MEFO
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the years prior to World War II. Origins This dummy company was set up in May 1933, just after appointment of Hjalmar Schacht as Reichsbank President in March 1933, as a front for purchases from four German armament manufacturers, Krupp, Siemens, Gutehoffnungshütte, and Rheinmetall. The four were persuaded to put up the initial share capital of 250,000 Reichsmarks. The German government was not openly involved in any way; on paper, MEFO was entirely a private company, in reality, the company had two directors, one appointed by the Reich Ministry of Defence and the other by the Reichsbank. The four companies pooled together over 1 billion Reichsmark (equivalent to billion euros) where the National Socialist government agreed to repay the money with five-year promissory notes known as Mefo bills. Soon afterwards, the Nazis discounted these notes (known in German as Mefo-Wechsel), basically turning them into a type of currency. Between 1934 and 1938, Mefo bills worth a total of 12 billion Reichsmark were issued to pay for rearmament. To put that into context, Germany's national debt