Paper Instead of Capital. How 280 Million Became Worthless: photo reconstruction & history

In the spring of 1945, deep in the vaults of a bank in Magdeburg, the U.S. Army uncovered a hidden Reichsbank cache containing the equivalent of $280 million in cash. Lieutenant Colonel Ben Thompson and Virgil Happy can be seen holding thick bundles of Reichsmarks as casually as if they were ordinary bricks, and there is a harsh historical explanation for this.

This photograph is not a chronicle of striking it rich, but the documentation of a collapse. The shelves are stacked with tons of banknotes that German officials had frantically evacuated from the capital to save them from the advancing Allied armies. However, while the money was being stuffed into safes, the economy of the Third Reich completely ceased to exist. At the moment the camera flashed, the officers were inspecting not a priceless treasure trove, but mountains of scrap paper. The currency of an entire nation was rapidly plummeting in value, turning into worthless paper and free exotic souvenirs for American GIs.
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