50 Centimes German Occupation Coinage

Belgium's wartime zinc coinage was a direct consequence of Germany requisitioning the country's copper and nickel stocks for military production. The Banque Nationale had ceased normal operations under occupation, and these issues were authorized by the German military administration rather than the Belgian government-in-exile, which refused to sanction them. Brussels workers reportedly referred to the zinc pieces as *Hungermarken* — hunger tokens — a name that captured both their degraded material and the economic conditions under which they circulated.

Zinc corrodes aggressively in humid conditions, and genuinely problem-free examples are harder to locate than raw population figures suggest.