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Monopoly Game Used to Assist POWs Escape Germany In WWII
 Starting in 1941, an increasing
number of
British airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the
Third
Reich, and the crown was casting-about for ways and means to
facilitate
their escape. Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that
end is
a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but
also
showing the locations of "safe houses", where a POW on-the-lam could
go
for food and shelter. Paper maps had some real drawbacks: They make
a lot
of noise when you open and fold them, they wear-out rapidly, and if
they
get wet, they turn into mush.
Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's CIA) got the idea of printing
escape maps on silk. It's durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny
wads,
and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise
what-so-ever. ver.
At
that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had
perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John
Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm
was only too happy to do its
bit for the war effort.
By pure coincidence, Waddington was also
the U.K. Licensee for the
popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, "games
and
pastimes" was a category of item qualified for insertion into
"CARE
packages", dispatched by the International Red Cross, to
prisoners of
war.
Under the strictest of secrecy, in a
securely guarded and inaccessible
old workshop on the grounds of Waddington's, a group of
sworn-to-secrecy
employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region
of
Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were located (Red Cross
packages
were delivered to prisoners in accordance with that Same
regional
system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such
tiny dots
that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece.
As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington's
also
managed to add:
1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass,
2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together.
3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian,
and
French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!
British and American air-crews were
advised, before taking off on their
first mission, how to identify a "rigged" Monopoly set ----- by
means
of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary
printing
glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square! Of
the
estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an
estimated
one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly
sets.
Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy Indefinitely, since the
British
Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in
still
another, future war.
The story wasn't de-classified until 2007,
when the surviving craftsmen
from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally
honored in a
public ceremony. Anyway, it's always nice when you can play
that "Get
Out of Jail Free" card.
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