5000 Dracme

The Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per la Grecia was not a bank in any conventional sense — it was an Italian military finance instrument, created specifically to fund the occupation of Greece following the Axis invasion in April 1941. Notes issued under this authority were essentially occupation scrip, backed by nothing and designed to extract real goods and labor from the Greek economy in exchange for paper with no convertibility guarantee.

The 5000 Dracme was the highest denomination in the series, which made it a primary vehicle for the inflationary spiral that followed. Greece suffered one of the worst hyperinflations of the war — by late 1944, prices had increased by a factor of roughly 163 billion compared to 1940 levels. Occupation currency, including these issues, was a direct mechanical cause.

Printed in Italy, though the notes bore Greek denomination and language, the series was never integrated into the postwar monetary reconstruction.