Catalog
100 Drachmai Italian occupation
| Issuer | Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1941 |
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| Size | 105 × 60 mm |
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| Obverse description | At centre, an intaglio oval vignette presents a classical male bust in left-facing profile rendered in the antique manner against a finely hatched background, framed above and to the sides by a bold Greek key guilloche border and along the lower edge by a stylised acanthus leaf ornament. Bilingual inscriptions in Italian and Greek run across the upper and lower margins, identifying the note as legal tender for the Ionian Islands, with the denomination DRACME 100 / ΔΡΑΧΜΑΙ centred below the vignette. A facsimile treasurer's signature beneath the title IL TESORIERE appears at lower centre. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BIGLIETTO A CORSO LEGALE PER LE ISOLE JONIE ΧΑΡΤΟΝΟΜΙΣΜΑ ΕΧΟΝ ΝΟΜΙΜΟΝ ΚΥΚΛΟΦΟΡΙΑΝ ΕΝ ΤΑΙΣ ΙΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΝΗΣΟΙΣ DRACME 100 ΔΡΑΧΜΑΙ IL TESORIERE 100 |
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| Comments |
The Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia was a purpose-built occupation instrument — one of several Axis "Mediterranean Credit Banks" established to extract resources from occupied territories while insulating the German and Italian economies from inflationary blowback. Notes issued under this authority were legal tender in occupied Greece but could not be repatriated to Italy, a deliberate asymmetry that transferred inflation risk entirely onto the Greek population.
The practical result was catastrophic. Combined with requisitioning and currency manipulation, these notes fed one of the worst hyperinflations of the twentieth century — by late 1944, a single gold sovereign traded for billions of drachmai.