Monopoly and World War II, interesting factoid
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 O.S.S.) 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 whatsoever.
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 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!
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 declassified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen
from Waddington's, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a
public ceremony.
It's always nice when you can play that 'Get Out of Jail' Free' card!
5 comments:
Gives new meaning to Get Out of Jail Free. :)
I remember reading about these things in the early 1960's when Popular Science had an article about various ways of getting these items to the POWs.
The trick to printing on silk had to do with adding some glycerine to the printing ink so the ink wouldn't "ball up" on the silk.
The article explained several different ways a "compass" could be hidden, like magnetizing a straight razor so the "G" on Gillette pointed North when you hung the blade on a string, and other many clever ways of getting escape aids into innocent looking items.
It does indeed, Ed.
jim, the prisoners in Colditz even built a typewriter out of small pieces of wood which could be easily disassembled into a random pile of little parts. "Escape from Colditz" is still one of my favorite books.
Literally play that card! :-)
Many did. 👍🏻
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