
How Allied Fliers Used Monopoly to Escape From German POW Camps - aaronbrethorst
http://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured-article/how-allied-fliers-used-monopoly-to-escape-from-german-pow-camps.html
======
lostlogin
Great use and clever idea. However I'm not too sure I'm keen on the idea of
using humanitarian groups to smuggle stuff to prisoners. It's important that
independent groups have access to prisoners, and this is a sure fire way to
get access limited. Not all wars have such clear good/bad camps.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Its important to realize that we're looking at this retrospectively. Imagine
if the headline was about Nazi POWs escaping custody with the help of rigged
board games. I don't think its fair to sort combatants into 'good/bad camps'.

I totally agree about not militarizing groups like this. If you try to turn
POWs into combatants, do they still have any protections? Its like having a
brilliant scheme to dress a whole bunch of marines as field medics; at best
it's unethical, at worst it puts real non-combatants at risk.

~~~
bdunbar
> I don't think its fair to sort combatants into 'good/bad camps'.

What's fair got to do with it? If there was ever a good/bad distinction
between combatants, World War II was it.

The Axis powers were evil, don't doubt it.

~~~
alanctgardner2
History is written by the winners. The Nazis as an organization committed
atrocities, yes, and their leadership was responsible for that. To the
millions of boots on the ground - in battles, not the relatively small number
implicated in concentration camps - there wasn't good/evil. There were people
we should shoot, and people we shouldn't. Blurring that line with tricks like
those described puts non-combatants at risk, which is pretty evil.

Dropping a nuclear bomb on a civilian population is also pretty evil.

~~~
nikcub
> History is written by the winners.

Overused cliche line that doesn't mean anything and isn't true. The Soviets
won World War 2, they won it more than the USA won World War 2 and more than
the British or anybody else won World War 2 but we re-wrote their history as
evil scumbags who committed atrocities during the war.

~~~
bdunbar
> we re-wrote their history as evil scumbags who committed atrocities during
> the war.

Re-writing was not needed. Stalin was an evil thug, just as bad in minor ways
as Hitler.

~~~
nikcub
News of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940[0] by
the Soviet Union was hushed up by the Western Allies during the various 3-body
conferences. It only came out after the war and when Cold War tension rose[1]

Contrast this to when Dachau was liberated, where the western media were given
an official tour and relayed pictures, stories and the news only days later.

Eisenhower sent out a press release when Dachau was liberated[2], but kept
quiet about Soviet atrocities.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre>

[1] [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/katyn-massacre-
hush...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/katyn-massacre-hushed-
stalin-slaughter-polish-officers-released-memos-show-article-1.1156361)

[2] <http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/dachau/dachau-01.html>

------
S4M
I wonder why they destroyed the remaining games after the war. What was there
to hide?

~~~
VLM
Presumably the maps were made from confidential info with the help of Germans
in their .mil and .gov... and if like clockwork we had to fight WWIII in the
1970s it would have helped to not blow the cover of those agents. Even more
excitingly, in the short term, about 1/4 of those agents probably were allied
with the USSR .mil and .gov by 1950, quite handy human intelligence.

Also having been in .mil, troops always have crazy stories that are blown off,
but a large cache of rigged board games means POWs would probably never be
able to play a board game again, which is a shame, so its vaguely
humanitarian, although they must have realized the truth would eventually come
out (like now). Its too bad, board games are nice for POWs, and now they can't
have them...

~~~
antidoh
"and now they can't have them..."

Actually they can. Print the board games on silk, and package the game in the
board/silk.

