5 Shillings - British Military Authority

The British Military Authority notes were produced in advance of Allied landings across multiple theatres — North Africa, Italy, and Northwestern Europe — as a deliberate instrument of economic control. Separating occupying forces from local currency prevented black-market pressure on civilian economies and gave military command authority over exchange rates from day one of any occupation.

De La Rue printed these under considerable wartime secrecy. The same basic format circulated across entirely different countries simultaneously, which still causes misattribution headaches when notes surface without documentation of where they were actually spent.