1.000 Leva

By 1943, Bulgarian state finance was operating under considerable strain — the kingdom was nominally allied with the Axis but had avoided sending troops to the Eastern Front, a careful balancing act that nonetheless tied the economy to German war demands. This 1,000 Leva note was issued not by the Bulgarian National Bank but by the Directorate of State and Guaranteed Debts, a distinction that matters: it signals a government drawing on debt-management infrastructure rather than central bank reserves to fund circulation.

The Darzhavna Pechatnitsa had been producing Bulgarian state documents and currency in Sofia since the late nineteenth century. Printing domestically was both practical and politically necessary by this point — wartime Europe made foreign printing contracts difficult to maintain.