How the Monopoly Board Game Became a World War II Escape Kit

Monopoly is a pretty divisive game, and people tend to either love it or hate it. However, for hundreds of Allied POWs captured during World War II, Monopoly became more than a mere diversion -- it became, instead, their ticket to freedom. Join the guys as they explore the strange sequence of events that led the UK to turn Monopoly into a real-life escape kit.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
If you're like millions of other people throughout history and
around the world, then you have probably at least once
played some sort of game with your friends, whether it's
a game of dice, a game of cards, or important
for our purposes today, a board game. Uh. And today's
episode is about board games, but not in the way

(00:45):
you think. Welcome to ridiculous history. My name is Ben,
my name is Noel, and I'm I'm a fan of
the old five finger fill at you know, where you
take a blade and pop it real quick between the
gaps between your fingers. Have you ever done that? Only
in video game form? So it's it's an available game,
and I believe Red Dead Redemption. I haven't found it
yet in the new one, but hopefully it exists. But yeah,

(01:08):
that's that's a pretty scary game. I've I've played that
game in real life before, and I never went fast
enough to actually cut myself. Seriously, was that back when
you spent time in that prison camp in the pow camp,
Well they called it church camp. But you know what,

(01:28):
I think, six on one hand, half a dozen in
the other. Not to derail the topic before we even
get there, but I just watched both documentaries about the
Ill Fated Fire Festival, and we talked about this and uh,
that was sort of like being in a in a
pow camp f y r E. The ill fated, the
ill fated festival that was most closely associated with jaw

(01:51):
Rules when it broke in the news. Well, and the
main guy who was the perpetrator of the whole hoax
is a guy named Billy McFarland I believe is his
last name. And yeah, he he was a real piece
of work. But here's one thing they didn't have it Firefest.
They had these gadesic dome kind of FEMA tents that
were left over they used that they had advertised as
luxury um I believe villas um. They had some really

(02:15):
sad looking cheese sandwiches. They had a lot of kind
of gross portapies. They didn't have was the game of Monopoly.
What they also didn't have was our super producer, Casey Pegram.
So there they were without Monopoly, and without Casey Pegram,
which I think is a is a grave injustice, possibly
could have solved the whole debacle. Quite possibly. We are,

(02:39):
by way of fantastic segues exploring the world of Monopoly
but again perhaps not in the way that you have
heard it explored before. For just a quick look at
the strange history of Monopoly. It was originally invented as
something called the Landlord's Game in nineteen o four by
Elizabeth Maggie, and it was a real estate and taxation

(03:03):
game that was really meant to inform people about the
dangers of unbridled capitalism. And when this game was more
or less stolen from her, the gameplay was modified so
that it rewarded unbridled capitalism. And nowadays Monopoly is a

(03:25):
love it or hate it game for a lot of people.
I've never experienced a huge falling out with friends, loved ones, relatives,
and so on playing Monopoly, but that's because I don't
play with cheaters, and that seems to be one of
the big accusations against winners of Monopoly. I just think

(03:46):
that Monopoly is sort of the board game equivalent of
solitary confinement, and that it's really boring. You find it boring,
It takes a long time to finish. Yeah, I mean,
I could I could see that being a CRITICISI is
um It's not for everyone, but it's a tremendously popular game.
You know what I mean, Like, even even people who
aren't big fans of it have played it before. Absolutely,

(04:10):
It's very true. Do you think people still play it
now like fun? Absolutely? And they've made a huge business
similar to Trivial Pursuit, they have made a huge business
in selling themed Monopoly boards. That's true, but at least
with the Trivial Pursuit branded versions, they're like questions related
to that topic. With Monopoly, it's just like a different
looking board and instead of a shoe, you've got like

(04:33):
a Stranger Things baseball bat or something yeah, yeah, or
a demogorgan. Right. The thing that I always found, uh
interesting about Monopoly is that it is a pale shadow
of the board game life, which is I think much
more intriguing. But either way you look at it, Monopoly
is is here to stay. It's a very popular game

(04:56):
and during World War Two it was widely played. It
was just as popular in the United Kingdom as it
was in the US. In fact, uh, there was a
manufacturer of Monopoly in the United Kingdom called Waddington John
Waddington Limited, and they had purchased a license to create

(05:19):
this just across the pond, which will be important later
but no, where are we going with this? Oh man,
We're going so many places. Um, yeah, it's true. Waddington
was the license of the products, almost like a franchise
deal right where they were allowed to manufacture and distribute
this game in the UK after it had seen a
lot of success in the US. But Waddington, this company

(05:41):
um was also very well known for their ability to
print things on silk. And that doesn't seem like a
big deal for our story today, but it turns out
it might be the biggest deal and the thing that
gave Uncle Sam and his minions of espionage idea to
pull off this amazing uh caper, I guess we can say.

