Bernhard Kruger Of Nazi Party

 

Bernhard Kruger was in captivity after World War II for forging British Pound Sterling and American Dollar notes in World War II. He was born on 26th November 1904 in Riesa town in the Saxony Kingdom, in the German Empire.  

Bernhard Kruger was a member of the Nazi Party, a Major in the Nazi Party paramilitary, and a leader of the intelligence agency foreign branch in the Reich Security Main Office during World War II. As one of the responsibilities of this office, he falsified passports and documents. In Operation Bernhard he forged 60 crore value pound notes (worth approximately 800 crore American dollars now) to fund Germany. This counterfeiting operation was named after Kruger, who led the operation from a segregated factory built at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp manned by 142 Jewish inmates. This operation ended in 1944. He succeeded in forging American dollar notes. In May 1945 his team of prisoners was transferred to Ebensee Concentration Camp in Austria. There they were liberated. Kruger was a murderer. Six weeks before the war ended he shot six people because just they were sick. He did not send them to the hospital with a suspicion that they would reveal about the operation. After the war, he was detained by the British for two years, and later by the French for a year for forging documents. He was returned to Germany in 1948. In the 1950s due to lack of evidence, as the prisoners did not give any statement to prove the forgery operation, he was acquitted by a denazification court. Eventually, he worked for a company to produce special paper for the Operation Bernhard Forgeries. Kruger died at the age of 84 on 3rd January 1989.