Just Visiting.

You may have seen the recent ABC News article about the top secret life of the iconic board game Monopoly… specifically, its role during WWII in assisting POWs escape German prison camps. For those who have not heard the story from the top, the gist of it is this…

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“During World War II, the British secret service hatched a master plan to smuggle escape gear to captured Allied soldiers inside Germany. Their secret weapon? Monopoly boxes. The original notion was simple enough: Find a way to sneak useful items into prison camps in an unassuming form. But the idea to use Monopoly came from a series of happy coincidences, all of which started with maps.”

(via Brian McMahon in an article appearing in the November–December 2007 issue of Mental Floss)
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Brian goes on to explain why paper maps are much harder to smuggle than you might think. Chiefly they are not durable as they disintegrate when wet and well, they make way too much noise when unfolded/folded which certainly would catch the attention of the German troops. So instead they had to come up with an alternative to paper which they did in the form of silk. Unlike paper, silk stands up well to the elements and of course is whisper quiet to fold/unfold. Fortuitously, the John Waddington Ltd. company was not only the licensed manufacturer of Monopoly outside the United States but they also had recently perfected the process of printing on silk and were already manufacturing silk escape maps for British airmen to carry. Perfect.

In addition to the regional silk escape map marked with safe-houses along the way, these “special edition” POW Monopoly games included additional “playing” pieces such as a metal file and a magnetic compass. All of these items were concealed in very tidy fashion inside the box. And furthermore, some of the Monopoly money was real. Actual German, Italian and French currency was placed underneath the play money for escapees to use for bribes. These games sets were bundled in with food and clothing in the form of Red Cross aid packages and were met with little scrutiny by the Germans as Monopoly was already a well-known game in Europe at the time. It is unclear how many POW’s can credit their escape to a Monopoly game but out of the 35,000 prisoners who did manage to escape, it is guessed to be a significant number.
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Learn further intriguing details via Mental Floss and ABC News such as the identifying mark used to detect a “special edition” game set and the second secret life of Monopoly behind the Iron Curtain.
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