Cool Moments in History: How Monopoly helped win World War 2

It has been a while since I have done a 'Cool Moments in History' post, it's nice to be back, especially with such a ridiculous title.

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British Escape kits

As we all know from 'The Great Escape' it is a British officer's duty to try and escape. So to help any airmen that got captured, MI9 British military intelligence, would supply pilots and crew with all sorts of secret gear to help in their escape attempts.

Some of these included buttons that concealed compasses (see below), coats with hidden maps and fake cigarette packets containing all sorts.

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Monopoly to the rescue

The british distributor with the rights to Monopoly outside the United States was John Waddington Ltd, a name familiar to all of us in Europe that played board games.

Waddington came to the attention of a MI9 because they had the ability to print onto silk. MI9 commissioned them to supply silk maps to their air crews, which had the advantages of being water proof, easily folded, easily hid and resistant to tearing. It was this collaboration that led to the Monopoly escape kits.

At least on the Western front and for officers of the right ethnicity, the Nazi's treated there prisonors according to most of the Geneva conventions, one of which allowed for care packages to be brought to the troops. Board games or past times was one of the things allowed in these packages.

Using this, MI9, with the help of Waddington, went about designing special sets of the world famous game. Inside you could find, silk maps hidden inside the board, real money under the fake money, files and compasses in the pieces and likely more. (explosive dice?!?!, ok maybe not, I watch too many movies)

Aircrews were told in advance to keep an eye out for marked copies of the game, and after harvesting the goodies inside, to destroy the evidence. This unfortunately has led to few if any copies surviving.

It should be mentioned that it was not only Monopoly that was used for these kits. Waddington also made chess sets similarly laden with hidden gems, but chess doesn't look as good in a title.

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@fiveboringgames