2 Reichsmarks Dachau Concentration Camp

Dachau's camp currency was not a prisoners' scrip in any meaningful economic sense — it was a tool of psychological control. Inmates could theoretically use it at the canteen, but access to the canteen was itself a privilege that the SS routinely withheld. The notes circulated in a closed system where the issuer also controlled every point of redemption, making the currency functionally worthless while maintaining the bureaucratic theater of a wage economy.

By 1944, Dachau held tens of thousands of prisoners across its network of subcamps. These notes were printed on-site. Their survival rate is surprisingly high relative to genuine circulation — many were preserved by prisoners as evidence, or confiscated and retained by liberating Allied forces in May 1945.