2 Francs - Mohammed V Essai

Essai pieces for Vichy-era Morocco were produced by the Monnaie de Paris under German occupation, making their political circumstances genuinely uncomfortable. The 1942 date places this squarely within the period when Mohammed V — nominally cooperative with Vichy but privately sympathetic to Moroccan nationalists — was navigating an increasingly untenable position between French colonial authority and Axis control of the metropole.

As an essai, it never entered circulation. Lec. 230 documents it among the trial strikes submitted for official approval that were ultimately shelved as wartime aluminum bronze shortages and shifting political priorities made new coinage impractical.