In addition, the Bank sought to remedy the inefficiencies of under-developed money and capital markets by instituting measures to attract savings to the banking system and to improve credit allocation. In April 1941, the Axis Powers occupied Greece.
For several years, London became the seat of both the exiled Greek government and the Bank of Greece, with the Bank’s gold secretly transferred to South Africa. Within occupied Greece, the economic situation became increasingly grim and hundreds of thousands of Greeks died of hunger.