of the day, but independence in maintaining price stability. The Bank is one of eight banks authorised to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom, has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales, and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee has devolved responsibility for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grundlsee
Grundlsee is a municipality in the Liezen District of Styria, Austria. The municipality includes 151.54 km ² large parts of the Ausseerland and the Dead Mountains. The village is located directly on Grundlsee lake. Contents Geography Location The community Grundlsee is located in Ausseerland in the Styrian Salzkammergut in the district of Liezen, Styria. Grundlsee is located at 732 m above sea level directly on the Grundlsee on the southwestern edge of the Totes Gebirge. The five villages of the municipality are located in an elongated valley on the shores of the Grundlsee, which is framed on three sides by the approximately 1000 meters towering foothills of the Dead Mountains. The valley has an east-west length of about ten kilometers (to theKammersee ) and a width of about one kilometer in a north-south direction with the only opening to the west to the ''Bad Ausseer basin''. The most striking mountains that frame this valley are the Hundskogel ( 1748 m ), the Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Toplitz
Lake Toplitz (German: ''Toplitzsee'') is a lake situated in a dense mountain forest high up in the Austrian Alps, from Salzburg in western Austria. It is surrounded by cliffs and forests in the Salzkammergut lake district, within the Totes Gebirge (dead mountains). The Toplitzsee water contains no oxygen below a depth of 20 m. Fish can survive only in the top 18 m, as the water below 20 m is salty, although bacteria and worms that can live without oxygen have been found below 20 m. In 1943 and 1944, the shore of Lake Toplitz served as a Nazi naval testing station. Using copper diaphragms, scientists experimented with different explosives, detonating up to 4,000 kg charges at various depths. Over £100 million of counterfeit pound sterling notes were claimed to have been dumped in the lake after Operation Bernhard, which was never fully put into action. In 1959, investigators recovered £700 million of counterfeit notes from the lake, that Hitler had planne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ebensee Concentration Camp
Ebensee was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria, in 1943. The camp held a total of 27,278 male inmates from 1943 until 1945. Between 8,500 and 11,000 prisoners died in the camp, most from hunger or malnutrition. Political prisoners were most common, and prisoners came from many different countries. Conditions were poor, and along with the lack of food, exposure to cold weather and forced hard labor made survival difficult. American troops of the 80th Infantry Division liberated the camp on 6 May 1945. Residential homes now exist on the site of the camp, and a memorial cemetery is nearby. A memorial tunnel, created in 1994, and a Museum for Contemporary History Ebensee, created in 2001, provide information about the camp to visitors. Formation The construction of the Ebensee subcamp began late in 1943, and the first prisoners arrived on 18 November 1943 from the main camp of M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Redl-Zipf
The Redl-Zipf V-2 rocket facility (code name ''Schlier'') located in central Austria between Vöcklabruck and Vöcklamarkt and established in September 1943 began operation for V-2 rocket motor testing after Raxwerke test equipment had been moved from Friedrichshafen. The facility tested V-2 combustion chambers' compatibility with turbopumps since the rocket did not have a controller for reducing the turbopumping of propellant into the chamber if pressure became too high. The World War II facility used as a starting base the cellars and storage tunnels of an old brewery. Construction of the facility was under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler who was responsible for Nazi civil engineering projects and its top secret weapons programs and used forced labor from the Schlier-Redl-Zipf subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The construction added a large number of tunnels and supporting structures and included a liquid oxygen generation plant in one of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further Subcamp (SS), subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp. The Mauthausen main camp operated from 8 August 1938, several months after the German annexation of Austria, to 5 May 1945, when it was liberated by the United States Army. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gran Sasso Raid
During World War II, the Gran Sasso raid (codenamed ''Unternehmen Eiche'', , literally "Operation Oak", by the German military) on 12 September 1943 was a successful operation by German paratroopers and ''Waffen-SS'' commandos to rescue the deposed Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from custody in the Gran Sasso d'Italia massif. The airborne operation was personally ordered by Adolf Hitler, approved by General Kurt Student and planned and executed by Major Harald Mors. Background On the night between 24 and 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence against prime minister Benito Mussolini. On the same day, King Victor Emmanuel III replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had Mussolini arrested. This is commonly known as the Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy (or ''25 Luglio'' in Italian); Badoglio's government at first continued the war on the Axis powers' side, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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