The Silk Maps That Helped Prisoners Escape During the Second World War

In Brief

During the Second World War, British intelligence produced escape maps on silk, rayon, tissue paper and other lightweight materials to help Allied servicemen evade capture or escape from prisoner-of-war camps. Silk became the best-known of these materials because it was light, strong, quiet to handle, resistant to water and easy to fold into a small space without tearing.

The maps were developed through MI9, the British military intelligence section responsible for escape and evasion. They could be sewn into clothing, hidden in kits, concealed inside everyday objects or smuggled into camps through parcels. Some surviving examples are now held by institutions including the Imperial War Museums and National Museums Scotland, where they remain evidence of a particular kind of wartime invention: not grand, mechanical or loud, but precise, portable and made for the hand.

The Wartime Maps Printed on Silk

Silk has carried many meanings across history. It has been currency, tribute, dowry, contraband, dress, banner and secret. It has moved through courts and caravans, across mountain passes and sea routes, from Chinese workshops to Roman debate chambers and European looms. Yet one of its least expected uses came during the Second World War, when a material associated with refinement became part of the equipment of escape.

The maps made for Allied airmen and prisoners of war were not decorative objects. They were working tools, printed with borders, railways, rivers, towns, roads and routes through occupied territory. Their purpose was simple to state and difficult to fulfil: to help a man who had been shot down, captured or separated from his unit find a way back to safety. A map was only useful if it could survive the journey as well as describe it, and the conditions of escape were rarely kind to paper.

An airman forced down over occupied Europe might have to cross fields at night, hide in woodland, wade through ditches, travel by bicycle, sleep in barns or rely on civilians who risked their own lives to help him. He might have no more than a compass, a little currency, a few phrases of the local language and whatever information could be carried without drawing suspicion. In that setting, the map had to be small enough to conceal, strong enough to survive repeated folding, quiet enough to consult in darkness and durable enough to remain readable after rain.

Paper failed at several of those tests. It softened when wet, split along its creases and announced itself with a rustle at precisely the wrong moment. Silk behaved differently. It could be folded into the palm, pushed into a seam, wrapped around the body or hidden inside clothing. It did not crack or disintegrate in the same way. It could be opened with far less noise. These were not poetic qualities. They were practical ones, and in wartime the practical qualities of a material could become matters of life and death.

The British organisation most closely associated with these maps was MI9, formed in 1939 to support escape and evasion. Its work sat slightly apart from the more familiar stories of espionage. MI9 was concerned with what happened after capture, or just before it: how servicemen might avoid imprisonment, how prisoners might prepare for escape, how information, money, maps and tools might reach them without detection. Its inventions often depended on small acts of disguise. A button might contain a compass. A boot might hide a blade. A playing card might carry information. A piece of cloth might hold half a continent.

Christopher Clayton Hutton, one of MI9’s most inventive figures, understood that escape equipment had to be useful before it was clever. A beautifully made device was worthless if it could not pass inspection or withstand real use. Maps needed to be hidden inside clothes, games, records, parcels or personal items, and they needed to remain legible once recovered. Silk and similar fabrics offered a solution that was both technically intelligent and almost absurdly modest.

Printing geography onto cloth was not as straightforward as transferring an image onto paper. Roads, rivers and railway lines had to sit clearly on a woven surface. Borders and names had to remain readable despite folds, pressure and handling. The printing had to survive the movement of the cloth without smudging into vagueness. Some maps were printed on both sides, allowing two regions to be carried on a single sheet, while others were designed for particular theatres of war, including Europe, North Africa and Asia.

The Imperial War Museums holds a two-sided coloured silk escape map measuring 68.5 by 71 centimetres. One side shows Holland, much of Belgium, north-eastern France and western and central Germany; the reverse carries further maps of south-eastern France, south-western Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany’s frontier. The museum record notes that Hutton met the mapmaker John Bartholomew in 1940, that Bartholomew supplied maps for countries including Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and the Balkan states, and that the maps were printed on silk, rayon and tissue paper. This last point matters, because “silk map” is often used loosely. Silk became the memorable name, but not every wartime fabric map was made from natural silk.

John Bartholomew & Sons, the Edinburgh cartographic firm, played a significant role in supplying material for escape and evasion maps. National Museums Scotland records that Bartholomew provided MI9 with paper copies and printing plates from its small-scale world maps, which were then adapted for wartime use. The same account notes that fabric maps were quiet, strong and waterproof compared with paper, and could be hidden in clothing or prisoner-of-war care packages. It is a detail that returns the story from legend to workshop: behind the romance of secret maps was the ordinary accuracy of cartographers, printers and textile specialists doing their work under unusual pressure.

The maps were carried in different ways. Some were issued to aircrew as part of escape-and-evasion equipment before missions over enemy territory. Others were intended for agents or special operations personnel. Some found their way into prisoner-of-war camps through disguised channels. National Museums Scotland describes maps, money and false documentation being smuggled into camps with help from firms such as John Waddington & Co., the Leeds company best known for manufacturing Monopoly in Britain. It also records that objects were hidden in board games, gaming sets, playing cards and gramophone records, with parcels sent through bogus charities including the Prisoners’ Leisure Hours Fund.

