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A
Cool piece of History
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 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!
I realize most of you are (probably) too young to have any
personal connection to WWII (Dec. '41 to Aug. '45), but
this is still interesting.
Story verification: http://blogs.wsj.com/
informedreader/2007/11/19/
wwii-pows-perk-monopoly-with-
real-money/
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