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12 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JANUARY 2019 Information gathered from the following sources: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/monopolys-hidden-maps-wwii-pows-escape/story?id=8605905 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/how-monopoly-games-helped-allied-pows-escape-during-world-war-ii/266996/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-games-3/ Did You Know Monopoly Helped Free WWII Prisoners? The November Breeze featured a "Did you Know article" about the game of Monopoly. However, the article didn't mention what is perhaps the most interesting role that the game of Monopoly played during World War II. . 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. Obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end would be 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 made a lot of noise when opened and folded, they wore out rapidly, and if they got wet, they turned into mush. Someone in MI-5 (similar to America's OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. Silk was durable, could be scrunched up into tiny wads and unfolded as many times as needed, and made 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 items qualified for insertion into 'CARE packages', dispatched by often fictitious, organizations like the Licensed Victuallers Prisoner Relief Fund. 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. When processed, these maps could be folded so tiny 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 approximately 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the disguised Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, as the British government wanted to keep this highly successful ruse classified should it be needed in a 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. By Rudy Garcia

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