the mag
War-opoly: How History’s Most Popular Board Game Helped Defend The Free World
by the mag - November 29, 2007 - 12:51 PM

by Brian McMahon

This article appeared in the November-December 2007 issue of mental_floss. Pick up a copy wherever brilliant (or lots of) magazines are sold. To subscribe, click here.

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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.

Smooth As Silk

Maps are harder to smuggle than you might think. They fall apart when wet, and they make a lot of noise when unfolded. Allied officials feared paper maps might draw the attention of German troops, so they turned to an unlikely source for help—silk. Not only would silk maps hold up in all kinds of weather, but they’d also come with the life-saving benefit of being whisper quiet.

To produce these silent maps, the Brits turned to John Waddington Ltd., a company that had recently perfected the process of printing on silk and was already manufacturing silk escape maps for British airmen to carry. What else was Waddington known for? You guessed it—being the licensed manufacturer of Monopoly outside the United States.

Suddenly, the popular board game seemed like the perfect way to get supplies inside German-run POW camps. At the time, the Nazis were hard-pressed to get provisions to their own troops, much less to the Allied soldiers they’d captured. Wishing to hide this less-than-stellar upholding of the Geneva Convention, they happily welcomed Red Cross aid packages for POWs. So throwing Monopoly games into the care kits along with food and clothing was met with little scrutiny. Monopoly was already a well-known game throughout Europe, and the German guards saw it as the perfect way for their detainees to remain occupied for hours.

Community Chest

MonoMan.jpgIn 1941, the British Secret Service approached Waddington with its master plan, and before long, production of a “special edition” Monopoly set was underway. For the top-secret mission, the factory set aside a small, secure room—unknown to the rest of its employees—where skilled craftsmen sat and painstakingly carved small niches and openings into the games’ cardboard boxes. Along with the standard thimble, car, and Scotty dog, the POW version included additional “playing” pieces, such as a metal file, a magnetic compass, and of course, a regional silk escape map, complete with marked safe-houses along the way—all neatly concealed in the game’s box. Even better, 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. Also, because of its collaboration with the International Red Cross, Waddington could track which sets would be delivered to which camps, meaning escape maps specific to the area could be hidden in each game set. Allied soldiers and pilots headed to the front lines were told to look for the special edition game if they were captured. The identifying mark to check for? A red dot in the corner of the Free Parking space.

Get Out of Jail Free

By the end of the war, it’s estimated that more than 35,000 Allied POWs had escaped from German prison camps. And while there’s no way to set an exact figure on it, more than a few of those escapees certainly owe their breakout to the classic board game.

But despite its brave and noble role in all of it, Monopoly’s heroic war deeds would go unrecognized for decades. Strict secrecy about the plan was maintained during the war, not only so that the British could continue using the game to help POWs, but also because Waddington feared a targeted reprisal by German bombers. After the war, all remaining sets were destroyed, and everyone involved in the plan, including the escaped prisoners, were told to keep quiet. In the event of another large-scale war, Allied officials also wanted to make sure the seemingly innocent board game could go back into action.

Uncle Pennybags Goes Behind the Iron Curtain

Believe it or not, it wasn’t long before Monopoly found itself in the middle of yet another international conflict—this time defending itself from Communist leaders in Russia.

Being that Monopoly is essentially a game in which one player gets rich at the expense of others becoming poor, Soviet officials had long seen the board game as an overt symbol of capitalistic frivolity and greed. So, as its popularity soared, Communists took more and more efforts to curb the enthusiasm. Cuba, the U.S.S.R., and other Eastern Bloc countries outlawed the game for fear it would corrupt the public with positive notions about a free-market economy. Soviet leaders even tried coming up with their own Marxist-themed spin-off games designed to highlight the virtues of frugality. The title of one such knockoff from Communist-era Hungary loosely translated to “Save,” while another in Russia had a name that roughly meant “Manage.”

But bans and spin-offs couldn’t hold down the individualistic drive of the human spirit. Monopoly became an underground success, secretly coveted and played behind the Iron Curtain as a way of escaping the drudgery of Soviet life. It wasn’t until 1987, four years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, that Monopoly was allowed to be legally sold there.

Today, Monopoly is licensed in more than 80 countries, and no fewer than 200 spin-off versions exist. Of course, playing it in the cozy confines of your living room, it’s easy to take for granted that there was a time when, to many, Monopoly was a lot more than just a game.

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Comments (38)

  1. This is SO COOL. I can’t wait to bring it up next time someone breaks out Monopoly, which is almost always met with groans haha.

    posted by Rachel on 11-29-2007 at 1:02 pm

  2. Fabulous!!!

    The pride and joy of my board game collection (next to my beautiful copy of the Mental Floss Trivia Game, of course) is my Franklin Mint Monopoly board game, which I worked hard through an entire year of high school to pay off. Every time I bring it out, people are so surprised to see that I went out of my way to get such a fancy version of such a common game–this new trivia about the game will really liven things up on game night!

    posted by Stacy on 11-29-2007 at 3:43 pm

  3. How amusing–I started to read this blog, and thought, “Man, this looks familiar. I think I read about this in a magazine somewhere. I wonder which magazine it was. Something kind of like that one… what is it? Mental floss… oh, wait a second.”

