'Monopoly X' review: How the game freed POWs in World War II

The game of Monopoly is complex, and in its appeal to one’s inner tycoon, all American. Its rise to popularity began when the Salem, Massachusetts, firm Parker Brothers bought the rights to it. Before long, as Philip E. Orbanes writes in his new book, “Monopoly X,” the game had “appeared in movies, inspired a song, and graced a range of merchandise, including greeting cards.” By the late 1930s, its “impact on culture was comparable to that of the "Star Wars" movie trilogy 40 years later.”

The craze went international, and for the British market it was decided that the street names of Atlantic City had to go. Orbanes includes an amusing vignette in which Victor Watson, head of the Leeds printing company that was tapped to manufacture Monopoly in Britain, embarked with his secretary on a renaming binge, crisscrossing London on the Underground’s Circle Line to find replacements for Boardwalk, Park Place, etc. “They selected streets ranging from shabby Old Kent Road to elegant Mayfair.”

A special version of the game, called Monopoly X, seems to have debuted in 1941 (Orbanes is not always careful about providing dates). It was a prisoner-of-war edition with a false bottom that could hide rations, medicines and escape tools such as cutters, saw blades and maps printed on silk for easy folding into concealable size. Delivered by the Red Cross, which to preserve its neutrality was kept in the dark, the games typically arrived in threes, only one of which — marked by a tiny sticker on the box — was doctored. Thus, if a guard happened to open a box and check its contents, the contraband still had a good chance of reaching prisoners undetected.

In “Monopoly X,” Orbanes — a game designer who worked for Parker Brothers and is the author of several books about the board game — explores how this ingenious rendition of a beloved pastime helped numerous Allied prisoners of war get out of jail and Nazi-held territory under the protection of Allied forces through a network of secret routes and safe houses.

Orbanes’ book is chockablock with heroes and heroines — British, French, Dutch and Finnish — and one particularly loathsome villain, an English traitor named Harold, or Paul Cole, depending on whom he might be trying to hoodwink. A “tall, lanky man with a trim mustache and ginger hair,” Cole exuded a self-confidence that belied his humble Cockney origin. At one point, he crossed paths with the British Monopoly maven Victor Watson, who came away from the encounter puzzled by Cole’s ability to wheel and deal in German-held territory.

“Was he truly aiding an escape line in France?” Watson asked himself. “Or was he a deserter lying through his teeth in order to remain at large?” Cole’s teeth were indeed being lied through, and the saga of how he bluffed his way out of trouble again and again to keep on betraying his country is a gripping one.

The book’s most appealing hero is Airey Neave, an Oxford grad who pulled off a thrilling, Monopoly X-aided escape from Germany’s Colditz Castle, the dumping ground for recaptured escapees from other prisons. He also fingered Cole as a serial deceiver and overcame resistance to that accusation from the bullheaded chief of Britain’s intelligence agency, MI-6, into whose good graces the brazen Cole had insinuated himself.

Making periodic appearances in the story is a decoded message charging that an unnamed traitor lurked in the last place you would expect to find one: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s White House. By a process of elimination, Orbanes pins this rap on FDR’s brilliant and versatile adviser Harry Hopkins. It’s a contested issue — other historians clear Hopkins of treason but charge him with naieveté toward the Soviet Union, then an American ally — but Orbanes makes a good case for his verdict.

Also worth noting are two facts about Monopoly’s later life: The X model was deemed so touchy a subject that its existence was kept secret until 1985; and standard Monopoly did not become “officially available” in Russia until 1991.

After reading the book, you may never play Monopoly again without thinking of Risk.