Block, Siteadmin, SkipCaptcha, Upload, Automoderated users, delete, edit, move, nsTeam2RO, nsTeam2RW, nsTeam2_talkRO, nsTeam2_talkRW, protect, rollback, Administrators, template
295,435
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 78:
Line 78: + + + +
→Transfer of Occupation Currency Plates: edit
Moscow printed up enough AM marks to provide their entire army six years of back pay. Black market activity thrived. A GI could buy a package of cigarettes for eight cents and resell them to a Russian soldier for 100 AM marks or $10. A 5-cent candy bar sold for $5. K-rations brought $20 and a pound of coffee $25. G.I.s sold watches for the equivalent of $500 to $2500 each. By one estimate, more than 33,000 GIs sent home an average of $12,000 from Berlin. Only when the U.S. Army reached an overdraft of $271,000,000 did Congress act. <ref>George Racey Jordan, with Richard L. Stokes, ''From Major Jordan's Diaries'', New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952, pg. 230.</ref><ref>Schecter and Schecter, ''Sacred Secrets'', pgs. 122-123.</ref>
Moscow printed up enough AM marks to provide their entire army six years of back pay. Black market activity thrived. A GI could buy a package of cigarettes for eight cents and resell them to a Russian soldier for 100 AM marks or $10. A 5-cent candy bar sold for $5. K-rations brought $20 and a pound of coffee $25. G.I.s sold watches for the equivalent of $500 to $2500 each. By one estimate, more than 33,000 GIs sent home an average of $12,000 from Berlin. Only when the U.S. Army reached an overdraft of $271,000,000 did Congress act. <ref>George Racey Jordan, with Richard L. Stokes, ''From Major Jordan's Diaries'', New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952, pg. 230.</ref><ref>Schecter and Schecter, ''Sacred Secrets'', pgs. 122-123.</ref>
Original Allied plans called for approximately fifteen billion AM marks to be printed. The Soviets printed more than seventy-eight billion of their own. <ref>Schecter and Schecter, ''Sacred Secrets'', p. 122.</ref>
A KGB document, dated 15 April 1944, has come to light in the last few years that may answer that question and put Bentley's accusation into a broader context. This document states "[on] 14 April that Harry Dexter White following our instructions passed through to [[Greg Silvermaster|Silvermaster]] attained the positive decision of the Treasury Department to provide the Soviet side with the plates for engraving German occupation marks...."
==Post war==
==Post war==