    Yup. It’s late, and I’m a bit tired.

    posted by Allison on 11-29-2007 at 6:27 pm

  4. Awesome article!

    posted by Beth on 11-30-2007 at 10:21 am

  5. What a great article! I havent played Monopoly in years but this weekend might see a big come back!

    posted by GTT on 11-30-2007 at 4:48 pm

  6. I find it very hard to believe that the ICRC would get involved in a scheme to smuggle anything to POWs. The cornerstone of the entire organization is its strict neutrality. Without that, it couldn’t operate. I’m very skeptical.

    Incidentally, Monopoly is as far from capitalism as you can get. Its premise is that there’s a fixed pie and only one person can win – and all gains come at someone else’s expense. Monopoly is actually very communist.

    If you want a game that simulates capitalism, try playing Settlers of Catan.

    posted by Adam on 12-1-2007 at 11:45 am

  7. The article didn’t say that the IRC was involved in the scheme — simply that they allowed Waddingtons to track the packages.

    And as for photos? This one from The Imperial War Museum in London looks pretty legit to me:

    http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpcgi.exe?AC=GET_RECORD&XC=/dbtw-wpd/exec/dbtwpcgi.exe&BU=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iwmcollections.org.uk%2FqryMain.asp&TN=Uncat&SN=AUTO23387&SE=1786&RN=3&MR=25&TR=0&TX=1000&ES=0&CS=1&XP=&RF=MainResults&EF=&DF=MainDetailed&RL=0&EL=0&DL=0&NP=1&ID=&MF=&MQ=&TI=0&DT=&ST=0&IR=265191&NR=0&NB=0&SV=0&BG=0&FG=0&QS=

    posted by Sandy on 12-1-2007 at 6:19 pm

  8. since the previous link is session dependent, here’s the picture from the imperial war museum:
    http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/media/images/Exhibits/EPH_002217.jpg

    and the accompanying text:
    Second World War period British board game. Its wartime provenance is reflected by the fact that the ‘property accessories’ have been replaced by wooden parts, and a Spinner has been substituted for the dice.
    Waddington made a variety of board games such as ‘Monopoly’ and also chess sets and playing cards that could be sent to prisoners of war with maps concealed within.
    Correspondence between Christopher Clayton Hutton, Intelligence Officer in MI9, and Norman Watson of Waddington’s held in the British Library on the subject of ‘car parking’ makes reference to the ‘Free Parking’ square on the Monopoly board. When this square was marked with a full stop it indicated that there was a map of Northern France and Germany inside. A full stop after ‘Marylebone Station’ meant a map of Italy and one after ‘Mayfair’ denoted a map showing Norway, Sweden and Germany. See Debbie Hall, ‘Wall Tiles and Free Parking: escape and evasion maps of World War II’.

    posted by rahael on 12-4-2007 at 2:43 pm

  9. The Soviets’ worried reaction to Monopoly’s capitalist threat is ironic, as the game was originally designed by American Quakers as a critique of capitalism.

    posted by Tim on 12-6-2007 at 3:49 pm

  10. congratulations on CNN.com posting this story

    posted by coyne on 12-7-2007 at 11:54 am

  11. Hi, I’m a film and t.v Producer and find this story fascinating. Does anyone know any POW’s who actually were saved because of Monoply. I would love to do a movie about this.

    All the best,
    Myles Shane

    posted by Myles Shane on 12-10-2007 at 10:48 pm

  12. That was a great read!

    posted by Barrett on 5-8-2008 at 12:13 pm

  13. ++interesting.

    posted by woog on 6-2-2008 at 5:08 am

  14. To Stacy…I have the same game from Franklin Mint…..I loved it then and still love it now. To Adam….I agree Settlers of Catan is an awesome game…but we found expanding it to six players wasn’t really all that great. I love Monopoly and also have a “Coronation Street” version, from the British Show of the same name.

    posted by Sandie on 6-2-2008 at 7:05 pm

  15. Reading this made me want to break out the only monopoly board… Too bad the only one I have is the gimmick Star Wars one…

    Oh well, Its basically the same game I guess.

    posted by mmorpg on 6-14-2008 at 12:46 pm

  16. great read. i’ve been collecting monopoly games for about 10 years now. i would love to have one of the original wwii copies. too bad they were all destroyed. thanks for the info.

    posted by vrtualme on 7-11-2008 at 2:42 am

  17. I had heard about this like 4 or 5 years ago, family had a box of monopoly cereal, promotional cereal thing, and this fact was on the side of the box.

