Monopoly Game Helped WWll POWs "Get Out of Jail Free"
Amazing what interesting trivia you sometimes stumble across on the Internet. For example:
During WWll, the Red Cross delivered special Monopoly games to POWs that included real “get out of jail free” cards, writes Brian McMahon in the November-December issue of Mental Floss, a magazine of far-flung trivia.
In 1941, the British Secret Service asked the game’s British manufacturing licensee, John Waddington Ltd., to add secret “extras” to some sets, which the Red Cross delivered to Allied POWs inside Germany. These specially marked sets included metal files, compasses and silk maps to safe houses in the areas of the respective POW camps (silk, because it folds into small spaces and unfolds silently). Even better, real French, German, and Italian currency was hidden amongst the game’s fake money. Soldiers and pilots were told that, if they were captured, they should look for these “special editions” identified by a large red dot in the game’s “Free Parking” space.
Of the 35,000 prisoners of war who escaped prison camps, “more than a few certainly owe their breakout to the classic board game,” says McMahon.
Here are some more fun facts about Monopoly from the Hasbro site.
Doug
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Reader Comments (7)
I didn't believe it so I Snoped it and it is true! Surprised I never had heard of this!
That must be why when you buy a leather WWll flight jacket (from the company that used to make them in WWll!), the silk lining has a map in it. Was news to me. Thanks!
That seems to me to have been extremely risky given that one loose lip could have sunk the whole ship. Even worse, the Germans would have known the whereabouts of all the Allied safe houses.
Perhaps the Germans were lazy about POW Camp security and never checked things brought in by the Red Cross. And maybe the British Secret Service knew this to be a fact. Maybe.
Any way, it must have worked and thank God for that!
It does sound like a risky proposition. I guess the Secret Service knew which camps they could easily get the trick games into. Kind of like Hogan's Heroes.
Yes it is amazing. Thanks for surfing for me and finding all the cool stuff!!
How interesting! We had never heard of that! And we still play the game. I wonder if anyone has one of the sets with the red dot? THAT would be worth something today!
Never knew that! And it is amazing that no one in my family ever heard of it either. You would think the folks who make Monopoly would advertise their connection.