500 000 Drachmai

Greece's 1944 hyperinflation was among the most severe of the Second World War. By the time this note was issued, the occupying Axis powers had effectively stripped the country's foreign currency reserves and forced the Bank of Greece to print its way through the occupation's fiscal demands. The drachma had collapsed so completely that even this 500,000-unit denomination was inadequate for routine transactions within weeks of issue.

The November 1944 currency reform replaced the entire wartime drachma series at a rate of 50 billion old drachmai to one new drachma — a ratio that measures the scale of destruction more precisely than any description could.