(06:03):
I think caper is a great word, or scheme keeper
is a little more fun. Yes, the story really kicks
into gear with a guy named Christopher William Clayton Hutton
known as Clutty to his friends, which I think is
just a terrible nickname, not not superior. And so Christopher

(06:24):
Clayton Hutton or Clutty is an intelligence officer at m
I nine and he got this job through a very
strange series of events or in off hands comment when
he applied to work as an intelligence officer in nine
for the UK War Office. He says in a quote later,

(06:47):
my passport to the whole curious business has been a
casual reference to my thwarted efforts to get the better
of Harry Houdini, the world's greatest Escapologist's right, because he
his whole deal. And the reason that he was attractive
to m I six was that he was kind of
a clever guy who was very fascinated by things like

(07:08):
up close magic and and little tricks that might be
involved in doing some illusions. Uh. And he was able
to apply that to those kind of James Bondi type
gadgets that you that we all know and love. Like
you know, a pen, it's also an explosive device or
something like that, right, a tiny telescope that looks like
a cigarette holder, or compasses on the backs of buttons, uh,

(07:31):
boots with hollow heels that held knives, maps, compasses and files.
But the thing was, you're right, only it was a brilliant,
brilliant man. But as ingenious as his inventions were, it
seemed that the Germans as they called them, always eventually
figured them out, all of them, that is, except for one.

(07:55):
You see, he came to Waddington Limited and said, you
all manufacture a lot of things. Check. I understand that
you print on silk, double check. And I am of
the understanding that you also print a board game called Monopoly.

(08:15):
Triple check. He probably pronounced it correct. These are some
important boxes. And we add these three boxes up together,
you get a way to execute this plot that was
gestating in this guy's mind. Because here's the thing. The
reason that it was a big deal to print on
silk is because they could be used to have maps
printed on them, maps that wouldn't deteriorate in the rain

(08:37):
or get torn to shreds if you stepped on them,
or make a noise when you try to clandestinely unfold them,
maybe in a pow camp or surrounded by enemy troops. Absolutely,
absolutely see, this is something that fascinated me. We're studying
up for this episode. Silk maps were already around because

(08:59):
of those advantage is that we just named silk maps
had already been proven superior to the paper stuff that
could disintegrate, tear, make noise, giveaway your position. And because
Waddington's made silk maps and Monopoly, Cluttie knew he was
onto something. There was one other important ingredient of wartime

(09:22):
reality that that solidified his decision. He knew that board
games were allowed into POW camps largely because of the
Geneva Conventions and the Red Cross, and also because Germany
at this point in the war UM had such a
bad rep for adhering to the Geneva Conventions in the
way they treated prisoner of war that they were willing

(09:43):
to allow these humanitarian air drops UM into their camps,
which included things like snacks and you know, things that
to pass the time. I think books, but board games
were also okay, and they would also think of it
as a win for them because they figured if they're
prisoners were busy occupying themselves playing an interminable board game

(10:04):
that took ages and ages and ages to finish. Clearly,
I'm not a fan of the game, yeah, but I
mean it would it would serve its purpose, right, and
they would probably be thrilled to have the opportunity to
do something like that to pass the time. UM. But
there's the thing. A board game is in a big
box with layers with stacks of stuff in it. This
is a pretty amazing opportunity UM for our Mr Cluttie yeah, absolutely,

(10:33):
So what they eventually decided to do Waddington's we should not.
It was initially not on board with this, so Clutty
and the UK government pitched it to them hard and
they said, look, we are going to We're going to
have this covered stem to stern. We are not just

(10:54):
gonna smuggle maps in these monopoly games. We are also
going to flude real money hidden with the monopoly money.
We're going to include French, Italian and German notes just
under the actual monopoly cash. What else did they include?
They included um hidden in little indentations that were cut

(11:17):
in the board itself because back in those days the
boards were a good bit thicker than they are now.
So they were able to um pre label because you know,
the whole label with all the pieces park place and
all that, just a big old sticker that goes on
a piece of foldable cardboard. Um, they were able to
cut these very shallow indentations that could hold things like
files or those uh, those little compasses you mentioned earlier,

(11:38):
the very small ones. The smaller the better, because they
wouldn't want it to be a red flag to any officers,
any German guards handling it who might think this is
way too heavy for a board game, right. You also
read other accounts that say, uh, playing pieces were actually
the escape items like a compass and a file were
disguised as playing pieces. That's interesting case. When I I