The Monopoly story has become the most repeated part of the silk-map legend, partly because it has the neatness of fiction. A prisoner opens a board game and finds inside not only a pastime, but the means of escape. The truth is more careful and more interesting than the simplified version. MI9 did work with Waddingtons, whose printing expertise made the company useful far beyond ordinary game production. Specially prepared games and leisure items could conceal maps, currency and other aids, but not every Monopoly set sent to a camp was part of the scheme, and the details were necessarily restricted to selected prisoners who had been trained or informed in advance. The success of such a plan depended on ordinary-looking objects remaining ordinary-looking to everyone except the intended recipient.

There is something deeply revealing in the choice of concealment. Escape equipment could not look heroic. It had to look boring. It had to pass through the hands of guards, inspectors and administrators without asking to be examined too closely. The silk map belonged to this world of quiet intelligence, where a thing survived by refusing to announce itself. It could be folded under a lining or slipped into the false bottom of a box. It could be touched, hidden and retrieved without noise. Unlike a weapon, it did not threaten anyone by its mere presence. Its danger lay in what it allowed a person to know.

What the maps provided was not certainty, but orientation. They showed railway lines, borders, rivers, roads, distances and routes that might help a man think his way through unfamiliar land. In some cases they marked useful crossing points or carried evasion information. A surviving example described by National Museums Scotland, issued by the Ministry of Defence in 1943, showed main transport routes by road, rail and river across Europe, with frontier information correct as of September that year. Other fabric maps produced for American airmen in Asia included multilingual “blood chit” messages asking civilians for help and promising reward, a reminder that escape often depended not only on geography, but on human risk.

The material itself did not guarantee survival. Many escape attempts failed. Many prisoners remained in camps until liberation. Many airmen who evaded capture did so because civilian resistance networks sheltered them, fed them, moved them and sometimes paid for that courage with their lives. The silk map should not be mistaken for the whole story. It was one object among many in a difficult chain of dependence, but it was unusually well suited to its task.

Its usefulness came from understanding silk without sentimentality. The same properties that had made silk desirable in clothing, its strength, fineness, lightness and ability to take colour, made it valuable in a very different context. The fabric’s beauty was irrelevant to MI9. Its behaviour mattered. How it folded, how it dried, how it sounded, how it resisted tearing and how much information could be printed onto it were the qualities that counted.

Today, surviving escape maps have a strange stillness. Seen in museum collections, they no longer look urgent. Their colours may have softened, their fold lines remain visible and their surfaces carry the quiet exhaustion of use or storage. Yet they retain an intimate scale. Unlike tanks, aircraft or ships, they do not overwhelm the viewer. They ask to be looked at closely, almost as their original owners would have looked at them, searching for a river, a border, a road, a name that might make the next decision possible.

For Thackray, this is what makes the story more than a curiosity of military history. It shows silk not as a symbol of luxury, but as a material of intelligence. It reminds us that textiles are not passive things. They enter the world as clothing, shelter, signal, memory, disguise and, in this case, direction. The Second World War silk maps belong to that larger history of fabric being asked to do more than adorn.

A scarf and an escape map are not the same object, of course. One belongs to art, dress and personal expression; the other belonged to fear, calculation and movement through danger. Yet both depend on the same underlying truth. Silk carries information beautifully. It holds colour, line and detail with a peculiar grace, and it can be folded close to the body without losing what has been placed upon it.

That is why this wartime use of silk still feels so arresting. The maps were never meant to be admired. They were meant to be hidden, unfolded quickly, read under pressure and put away again. Their success lay in their discretion. In a century full of louder inventions, silk helped some men survive by doing what it has always done best: carrying meaning lightly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were Second World War escape maps printed on silk?

Silk was used because it was light, strong, quiet to handle and easier to conceal than paper. It could be folded repeatedly into a small space without tearing along its creases, and it remained more usable than paper in wet conditions. These qualities made it valuable for airmen, agents and prisoners who might need to carry a map secretly through hostile territory.

Were all wartime escape maps made from real silk?

No. Although silk became the best-known material, wartime escape maps were also printed on rayon, tissue paper and other lightweight materials. Museum records from the Imperial War Museums note that MI9 maps were printed on silk, rayon and tissue paper, so it is more accurate to say that silk was the most famous fabric used rather than the only one.

Who created the silk escape maps?

The British escape-map programme was closely associated with MI9, the military intelligence section responsible for escape and evasion during the Second World War. MI9 worked with cartographers, printers and companies with specialist production skills, including John Bartholomew & Sons and John Waddington & Co.

What information did the maps show?

The maps showed practical geographical information needed for movement through unfamiliar or hostile territory, including roads, railways, rivers, towns, borders, distances and possible crossing points. Some were printed on both sides so that a large amount of information could be carried on a single sheet of fabric.

Were silk maps really hidden inside Monopoly games?

Yes, although the story is often simplified. MI9 worked with John Waddington & Co., the British manufacturer of Monopoly, to conceal escape aids inside specially prepared leisure items and parcels for prisoners of war. Not every Monopoly set sent to a camp contained maps, and the modified versions were intended for selected recipients who knew how to recognise and use them.

Can original silk escape maps still be seen today?

Yes. Original examples survive in museum and archive collections, including the Imperial War Museums and National Museums Scotland. They are preserved as part of the wider history of escape, evasion, military mapping and wartime intelligence.