Anyone here know anything about where and how the cotton for bandages for the Union wounded was obtained during the US civil war? India and the Middle East being so distant, I'm guessing that some kind of smuggling or trading happened, but I've never read of it. But I have read of some traveling merchants who were allowed by the Union to exit the areas the Union controlled. Even more postmodern is the likelihood that printers in the Union states propped up the Confederacy by flooding the states in revolt with counterfeit confederate paper money. There being a dearth of competent printers, genuine Confederate cash was so shabby looking that no one would have trusted it, and the Southern economy would have collapsed even sooner than it did because no one would take money like that seriously. But the bogus money from the North was typically so respectable in appearance that it had a street value above the coin of the local realm, giving said revolting realm a stronger medium of exchange.
During WWII, one of Hitler's higher ranking underlings let the Allies know that they could spare the lives of a large number of Hungarian persons bound for the death camps in exchange for trucks shipped through Spain, approximately 1 truck for each 10 lives saved, but that offer drew no genuine response.