Krueger's Men

The true World War II story that inspired the Oscar-winning movie The Counterfeiters.

"An astonishing and exciting tale. The drama of how the Nazis mounted a complex counterfeiting operation inside a concentration camp is matched by the chilling life-or-death saga of the prisoners involved. It reads like a thriller, but it's all true." —New York Times–bestselling author Walter Isaacson

Only a fortnight after the start of World War II, at a meeting that has remained a secret for more than half a century, Nazi leaders and officials of the German Reichsbank approved an audacious plot to counterfeit millions of British pounds. Drawing upon top-secret bank records, German and British correspondence, and interrogation transcripts, journalist Lawrence Malkin reveals how an unremarkable SS officer named Bernhard Krueger attempted to bring down the world financial system.

But when Krueger discovered that forging pounds, and later dollars, was no easy task, he made a crucial decision: he would seek out the greatest counterfeiters of pre-war Europe and enlist them in the effort. He found them in an unexpected place: a Nazi concentration camp.

Krueger's Men is the remarkable story of how these Jews managed to save themselves. Part Schindler's List, part The Great Escape, this account of the Nazi plot is a fascinating portrait of deception, courage, and moral awakening.

"Few writers understand the mysterious intricacies of money better than Lawrence Malkin, and in Krueger's Men he has reconstructed one of the last great untold stories of World War II." —Robert Crowley, founding editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History