1 Reichsmark - Winterhilfswerk

The Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes was the Nazi regime's annual winter relief drive, framed as a national welfare campaign but functioning as a compulsory fundraising mechanism — donations were rarely voluntary in any meaningful sense. These Reichsmark-denominated notes were issued as charitable tokens, not legal tender, intended to be contributed and redeemed within the campaign framework rather than spent in ordinary commerce.

Giesecke & Devrient, the Leipzig firm that printed them, was simultaneously producing genuine Reichsbank currency — an odd situation in which the same presses served both the state's monetary system and its propaganda apparatus. The 1940 campaign ran during the first full winter of the western war, when the regime was particularly invested in projecting domestic solidarity.