How Monopoly Games Helped Allied POWs Escape During World War II

Even trivial changes to a trivial board game can shift the course of history.

One of the charms of Monopoly is its insistent iconography: the quaint little board, with its quaint little properties and its quaint little playing pieces, all overseen by the quaint little mascot that is . To play Monopoly—even if you’re playing one of those —is in some sense to step back in time: specifically, to the America of 1934, when the game was first mass-marketed.