Spy stories are very popular and have been for a long time. Perhaps the most popular spy character is James Bond, who is recognized the world over. Spy stories that are fictional can be clever, interesting, and creative, but spy stories that are real are usually more bizarre than any fictional story. An example of this was how the board game Monopoly helped to win World War II. Yes, you read that right.
This story goes back to 1941. Members of the RAF found themselves as POWs under Germany. Britain tried to find ways to help these men escape and find their way back to safe territories. The best method for this is to have a map. But maps would have to be hidden or else the Germans would take them. Maps themselves aren't very durable: their loud when they fold, they don't fold very small, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, well, the map is done. So the thinkers in Britain tried to find a way to create a map that could be easily concealed, durable, and withstand water. They wanted the maps to contain not only escape routes back to safe territories, but also locations of safe houses for food and shelter. MI-5 came up with the perfect solution: print the maps on silk. A silk map can be folded repeatedly without wearing out, it can be easily concealed, and it resists water damage.
However, this is where things get unusual. There was only one company in Britain who had actually perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. Waddington was happy to help with the war effort, so they did their job printing the maps. Now, Americans wouldn't recognize the Waddington name, but the Brits might. You see, Waddington was the UK licensee for the board game Monopoly. The International Red Cross was allowed to give care packages to Prisoners of War, and a qualified category for inclusion was "games and pastimes". MI-9 is credited with the smuggling of the Monopoly sets into the hands of POWs. Waddington employees who took part in the printing were sworn to secrecy and printed the maps in what has been described as "a guarded and inaccessible workshop" on the Waddington factory grounds. The maps themselves were designed specifically for the areas of German or Italian camps.
This is the really interesting part. The maps could be folded up into small dots and hidden inside the Monopoly playing pieces. But it wasn't only maps that were smuggled in. A playing token was modified to have a tiny compass in it. A metal file that could be screwed together was smuggled in as well. And then there's the Monopoly money, which also contained real German, Italian, Austrian, or French bills. British airmen (and soon American also) were instructed on how to spot a Monopoly set that had the smuggled materials inside. Any serviceman who was trained on the clever ruse was sworn to secrecy for their life because Britain thought it might use the trick again, and why not? It's been reported that the trick has been very successful, but the exact numbers of POWs that had escaped using this method is unknown.
The Monopoly ruse was classified until 2007, but it wasn't unknown. There were reports of it before 2007, such as an Associated Press article in 1985 and a book Game Makers in 2004. The reason it was officially declassified in 2007 was because John Waddington, Ltd. was given special recognition for their work. Some finer elements of the story are still debated, as are all former classified stories. An article appeared in 2007 in the London Times and an archivist for Waddington wrote in saying that the maps didn't have safe houses because they knew that some maps would be confiscated by Germans and Italians, and no one wanted to risk the safety of the safe houses.
Whether the safe houses were printed on the maps or not doesn't take away from the creativity of the smuggling of the materials into the POW camps. This story is an amazing story that seems like a crazy movie. This definitely gets filed in the "more bizarre than fiction" category!
Bet you didn't know that!
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