(12:00):
pictured the whole cutting out of the indentations into the
board thing, it kind of reminds me of stuff like
how you might hide something in prison by cutting the
pages out of the middle of a book or a
bible or something with that and having like a file
or a shive or something hidden inside. Um. And it's
interesting too because this actually was classified until I want
to say, the nineteen eighties, uh, and the soldiers were

(12:22):
instructed to destroy these boards. Um. And the thing is
too they had to use their own intuition to figure
out these things are even in there, which is the
thing that blew me away, because apparently there was a
little red dot on the board that made that was
sort of a clue. I guess that this is a
special board, but it wouldn't have been seen as anything
out of the ordinary other than like a printing error

(12:44):
maybe for the folks that were distributing the boards. Sak
that the German soldiers, but it takes a lot for
you to think, oh my gosh, this board game surely
hides these secret items. I don't know, man, you spend
a lot of time looking at the same board. So
maybe the staff of the pow camp just checks it
and they shake it a little bit, but they don't

(13:05):
really care because it's a Monopoly game. But then there
are a couple of points that I want to hit
before they get lost. So this, uh, this board, if
you're familiar with Monopoly, does look very similar. Most importantly, though,
the map. You may hear different things about the pieces
versus things being stuffed in the board, but the map

(13:28):
itself was always hidden within the board, and m I
nine covered their tracks very well here. They invented fake
cover organizations to quote unquote donate these parcels to the camps.
So this removed culpability from the Red Cross because they

(13:48):
can't knowingly distribute escape kits right, So instead they're not
getting stuff from the UK Government. They're getting stuff from
organizations with names like the Licensed Victuallers Sports Association, the
Ladies Knitting Circle, the Jigsaw Puzzle Club and the Prisoners
Leisure Hour Fund. So as far as the people actually

(14:09):
supplying the kids know these are legit monopoly boards. As
far as the Germans know, these are legitimate monopoly boards,
and it they just had to wait. It was a
leap of faith to wait for one of those POWs
to say, hey, this peace doesn't look quite normal. Let
me turn it over. Oh there's a compass, you know

(14:31):
what I mean? Yeah, that's true, and not to mention
like that. The stacks of money, I believe were fake
money on top, fake money on bottom, real money in between.
So that might have been the first thing that gave
it away, right if they're like, think about it, if
we're going to play a nice game of monopoly, you
pull out the fake money and you say, what, what's this?
And then there's you know, real money, and that maybe
would make them investigate further. You think, yeah, yeah, I

(14:53):
think that's I think that's quite likely. And it's strange
because at first, you know, the first question is why
is this not a film? Right, because it seems like
one heck of a story. But the second question is
how much of this is exaggerated? Because Monopoly is a
cultural icon. The answer is really not much, not much.

(15:18):
And just to throw in one last point, Parker brothers
themselves the creators of the game didn't know this was
going on. This all had to be done very secretly,
and it's not like they would like let them know. Hey,
by the way, is it okay if we use your
beloved board can to rescue some of our troops? But
it you know, And again it was not known for
decades because it was classified, and we don't have any

(15:39):
examples of what these might have looked like because they
were all destroyed, because what if a German guard had
discovered one, the whole jig would be up for all
of the camps. Here's the thing to ben. They knew
which camps they were bear dropping these on, and they
had customized packages for each particular spot right right. This
may have been declassified relative recently, but it was kind

(16:01):
of an open secret way before two thousand and seven.
You can find a AP Press article about this. But again,
we don't know what the kids look like because people
could describe them, right. POWs who used these to escape
people can recount their appearance, but as you said, they

(16:24):
had to be destroyed. There's a fantastic article on this
in the Atlantic, How Monopoly games helped ally POWs escape
during World War Two by Megan Garber. And you know,
for someone who is severely anti monopoly, like it seems
no offense, you might benal this maybe is redemptive. Does

(16:46):
this make you feel a little bit better about the game? Well? Sure,
I think the game has it's it's it's positive qualities,
and it certainly is one of them. Um, I just
personally don't enjoy playing it. It's one of those games
where I like the idea of it more than the
actual practice of playing a game. Um. I'm really into
a game called Pandemic, which is a game that you
play cooperatively with people, and I think that's a lot

(17:07):
of fun. Sometimes the adversarial nature of a game isn't
is it for me? You know? There are also games
such as uh, there's a great HP Lovecraft game called
something like Call of and you cooperate with other players
to prevent the coming of the the Eldridge Gods. Yeah. Yeah,
and the Pandemic is very similar that you're preventing some

