Karen’s Opinion

I have not verified the following information but, since my mom sent it to me and I found it very interesting, I thought I would share it with my readers. Perhaps someone knows if it really happened that Monopoly games were used during the war.

Starting in 1941, an increasing number of British airmen found themselves as the involuntary guests of the Third Reich, and the Crown was casting about for ways and means to facilitate their escape. Now obviously, one of the most helpful aids to that end is a useful and accurate map, one showing not only where stuff was, but also showing the locations of ‘safe houses’ where a POW on-the-lam could go for food and shelter.

Paper maps had some real drawbacks — they make a lot of noise when you open and fold them, they wear out rapidly, and if they get wet, they turn into mush.

Someone in MI-5 (similar to America’s OSS) got the idea of printing escape maps on silk. It ‘s durable, can be scrunched-up into tiny wads, and unfolded as many times as needed, and makes no noise whatsoever.

At that time, there was only one manufacturer in Great Britain that had perfected the technology of printing on silk, and that was John Waddington, Ltd. When approached by the government, the firm was only too happy to do its bit for the war effort.

By pure coincidence, Waddington was also the U.K. Licensee for the popular American board game, Monopoly. As it happened, ‘games and pastimes’ was a category of item qualified for insertion into ‘CARE packages’, dispatched by the International Red Cross to prisoners of war.

Under the strictest of secrecy, in a securely guarded and inaccessible old workshop on the grounds of Waddington’s, a group of sworn-to-secrecy employees began mass-producing escape maps, keyed to each region of Germany or Italy where Allied POW camps were regional system). When processed, these maps could be folded into such tiny dots that they would actually fit inside a Monopoly playing piece. As long as they were at it, the clever workmen at Waddington’s also managed to add:

1. A playing token, containing a small magnetic compass

2. A two-part metal file that could easily be screwed together

3. Useful amounts of genuine high-denomination German, Italian, and French currency, hidden within the piles of Monopoly money!

British and American air crews were advised, before taking off on their first mission, how to identify a ‘rigged’ Monopoly set — by means of a tiny red dot, one cleverly rigged to look like an ordinary printing glitch, located in the corner of the Free Parking square.

Of the estimated 35,000 Allied POWS who successfully escaped, an estimated one-third were aided in their flight by the rigged Monopoly sets. Everyone who did so was sworn to secrecy indefinitely, since the British Government might want to use this highly successful ruse in still another, future war. The story wasn’t de-classified until 2007, when the surviving craftsmen from Waddington’s, as well as the firm itself, were finally honored in a public ceremony.
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It’s always nice when you can play that ‘Get Out of Jail’ Free’ card!
I realize most of you are (probably) too young to have any personal connection to WWII (Dec. ’41 to Aug. ’45), but this is still interesting, isn’t it? I wonder if Wii and Wii Fit will ever have this claim to fame.

I am not up to date on all the new game systems or games but I know a lot of people have the latest console and games that go with it. It is for all of you that I wanted to tell of something I read over at Make Memories Today. She said that her husband went to the store to return,
Guitar Hero World Tour today. They had none left and stated that of the 50 they sold 45 had already been return. It is such a wide spread problem that he decided to not bother waiting for them to get more in. So he bought Rock Band and an extra guitar since it uses a different guitar than what we already have for the regular Guitar Hero. You can visit her blog to see what her family thought of the replacement and what was wrong with the original purchase.

I am not sure if those are games or game systems but I figure that you who are into those things will benefit from this shout out.

I admit it. When my kids were small, I used television as a babysitter. I was a bad mom, I know. I did limit what they watched so does that make me a better mom? I think we have every Disney movie that was ever made. Let me see…
1. Cinderella
2. Aladdin
3. The Jungle Book
4. Sleeping Beauty
5. Peter Pan
6. Pinocchio
7. Lady and the Tramp
8. Dumbo
9. Bambi
10. Bedknobs and Broomsticks
11. The Sword in the Stone
12. Fantasia
13. Mary Poppins
14. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
15. The Lion King

Wow! I didn’t know we had all those but I had an idea that we had most of the ones Disney has put out. Do you have the same ones we do? Are there any that we don’t have that were your favorites? When the kids were small, we enjoyed playing easy games like Go Fish and Match Game. ScreenLife has a new Disney Bingo DVD game that looks to be a whole lot of fun. It uses the top ten Disney items such as the list of my videos above. The game also uses well known Disney characters. You can buy this fun game at Amazon.com or Drugstore.com.

Playing games with your kids is a wonderful way to teach sharing and patience. It also teaches young children how to lose gracefully and how to win with humility. Your kids will remember the times you sat down and played with them.