    posted by Max on 7-29-2008 at 11:08 am

  18. very good read….very intresting to learn the secrets of ww2. now back to work..whoo hoo…mental floss does it again!!

    posted by Ben W. on 8-27-2008 at 2:56 pm

  19. I have seen a Confederate regimental flat that was silk, and was folded into a TINY square and sewn/hidden in a tunic that was found 100 years later and opened under solution by the Smithsonian and is one of the VERY few privately owned such flags.. and is incredibly rare. If THAT can survive… atleast ONE of the monopoly set maps would have survived. I have seen silk escape kit flags…but they were carried by the airmen on the missions hidden in among the lining of their jackets etc. These do exist and are documented. I agree.. the location of safe houses?? NOT A CHANCE.

    posted by LoosMoose on 9-22-2008 at 1:56 pm

  20. Theres a line from “The Great Escape” that comes to mind. “Its so stupid, it’s positively brilliant.”
    And why not keep something that worked so well secret when at the time war against Russia seemed imminent.

    posted by jsubed on 9-26-2008 at 10:37 am

  21. There would be nothing uncoded to show safe houses. Most officers and/or pilots would have to memorize a few safe houses/locations from the area they would be in or flying over but would have a silk map of the area. Don’t be to quick to blow this one off. A lot off other things had items hid inside like chess sets and playing cards. Google WWII escape and see what you find.

    posted by Kevin in GA on 11-14-2008 at 8:29 am

  22. I just bought a WWII version of Monopoly from alocal charity shop – used to love this game as a kid. Found it facinating enough that game tokens were made of cardboard etc and it came with a spinner instead. In the version I got though someone has also made their own dice out of wood. Just read all this and double checked my board but hasnt got a red dot at Free Parking! From reading the other articles on web I believe this could have happened with some versions of the game!

    posted by nikki S on 1-16-2009 at 4:28 pm

  23. Can you furnish me with the biography and current address,phone number,& email of the Brian McMahon who wrote this article? There are many persons with the same name.

    posted by George Giddens on 2-10-2009 at 8:12 am

  24. Good post, you linked two totally irrelevant things lol

    posted by Omer on 2-17-2009 at 3:00 pm

  25. Life needs a get out of jail free card. That would be awesome.

    posted by MMO on 3-20-2009 at 4:24 pm

  26. *sigh* if only life were a bit more like Monopoly! Get out of Jail FTW

    posted by RPG on 4-10-2009 at 3:32 pm

  27. My granddad escaped those prisons with the board game. He lived to tell the tale.

    posted by Hae on 6-14-2009 at 10:30 pm

  28. I’ll trade you Broadway for a get out of jail free card

    posted by Game Music on 7-8-2009 at 5:31 am

  29. This is great stuff. I really enjoy stories like this!

    posted by phill on 8-21-2009 at 10:00 pm

  30. That’s a pretty incredible story. It’s amazing how something like this can actually happen in real life and save thousands of lives.

    posted by Oleg on 2-16-2010 at 1:15 pm

  31. interesting.

    posted by moo on 4-6-2010 at 4:07 pm

  32. This is NOT a fake story. My Great Grandfather used to tell us about when his best friend was captured he was able to escaope using this! He told the men in his platoon when he was returned to them. He described it so they would know also in case they were ever caught. We heard this story every time we played monopoly.

    posted by Jen on 4-6-2010 at 11:58 pm

  33. I’m the best Monopoly player there is.

    I haven’t lost a game since the late 90s. I did retire from the game then though, to be fair. I wanted to finish on a high. Not go on like these boxers who never know when to stop.

    posted by Andrew on 4-19-2010 at 11:23 am

  34. This was real, I’ve personally seen one. At my local museum they had an exhibit featuring several spy gadgets and one of these monopoly sets was on display.

    posted by John on 5-10-2010 at 5:33 pm

  35. Man, I love monopoly. I never knew this history though. Thanks for sharing!

    posted by Free Documentaries on 6-2-2010 at 10:15 am

  36. Oh, btw, I forgot to add something. Why isnt there some communist equivalent to monopoly on the part of the Russians or something? It would make sense wouldn’t it?

    posted by Free Documentaries on 6-2-2010 at 10:17 am

  37. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlxTmCFRcbI support our troops, comments welcome

    posted by jordan on 6-3-2010 at 9:38 am

  38. I have uploaded pictures of my Monopoly collection to my website, if interested go to http://www.ianbrowns.com/mymonopolycollection.htm
    The site does show pictures of a 1971 Russian set that after translation goes by the name “Manager”. There are also pictures of standard wartime sets from the UK and Australia.
    Regarding the WW2 POW story, I believe it to be basically true, I have been aware of the story for many years, but suspect bits may have been added with the passage of time.

    posted by Ian Brown on 7-17-2010 at 6:55 pm

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