(17:27):
sort of global outbreak that could annihilate civilization. So it's
all you know, it's all for a good cause. Also,
there's something about Monopoly that kind of rubs me the
wrong way, because, like you said at the top of
the show. It used to be much more about, you know,
highlighting the evils and potential, uh negative things that can
result from capitalism run amuck, and now it's just much
more about, like, hey, let's run them up with some capitalism,

(17:49):
now that we live in a world of late stage capitalism.
Oh excuse me, gig economy. She well, well, we would
be remiss if we did not ask super producer Casey Pegroom,
are you monopolist? Casey? I like it because the experience
of playing it is terrible. I just kind of feel
like it's good propaganda for um, you know, a different

(18:09):
way of life. So sort of like in the way
you might watch a Mystery Science Theater three thousand movie,
you enjoy the awfulness of it just for its own sake. Yeah,
because I mean, it's it's true life, true life. It's
too it's too terribly true to life. Casey on the case, folks, Yeah,
I think that's such a great point. One thing that

(18:29):
I was thinking about during the course of research into
today's episode was the fact that going to jail in
monopoly is just part of business and does not impede
your financial or social success in any shape, fashion or form,
sort of like how paying multimillion dollar finds. It's just

(18:52):
the cost of business for a lot of banks. I
don't want to get too oriented towards the corporatocracy or politics,
but that's just the case. Monopoly predicted it, but they
predicted it in a in a terribly misleading way. So
I'm glad it did something good and helped some portion
of over thirty five thousand Allied POW's escaped from German

(19:16):
prison gamps. Yeah, and they don't have exact numbers of
how many people many many POWs escape using these monopoly kits,
but um, everyone involved is pretty confident that they were
effective on some level. Uh. And here's the thing I
just found been too in this great article from ABC
news UM where they say that airmen, before being deployed
on missions that might have been um going out on

(19:39):
maneuvers at this stage in the war, were told if
they were captured to look for escape kits in monopoly games.
So I was thinking more of the folks that have
been there maybe a little longer term, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which lets us know that this had been in production
for some time, you know what I mean? And it worked.

(19:59):
Also in that ABC article is Victor Watson, who was
a former chairman of Waddington's until nineteen ninety three, and
in his estimation, again this might be a bit bias
because he did work for the company. Uh, he says
that Waddington's reckoned around ten thousand POWs successfully used the

(20:21):
monopoly map, which is inspiring, you know, and I love
that you raised the point that we're never going to
know the actual number of people who were who were
for sure saved, are able to escape with this. We

(20:42):
should also mention that this was not the first involvement.
Uncle Penny Bags, that's the name of that cartoon character,
the capitalist. Yeah, people just call the monopoly guy. Yeah,
well his real name is rich Uncle Penny. Back, Uncle Penny.
It's back when a penny before inflation carried a lot
more away, back when a penny meant something. Um. After

(21:05):
World War Two, Monopoly found itself in the middle of
another international conflict, this one more ideology related, because you
see Cuba, the USSR and other communist countries outlawed the
game because it advocated capitalism, you know what I mean.
There's not a communist version of monopoly yet. Someone check

(21:26):
on that if there, if there is, please let me
know whether there's some sort of anti monopoly or communist monopoly.
And and Casey, by the way, I see that you
just sent us something called Monopoly for millennials. This this
is a true thing. I remember hearing about this a
while back when when it broke fairly recently. It was

(21:50):
Monopoli's crass attempt to advertise to the millennial generation. Right,
they might have air dropped some of these on Firefest.
There we go, a nice way to call it back.
So what is this, Casey? It is a updated version
of Monopoly for millennials. And just looking at the box
cover art, I love the slogan forget real estate, you
can't afford it anyway. So that's just that lovely, lovely

(22:12):
late capitalist dystopia. We've all enjoyed Casey on a tragic
case there. But I love it because it's got pictures
of like bike lanes, and it's like a vegan only restaurant,
green kind of ecological messages. And um, Mr Pennybags has
kind of like some reflective sunglasses on. Looks like he

(22:33):
has an iPod earbud in his ear, so they're they're
really hitting the millennial cliche is pretty heavily. They're more
of a douche bag than a pennybag. Community chess cards
say things like your free web streaming trial expires, pay
the bank forty dollars, tokens including an emoji and a hashtag.
Oh this is great, this is terrible. It's funny because

(22:56):
it seems like they're trolling, but I mean it is
a real thing. You can by iron stores apparently, what
rough board games slouches towards beth Lehem to be born. Yeah,
and especially again, I'm fresh off watching both of these
Firefest documentaries, so I have a pretty bad taste in
my mouth and a bit of a self loathing for millennial.
I'm technically a zennial. I think I'm on the cusp.

