A Satire on Mefo Bills

Mefo papers, more commonly known as Mefo bills, were a type of six-month promissory note created by Nazi Germany in the 1930s to covertly finance its rearmament program while evading legal and treaty restrictions on government borrowing and deficit spending.
Mefo bills were issued by a dummy corporation called Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft (MEFO), set up in 1933 by the government but disguised as a private company.
This a satirical recreation of an internal memo of a company which did nothing. No operation. No production. No research. Just Nothing. 
The English translation of the name “Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft” (abbreviated as MEFO) is “Society for Metallurgical Research” or “Metallurgical Research Corporation”.

Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft m.b.H. (MEFO)

Excerpt from the Internal Memo:

Classified: For Eyes That Pretend Not to See

Date: 12 March 1934
Subject: Quarterly Review of Nonexistent Metallurgy and Excessively Real Rearmament

To: All departments pretending to research alloys
From: Office of Strategic Ambiguity and Fiscal Alchemy

Summary:
The Society continues to exceed expectations in the field of not existing. Our metallurgists remain unburdened by actual metal, and our researchers have successfully published zero papers, thereby maintaining operational stealth. Meanwhile, Mefo Bills have been issued with the elegance of forged opera tickets—redeemable only in the third act of national emergency.

Operational Highlights:

• Siemens delivered 400 tanks disguised as “experimental filing cabinets.”
• Krupp invoiced for “rotational metallurgy,” a term now officially defined as “cannon assembly.”
• The Reichsbank has adopted the motto: Liquidity is a state of mind.

Concerns Raised:
One junior accountant accidentally asked what our company does. He has been reassigned to the Department of Eternal Auditing, where he will reconcile imaginary balances until morale improves.

Recommendations:

• Continue issuing Mefo Bills with increasing abstraction.
• Replace all references to “war” with “advanced metallurgy outreach.”
• Host annual symposium titled The Future of Alloys We’ll Never Make.

Closing Remarks:
Let us remember: our strength lies not in steel, but in the silence between line items. The less we say, the more we build.