Mid-Week Mini: The Great Monopoly Escape

In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk about how the board game Monopoly helped the Allies’ WWII war effort.

Some prisoners have e scaped from jail by digging tunnels. A few have climbed walls. One group escaped by playing Monopoly.

I’m Michael Kent, and this is a Mid-Week Mini from The Internet Says It’s True.

If you’ve ever flipped over a Monopoly board because someone charged you way too much rent on Boardwalk, you’ll appreciate this story. Because during World War II, the British government and the makers of Monopoly quietly turned one of the world’s most recognizable board games into an escape kit.

The idea came from a remarkable organization called MI9. Their job wasn’t spying on the enemy. Their job was helping Allied soldiers avoid capture or escape if they were taken prisoner. They were constantly inventing clever ways to smuggle useful items into prisoner-of-war camps without attracting suspicion.

At first they hid things inside everyday objects like shaving brushes, fountain pens, and playing cards. Then someone realized something important. The German guards routinely allowed prisoners to receive board games through the mail. After all, bored prisoners were easier to manage, and a game of Monopoly hardly seemed dangerous.

Except these Monopoly games weren’t ordinary.

Working with the British manufacturer John Waddington Ltd., which happened to hold the UK license for Monopoly, MI9 began producing specially modified game sets. Hidden beneath the printed game board were genuine silk maps. Silk wasn’t chosen because it was fancy. It was chosen because it folded into almost nothing, didn’t tear easily, and stayed readable even if it got wet. Prisoners could tuck one into a jacket lining or even hide it inside a shoe.

The game money wasn’t always fake either. Mixed into the colorful Monopoly cash were real German marks, French francs, Dutch guilders, or other currencies depending on where the package was headed. Some editions even concealed tiny metal files for cutting through bars or wire, along with miniature compasses hidden inside playing pieces or the game itself.

The hardest part wasn’t building the games. It was getting the right ones to the right prisoners.

MI9 developed a code using tiny dots printed in specific places on the Monopoly box. Those almost invisible markings told prisoners whether their game was ordinary or one of the special escape editions. The Germans never figured out the system, so thousands of standard Monopoly games continued circulating alongside the secret versions.

The maps themselves were just as carefully planned. A prisoner in occupied France didn’t need a map of Norway. Different camps received different escape kits, each tailored to the geography around them. Once outside the camp, escaping prisoners could navigate toward neutral countries or advancing Allied forces using maps that had literally been hiding under a game board.

Exactly how many successful escapes these Monopoly sets enabled is impossible to know. Escape attempts were often kept secret, records were intentionally destroyed, and many veterans never realized how unusual their board game had been until decades after the war. What historians do know is that authentic escape-edition Monopoly sets are now among the rarest and most valuable board games ever produced.

It’s funny to think about Monopoly this way. Most families joke that the game ruins relationships because it takes too long and somebody always gets too competitive. During World War II, though, the game represented something completely different. It represented hope.

Every roll of the dice, every stack of paper money, every glance at that familiar board carried the possibility that underneath all of it was a real chance at freedom.

Not bad for a game most of us leave unfinished on the dining room table.

The Internet says it’s true.