How Playing Cards Helped POW'S Escape During WW2!

How pow’s of war used playing cards to escape during ww2

Playing cards on the frontline has always been part of a soldier’s life. It was the simplest way to pass the time and to get your mind off the stressful everyday life in the war zone.

In WWI, the United States Playing Card Company realized the importance of this accessory, and started producing cheap decks, affordable to soldiers who were going overseas to Europe, to fight on the Western Front.

Since then, the U.S. Army cooperation with the United States Playing Card Company has gone a long way. But it was the company’s brand Bicycle that took this cooperation to a whole new level.

During ww2, the United States playing card company joined forces with the American and British intelligence agencies to create a very special deck of cards. This deck was specifically created to help allied prisoners of war escape from German prisoner of war camps.

The decks were distributed during Christmas via the Red Cross Christmas parcels, which always contained a deck of playing cards to help the prisoners pass their time in captivity so the special packs went unnoticed by camp guards.

This deck of cards became known as the “map deck”. It was made by hiding maps of top secret escape routes between the two paper layers that make up all modern playing cards.
The original deck would peel apart when soaked in water to reveal hidden maps that allowed escaping prisoners the ability to find their way to safety.

The now-famous, but once top-secret, map deck helped at least 32 people escape from Colditz Castle and encouraged more than 316 escape attempts.

Due to the nature of the war and the prosecution of war crimes thereafter, the map decks remained a closely guarded secret for many years after the war had ended.

The secrecy behind them was so high, that no one really knows how many were produced or how many survived, apart from the two that serve as exhibits in the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

There is said a deck to be in a private collection. It’s possible that this is the only surviving example
As for further cooperation, Bicycle was the company behind the infamous Ace of Spades packs which were used in Vietnam for purposes of intimidation and psychological warfare.

At the request of an officer serving in Vietnam, the company produced 1,000 decks consisting solely of 52 aces of spades, for the purpose of leaving them as calling cards cards on dead Vietcong and NVA soldiers.

Today, Bicycle Playing Cards can be found among the kit of American servicemen and women around the globe, as nothing beats a good old game of cards during rest and recuperation.