10 francs Service des prisonniers de guerre

The Service des Prisonniers de Guerre was a French government body responsible for administering the repatriation and temporary welfare of prisoners of war returning after the German defeat. These notes functioned as internal scrip — issued to returning French POWs and, critically, to German prisoners still held in France as laborers under postwar Allied agreements. Germany's defeated soldiers were retained in significant numbers by France well into 1948, partly as reparative labor and partly because French law had been interpreted to permit this under the terms of the armistice.

The note circulated within camps, not in general commerce. That restriction is why surviving examples are disproportionately common relative to their limited print runs — they never entered the rough economy.