5 Kilos Acier ordinaire

The O.C.R.P.I. was established by the Vichy regime in 1940 to manage industrial rationing under German occupation — steel, aluminum, copper, rubber, all parceled out through a bureaucratic voucher system rather than the market. These "bons de matières" were not currency in any meaningful sense but functioned as industrial scrip, authorizing a holder to claim a specific weight of material from a designated supplier. The system persisted after Liberation and the O.C.R.P.I. continued operating under the provisional government until formal dissolution in 1948.

Five kilos of ordinary steel is a telling unit — small enough for a craftsman or small workshop, the kind of allocation that kept French light industry limping through the scarcity years.