War games from World War II

There has been quite a lot of publicity about a cache of board games, produced in Germany during World War II and based on that same war, being sold, including a story by the BBC commenting on such games.

I find the endless variety of subjects covered by board games very interesting, though they very often use the same playing methods. They can tell you a lot about society in the era in which they emerged (or, indeed, about the feelings of the inventor).

There is a ECLA or EC class for the idea of war games, A63F3/00D, which can be used on the free http://ep.espacenet.com database. I had a quick look to see if other countries had produced patented board games based on the war.

Easily the most interesting was Georges Gardes' Jeu de la Liberation, which he filed for in October 1944, a few months after the French Patent Office ceased to be supervised by the Germans. This patent includes a large illustration of a major part of the board, showing Germany with a swastika in the middle; each corner being for France, Russia, the United States and Britain; and paths between them of the names of cities on the way to Germany.

Other French patents of interest were one from 1942 based on warfare in the Mediterranean and one from 1943 based on a campaign through Italy, and a more explicit one about invading France from England, filed in 1945 which is described as an embarkation game.

Oddly, I couldn't find a similar British one, and for the USA only the rather prescient World War Game filed for in December 1938, which shows Japan, Germany, the United States and Russia in each corner.

Of course, published patents are no proof that the invention was ever produced, and many were no doubt produced without patent protection (or, perhaps, fall into other classifications). Best of all is to find an old game with a patent number so that you can see the inventor's thoughts spelt out.

Comments

[phoenix insurance]

That makes me wonder what the future will think about this generation and the games designed to obliterate each other.

[Buy WoW Gold]

Nice thought.
Tia smith
One of the great things about in-game money and virtual economies is that they never went through this whole economic meltdown. So take that to all of those people who think the real world is better then computer games!