1 Mark Allied Occupation

The Allied Military Authority marks of 1944 were produced in the United States under strict wartime secrecy, with the Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Company in Boston supplying the smaller denominations while other contractors handled higher values. The Soviet Union was given the original printing plates — or near-identical duplicates — by the U.S. Treasury, an arrangement that allowed Moscow to print its own run of these notes independently. The full extent of Soviet overproduction was never officially disclosed, but the resulting flood of Allied marks into postwar Germany contributed directly to American and British resistance to monetary union with the USSR, accelerating the currency split that preceded the Berlin Blockade.