COCHEM, Germany: For a few years, the citizens of the leafy the city of Cochem within the German Rhineland went about their day-to-day industry without a concept they have been residing on a gold mine. Throughout the Chilly Warfare, the German central financial institution stashed away virtually 15 billion marks’ value of an emergency foreign money in a 1,500-sq-m nuclear bunker underneath the city.

A intently guarded state secret, the foreign money was once codenamed “BBK II” and meant to be used if Germany was once the objective of an assault on its financial machine. After the Chilly Warfare, the bunker handed into the fingers of a regional cooperative financial institution after which an actual property fund. In 2016, it was once purchased by means of German couple Manfred and Petra Reuter, who became it right into a museum.

Nowadays, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stoking fears of nuclear warfare, hobby within the bunker is rising once more. “Many of us we all know have identified that we’ve got a protected bunker and requested whether or not there can be room for them in case of an emergency,” stated Petra Reuter. On excursions of the bunker, “questions are naturally requested in regards to the present state of affairs”, which seems like “a soar again in time 60 years”, she stated. “The fears are the similar.”

Inside of, in the back of a heavy iron door, lengthy corridors result in decontamination chambers and places of work provided with typewriters and rotary telephones. The principle room is composed of 12 cages the place, for just about 25 years, some 18,300 bins containing tens of millions of 10, 20, 50 and 100 mark banknotes have been saved as much as the ceiling.

Loads of vehicles

At the entrance, the banknotes have been virtually just like the actual deutschmarks in circulate on the time, however at the again they have been very other. Beginning in 1964, the notes have been brought to the bunker by means of loads of vehicles over a duration of about 10 years, with nobody suspecting a factor – now not even the East German Stasi secret police. The bunker was once accessed by way of a secret passage from what was once ostensibly a coaching and building middle for Bundesbank workers in a residential space of the city.

Cochem, situated about 100 km from the border with Belgium and Luxembourg, was once selected as it was once any such good distance from the Iron Curtain. “The voters of the group have been astonished to find this treasure, which were hidden for goodbye close to their houses,” stated Wolfgang Lambertz, the previous mayor of the city, which has round 5,000 population.

Together with the 15 billion marks saved within the bunker, just below 11 billion marks’ value of the opposite foreign money was once additionally saved within the vaults of the central financial institution in Frankfurt. Altogether, this added as much as round 25 billion marks – more or less identical to the overall sum of money circulating within the German economic system in 1963.

Operation Bernhard

Most likely an excessive measure to push back a simply hypothetical assault, however the German government were guided by means of courses from historical past. Throughout International Warfare II, the Nazis had introduced “Operation Bernhard”, wherein prisoners in focus camps have been compelled to fabricate counterfeit kilos with the purpose of flooding England with them.

“Probably the most believable rationalization was once most definitely the worry that counterfeit cash can be smuggled in the course of the Iron Curtain with the intention to injury the West German economic system,” in line with Bernd Kaltenhaueser, president of the Bundesbank’s regional place of job for Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.

However making a backup foreign money lately “would now not make sense as a result of there may be much less counterfeit cash in circulate and there are fewer money bills”, in line with Kaltenhaueser. Within the Nineteen Eighties, with the Chilly Warfare winding down and generation evolving, it was once determined that the alternative foreign money now not met Germany’s safety requirements. By way of 1989, the 12 months the Berlin Wall fell, all the notes were taken out of the bunker, shredded and burned. – AFP