WW2 Italian Occupation of Egypt that never occurred

Dear all,
just for a change from the usual topics discussed on this newsgroup
I wanted to talk about an episode during WW2 which led to the
preparation of some extremely rare banknotes.
The episode I am referring to is the intended occupation of Egypt
by the Nazi-Fascist Army during July 1942. At the time Mussolini's Army
arrived at Tobruk, North Africa. They were sure that by then the troups
of the Afrika Korps would have been in the process of fully occupying
Egypt. To celebrate that event Mussolini had thought of anticipating the
time by issuing the order to the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato to
prepare a series of banknotes similar to those issued by the Cassa
Mediterranea di Credito della Grecia. These notes had the left side
written in Italian and the right side written in Arabic. The issuing
Insitute was the Cassa Mediterranea di Credito per l'Egitto.
The occupation event, however, never took place. Already in October
of that year, the troups of General Montgomery managed to push the
Afrika Korps away from Egypt and even from Cirenaica (North of Lybia).
The notes, which in the meanwhile had already arrived in Tobruk, were
consequently almost all destroyed. Few samples managed somehow to
survive, and this means that someone instead of burning them kept some
aside.
So far just 8 denominations were known to exist (5, 10, 50
piastres, and 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 Lire). Nevertheless, very recently the
only specimen issue know to exist surfaced on the American market and it
showed the presence of 1 piastra in the intended series.
As of their value, given that just few items exist in the issued
form and just one entire series exist in the specimen one, we can leave
it to those extremely few lucky ones who possess them.
A very similar story can be told for the same type series for
Sudan. The only difference in the Sudanese notes were light color
variants and the fact that no note of 1 piastra has so far appeared and
all records of their issuing is lost together with those of the Egyptian
ones in the chaos of the end of WW2.
I hope that some of you found this little article interesting.

Lots of greetings to all,
Dr. Giovanni C. Pettinaro
(IBNS LM-166, LANSA 1173).

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Piazza della Riscossa, 16 int. 50,
CH-6900 Lugano-Cassarate,
Canton Ticino,
Switzerland

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/pettinaro/
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