__NOTOC__ Bernhard Krüger (; 26 November 1904 – 3 January 1989) was a member of the NSDAP, SS '' Sturmbannführer'' (Major) during World War II, and leader of the Department VI F 4a, part of the SD-foreign branch in the

Reich Security Main Office The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...

(RSHA). This office of the Nazi Party Security Service (SD) was responsible for, among other things, falsifying

passport A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...

s and documents. Within the setting of Operation Bernhard, the SD forged pound notes in great numbers, funding Nazi Germany with £600 million in high-quality counterfeit currency (worth approx. $6 billion 2009). This

counterfeiting To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

operation was named after Krüger, who led the operation from a segregated factory built at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, manned by 142 Jewish inmates. The pound counterfeiting operation ended in 1944. However Krüger succeeded in establishing a new operation to forge American dollar notes. In May 1945 his team of prisoners were transferred to Ebensee concentration camp in Austria where they were liberated. One of the forgers,

Adolf Burger Adolf Burger (12 August 1917 – 6 December 2016) was a Slovak Jewish typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. The film ''The Counterfeiters'', based largely on his memoirs, won the 2007 Academy Award fo ...

survived the war and stated that "Major Krüger was in no way like Oskar Schindler. He was a murderer just like everyone else, six weeks before the war ended he had six people shot just because they were sick. He couldn't send them to hospital in case they said something about the operation, so he killed them." After the war, Major Krüger was detained by the British for two years, then turned over to the French for a year forging documents for them. He was released in 1948 without any charges being pressed, and returned to Germany. In the 1950s, he went before a

denazification Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...

court, where inmates under his charge at Sachsenhausen provided statements that resulted in his acquittal. He eventually worked for the company that had produced the special paper for the Operation Bernhard forgeries. He died in 1989.

In popular culture

German actor

Devid Striesow Devid Striesow (born 1 October 1973 in Bergen auf Rügen, East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 Oct ...

portrays the character Sturmbannführer Herzog in the movie ''

Die Fälscher ''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 Kingdo ...

'' ("The Counterfeiters", 2007). Sturmbannführer Herzog is based on the real Bernhard Krüger.

References

Notes Further reading * Bloom, Murray Teigh (1983) ''The Brotherhood of Money''. Port Clinton, Ohio: BNR Press.

External links

Bernhard Krüger's photo
Axis History Forum. {{DEFAULTSORT:Krueger, Bernhard 1904 births 1989 deaths SS-Sturmbannführer German counterfeiters Reich Security Main Office personnel