Nazi Germany launched Operation Bernhard during World War II with the explicit goal of completely collapsing the British economy by flooding the United Kingdom with millions of perfectly forged Bank of England banknotes.

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Nazi Germany launched Operation Bernhard during World War II with the explicit goal of completely collapsing the British economy by flooding the United Kingdom with millions of perfectly forged Bank of England banknotes. They utilized skilled prisoners in concentration camps to master the complex watermarks, serial numbers, and specific rag paper texture, eventually producing counterfeit currency worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The operation was actually so successful at mimicking the currency that the Bank of England was forced to recall all notes with a value over five pounds and redesign their entirely money supply from scratch after the war. Weaponized inflation is a genuinely terrifying military strategy, though it is incredibly ironic that the Third Reich's most effective blow to British infrastructure was just printing their enemies' money slightly too efficiently