(23:18):
I think both you and I casy here a little
bit on the cusp. Yeah, we're customers. It's rated in
two different ways. Uh. The one way would be to
rate it on a generational chronological divide. But another way,
in some sociologists for you, this would be to rated

(23:38):
on a digital divide or access to information. You know,
so people who were born before the days of dial
up modem right are clearly not millennial. I don't know.
I think we're I think we're all actually cuspers. What
we what we should be wondering about if we were Hasbro,
is what sort of board game the generation after Aennials

(24:00):
would like to play? Hint, it's not on a board,
that's true. He also knows. It's funny how there's like
app versions of most old board games and they're very
similar theor just a little quicker to play. Like you
mentioned the Game of Life at the top of the show,
and I used to have an app version of that
because the mechanics of the Game of Life are a
little cumbersome and with the av it kind of does
all that for you. So it's it's a the lazy

(24:22):
Game of Life. I don't know, it's weird. I've tried
doing you know, you guys know me a huge fan
across words, and I've tried doing them online, but there's
something about the physical pen and paper. Also, yeah, I
do them in pen. But whatever I chose by battle.
Uh oh, we should mention as we're wrapping up here
that Uncle Sam and the Yanks that's us, so we

(24:44):
can say Yankees and not be pejorative. We totally copied
this idea a little later, after the Japanese attack Pearl
Harbor in December seven nine one, Hutton was tasks with
training his American like his the American version of him,
a guy named Captain Robbley Winfrey, and the art of

(25:06):
concealing escaped tools in this inocuous looking stuff. And he
came up with ideas that took off kind of dovetailed
on Hutton's and eventually his part of the Intelligence Services
Military Intelligence Services Escape in Evasion Section or miss x UH,
started sending out monopoly boards that were also loaded with

(25:29):
escaped tools. The one thing different they did is that
Winfrey would send his employees into toy stores and department
stores to buy civilian monopoly games and then they would
take the games back to their secret layer and that's
when they would kick them up. So they didn't have

(25:49):
I guess nobody trusted Parker Brothers at that time, you
know what I mean, because they ever asked Parker Brothers
to manufacture bespokeer custom ones. They just reverse engineered. That's
nuts that they would. There would be that much logistical
planning that would go into that. You talk about the
glue for example, oh lay it on us. Yeah, they
had to reverse engineer the exact glue that Parker Brothers

(26:11):
used in order to make the you know, the decal
lay correctly, So there was a whole lot of little
things they had to kind of like troubleshoot and figure
out how to make so that wouldn't throw up any
red flags. Okay, I've got to catch up, because just
for a second, when you said the decal lay correctly,
I for some reason I had a brain fart and

(26:32):
I thought you said de cal a like it was
some sort of very specific Parker Brothers correctly. Yeah, you're
You're right though, and by golly by gosh, by gum,
it worked because when the war ended in September, there
was only one escape kit that the German forces had

(26:53):
not discovered, and it was Monopoly. As you said, Noel,
everything was destroyed. Uh, we know this really happened. It
was officially revealed in nineteen eighty five, right, but the
American use of the game wasn't revealed until nineteen ninety
and according to various sources, at least at least seven

(27:18):
hundred and forty something airmen escaped with aids created by
Clutty and Robley Winfrey, which you know it sounds like
a great, a great gig if you can get it.
If there's a wartime thing and you get drafted. Can
you imagine, Fellows, if someone said, Okay, your job is
to make top secret board game Escape Kits, I would

(27:41):
be in. I would be one million percent. I would
do And I think it's a real testament to British
engineering and ingenuity. Agreed And with that ends our tail,
but not our show. Uh, tune in for our next episode,
which will be a surprising raw through the origin story

(28:02):
of one of the world's most famous rhinos. Very much
looking forard to that. In the meantime, we'd love to
thank our super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams who composed
our theme, our research associate Gabe of course, you fellow
ridiculous historians for listening, and Noel, thank you for thank
you for exploring this story with me. Ben, thank you
for being a friend. I wish we could. We don't

(28:25):
have the rights to play the Golden Girls. You just
have to use your imagination or go watch it on Hulu.
It's go right now. I could play it on ukulele. Yes,
that's very cool. Well, I certainly have by priorities order, right, man,
Well you got to and you guys should have your
priorities in order to listen to the next episode, Ridiculous History.
We'll see then