Monaco: coins of World War Two

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According to Wikipedia:

While Prince Louis II's sympathies were strongly pro-French, he tried to keep Monaco neutral during World War II but supported the Vichy French government of his old army colleague, Marshall Philippe Pétain. Nonetheless, his tiny principality was tormented by domestic conflict partly as a result of Louis' indecisiveness, and also because the majority of the population was of Italian descent; many of them supported the fascist regime of Italy's Benito Mussolini.

In November 1942, the Italian Army invaded and occupied Monaco, setting up a fascist puppet government. Soon after in September 1943, following Mussolini's fall in Italy, the German Army occupied Monaco and began the deportation of the Jewish population. Under Prince Louis' secret orders, the Monaco police, often at great risk to themselves, warned in advance those people whom the Gestapo planned to arrest.[citation needed] The country was liberated, as German troops retreated, on September 3, 1944.

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Monaco, 1 franc, 1943.

During the war, Monaco produced some coins whose obverse and reverse designs were standard, but different from any designs produced before or after the war.

In 1943, 1 and 2 franc coins were produced in aluminium. In 1945, aluminum-bronze versions of these coins were issued. Also in 1945, a 5 francs coin was issued in aluminium - no aluminum-bronze version of that coin was ever issued.

My question is, are any or all of these coins to be regarded as occupation issues?

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How would you define an occupation issue? If it is defined as coins coming with an occupation army to function as money during (part of) the occupation to fill in for regular coins that have disappeared in the days before the occupation the answer is no. They were struck in Paris as usual, presumably by the same procedures as pre-war coins. If your definition is coins struck during an occupation these are occupation coins.

BTW, Louis' grandson fought in the free French army.

Peter

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If your definition is coins struck during an occupation these are occupation coins.

Struck DURING an occupation. That's what I wondered. Because if Monaco hadn't been occupied at the time of their ordering and striking, then they would in all likelihood have been different. And they are different from the previous issues, but that did not necessarily make them occupation issues - but now I know that, in fact, they are.

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Just to make sure: those dated 1943 were struck during the fascist occupation. There was an Allied invasion in the South of France shortly after the Normandy landings and - as the quote from wikipedia above notes - the occupation ended in September 1944.

Would the coins have looked different otherwise? Hard to say. They are free of political symbols. Louis Maubert was a well known sculptor in Nice. Maybe being in the South of France was an advantage or maybe he would have been selected to design the coins in other times as well.

Peter

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In some places, the Nazis and Fascists did not want to upset the population or alter the coinage too much. In the case of the Nazis, they were generally vicious towards Slavs or else likely to set one higher than the other, in order to sow discord: Slovaks versus Czechs, Croats versus Serbs. The Nazis were not so harsh - initially - towards the West, though they were harsh in putting down rebellion. So, they were gentler with Scandinavia and the Netherlands - as FosseWay has pointed out elsewhere, where their monarchs did not flee the occupation, there was no need to change the coinage (other than its metal content).

France was a special case, but Hitler felt a lot of enmity towards the old foe, even though they were not Slavs. I have read that a lot of Monacans were of Italian descent, so Mussolini thought they should be "his". But you are right - this is one case where the occupiers maybe did not oversee the designs, and so these designs might also have been produced without an occupation.