Unternehmen "Bernhard"

[Shane Beaver]

I saw a documentary on TV last night regarding Unternehmen "Bernhard", the Nazi plan to flood Britain with forged banknotes. The officer in charge of this operation, Stubaf Bernhard Kruger, died in 1989. Can anyone provide me with further details of his career in the SS, please?

[Dieter Zinke]

Bernhard Krüger, KZ Sachsenhausen, Referat VI, F 4 / RSHA

Dieter Z.

[jv]

SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger (SS Nummer 15 249), Head of Group "F/Technische Hilfsmittel" in Amt VI des RSHA. The printing machines were located in baracks 18 and 19 at Sachsenhausen. When Skorzeny got involved in the operation in the summer of 1943, the engravers moved to Skorzeny's HQ Friedenthal. jv

[Phil Nix]

Krüger born 26.11.04 Party Nr 528729 Usf 9.11.35 Osf 9.11.36 Hsf 20.45.38 Sbf 9.11.42
Phil Nix

[Shane Beaver]

Thanks dieter, jv& phil. Knew he was SIPO/SD by plain collar patch, but was not sure which branch. Thanks once again.

[Michal78]

Here is postwar photo of Krüger.

G.

[phylo_roadking]

Funny to see that pic of him holding the White Fiver IIRC he worked out the rest of his working life at a desk job in the paper mill that had provided the paper for Operation Bernhard

[Mikedc]

I thought he fled to Peru after the war where he became a boardmember of Standard Electric AG, a subdivision of the American company International Telephone and Telegraph???

Greetings,
Mike

[gnem]

After the war Krüger was arrested by the British in 1946 and then turned over to the French who offered him a job making counterfeit documents for their Secret Service. He turned them down and was released in 1949. After which he returned to Germany and was unemployed and living on public welfare. In 1955 he was tried in a denazified court but was cleared when several of his prisoners came to his defense.

Krüger got a minor sales job at a savings and loans bank. His wife died of cancer in 1971 and he was also diagnosed with cancer but survived. As of 1979 he was last heard of living with his son's family in Hamburg.

It seems he spent all his post war years in Germany.

Information of his life and operation Bernhard can be found in the, now out of print, book The Brotherhood of Money by Murry Bloom printed in 1983.

[phillip burke]

Also ibelieve there is a excellent B.B.C drama about this quite old ,70s,but very well done . Cannot remember name of series , sorry,

[Max Williams]

See http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... d#p1256195
Max.

[nobodyofnote]

Counterf-Hitler: Examples from the £134million in dodgy bank notes Adolf hoped would ruin the British economy expected to fetch £2,000 at auction

A rare set of fake bank notes Hitler had printed in a bid to ruin the British economy during World War Two are expected to fetch £2,000 at auction.

Hitler hoped the £134million of counterfeit notes he produced in 'Operation Bernhard' would force a huge hike in inflation and spark a cash crisis if introduced to wartime Britain.

He ordered millions of the notes, in £5, £10, £20 and £50 denominations to be printed in 1942. Four bank notes recovered from Lake Toplitz in Austria will be auctioned next month.

The £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes will go under the hammer at Mullock's auctioneers at Ludlow Racecourse, Shropshire on August 18.

Nazi spies had been ordered to smuggle the cash into Britain and flood the economy with the fake money.

But Hitler's plan was foiled when British spies got wind of the idea and intercepted the shipment of the notes.

The Bank of England first learned of a plot from a spy as early as 1939. It first came across the actual notes in 1943, and declared them 'the most dangerous ever seen.'

The initial plan was to destabilize the British economy by dropping the notes from aircraft, but Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe declared it did not have enough planes to deliver the forgeries, and the assets were put in the hands of SS foreign intelligence.

Many were transferred from SS headquarters to a former hotel near Meran in South Tyrol, Northern Italy, from where they were laundered and used to pay for strategic imports and German secret agents operating in the Allied countries.

As late as the 1940s every banknote issued by the Bank of England was recorded in large leather-bound ledgers, still in the Bank's archives, and clerks first recorded the counterfeits from a British bank in Tangiers.

More at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml (Daily Mail, 12th July 2011)

[PF]

Postwar Mug shot and report of 1989 dod
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_K ... itglied%29

[dpast32]

Good Morning Gentlemen, I have a quick question concerning SS-Sturmbannführer Bernhard Krüger's Pre~WW-II occupation?
Was he, as mentioned in the 2007 German Film an Officer/Detective with the Berlin C.I.D. Branch? Just curious after having just viewed the aforementioned Movie.
THANK YOU!

Best regards, Dom P. / 'dpast32'

[steve248]

26 Nov 1904 born Riesa/Elbe
8 Kl Bürgerschule Riesa
Staatslehranstalt Chemnitz – but financial problems caused him to re-assess his career after one semester; Höhrere Werkschule (Maschinenbauer) “bildet sich eifrig in seinem Spezielgebiet (Funkwesen) weiter”
4 Apr 1930 began “Ausbildungkurs bei der Bay.Pol.Polizei” as a Funker, “technisch gut ausgebildet”
1933-1936, Funkstellenleiter at SD Chemnitz
1936-1939, Funkstellenleiter at SD-OA Stettin
Dec 1939, posted to RSHA VI
Feb 1942, noted with RSHA VI F4 responsible for forged papers and, ergo, bank notes
25 Nov 1946, arrested in British Zone using the alias Bernhard Kruse.

So no, he was not with Kripo Berlin as a detective.