50 Drachmai Italian occupation

The Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia was a purpose-built occupation institution, established by Italy in 1941 specifically to extract economic value from occupied Greece through a parallel currency system. Notes like this one were exchanged at a rate heavily disadvantageous to the Greek population, effectively functioning as a mechanism for requisitioning goods and labor without direct payment. The same institutional model had already been deployed in Libya and East Africa.

Greece's occupation-era hyperinflation — among the worst of the war — was partly fueled by exactly this kind of parallel issuance. By late 1944, the drachma had collapsed to a point requiring a complete redenomination.