Subject: Monopoly and POW's
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...
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 OSS ) 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!
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!
