500 Dracme

The Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia was an Italian military occupation currency authority, established in 1941 to manage monetary affairs in Axis-occupied Greece. Its notes circulated alongside — and progressively displaced — the existing Bank of Greece issues, with the occupying forces effectively using the printing press to extract resources from the local economy without direct foreign exchange cost.

Greece suffered one of the worst hyperinflationary collapses of the war years. By 1944, the drachma had become nearly worthless, and occupation-era issues like this one are inseparable from that catastrophe.