With the war raging across the Pacific in 1942, a new game appeared in stores across the United States called Follow the Flag to Victory – Be an Arm-Chair Strategist on World-Wide Battle-Fronts! The game was produced so families could follow the progress of the war across the globe with a focus on the Pacific where the Americans were trying to take the fight to the Japanese. Produced by the George F. Cram Company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, Follow the Flag to Victory came in a large, attractive box. On the front it featured the American flag together with a family looking at a map of the world while listening to the war news on the radio with a globe on top. Along the bottom of the box was a battle scene showing American infantry and tanks attacking the enemy with explosions happening all around them.
Cram was a family-run business which had produced maps and globes since 1867 and were renowned for producing geographical products of a very high standard.74 Their founder George Franklin Cram (1842–1928) was an American map publisher who served in the Federal Army during the American Civil War and afterwards became one of the first people to publish a world atlas. The firm was famous for developing metal printing plates by electroplating a wax-engraved model which created cheap maps that people could afford for the first time. According to the company’s literature, ‘The Cram globe and map products meet the highest standards of craftsmanship and editorial quality and are considered the standard that other educational globe and map products are compared against’ (the firm’s outstanding reputation meant that it survived as a family-run business until 2012 when it was finally forced to close, the result of declining demand and cheap imports).75
With the war raging across the Pacific in 1942 Follow the Flag toVictory – Be an Arm-Chair Strategist on World-Wide Battle-Fronts! appeared in stores across the United States.
The game board consisted of a large and detailed Mercator map of the world measuring 52 x 35cm which was mounted on thick card. The map showed the world ‘at the beginning of World War II, September 1, 1939’ and identified using symbols ‘US Possessions, Military Bases leased from the British, Commercial Air Routes and Air Distances’. It also showed the British Empire in pink together with American Possessions in green. The game came with a printed sheet of both Allied and enemy flags, which according to the manufacturer enabled the buyer to make ‘176 flags’. The flags were double sided and were stuck together after having a pin inserted so they could be pinned onto the board. The instructions stated, ‘The United States, Great Britain, and Russia each is represented by its own flag. For all other countries fighting for freedom use the general flag symbol representing the United Nations. Axis Powers flags can be seen to designate any enemy nation, with Germany, Italy and Japan each represented by its own flag.’
On the inside of the top of the box was a very detailed map of ‘Possessions of the United States’ including Alaska, the Panama Canal, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Philippines which it stated was under ‘US Control Until 1945’. The game instructions encouraged armchair strategists to start by placing flags ‘at all spots where American boys are stationed’ which according to the manufacturer included ‘Guadalcanal Island (Solomons), St. Lucia (West Indies), Fiji Islands, Iceland, Northern Ireland, England, Africa, Virgin Islands, the Aleutian Islands (Alaska), and many spots in Australia’. The instructions also included a helpful index of each country showing the kind of government, its area in square miles, population and capital city.
The map showed the world ‘at the beginning of World War II, September 1, 1939’. It predicted ‘the time will come when you can place the flags of the United Nations squarely in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo’.
The aim of the game was for the armchair strategist to plot the war with flags across the map, the instructions stating, ‘the graphic picture will change from day to day as news of the Global War is made public.’ As befitted the self-belief of the American nation, it also predicted that ‘the time will come when you can place the flags of the United Nations squarely in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo’. It would take another three years for the stars and stripes to fly over Berlin and Rome and for Japan to surrender. America would emerge from the war as the greatest superpower in the world but at a cost of over 400,000 lives.