The Great Franc Exchange: When France Changed All Its Banknotes in Twelve Days

Published on June 4, 2025 at 8:30 a.m.

Bundles of money are passed from one hand to another in a Parisian bank counter on June 4, 1945. — Bundles of money are passed from one hand to another in a Parisian bank counter, June 4, 1945. AFP

Subscribing allows you to gift articles to your loved ones. And that's not all: you can view and comment on them.

Reading time: 5 min.

Subscriber

Story In June 1945, the French had twelve days to replace their old banknotes with new ones. While the operation, suggested by Minister Pleven to track down black market money, seemed audacious, the proposal of his rival Mendès France was even more radical.

To go further

Everywhere, long queues, worried faces, and pockets full of bills. Here, in front of a branch of the Banque de France or a banking establishment, there, in front of a post office or a Treasury collection point, in nearly 35,000 different locations throughout the country. Inside, whether at the counter or on the tables set up for the occasion, the same scenes always unfold: bundles passing from one hand to the other, and others, this time of new bills, making the opposite journey. Early on the morning of Monday, June 4, 1945, the country carried out the largest monetary exchange ever. All this under the visible supervision of armed men, to everyone's great relief: the war had already taken so much that these few bills of 50 to 5,000 francs taken from stockings, mattresses, or god knows what improbable hiding place were often all that remained...

Two days earlier, on Saturday, June 2 at 8 p.m., the provisional government's finance minister, René Pleven, had unveiled the operation in a formal fifteen-minute radio address: the 1.6 billion banknotes in circulation worth 50 francs or more were to be exchanged for new notes. And this in record time: usually, when a central bank withdraws a series of v…

Article reserved for subscribers.

Want to read more?

All our articles in full from €1